Discipleship as the Bottom Line

“We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.”

Colossians 1:28

The church, in the context of its missional calling, must work with all its energy to present people fully mature in Jesus Christ. I think we can say that mission without discipleship is ineffective and discipleship without mission is pointless and honestly can’t really even be called discipleship.

It was Alan Hirsch who said,

“I have come to believe we are never going to be the movement Jesus wants unless we first et the issues of discipleship right. This is because the health and growth of transformative Jesus movements are directly related to their capacity to make disciples. No disciples, no movement – it’s that simple.”(Untamed, 17)

Neil Cole said,

“Ultimately, each church will be evaluated by only one thing. It’s disciples. Your church is only as good as its disciples. It does not matter how good your praise, preaching, programs or property are: If you’re disciples are passive, needy, consumerist, and not moving in the direction of radical obedience, your church is not good.”  (Source Unknown)

In Ephesians 4 we see that God calls pastors, teachers, prophets, evangelists and apostles to

“equip his people for works of service so that the body may be built up until we reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

Here, Paul is talking about the role of the church (especially those in leadership – but I would argue this is the responsibility of all disciples) in bringing God’s people to maturity in Christ. It is when we are mature in Christ that we can “no longer be as infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there.”

These passages, among many others in the NT, point out our main calling as the sent community is to make disciples – or in the words of Dallas Willard, “apprentices” – of Jesus Christ.

This of course begs a few questions:

• Are we as passionate about this as Paul?
• How do we do this?
• What does it entail?
• What does it mean to be mature in Christ?

In all of this, this whole entire conversation about discipleship must presuppose an understanding of the local church as a community of people sent into the world to be witnesses to Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. It must presuppose a individual and communal vocation of “witness.”

Without this understanding, our maturity simply loses its point. Sure you might argue that maturity for the sake of maturity is good for the sake of itself. But I would argue that you can’t really be mature in Christ if you do not see and understand your calling in the world.

For me, the most important question is, how do we do this?  How do we shape community rhythms where people are actually becoming and continually becoming followers of Jesus?

Okay, so if the primary calling of the church is to make disciples and I said that for me, the most important question is, how do we do this?  How do we shape community rhythms where people are actually becoming and continually becoming followers of Jesus? At our Ecclesia National Gathering in 2010 Dallas Willard was one of our main speakers. I’ll never forget when he said that a) Discipleship is the primary task of the church and b) He had never seen a church that had a good plan for discipleship. This was astounding and quite a challenge.

Towards A Discipleship Framework

As a bi-vocational pastor I spend a good portion of my time buried in my computer working on projects as a web designer. In the web design world we have what are called “frameworks.”  One of the most popular is the BluePrintCSS framework, developed to “give you a solid foundation to build your project on top of.”

I don’t want to get too technical here, but when you are designing for the web one of the most frustrating things is that different web browsers render the same code differently. What works in Safari or Google Chrome doesn’t always work in Firefox or Internet Explorer. It is a rather frustrating thing and it tends to make us all a little bit crazy. Frameworks were developed by web designers who were looking for a solid place to start no matter what context you are designing for or designing in. The beauty of the framework is that you can use this framework to build a foundation that will help your design/project be successful in almost any setting.

So, in response to this question of “how do we build a discipleship culture in our churches” I want to propose that we need a baseline discipleship framework.  I’ve been referring to this concept in different ways over the last year as we have experimented with it at The Well.  I’ve most recently been calling it the Spiritual Formation Puzzle. (I use the metaphor of a puzzle because a puzzle is not complete if you take out one piece. They cannot be disconnected. With these five parts, you generally can’t do one without the other. At the very least, you can’t do them correctly in isolation).

I believe the following serves us well as a discipleship framework. A starting point for us to build upon in our different contexts.

The five different puzzle pieces as I see them are:

• Liturgical Formation - The community gathered for worship is where we are re-oriented together to the story of God through the scriptures worship, prayer and communion.
• Personal Formation - This emphasizes our need to relate to God intimately through spiritual disciplines.
• Servant Formation - We are called to love and serve others and when you care for others, you cannot help but be changed.
• Relational Formation - We are not called to follow Jesus alone. We intentionally seek relationships that were encouraging one another on towards Christ-likeness.
• Educational Formation - We seek truth together and seek a knowledge that leads to faith. This “renewing of the mind” is a vital part of our formation.

My contention here is that if we are intentionally being formed in each of these puzzle pieces in some way, we will likely be moving towards the goal of maturity in Christ. (I say likely because it would be quite possible to go through the motions on all of this, but that’s another conversation altogether).

I believe that we can actually use this puzzle as a template to look at the rhythms of our lives and our churches and gauge how we are doing with our discipleship rhythms.

Before we look at each different pieces of the puzzle separately, we need to talk about the whole. It is important that this whole puzzle must be talked about in the context of community. We are not formed in isolation from one another. In fact, we will begin to see that we need the whole of the body of Christ (both locally and globally) to live out the puzzle well.

Also, it is important to note that this puzzle is more like a 30,000 foot view of discipleship than it is a five step process. This to say that this is not a one size fits all approach where we all do the same things all the time. Also, we might be tempted to think that we must be participating in all five of these perfectly all the time. Usually we use the language of “balance” when we talk like this. I tend to believe the balance is a myth and what we are really looking for is “harmony” within these five pieces. What I mean is, we might find ourselves more focused on one piece for a certain period of time and another for a different period of time. The reality is that God calls us to different places at different times along the journey. But, if we are to be formed in a holistic way, I believe we need each piece in our lives (and lives together) in some way or another.

