Almost Christian

As I continue to reflect on the urgent task of discipleship formation, I am taking some time to revisit the work of Kenda Creasy Dean, one of my professors from Princeton Seminary.  I appreciate her research, writing, and teaching because it focuses on youth ministry as a vital indicator of the wider church's faith practice.  She rightly understands the too-often mediocre faith of our youth not as a symptom of teenage apathy and indifference, but as the reflection of our own faith communities.  Basically, she says that a hip youth pastor is not the most important factor in the development of faith obedience in our youth; rather, the faith of the particular church community as a whole is a reflection of the adults' and parents' faith, and this often low-commitment faith is reflected in the low-commitment faith of the youth.  But the tragedy is not just that this faith is apathetic; what is happening instead is that a new form of spirituality is replacing traditional and orthodox Christianity in our youth ministries and churches.  The Christian Faith is rapidly disintegrating into Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

In her book Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, Dean summarizes the five guiding beliefs of Moralistic Therapeutic Diesm: (Note that this entire book is based on the ground-breaking National Study of Youth and Religion)
1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die. (See page 14).

Does any of this sound familiar?  More and more youth in more and more churches are defining their "Christian" faith in these terms.  And, with Dean, I believe that this trend must be stopped with a clear and deep theology and practice of discipleship.  At the center of this change will be the distinct affirmation of the mission of God.  To participate in God's ways means to love others as God loves; it means a turning away from self and a turning towards the world.  This is an easy thing to say and write, but it will take an immense paradigm shift in the culture of our churches. 

I am full of hope - because of the promise and power of God's Spirit to move among us.  My prayer is that as God's Spirit moves, we will learn to listen, and we will learn to believe and obey - not only understanding but also living in the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  When we take seriously the call of following-after Jesus Christ, the life and witness of our churches will shine the bright light of hope and redemption.  God will continue to pour out his Spirit, and "Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams" (Acts 2:17). 

Discipleship needs the raw reality of friendship

One of my dilemmas in thinking about a theology of discipleship is the very practical "what" question.  What does this actually look like in the life of a church, for a small group ministry, even within an academic institution like a seminary or college?  This often ultimately comes down to a question of curriculum - a group after all needs something to do when tackling issues of discipleship.  However, I am often quite dissatisfied with the standard "discipleship" curriculum that is in current use.  Now, I believe that such curriculum has its place, and I am sure that it has played a crucial role for people in establishing key components of the Christian life.  But most discipleship curriculum also runs the grave risk of perpetuating a very narrow and limited view of discipleship, often just schooling people in the basic spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, worship, and fellowship.  These disciplines certainly must never be neglected, but they can also never be simply the end of our "discipleship" training.  And my fear is that when we lead people through these types of discipleship workbooks, we perpetuate a tragically limited practice and theology of discipleship.

The argument of course is that people need to start somewhere, and so they need to start by building good spiritual habits.  Again, you won't hear me saying that there is anything wrong with personal spiritual disciplines - but when we talk about discipleship, we are talking about something much greater, something that encompasses the entirety of our lives.  We are, after all, talking about what it means to follow-after Jesus Christ.  And I certainly hope that a life of following Jesus Christ means more than reading my Bible everyday. 

But what do we teach people to do in their following Jesus?

Here we come to the heart of the issue - that is the wrong question.  Discipleship is not a task; it is how we live life.  It is a worldview.  It is a set of beliefs that so permeate our lives that every decision we make is a part of our discipleship.  After all, if discipleship is following-after Jesus Christ, how could our every move and every relationship be anything but another unique aspect of the life of discipleship?

I want, then, to propose that discipleship requires much more than a curriculum and workbook.  It needs relationships; and more, discipleship needs dear friendships.

This hit me the other night talking with - who else - some friends.  There we were, informally hanging out, but I would say quite formally talking about the real hardships, joys, and questions of life.  As friends, we could be honest and share hurts and struggles.  As friends, we could laugh and relax.  As friends, we offer prayers and encouragement.  And I want to say that as friends we were in that moment growing in the life of discipleship.  We were not only learning from each other, but experiencing quite tangibly what it means to live life following-after Jesus Christ.

I went home that evening with a renewed energy to read and meditate on scripture and pray - and I had this desire not because of a curriculum workbook, but because I had, through my friends, pressing issues to pray and think on.

So, what I want to say is that when we are teaching people about discipleship, we really need to teach them how to be a good friend.  As disciples, we are called to journey with each other and be with and for each other.  Bonhoeffer describes Jesus as the man-for-others, and so we as Christians are called to be ultimately for-others - for our friends, our neighbors, and ultimately for all the world.  This is the "loving more" theme that I wrote about last time.

