Orthodoxy is Gk Chesterton’s account of his journey from secularism to Christianity. It reminds me of a doctoral student explaining his dissertation to someone who is not an expert. For brevity the student will skip vast amount of details to give the main overview. To the uninitiated or poorly informed this is always quite jarring. At the end you find yourself in agreement, but barely understand what happened. Most of the arguments in Orthodoxy are the same way. He speeds though arguments, making tangents that don’t make any sense until his vision is complete. Anything even remotely in his style would be met with only the most puzzled of looks and side comments about how it wasn’t about Jesus. The whole effect is dizzying.

Chesterton’s view of the world, his vision that seems ancient in scope, transmodern in approach shines through the pages like sun into a dark room. Too much of modern Christianity today is compartmentalized into trite slogans that at best offer nothing and at worst demeans Christ. Rationalism and science seem to point away from Christianity, but we find Chesterton taking the view that rationalism and science have inaccurately become unquestionable, yet have extended beyond what they can accomplish. They are false idols and page after page he makes the point that if rationalism is what you want; suicide is what you will have. This was in stark contrast to what I had been taught. Romanticism taught me there was more, but not where it might be found. The church told me that it was best not think about such things and just have more faith. Chesterton taught me to think about such things and see that they are not what they seem to be.

Chesterton taught me that following Jesus is more than acting a certain way; it’s more than believing certain things; it is even more than loving certain things. Christianity is about seeing things a certain way. It is about seeing the world the way God sees the world, not as something to be marched against but as something to be a steward of. Perhaps God wants us to delight in Him, as he delights in his creation. God used Chesterton in a way that made me realize the Joy of God. He taught me that we must love the world without being worldly. “The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more…Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.” Perhaps that’s why I can’t take these UBF people seriously when they reduce the gospel into a straight command to make disciples. I have learned too much, seen too much to be tricked by such an illusion. For one who has found a well spring of water can stop trying to squeeze moisture from his sweaty clothes. Chesterton never did a one of one bible study with me, but he has taught me more about God than anyone ever has. He has shown me Christ more clearly than any one to one bible study ever could.

“No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.”

Here is the book for free online
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16769/16769-h/16769-h.htm

Forestsfailyou

Jesus words are harsh and direct “You hypocrites!” The second point here is that Jesus realizes the stakes are high and reserves no harsh words, and compromises nothing when dealing with this fall teaching. The disciples even question this asking “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?” But Jesus’ response is twofold: first, that judgment will come (verse 13) and since it will come we cannot afford to have the blind leading the long. Jesus often rebukes his disciples, but he reserves his harshest critics for teachers, because they spread teachings and therefore represent true danger. The early church would often put down groups, not because they hated them- but because they wagered that it was better to have a group eradicated than to have the gospel messaged changed and distorted amongst the body of Christ. Although their methods were at times harsh, their aim was the same as Jesus’ in this passage. Right beliefs preclude right action, on the other hand wrong beliefs preclude wrong action. Jesus concludes by teaching both the Pharisees and the disciples the right belief, that our heart is what determines our holiness. He concludes that the ritual does nothing to determine a person’s faith. Righteousness comes by faith, and adherence to any tradition in and of itself is meaningless (Gal 2:21). I have heard people in UBF go so far as to out rightly claim that a person’s spiritual maturity is based on adherence to their traditions. It is fanaticism in its truest. It’s wrong through and through.

A specific tradition may be invaluable to a particular person at a particular time, but it takes a special type of evil to unilaterally decide that that’s the way it ought to be for all. When I think of myself I have to be very careful myself not to fall into this trap. It is easy enough for a person to fall into, but I find the danger only grows with time. Perhaps there is a certain maturity I have yet to reach where I take all of this with the right amount of levity, but I find that I have the same tendency to asset my religiousness over others. The gospels seem clear to me that this is a problem to be fixed, not a feature to be upheld and enshrined.

Forestsfailyou

Group Bible Study
The high light of the conference for me was group bible study. For some very bizarre reason I was the “bible teacher” for a group that included 2 seminary professors, 2 UBF missionaries that had been Christians longer than I have been alive, and a missionary from South East Asia. I had mixed feelings about this, since on one hand I could do what I wanted, on the other hand I felt like Dr. Augustine or Dr. John Yoon should lead the bible study. I made it clear we wouldn’t be using the bible study questionnaire and things went very well. My friend Ivan said after this he would give Jesus another chance and I really felt that the Holy Spirit guide the conversation. At times certain people would occupy the conversation for a long time but then others would speak and overall it was one of the better (if not the best) group bible study I have had.