In my experience, most churches tend do one or two of these pieces well. In turn, they draw in people who are passionate about those one or two. If someone is passionate about something else, they find a church that does their favorite piece well. Frankly, this seems like a broken system to me. We should be able to have local communities that are growing in each of these areas. But this will never happen if we have churches unwilling to grow in their areas of weakness. It will also not happen if leaders (both formal and informal) are unwilling to lead our communities where we are passionate and gifted and give up leadership in the areas that we are weak.

The bottom line is, we do not need to fight about which one of these five pieces is most important. What we need is people who are passionate about one of these five and are willing to help lead the community towards health in each of them. If your church is not doing well at one of them, it does not mean you should leave the church! Instead, it means you should help the church get better in that particular area. I think that often, we think that we need to diminish emphasis on one of these in order to be more complete in another. It’s almost like we think that you improve one and the others will regress. This is not how it works if everyone is living out their calling and gifting. If I am passionate about mission and you are passionate about liturgy then I need you to stay passionate about liturgy and call me towards that. What I don’t need is for you to shut up about liturgy so I my passion for justice can be talked about more. Yet sadly, this is the attitude that I see in churches far too often.

As we look at each piece of the community formation puzzle we will look at the following: What this piece looks like, how the biblical witness, especially Acts 2, points to it’s importance, how this piece has been traditionally practice looked at by evangelical churches specifically, what traditions this piece finds the greatest emphasis and ways that we (again, specifically the evangelical church) can grow forward with it.

Liturgical Formation

The first piece of my Spiritual Formation Puzzle is Liturgical Formation. This is often understood as formation that happens in our worship gatherings. Our corporate gatherings are an environment where we are shaped together around the narrative of Scripture and witness of the church history. Our liturgy reorients us to the right Story, the story of Jesus and redemption. This puzzle piece is traditionally emphasized by traditions such as the Catholics, Anglicans and many in the reformed tradition.

In Acts 2, we see in verse 46 that “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.” Even as they gathered in homes and had all things in common they did not forsake gathering for their liturgical time together.

In many evangelical circles, we tend to see the worship gathering is a product to be consumed by a group of individuals. We come to church to “get something out of it” or “to be fed” instead of coming to church to be formed in community around the right identity and calling. We need to instead see the gathered congregation as individuals in community. As stated above the gathering isn’t a place to get something but rather a place to be formed along with a community and reoriented to the right narrative of Jesus and redemption.

I fear that in many missional/emerging churches there seems to be a lack of importance/emphasis on the community gathered together for Liturgy. Many new congregations are forsaking the larger gathering all together and meeting only in small groups. While I see the reason for this (And these reasons are great!) I fear that they are living out an underdeveloped understanding of the importance of liturgy and worship. We need to talk about the church being gathered for the sake of being formed as one people.

Shane Claiborne and Jonanthan Wilson-Hartgrove write,

“Participating in the liturgy of the worldwide Christian community, whether on a Sunday morning or at another time, is more than attending a service or a prayer meeting. It is about entering a story. It is about orienting our lives around what God has been doing throughout history. And it is about being sent forth into the world to help write the next chapter of that story. Wandering the world in search of meaning and purpose, we may not even realize how desperately we need a story. But we know we’ve found something priceless when we find ourselves in God’s narrative.”

They also write that,

“liturgy invites us into a new “we.” The church reflects the most diverse community in the world — white, black, and all shades in-between, rich and poor, all walks of life. We are called to bring our lives and our cultures together to become a new community.”

If we are going to see liturgy as something that is vital to our formation as a community we need to begin viewing our worship together as more than a way for us each to get bits of information to help us with our lives or just a means to us to get together and sing some songs. The weekly gathering of the local church should be a time where we are imaginatively and communally seeking to be interrupted by the narrative of scripture, the prayers of the people, the celebration of the Lord’s table and the songs of people longing for redemption. It is this recovering the whole of the biblical narrative that Robert Weber says is most vital to Christian worship,

“The issue that all of us need to deal with is the reduction and fragmentation of God’s whole story. The full story is that of the work of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God creates, becomes involved with creation, and is made incarnate into time, space, and history in order to redeem and restore the world as the garden of God’s habitation and people as his community of love and fellowship. In summary, here is what biblical worship does: It remembers God’s work in the past, anticipates God’s rule over all creation, and actualizes both past and future in the present to transform persons, communities, and the world. (Ancient Future Worship)”

Personal Formation

The second piece of the Spiritual Formation Puzzle is Personal Formation. These are the personal rhythms and practices that we intentionally put ourselves under. In short: spiritual disciplines (Fasting, prayer, study, meditation, lectio divina, etc). Here, we follow the example of Jesus himself who often went off alone to be with the Father. This piece of the formation puzzle has traditionally been most emphasized and taught in the Quaker tradition and the different monastic traditions.

As we turn again to the second chapter of Acts we see that patterns of prayers were important to the people of God. In verse 42 we see that they “devoted themselves…to prayer.” Scot McKnight points out in his book, Praying with the Church, that the disciples were gathered for 9:00am fixed-hour prayer when the Holy Spirit descended on them at Pentecost.

