Spiritual Formation in Ministry

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2011-02-08T07:14:00.004-07:00

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Happy Death

2010-11-14T18:51:00.004-07:00

Today at our church’s prayer vigil, I went through all of the prayer cards that had been turned in. My favorite was the boy who is so grateful for chicken nuggets!

But as I read through them, it was clear that many dealt with death. Our congregation has a good spread of ages, but these requests were not limited to the aged. What I realized is that we do not have a good language for death.

One member of my Bible class lost his wife recently, an experience for her that he call “going home to glory.” For her it was a release, but as she struggled with illness and suffered the last few weeks, how were we to pray?

One card at the prayer vigil was from a man closer to 100 than to 90. His card asked for us to pray that the doctors would find out what is ailing him.

No one wants to give up on life, but can we have a language that admits both realities we live in: Death stinks; Death is inevitable short of the Lord’s coming. Death is an enemy, but death can also be a merciful release.

I once heard that Catholics, when praying for a very sick person, ask for a happy death or a speedy recovery. (Are those two mutually exclusive?) I’m not sure I like the language of “happy death,” but it is headed in the right direction.

Perhaps having a language that accepts death without capitulating to it will help us live both soberly knowing what lies ahead and joyfully knowing that Christ has overcome this final foe.

Hope Mongering

2010-06-17T08:18:00.004-06:00

Noted marketing consultant Seth Godin recently wrote of hope mongering as a means for developing relationships in business. There is plenty of fear mongering, he noted, but hope brings longer-term results.

I am hesitant to let the business world co-opt a term as rich as the term hope.

Theologically the kind of hope a business guru talks about reduces down to wishful thinking and optimism. But the message of Christian hope is based on an understood reality—God’s ultimate victory over the powers of evil, a victory in which we currently participate.

Ever since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, life with God has meant hope. God’s work is about hope. The well-known song “The Steadfast Love of the Lord” sets to music the text of Lamentations 3:22-24. But this text comes in the middle of serious lament over the fall of Jerusalem and the terrible plight of the survivors. We are not in the Garden. But God is still working to bring us back.

The fact that the text for that song comes is the middle of a lament makes sense in some ways because hope and fear go together. The notion of hope only has meaning when that which long for is more desirable than our current state. And in God’s story, hope is always more powerful than fear, pain, sin, or injustice.

Hope that does not affect us now is not hope. Hope does not mean we do nothing, waiting passively for rescue. Hope means we know rescue is on the way, so we do everything we can to be part of that rescue effort. Hope empowers us to be part of what God is doing in the world.

Complacency is the enemy of God’s message because complacency neither fears nor hopes. Ministers and churches content with who and what they are will not be able to live in hope, nor share hope with others.

Unless the painful state of the world pains you, unless you long for the redemption of lost souls, unless you long for life in the renewed Garden of Revelation 22, you cannot truly hope.

Hope may be good business. But it is better theology. And it is the lifeblood of transforming leaders.

New and Old

2010-01-03T15:25:00.006-07:00

I visited the Old North Church in Boston last year. It is an icon in American History, complete with the statue of Paul Revere riding his horse in the foreground. The church is stately, meditative, and bustling with tourists.

The church building has great connections to the past. It's Congregationalist heritage is part of the Boston religious landscape.

But the church is dead.

There is a congregation that meets there, I think. But the church maintains its vitality as a tourist stop on the Freedom Trail more than as a representation of Christ's body on earth.

In my job at Harding Graduate School, I am able to work with a lot of people who want to create new churches, congregations that are representations of Christ's body on earth. They want to create intimate communities where God and others are served.

These folks want to become a church that is alive and cares for members and non-members in the name of Christ. It's like the group of friends on Friends, but nicer to those outside the small group.

But these churches often have no past.

Many of these churches are defined by what they are not. ("We are not our parents' church" is the most common, I think, but of course this is rarely admitted.) Even the healthiest of these groups have a healthy dose of reaction against something, rather than straining toward something.

So is the choice we have this simple: Be dead and traditional or alive and lone?

