Discipleship Group

This really only applies to those who go to New Start Ministries, but for those of you who are part of my church, here is some information for you.

Friday Night Discipleship Group
With readings from “Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups” edited by Richard Foster and James Smith.

Background
This Friday was going to be the beginning of the discipleship group. However, Naomi’s grandfather died on Thanksgiving Day so I will be in eastern Washington for the funeral instead of here in San Francisco. So the first actual gathering of the discipleship group will be delayed by two weeks.

However, the first gathering was going to be an introduction to what the discipleship group is, with the actual discussions beginning the next meeting. So this letter is designed to be a replacement to that introduction so that the next time we meet everyone will be caught up to speed already.

The reason why we need a discipleship group at all is that we all know that what the Bible calls us to is not who we are or what we have been doing. We try our best to follow God, but on our own we almost invariably water things down until we convince ourselves that who we are and what we’re doing is all there is to life. We reinterpret the Bible so that it fits with what we are already doing, instead of allowing the Bible to encourage us to grow.

But that is the whole point of why Jesus came and died for us, so that we can be reunited with God and reformed back to the image of God we were created to look like. Salvation is only the beginning, but it is so easy to forget that on our own. We need to see different perspectives on what we as Christians can become to see where we have personally let ourselves water down the gospel.

Fortunately we are not along in this journey. Millions of people have traveled this road before us. And while only Jesus has fully shown the image of God, many different people have mastered individual aspects of it. Some of these people have written down their insights and the things that helped them the most. It is those insights on following God and being transformed that we are going to look at in this discipleship group.

The book that we will be looking at is an anthology of excerpts from many Christian writers spanning five continents and the last 1800 years of Christian history. Most of these authors come from various traditions emphasizing different parts of the Christian life. These generally focus on different aspects of what are known as the spiritual disciplines. Over the course of this group we’ll look at a variety of different perspectives and traditions. Some of these I can guarantee you will disagree with, possibly quite strongly, but almost all of them will stretch you, and me.


Discipleship Group Outline
We will be meeting every other week on Friday’s during the normal time of Friday Night Fellowships. The group itself will mainly be discussion based. Before each meeting, we’ll each read the next two sections of the book, and when we get together we’ll discuss those two chapters of the book as a group. If there is something that you want to talk about that is important to you, we can talk about it. Nothing is off-topic if you need to talk about it. Generally, however, the discussion will attempt to be centered around what we agree or disagree with about the readings for the week and how we can apply the same ideas to our own life.

The goal is to get exposed to different flavors of Christianity that can each help us to grow closer to Christ. There are 52 readings and with meeting every other week this is designed to be a yearlong course. Each section is only a few pages long, and is followed by suggested reflection questions and ideas to ponder. These are only suggestions, however, and we will first talk about any insights, problems, or applications that any of us personally got from the reading. However, feel free to use the discussion questions to start your thinking on your own if they help.


Accountability
Understanding how we have watered down the gospel is only the first step, however. We have all heard great insights that we have completely neglected to put into practice. The new knowledge and insights is only the beginning, we need to put these insights into practice as well. That is where accountability comes in.

Just as each of us has our own special strengths we also have our own weaknesses. Whether it is prayer, Bible, anger, fear, issues with appropriate sexuality, or any number of other things, we all have weaknesses. And we know that already, but we can’t seem to do anything about it on our own or we would have already taken care of it.

Along with the larger group, part of the discipleship program is also to have a personal accountability partner. This is someone that you will meet with one on one at least once every other week (once a week would be preferable) to talk about stretching points from the week and areas that you are trying to grow in.

The idea is to find someone that you trust and can be honest with. Whether this is someone in the group or not, or even whether it is mutual accountability or just them holding you accountable is up to you. Share what is going on in your life, pray together, and especially share what areas you are struggling with and what areas you are trying to grow in. As we journey through the book, you will hopefully find more ideas to work on and try out. Have your partner keep you accountable to these new things so that they are not forgotten with the next chapter of the book.

If you have never participated in accountability before, or want some sample things to talk about with an accountability partner let me know. There are many sample lists of questions and ideas that I can supply you with, including those used quite successfully by John Wesley several centuries ago.

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The Struggle with Prayer Pt. 3: Time

This has been a hard week. Thanksgiving Day my grandfather in-law died, so we are preparing to go to his funeral. On top of that I have two new groups at church starting soon, my normal church duties, my master’s class picking up speed, and general life insanity. It feels like my entire world has picked up speed and the world is spinning just that much faster than normal. Maybe you’ve had times like that too. It’s harder to concentrate, and there’s just so much on your plate that sitting down to do anything for an extended period of time is hard, and praying for a while at a time just seems impossible.