Fixed-hour prayer is one of the many disciplines that the early disciples, and Jesus himself practiced. Elsewhere in the Bible we see the disciplines being practiced regularly. We see Daniel being sent to the lions den because he was keeping the hours of prayer. We see David and the psalmist internally reflecting on his own life in light of the truth of God.

In the churches that I grew up in, personal formation was very, very limited. We were basically taught that if you wanted to be fully devoted follower of Jesus you should read your bible each day (usually called a quiet time) and pray according the A-C-T-S (Adoration – Confession – Thanksgiving – Supplication) acronym.

In the churches I have been in since, we have done well at deconstructing “quiet times” as the sum total of personal formation. Quiet times aren’t evil but for many of us they didn’t live up to their billing as the thing that will make us more like Jesus. We were right to recognize that personal formation is much more than reading a chapter of the bible every night, journaling and praying through the ACTS acronym.

But, the problem comes in that after de-constructing quiet times, many of us have replaced them with nothing. Now we are left without any tools that help us engage the personal side of formation. While reading a chapter and writing in a journal fell short, they were better than what many of us currently have. As churches and leaders we must give people more holistic tools that will help guide their personal disciplines. There are many, many resources out there for this today so it is not acceptable that we haven’t taught this or practiced this better.

There are some excellent traditions around the areas of Personal Formation. Perhaps the best known book to get people started in a more holistic approach is Richard Foster’s book, The Celebration of Discipline. Here he introduces thirteen different approaches to personal formation, a far cry from quiet times! Foster writes that “The disciplines are God’s way of getting us into the ground; they put us where he can work within us to transform us. By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.”

There is a strong difference in the emphasis of the disciplines than there is in the emphasis that comes from a quiet time. For most of my life, I spent my quiet times gathering information about Jesus. The bible I used as a youth was underlined and highlighted all over. But, my mission in those underlines was like that of a miner. My goal was to find as many cool, interesting and helpful tidbits and facts as I could. The focus of the disciplines is quite different. The focus of the disciplines is for listening. For hearing God speak into our lives. When I was taught to have a quiet time, I was not taught to listen. This is perhaps the greatest weakness of what I was taught as a youth. Even as we look at the often helpful A-C-T-S acronym we see that there is no place where we are sitting quietly before God inviting him to speak into our lives.

This piece of the formation puzzle is obviously vital to our maturity in Christ. But, this is perhaps the one that is hardest to teach and to pass on. We can teach all that we want about the different disciplines from the pulpit or in the classroom. But, I am convinced that until we have personal mentors who are walking with us through these disciplines, we will never realize them fully.

Servant Formation 

The third piece of the formation puzzle is Servant Formation (I know, this naming doesn’t fit but the term “Missional” wouldn’t be fair to use here). This is formation through service and loving others. Not only are we called to love others, but we are formed through serving others less fortunate than us. Some of the most formative moments of my life have been when I’ve been in service to others. Here is where we are often stretched and challenged in our thinking. Here we have our eyes opened up a world much larger than the one we live in on a day-in day-out basis.

Again we turn to Acts 2 to see how the early church practiced this. In this chapter, we see that “Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles … And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” Here I do not believe it is a stretch to understand the signs and wonders being done by the disciples as means of caring for those who were hurting. After all, the disciples were following after the pattern of Jesus. Almost everyone of Jesus’ signs and wonders were focused on caring for those less fortunate, the outcast, the marginalized. No where in Scripture do we see Jesus performing a miracle that did not result in someone being cared for or helped (correct me if I am wrong here!).

When we talk about servant formation we see that it is reasonable to view people being “saved” as a legitimate result of the compassion that we are to have on one another. The traditions that have emphasized this focus well have often been more mainline denominations like the PCUSA and the ELCA. These traditions have often been accused of preaching a social gospel. Yet, even if if this accusation is legitimate, they are living out their faith in a very real way that follows in the way of Jesus and the way of the disciples.

In the evangelical churches that I grew up in, the issue of social justice or this typical type of missional work was usually left to missionaries or the “liberals”. There was a strong bias away from ever caring for someone’s physical needs. In fact, too many times I heard “they don’t need food, they need Jesus” when we were talking about someone who was poor. Ironically, it was usually someone who was well-off by the world’s standards who was saying this!

Ron Sider in his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, writes the following,

“We need to discover that in the BIble, sin is both personal and social. Again and again, the prophets make it perfectly clear that we sin both by lying, stealing and committing adults and also by participating in unjust legal and economic systems without doing what God wants to change them. Sin is both personal and social, so overcoming evil demands both personal and structural transformation.”

We see this same tension in the book if Amos in chapter 5 where we read,

“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

We also see this in a similar passage in Isaiah 1 where we see God say again that he is sick of all Israel’s worship and sacrifices because their “hands are full of blood”. He then calls them to, “Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

We see here that we cannot separate the service from our formation. In addition, we cannot worship in our liturgy without also caring for the needs of those around us!

Relational Formation

The fourth piece of the formation puzzle is Relational Formation. This is formation that happens when we place ourselves in intentional relationships focused on prayer, sharing and encouragement. This isn’t referring to merely having fun with close friends (which is definitely important) but this is referring to groups of 3-5 that meet regularly to share life.

