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The Celebration & Challenge of Spiritual Disciplines

February 5, 2013 in spiritual formation with 1 Comment

This past Sunday we launched a new series at The Vine Church, called “Old School: Enrolling in the School of Jesus.” In it we are digging into spiritual practices which bring us into deeper communion with God. I’ve asked some friends – some of the best spiritual seekers I know – to share what they’ve learned and experienced about spiritual formation. Today’s guest post is brought to you by Lance Boley (bio after post).

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Beginning a spiritual discipline can be frustratingly complicated.  First, there are so many kinds of disciplines from which to choose.  Dallas Willard speaks of the disciplines of abstinence and the disciplines of engagement.  Richard Foster breaks it down according to the inward, outward, and corporate disciplines.  Urban Holmes, not for the faint of heart, defines them in terms of apophatic vs. kataphatic and speculative vs. affective.  Sounds like a lot of fun, right?

Putting all categories aside, what if I simply want to pray more?  Which prayer form will I choose?  Mark Thibodeaux outlines four kinds of prayer:  talking at God, talking to God, listening to God, and being with God.  And if I want to swim in the contemplative prayer stream, will it be Centering Prayer, Breath Prayer, or Welcoming Prayer?

But wait.  It gets even more complicated.  Isn’t all of life spiritual anyhow and thus one big discipline full of countless disciplines every day?  Responding kindly to a hateful email is a spiritual discipline.  Practicing peace in a tense staff meeting is a spiritual discipline.  Doing church is a spiritual discipline.  So now I have formal (planned) and informal (unplanned) disciplines!

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Making Disciples: The Problem & Promise of Spiritual Formation

January 31, 2013 in church, spiritual formation with 5 Comments

Today we continue our discussion of spiritual formation. Today’s post brought to you from my closet friend, Kraig Martin (bio at the end). Kraig leads the way in calling others within his community to a deeper embrace of following Jesus.

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I find myself very unlike Jesus. You probably are too. The church I knew as a kid was wonderful. I loved it, and love it still. But I have come to believe that a failure to sufficiently understand what it means to make disciples existed in that church, and that correcting this failure could help many people take hold of blessings that God wants us to enjoy. The following story, a strong memory of mine about church one Sunday, might help explain what I mean.

I was about ten or twelve years old, attending the A&M Church of Christ, and we worshipped one particular Sunday in the large high school gym. Before the event, we invited other area churches and took out an ad in the local paper. We wanted lots of people to know that we were going to have worship in the gym on that particular Sunday. It was very well attended, and lots of people “went forward” following the sermon. I don’t remember the name of the preacher who was brought in for this event, but he made an impression on me. I remember one moment when he was discussing how terrible it would be to look across that great divide between heaven and hell and meet the eye of a hell-tormented friend I had known from life and realize that I never took the time to tell them about Jesus. The preacher was trying to impress upon us the importance of making disciples. One of the reasons my church scheduled this event was, no doubt, to make disciples.

I agree that it is important to make disciples, but I worry that my tradition never properly informed me about what a disciple is, nor how to go about making one. I knew that a disciple was a follower or student of Jesus, but I never reflected on what it really meant to be Jesus’ student. I can be a student in Mrs. Evan’s math class without ever caring a lick about math and without ever trying to be like Mrs. Evans. As a result, it took a long time for me to grasp a mature picture of what it means to be a student of Jesus. Unlike being a student of Mrs. Evans, one cannot be a student of Jesus without coming to care a great deal about what Jesus taught and who he is, nor can one be a student of Jesus without making progress in becoming like him.

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The Fine Art of Slowing

January 3, 2013 in spiritual formation with 0 Comments

Jesus got a lot done without ever seeming like he was in a hurry. I find this thought both refreshing and frustrating.

Maybe you’re like me and find yourself suffocating under the pressure of accomplishments, deadlines, goals, and generally trying to reap the consumerist marrow out of life. If you know me, you know that I’m all for goals. The goals aren’t the problem. The way we oftentimes go about them is.

Maybe you want to live “the good life.” You keep chasing it but never know when you’ve found it. If so, you know that if the pursuit of having it all produces anything, it produces busy people.

But I don’t think we enjoy being busy as much as we like to pretend we do.

When I finger my way through the pages of the New Testament, I witness Jesus challenging contemporary notions of leadership and productivity. Our culture wants to get farther faster, but Jesus wanted something different. Jesus seems intent on creating wholeness and peace. He was less centered on volume of activities but meaning and purpose.

The Lord choose to be on mission rather than on pace. Sometimes events happened quickly – think the time period between the last supper to crucifixion. Sometimes they happened slowly – Lazarus died while Jesus was taking His time.

Repeatedly, Jesus shows us how to be present rather than productive. Admittedly, I’m terrible at this! But I don’t want to be. As a remedy for me – and for you – I suggest we embrace the lost spiritual discipline of slowing.

What is slowing?

Slowing is the prolonged space between and during activities.

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4 Ways To Connect In A Disconnected World

September 20, 2012 in leadership, life, ministry, perspective, productivity, reconciliation, spiritual formation with 5 Comments

You takin’ to me?

Seriously! Who are you talking to?

In our hectic, dog-eat-dog, workaday world, where so much rests on productivity, meeting deadlines, and getting things done, we cannot forget that the people we deal with everyday are people. Frequently people walk into my office, or I see them at my daughter’s school, or around town and behave as if people are means to an end.

No, “Hi.” No, “Good Morning.”

Nothing.

They launch into business – usually something they want someone else to know or do. A flippant and dismissive air of , I don’t care about you, I only care about my agenda is all too clear.

It comes across as rude. And you don’t want to be rude.

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Over-Saturated Church

September 18, 2012 in Bible, church, leadership, life, ministry, missional, Missional Church, preaching, spiritual formation, theology with 11 Comments

This past Sunday, we began a new teaching series called, “It’s Your Move.” Over 4-weeks I’ll be presenting our church’s strategy for ministry in Temple, TX. It’s a simple church strategy. Thinking through the implications reminded me of this which I posted some time ago.

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I never thought about grass getting too much water.

There’s a place on our church’s playground that’s dead grass. As far as I know, it’s always been dead. It’s a small rectangle, a different blend of grass from the rest of the playground. It’s at the corner of the playground where two sidewalks connect.

I’ve always been puzzled by the mud and dirt that settled there when the rest of the play yard has always been so lush. I think I may have figured out the mystery.  As I walked a first-time visitor through our campus back to his car on Sunday, he almost stepped into that muddy corner. Flippantly, I said, “We’ve never been able to get grass to grow there.”

In an instant, he said, “Sure. It gets too much water.”

He went on to explain to me that it was evident that water from our sprinklers pooled in that corner and it was over-saturated. Grass won’t ever grow there.

Wow! The things an outsider can notice about your church.

Since Sunday my heart has had some clarity about factors contributing to the numerical decline of my faith family of origin – Churches of Christ. I posted some initial thoughts last week. While I still think those reasons are true, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to believe that we’re drying up because of too much water.

Here’s what I mean:

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