I wonder if discipleship can be separated from friendship?  It's curious - Bonhoeffer participated in the conspiracy against Hitler in large part because his close family and friends were deeply involved in the plot.  So, Bonhoeffer's discipleship was intricately linked to his relationships/friendships.

I guess I am trying to get at the fact that discipleship is most potent when it rubs up against others in our life.  And life is not a series of habits.  Life is the journey of discipleship, best experienced in the raw reality of friendship.

The "what" question of teaching people about discipleship just got a lot more complicated and nuanced.  And more fulfilling.

Turning away from loving less

I'm constantly amazed with the people that God puts in my path.  We've moved quite a bit in the last few years, but God always blesses us with special and unique friendships.  Last night I was out late with a couple of these friends, just sitting out in the warm evening talking about life and, in this case, the difficult joy of trying to follow God's call on our lives.  We inevitably end up talking about the church when we get together, and we are all burdened with a longing for the church to be something more - or, to put it a better way, to live into what it really is.

So when I got home late last night, I felt I should meditate a little on John's letters to the seven churches in Revelation.  I only had to read about the church in Ephesus in chapter 2 before coming upon my prayer, in verse 4: "Nevertheless, I have this complaint to make: you have less love now than formerly."  That stings.  Less love now than before.  How true is that, in my own life, in all our lives, and so subsequently in the churches.  Now, I'm not trying to be a downer on the church.  The church is real, it is alive, but God certainly weighs in a complaint every now and then.  And so, I'm praying first that I can repent of my less love, and I'm praying that the church will repent of less love.

But what does this mean?  Less love than what?  Than when?  The text says less love than before...  Perhaps, before, when I was more zealous, or more trusting, or more willing.  Perhaps before, when the church reached out to those in need, when it believed in and was laser focused on its mission to be the gospel in every nook and cranny of society.  Before, when the church did not exist to subsist as an institution, but as a living witness to the very reality of God's revelation in Jesus Christ.

So, this has been my prayer today.  That I would repent of loving less, and that the church would repent of loving less.  And I meditate on the promise in Revelation 2:7: "Let anyone who can hear, listen to what the Spirit is saying: those who prove victorious I will feed from the tree of life set in God's paradise."  Certainly the fruit from the tree of life will be bursting with the fullness of love.

And I'm finally struck because one of my friends from this late night hang out is preparing to set off for Santa Cruz to plant a church.  And he's picked up on this - that the Christian life is about loving more.  I think he's on to something.  New City Church Santa Cruz is about loving God, loving people, and loving more; and that is the truth and reality that we all need to bear witness to and experience.

Leadership Development and Discipleship

I just had a few quick thoughts I wanted to get down...

I'm starting to think more about the relationship between discipleship and leadership development, especially in the context of ministry and church planting.  What is the difference between them?  Can one take place without the other?  At the moment, I feel like the questions of discipleship need to be addressed prior to the issues of leadership development, because I think that leadership development will come naturally out of discipleship.  Maybe focusing on leadership development without first establishing a clear sense of discipleship among potential leaders is like putting the cart before the horse.  But I'm thinking that a first step of discipleship formation is learning how to listen both individually and collectively to God's call.  Leadership development can have a sense of go-go-go (at least, that's how I can feel about it).  And there's certainly nothing wrong with urgency and leadership growth.  However, the urgency can sometimes overwhelm us, and we can lose sight of (or even never really grasp) the work and will of God in our unique situation.  I believe that starting with discipleship serves as a sort of guard against just developing leaders for the sake of having leaders.  More importantly, I think, is the issue of discernment.  How do we learn, and how do we teach our leaders a posture of listening and of the subsequent readiness to respond to God's unique call.  When we talk about leadership development in ministry - and especially in church planting - I want to talk first about discipleship.  Because I sense that all too often we can develop leaders apart from disciples; but I think it would be difficult to develop disciples apart from leaders.