Testimonies
In contrast the testimonies were by and large boring and tiring. It was beyond obvious that they had been carefully scripted and edited. Of course when this is brought up it is denied but for everyone who has ears let them hear that nothing that was spoken from a stage this weekend wasn’t preapproved and checked. The Pauline Three Part testimony was in literally everything, from messages to mission reports, from reflections in the small group to the presider’s introductions. It led to a dry and tiring experience at best, at worst it implied that Jesus always works the same way in everyone, turning absolute terrible excuses for people with no redeeming qualities into people ready to throw their dreams and goals away for world mission. Some of these were truly moving, like John Peace and Philip Brown but when they were good it was because they broke the mold. Ivan (who later commented that he liked this conference) walked out on literally every single one of these.

Presiding
This leads me to my last point. I was asked to preside and was emailed with instructions to give a short life testimony and a description of where I was with God. As I started to read my testimony I was strongly convicted that this was the wrong thing to do. Although there are a lot of good things that have happened in my life, I simply did not want to share them. My life has been checkered in parts and as I looked at what was written I realized that it would create in many people a feeling of pity, pity that I did not want. If this makes me proud so be it, but simply couldn’t bring myself to say all those things to a group of strangers who would not be able to relate nor fathom what I was saying- to a group of people who (as I have experienced) do not understand how mental illness works.  I am not a product of my mother’s condition, and I felt like I did not trust people enough to tell them of my past. I was very sparse with details and when I gave where I was with Christ I chose not to simply say a list of activities I was involved in. For me this is not what following Jesus means. “If righteousness could be attained from the law Christ died for nothing.” At best these things are a glimpse at what Jesus was doing in me, and so I shared my true feelings- that I struggled how to be fearlessly humble. I struggle with loving my enemy as myself and how to love those who disagree with me.
Who was this conference for?
There was a claim that this conference was for new people. I realize now that there are different definitions of this word. Ivan was by anyone’s definition “new” but my pastor asked if he had a Christian background. When he said yes my pastor was relieved because “otherwise it may have been awkward.” This conference was not for “new people”. It was for people like me. “New” in the sense that they have been in UBF for a few years. It was a chance for them to show how they were “growing” in Christ by giving them tasks at this conference. It was evident from all that was testified, in the nearly singled minded emphasis on “making a confession of faith.” If a college student with no knowledge of Jesus had been taken off the street they would have left knowing they should follow Jesus and that they would have life, but no idea of who he is, what he is (beyond “The Lord”), why he is. They would know that following him leads to eternal life, but not why this is to be desired. They would know nothing of his great commands, nothing of the resurrection. They would know nothing of the Holy Spirit. So in that sense I feel that these (to give our conference creators the benefit of the doubt) were assumed to be known, and so this conference was for those who were given roles in the conference.

In closing, I had a fun time with lots of friends. I really loved the songs and music. I loved seeing my friends and the bible study was very inspiring. I am not sure if I will go again, especially since the next one is in Colorado. But I don’t regret going, as with all things it could have been better.

Forestsfailyou

In this passage our Lord is brought a man who is paralyzed. After proclaiming his sins are healed Jewish leaders accuse him of blasphemy. At this Jesus heals the man and sends him away. The second part is on the calling of Matthew.

The Paralyzed Man healed

What can be said about this passage? First and foremost Jesus has authority to forgive sins. Jesus has authority to forgive sins because it was given to him by the father. Beyond this his death and sacrifice for our sins allow us to live. When Jesus forgives the man the religious leaders become indignant. The religious leaders understood that only God could forgive sins, and they also understood this was done though the law, which they were the sole interpreters and keepers thereof. God would forgive them, they reasoned, but only through the means that have been given to them through the covenant of Abraham. Jesus knew all of this, yet he says “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?”. This means that there was something beyond them just being mistaken and not knowing the plan of the father for this is no sin. No, Jesus calls their thoughts evil because they were more concerned about someone stepping on their toes than their offense to God. This is a common theme in all of the gospels. Jesus goes on to challenge them with “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”- pointing out that they should know how to act but are not acting in the way God desires and commands after he is mocked by the leaders while eating with known sinners. How many of us are sinners? All of us, and so Jesus comes to all, but he is least accepted by those who are least without excuse. When Jesus heals the man he says “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?” This is an example of a Jewish qal wahomer (“how much more”) argument: if God gives Jesus authority to heal the visible effects of humanity’s fallenness, why would he not send him to combat that cause of that fall? This is why social justice, mercy, and alms giving is so important for the Christian life. It proclaims the gospel.