The truth is we all are connected in some ways to the past, admit it or not. If you read the Bible in translation, then your faith is built upon the work of others.

But it is also true that the church is by nature relational, since it is a group of people united by the mission of God.

It is difficult to be connected to the past and connected with others. People polarize so easily, and we are incredibly impatient with either change or lack thereof.

How do we as church leaders honor our past, experience the present, and help create a vibrant future?

Spiritual Doubt

2009-08-09T17:28:00.007-06:00

A nine-year-old asked not too long ago how it is that we know the Bible is true. How do we know it is not just made up stories, a fiction?

It is a big question for a young child to ask, but it is an important one to ask. If he doesn’t ask it, then he will never have a faith richer or deeper than his parents’ faith. This child is a believer, as much as one can be at that age, and a seeker. He wants to believe, but needs to understand.

As strange as it may seem, one of this boy’s keys in his spiritual formation is his doubt.

I can say this because I understand there being two kinds of doubt. The first is the kind we find in James 1:6—someone asking wisdom of God but not really believing God can or will grant such a thing. I call this doubt of accusation. Our very request of God is an accusation against God: “This will prove you don’t exist!” The doubt of accusation assumes that God is not willing or able to do as he has.

But there is another kind of doubt, a spiritual doubt. Spiritual doubt assumes God does exist and will be faithful to His promises, but confesses the reality that we cannot see how it is possible for God to do so. “I believe,” the man cried to Jesus. “Help my unbelief.”

Spiritual doubt longs for God to be known, and so it not opposed to faith. On the contrary, spiritual doubt admits our human frailty and finitude. We may not “get it.” But at least there is something to get.

Perhaps this spiritual doubt is reminiscent of Anselm’s “faith seeking understanding.”

Perhaps this quotation from Thomas Merton will be helpful:

Faith is not the suppression of doubt.
It is the overcoming of doubt,
and you overcome doubt by coming through it.
The man of faith who has never experienced doubt
is not a man of faith.
(Asian Journal, 306)

Spiritual Adaptation

2008-01-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be nice to have a magic wand to solve our ministry problems? It sounds crazy, but I keep running across people wanting magic wands.

Of course they don't use the term magic wands. Congregational leaders call them "answers." Like, "People in our church want to [insert mildly controversial topic here]. What should we do?" Then they look at me as if I have the one Scripture text or theological insight that will solve their problem.

Ministry students do the same thing, but with more sophistication. They use words like "discernment" and "vision" and "leading." (All good words, by the way.) "I'm trying to discern a clear leading for my ministry vision" means "I don't have a clue and I'm hoping someone will tell me what to do."

Jacob wrestled with God, and maybe that is a better metaphor than magic wand. The wrestling caused Jacob to limp the rest of his life. And maybe that is also a good metaphor.

I like the word adaptation. It implies changing because of the reality around me. Most of the time when people look for magic wands they want solutions to problems instead of wrestling with God to discover what he is doing and then adapting themselves to his work.

When we wrestle with God he will always win, even if he has to break our leg to get us to submit. God has a funny way of confronting us with reality, then expecting us to adapt to his work.

As ministers, we must look for God's reminders of what is real--as difficult as that may be. Then, when tempted to seek a magic wand to overcome the problem, pray for the strength to change, to grow, to adapt.

It is unlikely, however, that once we enter God's reality that we will ever walk the same again.

Saint Benedict

2007-05-30T13:29:00.001-06:00

I'm reading The Rule of St. Benedict for a doctoral course in spiritual formation. Benedict was a sixth century monk who wrote his Rule to help monks find God within a monastic community. His brief comment on the four types of monks reminds me of various ministers today:

The first kind of ministers wander around aimlessly, living off the work of others. They bounce from ministry to ministry without focus--all in the name of the Spirit!

Others go off on their own without spiritual training, without mentoring, without discipline. (Been there, done that!)

A third kind is the one living in a community of spiritual growth, submitting to the wisdom of those who are like-minded in their quest for God. (These are the ones Benedict writes to.)

The fourth kind, the rarest, is the one who, after years in a supportive community, can endure the challenge of solitary ministry. (Benedict thinks these are the most noble.)