We see in our chapter of Acts 2 that the people were in close community. “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need….They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.” We see later in chapter 4 that they were sharing all of their possessions. And in the next chapter when Ananias and Sapphira withheld their offering from Apostles they knew about it right away. I would argue that the Apostles new about it right away because they were in such close community! There are a few traditions that do “community” really well. Perhaps the most well known denomination is the Vineyard churches who I have seen have a great focus on community in their churches.

In the evangelical tradition the focus on community has been meant for many people the practice of “accountability groups.” This meant every week or so you would sit with some “close friends” and feel guilty about all the things you did wrong that week. Then someone would ask you if you lied during the conversation. My personal experience with these groups was obviously not very helpful! I always found ways to come up with excuses to not attend these meetings because I felt like the groups were all about “keeping record of my wrongs.” In I Corinthians 13 we actually read that, “love keeps no record of wrongs”!

Accountability/Accounting is a term that we use to talk about maintaining records and few people likes to experience groups like this. Because of this many churches like mine have intuitively and wisely done away with accountability groups. But again, we’ve replaced them with nothing and we’ve thrown the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.

The question before us then, is what is a better way forward? I still believe that small groups of 3-5 are a vital part of our formation. We need people who we can bear our souls to. People who can know our struggles and our strengths. People who can hold us up with we’re about to fall over and people who can rejoice with us when our lives are full of joy. But we need some models of how this works well. In a class I took at seminary with Joseph Myers he talked about the possibility of “edit-ability groups.” He argued that an “editor” is a much better metaphor for what we are looking for. Editors help make writing better. A good editor does not just point out errors. A good editor finds an error and helps find a way to make the writing more complete. While the name “edit-ability groups” doesn’t have a great ring to it, I think the concept has value. We don’t need people who are keeping records of our wrongs. We need people who are aware of our weaknesses and helping us become more whole. The big question then is, how do we model and provide helps with people engaging as editors rather than accountants?

We need to give people tools that allow them to slowly enter into these kinds of relationships. Whether it be a list of questions or a book to study through together, we must provide the tools. I have been amazed at how awkward and unnatural it feels to talk about spiritual things, even with some of my closest friends. In my experience having a book to lead and guide our discussion is beyond helpful. The book is merely a path to walk down and we feel the freedom to take a detour off the path whenever we want. It’s just nice to always have a path to come back to and a path to get us started.

Mike Breen in his book, Building a Discipleship Culture, points out that if we are going to from disciples the way that Jesus did we need to learn from the way he actually did it. He writes,

“Time and time again in the Gospels we see Jesus functioning as a classic horse-whisperer, inviting his followers into an intimate relationship with him while also initiating a direct challenge to behaviors he knew were either right or wrong or unhealthy. He drew his disciples closer, loved them, then gave them opportunity to accept the responsibilities of discipleship.”

As Breen points out, Jesus is perhaps our best example of what it means to live with and share life intimately with a small group of people. Yet, we have other examples of this kind of friendship in other parts of the Biblical witness. We see the close friendship of David and Jonathan. We see Pricilla and Aquila taking Paul under their wing to mentor him and teach him. We see Paul then doing the same with Timothy. All throughout scripture we see people coming together to be shaped by one another.

Unfortunately for many of us, being in these kinds of relationships is unnatural. Our culture is based on surface friendships that tend to revolve around the latest episode of our favorite television show, the latest sporting event or a common interest in a hobby. These are not unimportant parts of our friendships but they are not the essence of relational formation. If we are going to be in friendships where we are drawing each other closer to Jesus and following in his way we must be willing to enter into the mess with each other. Resources like Mike Breen’s LifeShapes are a helpful tutor when it comes to building these kinds of groupings in the local church.

If have found that like many things, we must be modeling this kind of thing as leaders for it to take hold in our communities. Modeling actually works! Recently I began meeting with a group of men in my congregation every other Monday night to pray for one another and share life together. One of the members of my group, all on his own, reached out to two other men in our church to begin doing the same thing with them on our off meeting nights.

Educational Formation

The final piece of the community formation puzzle is Educational Formation. This is formation that happens “by the renewing of the mind”. Knowledge is important. As Dallas Willard says, our faith must be based on something other than just dumb luck. We are formed by what we know and believe and the only way we know more is by intentionally learning and stretching our thinking.

We see evidences of this part of formation all around the Scriptures. Again, we see this in our Acts 2 template where it says that “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” in verse 42. We also have the oft-quoted passage in Romans 12 where Paul admonishes us to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds” so that “Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Again in 2 Timothy 2:15 we read that in the example of Timothy he is encouraged to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” There are traditions who are very passionate about learning as important to formation. For example, the presbyterian tradition, especially the PCA, places a large emphasis on learning.

I also grew up in an environment that placed a large emphasis on learning and knowledge. In fact, 2 Timothy 2:15 was one that I remember hearing about over and over again! The unwritten belief was: get your knowledge correct, your doctrines in order and you will be a mature disciple. In fact, a mature believer was generally one who had the right answers to the theology questions.

Over time many have recognized that this is not helpful when taken to this extreme. We have recognized that knowledge does not automatically lead to maturity. We know plenty of Christians who have all the “right answers” but their lives show little Christlikeness. So, we’ve wisely said “Following Jesus isn’t all about knowing the right information about the Bible.” But, in the process many of us have more or less said in practice, “Following Jesus isn’t about knowledge at all”. This approach obviously has swung the pendulum way too far.