The Calling of Matthew

Matthew’s calling displays that Jesus loves us in spite of us. I have often wondered why tax collector is such a “sinful” job. After all the entire bible gives a high view of taxes. Historically the tax levied to Rome was an occupier’s fee. The Jews were being charged for their occupation, and since their nation was seen as instituted under and by God; since it was a “kingdom of priests and holy nation”- being a Jewish tax collector would have been seen as traitorous and against God. Being a tax collector would have been seen as a betrayer of his culture, God, and people. So Jesus coming to the tax collector is a bold statement. Our sin is betrayal of God and yet this is who Jesus comes to. He comes to those who have betrayed him, “rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the LORD’s instruction.” His action suggests that if God is willing to come to worst, is his not willing to come to all? And this is what he says “For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” The Pharisees self-righteousness he seeks to correct, but at this time they are unreceptive of him, as are all people who think they are so good as to be free from any sin. I often suspect that one can be so proud that they are beyond all save divine intervention. God must often break people like the Pharisees with painful trials so they can understand their condition.

These are my thoughts on the passage. If anyone has anything else to add please leave it in the comments.

Pride has traditionally be viewed as the worst of the sins. St. Augustine attributed nearly all other vices to pride. Pride, as he says, is the sin of loving yourself more than God. It manifests as contempt for others, shows itself as competition between others, and poisons everything it touches. People much closer to God than I could ever hope to be, have reserved no insults or denouncements for this sin. They have offered it no disguise. In short, the church has always held that if we could rid the world of pride, we would have no need for a second coming.

There are two things that often go unnoticed about pride. First, it is easily disguised and therefore hard to correct. If someone speaks of how he has sacrificed much for God or his family, is he seeking praise? Or is he simply proclaiming how he is thankful he could be so lucky to give to God? Pride, being closest to our Adversary, mirrors the temptation that Eve fell to. The second thing that is often unnoticed is that the Church and Christianity in general have often been at odds with the World in its view on if pride is even a sin to begin with. It is hard to find a non-Christian who agrees with violence, greed, or adultery (even if they might find excuses for them). But if you find someone who sees pride as an issue, you have found a Christian. In fact, when a non-Christian even addresses it as an issue and says “He is arrogant.” The issue is usually because his own pride, his own ego feels threatened. But he never thinks that should he actually be better than the guy he criticized that bragging or pride would be his reward for his own abilities.

Pride manifests as an arms race. The idea present in the proud person is that he needs to be better than other people. People can usually discern if they are lustful, violent, envious, but rarely will they discover they are proud. Pride is so close to people, so ingrained in people that they cannot see it easily. For this reason hardest all of all sins to correct. A preacher preaching against pride will therefore find himself talking to an empty room. Everyone in the audience finds his neighbor guilty but never themselves.  The only method I have learned to tell how proud I am is ask myself how offended I am when I (or my accomplishments) go unnoticed. You may even ask how mad are you when your status is left unrecognized? The madder you get, chances are the prouder you are.

A few final things I will leave you with. First, I am not at all suggesting that we cannot find enjoyment in life. It is not proud to find a sunset enjoyable, or to take delight in a walk, or even to feel happiness while on a date. We should be like children, who find enjoyment in things meant to be enjoyed, but never enjoy yourself for the sake of yourself. We are not a proper item of worship. Second, being proud of your child, or feeling proud of a job well done is a different use or the word. Here the admiration is felt because you are giving approval to something outside yourself. Nor is it pride to suppose that one cannot feel good about being a servant of Christ (or doing good deeds). The bible says clearly “Well done my good and faithful servant…Come and share your master’s happiness.” But in that moment, we must resist the urge to feel that is was by my own goodness but rather the goodness of Christ. St. Augustine in Confessions ponders the same question, how can you know if it is pride or if it is really given to God?:

“I cannot pretend that I am not pleased by praise…But I have to admit that not only does admiration increase my pleasure, but that adverse criticism diminishes it. When this symptom disturbs me, self- justification worms its way into me, of a kind which you know, my God.”