Kuyper and Bonhoeffer on Faith in Public Life

My research this quarter led me to explore the intersection of the Neo-Calvinist Abraham Kuyper with Bonhoeffer.  Here’s the beginning of my paper…

            Abraham Kuyper and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are two very different historical and theological figures.  Kuyper (1837-1920) was the son of a Dutch Reformed minister and spent his lifetime building and advocating a Calvinistic worldview in the Netherlands.  Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was born into the old Prussian aristocracy and chose the life of a Lutheran pastor, theologian, and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime.  Kuyper died after a long and successful career; he founded several institutions, including the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland, the Free University, the Anti-Revolutionary Party (the first modern, organized popular political party in the Netherlands), and the daily and weekly newspapers De Standaard and De Heraut, and at the height of his career he was elected the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.  Bonhoeffer died at the young age of 39; he was killed in a Nazi concentration camp for his role in the Valkyrie assassination attempt on Hitler.  His short life was incredibly productive, though, and some of his theological writings on discipleship, ethics, and the nature of the church have become spiritual classics.  Kuyper would have never known of Bonhoeffer, and Bonhoeffer’s interaction with Reformed writings seem to lack any direct connection to Kuyper.[1]

            For all their differences, however, Kuyper and Bonhoeffer hold striking similarities, especially in their commitment to Christian engagement with the world.  While they employed different methods, emphasized different dogmas, and advocated for different outcomes, Kuyper and Bonhoeffer were really after the same thing.  They both were convinced that the nature of the Christian faith demanded clear and direct action in and with the public arena.  As a result, they both sought to build a theology that could make sense of and meaningfully engage with the pressing issues in their respective historical circumstances.  Kuyper looked to the roots of the Reformed faith in Calvin and worked to construct a theology that was both faithful to its foundations and relevant for the time.  Bonhoeffer, too, sought to refine and re-imagine the Lutheran theological tradition in order to articulate a biblical way forward in the midst of Nazi Germany.  Their different historical contexts nevertheless led them to a strikingly similar conviction: Christian disciples are called to bear essential witness to the reality of Jesus Christ in the world.  Kuyper and Bonhoeffer are thus excellent resources for exploring the very public nature of Christian discipleship.

Personal discipleship demands public engagement because the reality of life in Christ is public, in that it infuses all aspects of life.[2]  Kuyper and Bonhoeffer construct theologies of discipleship that speak to the mandate of Christian involvement in and for the world.  Their conclusions are both general and specific; they interact with the world from a set of theological convictions and yet allow their unique situation to inform the outworking of that theology.  As such, this paper will explore the specific historical context and theological implications of concepts from select writings from Kuyper and Bonhoeffer.  Investigations of Kuyper’s writings on sphere sovereignty, common grace, and worldview coupled with Bonhoeffer’s work on church/state authority, Christological ethics, and divine mandates (which culminate in Christonomy) will provide a compelling notion of public discipleship.  Kuyper and Bonhoeffer both construct a theology of engagement that operates from and witnesses to the gracious reality of Jesus Christ in the world.

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[1] John De Gruchy gives an example of Reformed influence on Bonhoeffer by making the case that Bonhoeffer found himself outside his Lutheran heritage and embracing notions of the Reformed tradition in the decision to participate in the conspiracy against Hitler.  Cf. John De Gruchy, Bonhoeffer and South Africa: Theology in Dialogue (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1984), 98ff.

[2] Note that the use of “public” throughout the paper is not limited to “politics,” but rather signifies a theological orientation to all aspects of our interconnected society and life, including occupations, societies, economics, family, etc.

The Possibility of Discipleship

Here's the first two introductory paragraphs to my seminar paper from this quarter...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's writings from Tegel prison are often describes as "the new theology."  His Letters and Papers from Prison contain wonderful and fresh theological insights and represent a serious attempt to reconcile the reality of the revelation of Jesus Christ with the growing effects of secularization on Western religion and culture.  Though unfortunately fragmented, the Letters and Papers represent some of Bonhoeffer’s most creative work.  They are the result of focused study and reflection on an impressive array of scholarship, including drama, literature, music, history, philosophy and physics.  He scoured the prison library for material and he managed to receive a regular supply of books from his family and friends, often smuggled into Tegel by a friendly prison guard.  Of the dozens of authors that Bonhoeffer read while in prison, three had a particularly strong influence on the development of his new theology.

            Bonhoeffer’s letters from the spring and early summer of 1944 represent the height of his theological reflections.  During this time he was giving particular attention to questions of the philosophies of history, human life and worldview and was looking to Wilhelm Dilthey, José Ortega y Gasset and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker for insight.  Dilthey and Ortega y Gasset provided a framework for Bonhoeffer to engage critically the historical emergence of science and its perceived companion secularization.  Their philosophies of the radical reality of human life in the interpretation of history offered Bonhoeffer a compelling hermeneutic for interpreting God’s place in the rise of human autonomy.  Weizsäcker, a physicist, argued that our evolving scientific view of the world has determined our perception of, and belief in, God; this led to an ever-retreating God of the gaps.  From these authors (and certainly others) Bonhoeffer is able to refine and articulate the central aspect of his new theology.  He embraces the modern world, calling it “a world come of age,” and declares that Jesus Christ has and always will be in its very midst.  The false claims of religion, exposed by secularization, open wide the possibilities of the recognition of God’s nearness and grace.  Bonhoeffer understands that the church can only truly follow Jesus Christ when religious constructs are shed from Christianity.  He calls this separation religionless Christianity, and it is the very possibility of discipleship in a world that has come of age.  This paper argues that Bonhoeffer’s understanding of this “possibility” emerges in part from his study of human life, history and worldview in Dilthey, Ortega y Gasset and Weizsäcker.  Each of these three figures will be examined in terms of how their particular writings influenced the development of Bonhoeffer’s emerging theology. 