At times like this I usually end up praying for about two minutes and thinking it is an hour. My mind is just racing so fast and I feel so rushed that I run out of things to pray about almost immediately. I almost immediately feel like I hit a dead end in my prayers and then stop. But just like I don’t really get to sharing deep things with my wife for the first half an hour or so of a normal conversation, it takes time to get to truly talking deeply with God. And that’s time which right now I just can’t sit still long enough to give if I try and pray.

Fortunately, this is a common problem. The Roman Catholic Church has for centuries recognized that people need structure to help them concentrate in prayer, and so they use a rosary when they pray. The feel of the beads sliding through your hands as you pray gives you a feeling of progress, while also keeping your mind more focused and helping you to recognize that you haven’t been praying for an hour, it’s been three beads.

If you don’t have a rosary, almost anything will work that is something you can hold and has increments. Some people finger their necklaces, others more small pebbles down a pre-marked path with each prayer. Still other people make what they call “prayer shawls” or something similar where with each stitch you make you say a prayer. The ever increasing shawl gives you a sense of progress with your prayers, and also keeps you focused because with each stitch you seek to find someone or something else to pray over. This helps you from just dealing with the standard stuff you always pray about and actually move into the realm of needs around you and people you normally wouldn’t think to pray for.

I don’t knit or crochet, so this method doesn’t work too well for me. However, I do make chain maille armour. And so I have modified the prayer shawl method for chain maille. With each link that I put in, I say a prayer. This helps me to stay focused on prayer and not just run off when I run out of things to say. It also gives me something physical to hold and do with my hands so I am not as fidgety. Using the sense of touch in prayer has really helped me personally, and helped me to move beyond surface level greetings and into prayer that is about what really matters to me and those around me.

In short, if you have trouble concentrating in prayer, or sticking with it for a significant amount of time, or just fidget a lot, try some form of tactile prayer. It can be a rope, a necklace, a rosary, even a stick with notches on it. If you can, making something as you pray can be even more significant. Whittle, knit, carve, build (Lego’s work great, actually) or anything else you can do to help concentrate on God and keep your hands busy. It might sound weird, but give it a try, you might be surprised at how it helps your prayer life.

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The Struggle With Prayer Pt 2: Fear

Last week I started a series of posts about prayer, and prayer techniques. But before we prayer better, we had better start praying at all. It is so easy to talk about prayer, but actually praying is often hard. How often have you told someone that you’ll pray for them but never done it? I’m a pastor and yet I find myself doing that sometimes. It’s really sad, but true. Why do we talk about prayer so much and yet do it so little?

I have a thousand excuses about why I don’t spend more time with God in prayer. I am too busy. I talk to God more than I talk to my family already. I chat with God subconsciously so prayer is not needed. God knows my thoughts so I don’t have to direct them at God to pray. I am waiting to pray until I have the time to do it right. I don’t want to bore God with my minor issues. But in reality those are all excuses, not reasons.

The real reason I don’t pray more is that I am afraid. I am afraid that if I actually pray about what is going on in my life then I won’t have any excuses if I fail. You see, if I don’t pray, then I always can say “well I should have prayed about that more” as an excuse. But what does it mean if I pray about something and still fail?

And even more than that, I am afraid that if I do pray I won’t like the answers to my prayers if I do pray. It isn’t a conscious fear, but to some extent I keep trying to keep prayer as a reserve chute in case I am plummeting to my death, and am afraid that if I pull the chute too soon it won’t be there when I need it, if at all.

I know I’m not alone with some of these fears, and probably many more that I haven’t recognized in myself yet. The question, however, is what are we going to do about them? I can believe that prayer is important all I want, but if I don’t put that belief into practice its’ useless.

The problem, though, is that there are no magic solutions to make fear disappear. Only by trying out our fears and putting them to the test can we realize how foolish they are. We gain nothing by flinching away from God because we’re afraid. If you’re like me, right now you’re wishing there was another way. Perhaps you’re even certain that there is and have already decided to put off prayer until you have conquered your fears.

But there isn’t another way, which again scares me because these fears are my fears too. To conquer them we have to face them, prove them wrong, and that means we have to actually pray. Over the next several weeks I’ll be blogging about ways of making prayer easier, but in the end we still have to sit down and do it.