But his answer is to be pleased, not with yourself- but with the love of others.

“Your will is that we should love not only you but our neighbor. Often when I am pleased to be praised by someone whose understanding is good, my pleasure lies in my neighbor’s progress or promise of it… But once again how can I know whether that is my reaction because I do not want my admirer to hold a view of me different from my own? Truth, in you, I know I see that if I am to be praised be not on my own account but the account of my neighbor.”

Admiration spoils fast, if it is not given to God is becomes poisonous. The final thing I should mention is regarding a bad definition of pride. It is pure fiction to suppose that pride means disagreeing with church authority, or anyone else for that matter. I am unsure how such an unreasonable definition can be held without bursting into laughter. Neither good sense, the bible, church tradition, nor anything else has ever had this definition. Not to say that disobedience is good, I am simply saying that to call it pride is to misdiagnose the patient. When it comes down to it there are really only two types of people, those who are proud and know it- and those who are proud and do not know it.

Thursday

I arrived late Thursday and had a very long talk with one of the students from the Hyde Park chapter. He asked how things had been. Honestly the messages in my chapter have greatly changed in the last year. I really see that God has worked on my pastor. He no longer adds world mission into places where I do not feel it is obvious. Our relationship is better these days, and he understands that our relationship is very different. I try to understand him more, and I try to communicate more with him. The student was glad to hear. We talked a lot and I got to sleep very late. I had requested to have bible study with the chapter leader the next morning so I was very tired by the time I awoke. He asked me to read the book of Ephesians and give a brief outline.

Friday

I brought my outline to the bible study. I outlined the book as such:

• Blessings of the Spirit
• Who Christ is and his role in God’s redemptive plan.
• Who Paul is and his role in God’s redemptive plan.
What the Church is and its role in God’s redemptive plan.
• How the church ought to act to carry out that plan and how its members should act to help carry out that plan.
• A call to persevere against Satan.

He showed me his outline which was much more detailed. We talked about how the church should proclaim the kingdom. And he taught me how the church should shepherd God’s people, but the context of John 10 needed to be carefully understood. He said that UBF has been given shepherds. I mentioned that while the sacrificial nature of UBF shepherds and their great love for their students was its strength sometimes it was had been over stepped. He corrected me “Many times.” He mentioned that shepherds proclaim the kingdom. It was a very good bible study. Later that day I went to campus night.

Campus Night

People were totally bewildered to see me. I think in large part because I was unaccompanied by my “shepherd”. I suppose it is also surprising to see someone travel such a long way when they are really obligated in any way. It didn’t escape my notice that Yvonne Lee stared for a long time. I eventually moved to the back and when I saw Dr. Augustine he was shocked to see me.

Later Dr. John Lee from Springfield joined. The first speaker was Jacob Lee. I remember he was funny. At one point he said “I was not good enough to called Abraham so they named me Jacob which means deceiver. But I came to like the name since he had 12 sons.” I was put off by his talk. The powerpoint read “Why UBF should remain in world mission.” I didn’t believe this was a point of debate, and furthermore his answer amounted to- because UBF always has. Just because something has always been done one way does not mean it has to. But eventually he made his point. He presented from Stephan Lutz book calling campus mission strategic. I won’t go into details but he gives an outline from that book.

Mark V was the next speaker. His talk was on the history of campus mission movements. Mark V spoke incredibly fast. I was having a hard time keeping up with him. He also had a pained look on his face. I later found out he was in extreme back pain, and I suspect he was trying to get through it as fast as possible. What really struck me about his presentation was that campus mission movements grew out of YMCAs and the student volunteer movement in the mid 19th century. That explains a lot. American imperialism and a drive to evangelize the world have often went hand in hand (along with all their problems too). And here we see it.