We can’t hold knowledge up as the “only” thing in discipleship. But we do need knowledge as part of the formation puzzle. This is especially true since we are in a post-Christian culture where Biblical knowledge is at an all time low. We must find ways to teach people the truths of Scripture and give them the tools to study on their own.

This is why James K. Smith wrote his book Desiring the Kingdom. He says the point of his book is that “It is an invitation to re-vision CHristian education as a formative rather than just an informative project.” This is a key thought because it shows that education is an important part of our formation, not just a means of cramming more information into our heads.

As churches, we must do better at talking creating an educational environment that forms people for witness. Again, this comes back to realizing that we cannot remove our discipleship, especially our educational piece, from mission.

The Acts 2 Church?

As we have seen the witness of Scripture, especially Acts 2, formation of a community takes on five main forms. As communities, we have traditionally emphasized one or two of these pieces of the puzzle at the expense of the others. If we are going to be forming holistic disciples of Jesus Christ, than we need each other in the process. In the local church, we must build leadership structures that allow people of all different gifts and passions to teach others. The fact is, most pastors are gifted to teach in one or two areas. We needs pastors who willing to give up their positions of power and allow those in their communities who are gifted in other pieces to take the reigns and lead the community. In the same way, we need leaders of traditions and denominations and movements to realize that their way is not the only way and that they can learn from traditions wider than their own. If we do not work together we will not only be making incomplete disciples but we will be ignoring the witness of scripture as well as the witness of the Church over the centuries.

One of the things I have realized here is that it is actually possible to have an “Acts 2 church”.  But, we have to take Acts 2 in a descriptive way, not a prescriptive way. We are not called to copy Acts 2 exactly as we see it.  We can however learn from Acts 2.  When we do, I believe we see a five-fold approach to Spiritual Formation. With this Puzzle approach to community formation we can see how a church in Zambia as well as a church in Center City Philly to a church in Suburban Chicago could be helped by contextualizing what it means to be in relationships together (Relational Formation), learn together (Educational Formation), worship together (Liturgical Formation), service together (Missional Formation) and learn what it means to be formed inwardly together (Personal Formation).

Over the last year, we at The Well have been living, learning and leaning into this framework. I would love to hear your feedback, thoughts and ideas as we continue to wrestle through rhythms of community life that lead us to take active participation in our formation as individuals in the context of community.

The wonderful thing about our friendship is that while we have very similar beliefs on leadership, mission and theology we come from very different backgrounds and we lead in very different contexts.  I come from a semi-fundamentalist upbringing where I am a 5th generation pastor.  I grew up in white-suburbia where my pastor was a proud dispensationalist graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary.  LT was raised in Brooklyn, NY where he spent most of his days as a young child running around Chinatown with his friends.  I went to Bible college. LT went to public university.  I serve in a church where we are part of the white-majority.  LT serves in a church that has three different congregations one one.  One congregation is first generation immigrant and is all in Chinese. Another congregation has both english speaking and Chinese speaking families.  LT leads the English-speaking congregation.  All of this has helped shape a friendship that has become one of my most valuable friendship that I know.  Not only are we good friends, but LT’s experience as a Chinese-American growing up in a majority-white culture has been an invaluable perspective for me to have on our world.

In fact, early this year LT came with me to a gathering with our church network, the Ecclesia Network.  The majority of our network is white, middle class. We actually have a decent amount of gender diversity in the network, but it became clear from having LT there (along with a few other minority attendees) that we were overwhelmingly white.

As a budding church network in North American in 2010, we hold diversity as something we value.  We understand that living out this value is a journey but it must be something that we intentionally seek.  LT and I talked for a while about the reality of connecting and finding partnerships with churches from other races and ethnicities. As we talked, we realized that since Ecclesia is a “relational network” the people and leaders in Ecclesia must develop relationships with those who look different than us.  We won’t be more diverse until our relationships ad friendships are more diverse. The only reason LT was at the gathering this year was because of our friendship.  The only way that we will have more diversity at our gathering next year is if we intentionally seek out and begin and form friendships back home.

Because of our conversation, I came back from the Ecclesia Gathering with a newfound energy around seeking out friendships with people who were different than me.  Over the years my wife and I have begun to find a deep love for the hispanic community.  Adopting a child from Guatemala started this (along with my deep appreciation for Mexican food!).

As we began looking around our community we started to realize that it was the hispanic community that is the most oppressed and fringe people group in suburban Philadelphia.  So, with encouragement from my relationship from LT, I picked up the phone and called two of the hispanic pastors who I had met  briefly last year at a local event.  From this phone call we planned a lunch together.  And now for the last 10 months I have been having lunch with Jorge and Leo once a month.

Our goal is friendship and anything we do together flows out of that.  So far we’ve done a bi-lingual worship gathering together where we shared a meal afterwards. A month ago we at The Well challenged their churches to a soccer game (which, by the way, we lost 1-0!) and then we worshipped with them at their congregation in another bi-lingual service.  Just last week Jorge and Leo became part of the Feasterville Ministerium, a monthly meeting of local church pastors.

Jorge and Leo’s churches are very different than The Well.  We are a bunch of wounded fundamentalists and church burnouts and seekers and typically come from the white majority.  Their churches are more conservative and charismatic and a majority of their congregations are likely undocumented residents of the US.  These differences don’t even compare to the language barrier that is between us.

Recently as we were studying though the book of Ephesians, specifically in chapters 4 and 5 I noticed that when it comes to church unity submission is a very key concept.  We see over and over again in that passage Paul’s call to put ourselves and our needs and our desires aside for the sake of the other person.