Many ministers think they are the fourth kind, strong and heroic against the forces of evil. After all they really, really love God. Most of these end up being the first or second, but only realize it after a ministry crash.

May we seek and find communities of support, encouragement and discipline as we strive to grow closer to God and bring others along for the ride!

Feast or Famine

2006-11-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

[An abbreviated version of this article appears in The Bridge, Winter 2006.]
I sit on the grass watching others eat a sumptuous meal while I have four ounces of soup and a cup of water that smacks of dirt. I am part of the 60% of the human population that earns under $912 per year. The group to my left is middle class; they earn between $912 and $9211 per year. They are about 25% of the population of our planet. Those eating the good meal, the ones making $9212 per year or more, are the upper class in our global economy, the upper 15% of humanity.

This is "Feast or Famine" at the 2006 Word Mission Workshop, held this year in Lubbock, Texas. Earlier, I randomly drew a wrist band to admit me to the cafeteria. The color purple assigned me to the poverty-stricken majority during the hunger awareness experience. The experience is a reality check on the stare of our world: inequitable distribution of wealth, malnutrition, ignorance and greed. Sitting on the grass I can feel my head burning in the West Texas sun. I resist the urge to run into the air conditioning. I need the experience of hunger and sun to remind me of those whom I so easily ignore.

I hear several responses to the global understanding event. One student tells about his own homelessness as a young man and how he lived on soup kitchen rations for several months.

Some weep. My friend who had drawn a blue wristband feels guilty as he eats his three course lunch. If he tries to give us food, actors playing security guards will intervene: "Giving food to beggars only encourages begging!"

Others commit to do something. One student gathers his friends and buys two packs of food from a local benevolent ministry; one pack for a local soup kitchen and the other so they can host a similar event on their campus.

Some blow it off. In reality, almost everyone here is part of the 15 percent. They will live most of their lives trying to distance themselves from the poor.

My own response is different. I wonder who will lead the mass of students now riled up to fight injustice. Who in this crowd will be the prophetic voice leading forth to a new dawn? Having several hundred students aware of social injustice is very different from having several hundred students led to do something to impact those injustices.

"God, raise up leaders," I pray silently. As soon as I pray it, I turn and see that God is already at work raising leaders: I see Bob Logsdon not too far away from me. He and I studied together at Harding University Graduate School of Religion.

Bob is here with some of the high school students from his inner-city work in Tulsa, Okla. I wonder if in the real world any of them are far enough in poverty to be in the lowest level of the "Feast or Famine." How ironic that these inner-city youth are participating in an experience intended to make us aware of life's disproportional distribution of wealth.

Earlier I had asked Bob about his ministry. He pointed to a photo of a man who had come to his ministry as an addict. Now that man runs a house for recovering addicts. Bob had been a witness to the transforming power of God in the life of one man, and now Bob gets to witness as God transforms others through that re-made man.

I sit and get sunburned, my heart aching for those suffering from a global economy that has put me on the top of the heap. As I sip my unfiltered water, I rejoice that in the midst of this reenactment of inequity I am near a man confronting real-life inequality. He is igniting a quiet revolution of spiritual re-birth.

Such is the power of transformational leadership.

The Spiritual Risk

2006-09-30T16:19:00.000-06:00

Garnett Foster, the director of the doctor of ministry program at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary says about ministry students: "I find often that students want to be more spiritual, imagining that means they will always feel good and have warm fuzzy feelings about every aspect of life. Spirituality joins running and self-help programs as one more way persons attempt to fill the emptiness in their lives."

The risk of spirituality--even for ministers!--is that we make it about us. It is a little frightening to think that spirituality might involve the Spirit--making it Spirituality [capital "S"] rather than spirituality.