It was remarkable how so many of the ideas of the founders of the campus movement are so similar to the ideas that Samuel Lee would later speak of. Hearing these ideas from someone who doesn’t have the history of Samuel Lee gave them more of an air of legitimacy. The frequent quotes from the founders of the student volunteer movement and its role as a parachurch were very helpful for me to understand the core foundational ideas behind UBF and its relation to Christian doctrine and why at times this has been a weak point in campus mission movements.

Kevin Albright went on to give a survey of Intervarsity. He mentioned that they do a lot of the same things as UBF. They do inductive bible study for instance. He also mentioned that many people in their organization were not encouraged at times, and the author of the book he read on Intervarsity regrets that they were not given more help. One thing he mentioned that struck me was that Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ) was more for new converts and Intervarsity was more for discipleship.

Here he meant “discipleship” as “become a more mature Christian”. But for me I have always understood discipleship as growing in Christ in whatever capacity the Holy Spirit moved you. For me I have been taught that a Christian is a disciple and a disciple is a Christian (Acts 11:26, Ephesians 2:19-22). So for me telling me someone is not a disciple is the same as saying they are not Christian. But one can be a Christian and not mature. Although it is dangerous to judge or label, a goal of maturing Christians is a noble one at the very least (this makes no mention of the methods however). To call UBF a “discipleship ministry” has always been redundant to me.

In the next article I will talk about the last few speakers. I was more than a little surprised (and inspired) by their testimonies. I also caught up to someone on Joe Schafer’s recent letter, so I will include that next time too.

Do’s and don’ts

It doesn’t work. Though not entirely, yet as a Christian I generally don’t disagree in theory and principle with the above imperatives. The problem is that it doesn’t work! Sooner or later it produces despair and despondency (because I just can’t stop flirting!). Or it produces varying degrees of pride and self-righteousnes (What’s wrong with those rebellious, complaining, disobedient, immature, proud people!).

Law and grace. As I am studying and preaching on Romans at West Loop in some depth and detail, it seems rather clear that Paul makes it a point to elaborately explain and distinguish between grace and law, faith and works, credit and merit, justification and work righteousness, humility/unity and elitism/nationalism.

Do I need to know the difference? I used to think that nitpicking about such theological distinctions was practically irrelevant. I regarded it as unnecessary, since Christians should primarily just feed sheep (Jn 21:15-17) and make disciples (Mt 28:19).

A hole in our gospel when discipling others. But if we ignore such biblical Pauline teachings we are ignoring a significant chunk of teachings in the NT. We will have some hole in our gospel. Mainly, we Christians often think that the way to genuinely help others is to simply instruct them correctly and biblically as to what to do. We should tell them to obey the teachings of the Bible. In other words, we are giving them the law, some law, some imperative, some command that they should follow and obey. (See the first paragraph.)

The law, though good, makes us worse. Paul said that the law is good (Rom 7:12), since the law is from God and it reflects who God is. Yet the law is NEVER able to change or transform anyone, since as sinners, including all Christians, the law makes us worse, not better.

Be humble. For instance, if you tell an older Christian, “Be humble,” he knows that what you said is correct. But he will likely not become humble just because you clearly told him what he knows is biblical, correct and true. Yet surprisingly, when this older Christian tells someone younger that they should be humble, they often somehow expect that their directive and command be followed and obeyed.

The law makes you and your sin worse. Paul’s repeated point in Romans is that the law doesn’t work. In fact, the law:

• shows you your sin (Rom 3:20)
• brings the wrath of God (Rom 4:15)
• increases sin in you (Rom 5:20)
• arouses sinful passions in you (Rom 7:5)
• produces sinful desire in you (Rom 7:8)
• weakens you (Rom 8:3)

Only the gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom 1:16). It is surely the reason why Paul explicitly stated that testifying to the gospel of the grace of God was his only aim in life (Ac 20:24).

Does it make sense that the law makes you worse, not better? Is your life driven by the gospel of God’s grace? Or is it driven by the law? Does your church motivate people by the gospel of God’s grace? Or by the law?

I recall a childhood story about a girl from India. She was arranged to marry someone from birth. The girl grew up and fell in love with another man and when the time came for her to marry she told her family no. “But this is how it has always been. You marry the man that has been decided.” But the girl, now woman said “But why does it have to be how it has always been? I will still marry.” This is very much the story of a person trying to change the methods while preserving the ideal. In one sense our task as Christians in judging the aims and means is very easy. For most of us the aim is quite easy to judge. A confusion of methodologies and ideologies is a constant source of problem across many different disciplines and institutions. It is very much the story of a person attempting to break tradition.