From this study I came to realize that a major, if not the major, concept in unity is that of submission.  Unity comes when we willingly submit ourselves to each other.  As we studied this it was clear that this was one of the most important parts of my friendship with Jorge and Leo.  It is especially because we are different, and especially because I and my congregation are from the majority culture, that we need to willingly submit ourselves and our agendas to learn from people like Jorge and Leo and their congregations.  They have so much to teach us about the gospel, life and faith.

Near the end of  Soong-Cha Rah’s book, The Next Evangelicalism,  he asks the question,

“Are white evangelicals willing to enter into places of submission (maybe for the first time in their lives) to those outside their ethnic group?”

As I contemplated this question I was encouraged that I could actually say “yes!” to this.  However, it got me thinking that there are further places that I can go in order to submit myself and learn from Jorge and Leo.  One of the practices I want to enter into is to spend one day a month just shadowing Jorge and Leo and learning from them, learning their challenges, and learning their rhythms.  I want to do this, not because I want to show them the right (white) way to do things, but rather to stimulate my own practices and challenge my own faith and leadership.

By the way, I think Rah’s book is a very important book. It was a challenging read and made me quite uncomfortable at times.  If you are interested in this kind of topic, this is a great place to start.

I have said many times throughout the last couple years that I would rather work nowhere else than at The Well. You could make me an offer to work full-time with a $120,000 salary in a well established, very respected congregation and I would turn it down to work here part-time.  I just love this community and I’d give my left arm to be part of it (I’d prefer not to have to test this commitment!)

However, sometimes I have had a hard time putting words to what makes this community special and unique.  When I find myself in conversations with people who do not know much about The Well, the conversation usually goes something like this:

Them: How are things at The Well?  Well?  Ha ha ha, That’s funny. Well…Well… Get it?!

Me: Ha! I’ve never heard that joke before! Thing are really, really…uh…Well.

Them: Awesome, so you guys are growing?

Me: Sure! In many different ways!

Them: So what do you guys do?

Me: Uh, well, we’re like a community… that like, loves Jesus together… uh, we have worship gatherings on sundays in a cool warehouse… and, uh… well, we do lots of really awesome stuff. Mostly, it’s like a family. Oh, and we did a great local missions trip this summer…

It becomes clear at that moment that either I don’t know what we actually do or what we do isn’t as easy to describe as it would be if we were all about being a series of programs and small groups and special events.

So, what I want do to try put some words and some language to what it is that we are actually doing.

First, We must start with a basic understanding that we are a community that is sent.  We know that God cares deeply for Feasterville, Bucks County, Philadelphia and the World. Because of this, we understand ourselves, along with all the Christians in the world,  as “sent” from God as missionaries to this world. We read Jesus’ prayer in John 21, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

The biblical metaphor of ambassador and embassy is helpful as we seek to understand what this practically looks like. As the United States Embassy is the presence of the United States in a foreign country, so the church is the presence of the Kingdom in this foreign culture.

At The Well our mission statement shows that we must keep a few different things in mind as we seek to be the presence of the Kingdom. We must be constantly formed and reformed by the Scripture and prayer.  We must always be speaking the good news as well as showing it by our actions.

We recognize that our mission field begins in Feasterville but extends to the surrounding areas, Philadelphia, the rest of the US and even to the ends of the earth.  In this, we hold up four values to guide us on our journey and keep pulling us back on mission.  These four values are:

• Justice. It is clear from scripture that we must be caring and avocating for those less fortunate than us.   This might mean we serve the financially poor.  This might mean we serve those who are poor in spirit.  The issue here is caring and advocating for those whom the world tends to ignore.
• Glocality. Caring for our neighbors in locally to globally. Glocal is a word that was coined by missionaries to describe our need to be focused locally as well as globally.
• Discipleship. We must be intentional about helping each other become more like Jesus.
• Unity. We must have a kingdom-first focus by intentionally connecting with and partnering with other Christians.

Now, with this as our starting point. Some questions naturally come.  What does it mean to be a sent community? What do we focus on?  When it all comes down to it, what are we actually doing?

At the Well we’ve mainly landed on two primary words:  Shaping & Sending.

What we are doing is shaping and sending each other into the world to be witnesses to Jesus Christ.

Now, a few things about the idea of church.   We can view the church in a few different ways.

We can view the local church as an organization.  In this description, we have an organization that runs programs and ministries (mostly through pastors and paid staff).  Through these ministries the organization works hard on shaping people and sending them out.

We can also view the local church as a family.  In this metaphor we have a community of people who live together and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, shape each other into the image of Christ and send each other out into their homes, workplaces and neighborhoods to be witnesses to Jesus.  The success of the mission depends on the members of the family.

Now for most of us the metaphor of family resonates most. We all know that a “church” refers to a group of people, not a place, organization or church service.  But the fact is, The Well is somewhat of a hybrid. We do have pastors and staff. We do have a building and we do have resources. We actually are an organization in the eyes of the state. But, the main difference is that we’ve intentionally set up the organizational side of The Well to function as a support to the family. The organizational structure that we have are meant to help us shape and send each other. I guess you could say we are famliganization?