So right now, step away from the computer, go somewhere private, and pray. Not when you’re done with your email, go now. I will too.

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The Struggle with Prayer Pt 1: Is God Listening?

Each person has their strengths and weaknesses. One of the areas that I constantly struggle with is prayer. I know some people can pray for days without trouble, but not me. I start out well, but unless I am careful, within a few minutes my mind has wandered off to something else, I run out of things to say, and pretty soon I give up or completely forget I was praying at all. However, I also recognize a difference in who I am when I do not spend regular time in prayer. I am shorter with my wife. I can’t concentrate as easily. I have a harder time reading scripture or trusting in God. I lack the joy and sense of peace. I know I need prayer, but I have a really hard time achieving that sometimes.

Because of this, over the years I have consciously sought out ideas and ways to pray better. Some of them have really helped me with my own prayer life. And so for the next several weeks I’m going to be posting on some of my favorite prayer techniques.

These aren’t ways to coerce God into listening to us, nor are they ways we can “guarantee” that God will answer our prayers exactly like we want them to be answered. No, these are some ways that I have found that help me to better connect with God in a meaningful conversation. Perhaps some of what has helped me might be able to help you as well. Perhaps you have some ideas about prayer you can share with me.

The first thing that usually hinders me from talking with God is that I have a hard time believing that out of all the people in this world, God actually listens to me and will answer me. This irrational worry almost always crops up when I try to prayer. And if you don’t think the other person is listening it’s really hard to have a conversation.

The way I finally found to deal with this was to write down everything I was praying for in a book. Then as each request gets answered just write down the date next to it. It’s kind of scary starting to do this because at least my fear was that I would find out that God actually wasn’t listening to me at all. But after several years of doing this I have about a third of a notebook filled with prayer requests, and page after page of them have all been answered.

So now whenever I start to pray I flip open the notebook, and as I flip past page after page of answered prayers I don’t worry as much anymore whether God is listening. I see the evidence right in front of me that God does listen. And that makes all the difference to me. I can pray with confidence, and actually believe that God is hearing me and interested in what I say. I know it sounds simple, and it takes some trust to begin, but if you don’t have a prayer journal, try it. It has made a huge impact in my life.

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Who Do We Listen to?

There has been a lot of talk recently in the news about the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas. In case you haven’t heard, they believe that God has called Christians to be prophetic in pointing out the problems of the world. However, they believe that God has everything so planned out that no one can actually change from their evil ways. In short, they believe that the world is doomed by God and that they need to point this out to everyone. This church’s most famous act is regularly picketing the funerals of dead soldiers with signs like those shown in the picture to the right.

Now we can write these people off as complete nut jobs pretty easily. But doing that doesn’t take seriously that this used to be a perfectly orthodox church. What happened to make them become so unloving, so hateful, and crass? Unfortunately there isn’t an easy single answer. Instead, it’s a whole host of reasons that over time led to the entire church going off the deep end.

First, every Christian has a circle of influence that includes those people they allow to teach and influence them. These are the people we will listen to about spiritual things. For this church, that circle probably started out with anyone calling themselves Christians. But as homosexuality began to dominate their thinking, they stopped listening to most mainline churches. Then even the evangelical churches began to be too “tame” for Westboro. Eventually, that circle tightened to close that if you go to their website they say that only their one church is the remnant of God’s chosen people.

Many Christians turn off their brains when they come to church, and listen to whatever their pastor tells them to listen to. This is a problem, because any one of us has the capacity to be carried off into heresy and into becoming a cult instead of a church. If the circle of who we listen to shrinks to the point there we only listen to a few people it is almost inevitable that we will be led astray, even if the leader has the best of intentions.

What keeps us safe from heresy is staying in constant conversation with other parts of Christianity, even those parts we disagree with. Turning off our brains to other ideas is the beginning of heresy. If it is God’s truth, it can stand up to conversation and seeking. If I start going off the deep end, and you only listen to me, then you will go off the deep end as well. But if we are both listening to other people as well, we can recognize when we are being swept away, and can come back from the brink.

We should not write Westboro Baptist off as an isolated instance of insanity. It isn’t a random occurrence, it’s a result that we all can expect to see in ourselves to some degree if we turn off our brains and follow one person wherever they go. And you know what’s really scary to me? I know there are people in my church who are just accepting my word on stuff too. In fact, that is what many pastors encourage. But whatever your pastor says, whatever I say, don’t shut off your mind, and don’t stop listening to people just because you disagree with them.

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