To start there is wisdom in tradition. Tradition has been tried, and it has worked for a long time. I have heard it described that tradition is giving votes to our ancestors. When going against tradition one must be very careful. There are often times unknown dangers that come with the territory. I like to think of the practice of cohabitation that developed in the midcentury. Prior to this the method of courtship never contained living together prior to marriage. Then my parent’s generation questioned this norm and now most contemporary courtship contains cohabitation. Sadly this method has been tried and found wanting. Couples who live together prior to marriage tend to have less successful marriages.

Sometimes though the methodology is tried and is found to be better. The norm used to be that women could not hold jobs outside of strictly “matronly” activities like being a man’s assistant or housing a large number of kids for 8 hours a day. With women entering the work force the size and scope of the American economy has grown. This was greatly resisted. Gk Chesterton, the man I quoted up above, went so far as to say that women were selling themselves into the slavery of their employers.

The problem with evaluating Christian tradition is that is quickly becomes bogged down in ideology. They are often times confused. This happens outside of Christianity when people equate science, a methodology, to atheism, an ideology. Historically they have been viewed as the same, because the methodology comes by authority, which is given by scripture which is the basis of the ideology. I am a firm believer in being orthodox in our beliefs. To be relativistic is to be intellectually weak. On the other hand our methodology has to be relativistic. There is scriptural basis for this. “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” (1 Cor 12:4-6) “But test them all; hold on to what is good” A methodology is pretty easy to test. If the methodology goes against natural law then it has no basis in scripture. By natural law I mean anything that contributes to the family life. If a Christian methodology overwhelmingly leads to anything that abuses or harms a family or person, this methodology should be discarded. There is nothing else to say. The methodology should also make the person into the ideal. Does your Christian methodology produce people like Christ? If the answer is no then it should be discarded. These are the criterion for our methods. Note that this criterion is a product of the ideal, Christ and his love for us as creations of God the Father. If you have a verse that disagrees with the criterion then criterion is not wrong your interpretation is, because Christ and his love are beyond question for the Christian.

One common response is not that the method does not work, just that the person is not taking to the method perfectly. Indeed nobody can follow Christ perfectly but we are to try anyways. I have heard it said “He is rejecting the call of discipleship.” The tacit implication is that the person is wrong and the method is not. This argument seems to carry weight, but we can easily compare the magnitude of the result of the methodology when it is hypothetically being rejected to the norm. When we find terrible, terrible stories of suicide, divorces, and the like- all in the name of becoming like Jesus the evidence seems to indicate that the method is in the wrong. Not the person.

In summary, we cannot escape methodology as teachers and leaders of the church. But we ought to test everything. We should be orthodox in our aims, but relative in our methods.

This is why it has been particularly hard to “disciple” me. Because I have already been “discipled” and not only that but in many cases the new teachings I have received directly contradict the old teachings. We have seen how hard it is to change someone’s mind once it has been settled, especially about people who have been strongly influenced and changed the lives of many.

The truth of the matter is that UBF is right when it says that a personal vested interest of a mature Christian can vastly impact a person’s lives. In fact sometimes it impacts their life so much they fail to see it. Like the grammar we use in our language it becomes so much a part of us that we forget it exists. Like the glass window out of which we view the garden, we know it so well we forget about it.

But then there comes a time where we hear incorrect grammar or a bird crashes into a window and we are jolted to the realization that something is present that was previously forgotten about. For me that something is Travis Peterson. In the following weeks (as time permits) I will share some lessons I have learned from Travis. I will try to have them posted every Friday. Travis was not the only person God used in my life at this time, but his teachings have come to be the most valuable in my time here in UBF.

The author makes no claim as to the exact memory of events, they will be only as he remembers them. Sometimes the lessons will be only stories, other times they may be essays on quotes from him. To many readers these lessons may be well known, to others they may provide examples for your own ministry. At the very least they will give a glimpse into what made me who I am today.

Truly,
Michael Lanier

I used to consider some activities as spiritual (sacred) and others as worldly (secular).