In Romans 12:1-2, Paul give a glimpse intspiritualityty. I glean these five basics from that text:

1. Spirituality is based on God's Mercy
2. Spirituality comes through the sacrifice of our bodies, not the indulgence of them
3. Spirituality means we give up worldly norms for evaluation of life
4. Spirituality means we are transformed by the renewal of our minds
5. As we develop spirituality, we are better able to discern God's will

The beginning and ending of biblical spirituality is God. It begins with God's mercy and involves our sacrifice, our redefinition of ourselves based on God's values. As our minds are remade in the image of God we are transformed, and so we are able to better discern God's will.

We seek spirituality to be comforted, or even to be comfortable. But surely spirituality is really about conforming and transforming.

How are you being transformed?

Spirit-free Spirituality

2006-08-17T12:27:00.000-06:00

I was raised without much talk of "spirit," whether Holy Spirit or anything else. My only recollection of hearing the word was in terms of death, when one's spirit leaves the body.

Spiritual talk, then, is a foreign language for me, like speaking in tongues without being Pentecostal.

My upbringing is cessationist, believing the Spirit's work was finished at the close of the apostolic era. Charismatics were way off my radar and the few times I heard my charismatic friends talk about church I got pretty scared. I know a lot more now, but I'm still uncomfortable with speaking in tongues, etc. That's not where I'm headed with spirituality.

So how can I talk about spirituality since I'm a post-cessationist, non-charismatic? Admittedly, it is a foreign language, but I and my compatriots are trying to learn the tongue.

One realization came from reading--you've got to love this--Acts 2:38. I knew the stuff about what I was supposed to do (repent and baptized) but the verse--yes the very same verse!--talks about receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit connected to baptism. Acts 2:39 says the promise of the Holy Spirit cuts across time and geography. Maybe there is some amount of spirit for me, a foreigner to the Spirit's land.

Eugene Peterson points out that the promise is not the promise of spiritual gifts, but the promise of the Spirit himself. This is not about what I can do, but about a powerful relationship with the Holy Spirit of God.

So spirituality begins with acknowledging that God is active in me by his Spirit. Talk about a paradigm shift! This means the spirit is doing more than merely animating me, waiting to flee my corporeal tent once I kick the bucket. It means never being alone, never far from God. It means having comfort to support me in what God wants me to do. It means having community support regardless of where I am.

So much spirituality talk today is about getting in contact with the inner me, having profound experiences that enrich who I am. Self-understanding and deep experiences are fantastic, but they don't necessarily have anything to do with the Spirit promised by God to meet me on the upside of the baptismal dunk. This spirit talk has no more Spirit than what I was raised with.

We need to move quickly past the albatross of a Spirit-free spirituality.

Fake Spirituality

2006-08-09T11:30:00.000-06:00

Two forms of fake spirituality plague ministers: solipsism and capitalism. Both are well known and frequently mocked.

Solipsistic spirituality is the classic bookworm preacher who has no contact with people. His motto is "desk work is God's work." He understands his spirituality based on his own insight and knowledge, and he sees his job as transmitting his insights to those who come into his path.

Capitalistic spirituality, on the other hand, values production above all. This minister's motto is "Head count is all that counts." He constructs events that draw a crowd--any crowd--and determines his own success based on the size of the group.

Both groups have a scriptural basis--Mary and Martha are good examples. Solipsism says, "study to show yourself approved," and capitalism say, "Go and make disciples." Both are good, but the fact is that someone can study without showing himself approved, and one can go and get followers without making disciples.

Working at a graduate school, and being a product of said school, solipsism is an occupational hazard. We work intentionally to push students out of the library (OK, some we have to push INTO the library!) and into real ministry. These folks do not draw a crowd. It isn't their intellectualism that drives people away, but their inability to make their knowledge real for the average person simply does not attract the masses. They confuse acquisition of knowledge with ministry.

On the flip side, I have been at conferences where the speaker talks about "ten easy steps to grow a huge ministry." They tend to have an anti-intellectual bias, even to the point of degrading serious study, rather than seeing it as a tool. The speakers had fantastic stories of people loving each other in Christ, but from the speeches, I'm not sure how often Christ showed up. There is a lot of people and a lot of hype, and Jesus tacked on at the end. Most of what I find I also find at marketing conferences--as if sales and conversions are the same thing. They confuse community in Christ with a happy group of people.