Now, some thoughts about shaping and sending:

Shaping Since we live in a family of sent people from God we must continually and intentionally be shaping our lives after our Lord, Savior and teacher, Jesus Christ.  As ambassadors must be know and model the way of their mother country, so Christians must know well and model the life of the Kingdom. Since we live together as aliens in a foreign land we must be patterning our lives after the one we follow.  We recognize that this “shaping” happens mostly in daily life, even if we don’t think it does.  Our relationships, our jobs and our circumstances all shape us into the people we are and will become. Because of this we believe this shaping must take intentional and specific forms.

This generally happens in four spheres:

• Personal Formation (personal disciplines that help us know God such as prayer, fasting, silence, journaling, study, etc),
• Relational Formation (close friendships that help direct each other towards Jesus)
• Liturgical Formation (worship gatherings and special worship services)
• Educational Formation (classes).

We must therefore be asking ourselves what intentional steps we are taking to be formed holistically.  As an organization we are constantly looking at the opportunities and availability we create for each of these spheres in our life together.

Sending A good ambassador does not spend all his/her time inside of the embassy.  A good ambassador is out among the community that is hosting him/her to represent the country that he/she serves.  In the same way, Christians must understand that their main calling is to be in the host culture actively representing a different way of life, a life of the Kingdom. Therefore, the church does not see itself as a “place where ministry happens” but rather as an hub or outpost that ministry flows out of.  The christian must learn to understand that they are constantly representatives of a new kingdom in their homes, workplaces and neighborhoods.

One of the big challenges of being in a foreign culture is the need to be aware of the ways the local culture is affecting ones life.  Sometimes the local culture influences the ambassador in a new and much needed perspective.  Other times, the local culture influences the ambassador in an unwanted way. Still other times, the influence is neutral. As Christians, we must be constantly aware of how the culture that we are in is influencing our life together, both positively, neutrally and negatively.

Another way to look at this is to use the metaphor of a river.  The river is the culture and we are swimming in the midst of its current. The church has traditionally approached this reality in a few different ways.  Many churches allow themselves to unquestionably be taken down steam by the river as if they didn’t realize they were even in the water.  These churches don’t really even pay attention to the ways the culture is affecting their witness, good or bad.  Other churches, realizing that the culture is effecting their witness go to the other extreme and, out of fear, seek to remove themselves completely from the river. This approach holds the culture as a thing to be feared and escape.  They focus on being holy and wait for God to save them from the evil and corrupt world.

A third way also understands that the culture is influencing the life and witness of the church.  These churches realize that they have to work to be constantly aware of how the culture is effecting their life and mission.  But, instead of removing themselves from the river (and therefore abandoning the country that God has put them – think embassy and ambassador) they work together to swim upstream and live as a counter-cultural community.  The focus here is being a city upon a hill, a light in the darkness and a sign, witness and foretaste of the Kingdom of God. We know that this third way is not simple. We know that, since we are not removing ourselves from the river, this third way has dangers. But we know that this is where God has called us and that if we swim together, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will be able to give the world a glimpse of what God intended for this world.

Some areas we should be intentional about swimming upstream:

• Generosity. what does it look like to be generous with our time, money, possessions? how does the world typically view these things?
• Individualism and community.  What does the world tell us about our need for community?
• Selfishness. How do we relate to those
• Power. How do we relate to minorities and those who are in a different ethnically or socio-economic place than us?
• Truth. How does the world view truth and knowledge?  What is more important, truth or feelings? a

All this is an introduction to what it means for us to be a community that is shaping and sending each other into the world to be witnesses to Jesus.  There is much more to be said about being a community that seeks to be a sign, witness and foretaste of the Kingdom of God.

For example:

• How do we define the gospel?
• What is the hope that we have in Christ Jesus?
• How and why do we hold the Scriptures as our authority?
• How do we deal with truth in a world of pluralism?

Part of what it means to be in community is to wrestle together in searching and discovering answers to questions like these.

If you desire to be part of this journey, we welcome you.

This is not a simple calling. Walking together in a community of faith is a complex, difficult but very rewarding journey.

For this reason we kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. We pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen us with power through his Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith.

And we pray that we, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21)

On Saturday October 24, 2009 from 10 am to 4 pm The Well and Renew Community will be co-hosting Dr. Darrell Guder and Andy Crouch for a conversation about Culture and Scripture. The event will be at The Well in Feasterville, PA (a suburb NE of Philadelphia).

In the morning, Dr. Darrell Guder (Dean of Academic Affairs at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of the seminal work The Missional Church) will help to answer the question: How do we read and interact with Scripture as communities of faith?

After lunch, Andy Crouch, author of the book Culture Making, will wrestle with the question: How do we read and interact with culture as communities of faith? (You can read more about Andy here).

This event is not just for pastors. This is for anyone – clergy or laity – who is interested in wrestling with the topic of how local churches can engage with their contexts more. And for those of who you are are planting churches or seriously considering being a church planter this seminar should be a priority for you to attend. More information about the seminar can be found here.

You can register here

Enjoy.

Part of the deal is that I get to head over to preach to his community.  I’m tremendously excited about this as I love being given the opportunity to speak into other communities of faith.  I’ll be preaching on the topic of personal / corporate vocation which will fit quite well with my place in life these days. 

One of the values we have at The Well is that of “unity” with the wider body of Christ and I am excited to see us expressing it in this simple way.  If you have never done this kind of thing in your church, suggest it or if you are the pastor, just make it happen.  I think its a great way to say “we are all one body on mission together.”  