The Consequences of Intellectual Formation

This quarter I'm working on a paper (which hopefully will eventually turn into a chapter of my dissertation) on Bonhoeffer's intellectual formation.  It really is a fascinating study.  I'm specifically looking at what Bonhoeffer studied while he was in Tegel prison and how that impacted the formation of his concept of 'religionless' Christianity.  I'm amazed at the volume of material that Bonhoeffer worked through during his time in prison, and then the resulting productivity.  He was reading history, philosophy, theology, science, novels, poems and music.  I hardly know where to begin or how to focus my investigation.  And this is not to mention all of the other influences before his imprisonment.  Some important names are bubbling to the surface, though, including Wilhelm Dilthey, Jose Ortega y Gasset, C. F. von Weizsacker, G. W. F. Hegel, Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth (just to name a few).  I'm still in the gathering stage of my research, so I don't have many conclusions to offer at this point.  But I can offer some thoughts on how this project is impacting me on a personal level.

You may remember that earlier this summer I read Paul Tillich's "A History of Christian Thought."  Now, the thing about studying history, is you begin to realize the incredible interconnectedness of the development of ideas.  Every historical figure is indebted to another historical figure.  Sometimes they are indebted in a negative sense, by being against a line of thinking.  Other times, a breakthrough occurs only because someone takes the next step beyond the previous great thinker.  But in every case, what comes next is only possible because of what came before.

All of this study of the development of ideas is making me think of my own influences.  The big one for me is, of course, Bonhoeffer.  After all, I am dedicating the next several years of my life to producing new scholarship on him.  Certainly I won't make it out the other end without his profound influence on my life (for better or for worse - I'm counting on for better).  And I have to admit, in large part I picked Bonhoeffer for my doctoral studies (and ThM studies for that matter) because I want to be influenced by him. 

I often have people ask me why I picked Bonhoeffer.  The short answer is that I needed something to study if I wanted to do doctoral work, and Bonhoeffer piqued my interest during my MDiv studies.  But the deeper answer is that in Bonhoeffer I find not only a theology but a life that profoundly illustrates the incredible potential of following Jesus Christ.  Bonhoeffer challenges me, and helps me, to think seriously about theology and about how theology should change the way I live.  Bonhoeffer convinces me that theology and life go together; there is just no way around it.  What I believe must have everything to do with how I act.  And if it doesn't, then I have to ask myself what I actually believe.

My interest in Bonhoeffer is certainly driven by intellectual curiosity; I wouldn't put myself through the pains of doctoral work if my mind didn't thoroughly enjoy the task at hand.  But, to be honest, studying Bonhoeffer can't be just an intellectual exercise for me.  I'm pouring my life into this because I am convinced that through and with Bonhoeffer the church can better understand its place in the midst of this world.  And this is where I arrive at the concept of discipleship. 

I certainly don't know how it will all come together, but my hope is that by the end of this leg of my journey, I will have a theology of discipleship to offer.  My dissertation will certainly be full of scholarly nuance and more footnotes than all but my examiners will probably read, but I want it to be something that equips me for a future of disciple-making.  I want to offer a way for people to think about how their belief in the triune God actually makes a difference in their daily lives.  And then I want to help students or church-goers or people just wondering about God to process their belief into a life of trust and hope in Jesus Christ.

This gets me thinking about one last thing.  I was talking to a friend this week about curriculum and curriculum development for the church.  And I can't help but think about how the concept of discipleship, which is so personalized, can be disseminated through educational ministries.  In my mind, the teaching ministry of the church is for disciple-making (this certainly is not a new idea).  But the difficulty lies in the difference between information and formation.  How is the curriculum we use to spread information involved in actual spiritual formation?  The answer certainly depends on a number of factors.  Perhaps the greatest of these factors is the commitment to discipleship of the teachers and leaders of our educational ministries.  When discipleship is a core value of a church, what is taught will be reflected in what is lived out within the congregation, and into the surrounding community and world.

Because what we think makes a profound difference in how we act.  At least that's what I get from Bonhoeffer.