My guess is that both groups are equally successful in the process of making disciples. Solipsism yields few converts, but the converts are good ones. Capitalists have many converts, but few endure past the hype. [The parable of the soils comes to mind.]

We cannot ignore the need for a minister to grow in knowledge and have a rich devotional life. Nor can ministers make excuses for not being evangelistic. A spiritual community assumes both kinds of perspectives in balance.

Balancing the need to have one's own spirit fed and feeding the masses is a spiritual struggle. One small victory in the battle--and this may be the hardest battle--is recognizing solipsism or capitalism in our own definitions of ministry. May God's Spirit speak to our spirits!

Measuring spirituality

2006-07-26T09:52:00.000-06:00

How can we measure our own spirituality? The question seems almost absurd, like judging how humble you are--as soon as you start measuring your humility, you lose it!

There are many ways people try to measure spirituality. Some count the number of people they convert. Effectiveness at tasks may be related to spirituality, but we all know people who convert many without ever really being transformed into the image of Christ themselves.

Others judge their spirituality by their spiritual disciplines. "If I pray/memorize Scripture/fast more, I'll be more spiritual!" That's putting the cart before the horse, since spiritual disciplines are tool and products of spirituality, not spirituality itself.

I want to suggest that we cannot measure spirituality, but we can "review our course" on our spiritual journey. Reviewing our course would mean identifying challenges in ministry that God's can help us meet. By asking "what don't I do well that I should be doing better" we identify our shortcoming, those areas where God can work in us. Robert Mulholland says: "The process of being conformed to the image of Christ takes place primarily at the points of our unlikeness to Christ's image. . . . God meets us in those places of our lives that are most alienated from God. " Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation, 37.

By asking "what don't I do well that I should be doing better" we identify our shortcoming, those areas where God can work in us. This is not a way for us to beat up on our selves, nor is it an opportunity to improve ourselves. It is understanding reality—I’m not perfect but God is; I want to grow closer to him, and he can bring me to himself.

Increased effectiveness can be a part of this since defining "effectiveness" would itself become part of reviewing the course. We tend to measure effectiveness based on what we do well. (Those gifted at evangelism tend to use conversions as a positive measure. Those gifted and shepherding use leadership as a measure.) By understanding where we are more effective and less effective, we develop a richer definition of what our goals are.

Spiritual disciplines also become a part of reviewing the course. My prayers, Bible reading, etc., are ways to discover where I am most alienated from God. They are also ways God can use to diminish the alienation.

Reviewing our course is not about quantifying anything and more about understanding the reality of who I am as a person and a minister. It also means allowing God to form me in those areas I least want re-formation.

Defining "Spirituality"

2006-07-13T05:36:00.000-06:00

We cannot get any sort of handle on the spiritual formation of ministers if we don't have a handle on the term "spiritual." This has always been tricky, but today's particular difficulty is that we can now conceive of secular spirituality.

Eugene Peterson in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places demonstrates the problem: "As an abstraction 'spirituality' frequently obscures the very thing it is intended to convey--God alive and active and present. The difficulty is that the term has become widely secularized in our present culture and consequently reduced to mean simply 'vitality' or 'centered energy' or 'hidden springs of exuberance' or 'an aliveness that comes from within.' For most people it conveys no sense of the life of God, Spirit of Christ, Holy Spirit" (29).

Any definition of "spiritual" for Christians must begin with Genesis 1:1-2--the spirit of God moving over the face of the deep, then speaking and therefore creating.

Spirituality, then, does not ultimately refer to us, as in "aliveness that comes from within," but somehow, in some way has its source in God and who he is. Any sense of spirituality that has its source in the person is, in Peterson's words, "Idolatry, reducing God to a concept or object that we can use for our benefit" (29-30).

Welcome!

2006-07-11T16:46:00.000-06:00

I've started this blog because of my personal interest in how ministers are formed spiritually, and because in the past week several others have mentioned to me their same interest.

I hope this can be a forum for discussing how we are personally shaped into the image of Christ and how we help others in their formation.

Blessings!

Mark