Spiritual. I thought that carrying out 1:1 Bible studies on the UIC campus was the single greatest Christian activity under heaven, and that it gave God ecstatic chills, goose bumps and enthusiastic high-fives among the Three Divine Persons of the Godhead! So for over two decades I averaged ten 1:1 Bible studies a week, while working full time and never missing any UBF evening meetings, which was usually 4-5 every week.

Worldly. Conversely, I thought that going home to visit my aged mother in Malaysia was selfish and family-centered, and that it displeased and grieved God. By visiting mom for even a week, I would not be on campus to focus on the most important task of making disciples among college students (Mt 28:19), which was unthinkable for me.

Breaking my mother’s heart. As a result, I did not go home and visit my parents for over a decade, even though I had promised my mother that I would visit her every year when I left for Chicago in 1980. This broke her heart and brought her to tears on many occasions. She once said to me, “Because of you, I would never become a Christian.” At that time, I chalked it up as a badge of honor, for I was being persecuted as a faithful and committed Christian (2 Tim 3:12; Mt 5:10-12).

Does visiting my mom displease God? A decade ago I began asking myself some questions: “Am I displeasing God by visiting my mom, and not being on the UIC campus feeding sheep every week? Do I become a different person and a less godly person by staying with my mom? Do I love Jesus less, fear God less, and entertain more sinful thoughts in Malaysia, since I am not carrying out 1:1 Bible studies in Chicago? Will the work of God be hindered by my absence at UIC?” For the first two decades of my Christian life I thought it was.

My mom began going to church at age 96. So over the past decade I have visited my mom every year. Earlier this year I had already visited her. But I plan to visit her again in November to attend her 97th birthday. Recently, she told me that she began to attend a Methodist church, which was quite an unexpected pleasant surprise to me.

Unhealthy compartmentalization of what we do. From my experience and based on my reading, it is not helpful, nor prudent, or even biblical to create a sacred-secular divide. Some examples which I have practiced and witnessed:

• Attending a UBF worship service is good, but attending other Christian church services is not good.
• Never miss a Sun service to attend any other “worldly” activity such as family gatherings, or the graduation of a family member or friend.
• Having Bible studies each week is spiritual and better than working full time at your secular job, which is primarily for the purpose of supporting your church and ministry.
• Serving in church is spiritual while serving in non-Christian institutions is not.
• Spending time in the church is more spiritual than hanging out in your home.
• Bible study and discipleship is better than justice and mercy ministry, which is social work and not spiritual.

Though I once practiced such dichotomies, I find them quite disconcerting today. This list can sadly go on and on. But such artificial dichotomies and expressions of our Christianity is pretty ghastly and even unbiblical. Why?

Monotheism. The Shema, which faithful Jews recite every day is Dt 6:4 which proclaims in essence that there is only one God whom we worship with the entirely of our being (Dt 6:5). Jesus regards this as the greatest commandment (Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30). A meaning of monotheism is that the one God is the same God wherever we are and whatever we do. It is the same God whether we are in church, or at home, or at work. It is the same God whether we are with Christians, or with family, or with colleagues at work. It is the same God whether we are at a UBF worship service or some other Christian worship service, or whether I am in Chicago or Malaysia.

Polytheism. If we communicate that doing particular activities is spiritual and others are not, we are in a sense practicing polytheism. In the past, the ancients worshiped a god of agriculture, a god of fertility, a god of health, a god of fortune, etc.

Do you experience or encounter any sacred secular divide in church? If so, are you able to address it and discuss it?

“Pastor Abraham Kim asked me to prepare a message on campus mission with reference to Stephen Lutz’s book (College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture) along with my own sense of problems and visions.”

Here is a question I’ve wondered for many years. Why is this Korean director in Pennsylvania repeatedly considered the expert in campus discipleship among ubf leaders? This is not the first time Daniel has spoken on this topic. This doesn’t make sense to me because his ministry is very small and disconnected from the rest of ubf. Anyone know why ubf leaders look to him for expertise in “making disciples”? Perhaps he “raised” some famous ubf person?