Also, its always helpful for communities to hear the scriptures spoken from someone who lives in the midst of a different environment.  While there is some overlap for sure,  there is no question that the lives that Pastor Greg’s people are living have somewhat different narratives and questions than the people at The Well.  I’m excited to be able to speak into their community from my experience and he into ours. 

Of course, since the baby has come I haven’t preached in about 7 weeks so I’ve got to figure out how to do this again…

(By the way, I use the term “bi-occupational” instead of “bi-vocational” because I believe that my vocation as a Christian is “witness.” What I do for pay does not change my vocation. My vocation is witness, my job is pastor. Your vocation is witness, your job is… well whatever you do for a living).

The bi-occupational approach to church leadership sounds pretty sexy to a lot of people these days. And, while I am a believer in it, I’ll be the first to admit that it isn’t always easy. The biggest challenge is finding another job/career that can support your family and still make it possible for you to serve your church well.

In these last nine years, I’ve worked at UPS, Starbucks and for the last three years I have been a freelance web designer/developer. I’ll be honest, UPS was a terrible job. I worked midnights there and it was probably one of the darkest times of my life for a few different reason that I won’t get into. Starbucks was a great experience and web designing has been pretty awesome because it has given me an extremely flexible schedule and I love the work.

I am not sure if it’s the “economy” or what but I have not been getting enough design work lately to complement my salary at The Well (which, by the way, is a good part-time salary. They take care us well). So, over the last few weeks my wife and I have been talking about what to do. And it looks like God is leading me back to work at Starbucks part-time.

I’ll still be doing some design work, but now I’ll have less pressure to make so many sales each month. My hope is to find one or two steady clients that I can concentrate on serving and sell some of my template sites that don’t require a lot of set up work.

Starbucks will then be a good base for us to work from each month, especially as the benefits kick in after a few months.

I’ll be honest, this was a very hard decision to come to for many reasons.

First, I lose some of the flexibility of my schedule. Thankfully, I’ll have set hours (only mornings) and will be able to plan my weeks in advance. But, I lose a lot of the freedom that I get from being my own boss. This freedom is nice, but I understand that the freedom that I’ve had for the past three years is pretty unique so I am willing to part with it for the time being to care for the needs of my family.

The second reason it was hard honestly revolved around my ego. On some level it feels like a giant step backwards to head back to the Starbucks world. This is not meant as a slight on Starbucks my any means, I wouldn’t be going back there if I didn’t have a high respect for the company. Being totally honest here, as a pastor of a growing church that is doings some incredible ministry, its easy to fall into the trap of thinking that I am too big of a deal or too important to work as a barista at Starbucks. I’m not really sure how cool it is to show up at pastors conferences and say that you are only paid part-time at your church and you spend your mornings steaming milk. But, when it comes down to it, my family is more important that my ego and, well, if my ego really suffers from this job then maybe my ego needs to be put in its place!

While there are some things that made taking this job hard, there are some very appealing aspects to it.

First of all, I finally get to use my college degree. You see, i got a degree from PBU which Gary and I have recently dubbed “Pre-Barista University.” This is because I have so many friends who have graduated from PBU (Philadelphia Biblical University) end up working at Sbux. Now I get to tell this joke more often! :)

Second, and more seriously, I can’t think of a better connection point to the local community. Starbucks really is a third place. That isn’t just a cliche that they come up with as some marketing jargon. I remember when I ended my employment the first time I worked there I thought to myself, “I could probably start a church with 25 non-christians from my relationships at this store.” No, it’s not because I was preaching all the time (Starbucks is not the place for that and I make great efforts to respect the environment they have there). Rather, it was because I built so many actual friendships with both customers and partners that extended beyond the counter and into the real world. I have dreams of someday seeing The Well plant a church in the area I live so this is a great way for me to get connected to my local community.

Third, Starbucks is just a great company to work for. The workplace is business-like but its also filled with great people. As a pastor, I need a second job that is not going to wear me out emotionally. Starbucks is just that: enjoyable.

Finally, I need the extra cash. By working at Starbucks I can decline the health benefits at the church and essentially give myself a quick raise in that check in addition to the hourly wages from my time at Starbucks.

So here we go. Back to Starbucks. I’m honestly very at peace about the decision. I start tomorrow morning and I’ve committed to being there for at least a year so if you are ever in my area, stop by and you’ll get to best latte you can find in the area…

The Idea Camp – Todd Hiestand from The Idea Camp on Vimeo.

Each of these books (especially Exodus and Acts) have had some seemingly difficult, boring or irrelevant passages in them. Exodus and Acts had more because they are narratives. Each time I would come to one of these passages I would get frustrated that I had to preach it. But, like I said, the scripture never ceases to amaze me. I have found that out of those passages come some of the most amazing truths, stories and thoughts about faith and mission.

Yesterday morning at church I had the “privilege” of having one of these difficult passages again. This time it was Ephesians 6:1-9. Yeah, just what I wanted to do was speak about slaves, children and also go back to last weeks topic of submission.

But, like I said, I am always amazed at how the scripture comes alive when you wrestle with it and engage it deeply. This is especially true when you do it in community.

I was able to work through this passage with three gifted women in my community and they actually helped me preach it yesterday and I can honestly say that I really love this passage. I’d consider it a real privilege to preach it again.

If you are interested, you can listen here. Anna, Shannon and Shanna really did a great job of picking up my slack!