“One motivation to think about this topic is that some of us have asked whether we should continue to make college students as the main focus of our ministry. The UBF is more than 50 years old. We have many young children in our ministries who need our attention. We have many coworkers who are in retirement age, some with no financial nest egg. And it is becoming more and more difficult to reach out to college students in this post-modern society. So it is natural for us to ask what we are doing.”

Yes you all need to ask these questions! Is ubf a church? If so, then you must start acting like a church and actually care about the needs mentioned here. Is ubf a network of para-church groups? If so, then you need to release the families and stop binding them to live like single college students. But of course, ubf leaders never make up their mind about this. They just plod along, hoping families don’t leave. If the American, German, etc. families left ubf, they would have just the Koreans remaining. If ubf is a college ministry, they should have mostly single non-Korean college students among them, especially single college students leading most of the ministry. But they don’t. Instead the audience at this staff conference is made up of married couples whose average age is likely about 40.

“And it’s important to note that such question is asked by those who love our ministry. The fact is that some of us have devoted our life to campus mission for 10, 20 or 30 years but with very little to show for (humanly speaking). Like men going through a mid-life crisis, we may be wondering what has happened to our life.”

Correct. Such questions are asked by those who love ubf ministry. Such questions are asked by people like myself who also love ubf ministry even though I am no longer part of the ministry.  Ubf does have something to show for their effort. They have earned the cult label from several organizations and from their public image. They have earned the responsibility to bear the burden of abusing people around the world for five decades. Such things are what cause your ubf staff to have moments of crisis. And they are also dealing with the real mid-life crisis of wondering what you did with your life. When you turn 40, it is normal to experience such things. It is harmful to your psyche to suppress or ignore such emotions.

“We all agree that the Bible is at the core of our ministry. It is in our DNA. It’s in our bones and marrows. We believe that the word of God leads us to Jesus. It leads us to eternal life in the kingdom of God.”

Correct, the bible is at the core of ubf ministry. Is that a good thing? I say no. ubf has made the bible into an idol, like many fundamentalist groups have. Being biblio-centric doesn’t automatically make your ministry honoring to God. Perhaps you should spend some time thinking about whether the bible should be at the core. Should not Jesus, the living God, the Person, the Shepherd be there? Does not Jesus our Lord want to be the core? Assuming that because you spend many hours reading the bible you automatically also have Jesus at your center is a very bad assumption.

You say that the word of God leads us to Jesus and leads to eternal life in the kingdom of God. Technically that’s correct. But why emphasize the “going to heaven” message? Where is love for your neighbor, love for your families, and love for your enemies?

“Francis Chan, a pastor in California, said, “If Jesus had a church here (in Simi Valley), mine would be bigger.” What he meant is that Jesus’ preaching would not be very popular today. It’s his critical observation that people today want to hear something that tickles their itching ears. The pure, unadulterated gospel may sound quaint and uninteresting to them. They would rather turn to something new, something more interesting. So some preachers tend to quote a Bible verse or two and then quickly move on to something people want to hear.”

Can you hear the pride oozing from this? Wow! Ubf is a small ministry who spends a lot of time reading the bible. Therefore, ubf is better than Francis Chan’s ministry! Ubf is just like Jesus’ ministry. If Jesus were here today, surely Jesus would set up an unpopular ministry like ubf….

Speaking of that “unadulterated gospel”…. What is the gospel? Why do ubf Koreans get so nervous and even angry when I ask this question? Maybe we could talk about this wonderful gospel? Or is that a waste of time?

And speaking of preachers quoting a few bible verses and moving on to what their audience’s itching ears want to hear… isn’t that what you are doing here Daniel? You quoted a bible verse but don’t speak about it much. You move on quickly to affirm the glory and rightness of ubf ministry, soothing the ears of your audience for a moment.

“In our campus, there is a Christian group that attracts a large gathering each week. I sometimes envy them. Some of our Bible students would leave us to join them, because they can have more fun there and also because they have a better chance of meeting a girlfriend or boyfriend there. On the other hand, only a few students come to our campus fellowship meetings. So again this summer, our student leaders are seeking God’s wisdom on how to reach out to more students. We’ve discussed having games, music, dance, and café after each meeting. But we know that whatever we do, we should always let the word of God be the main focus.”

Ah those darn, unspiritual, mamby-pamby, weak, licentious Christian groups! Argh, if only they wouldn’t attract so many students! Then ubf ministry would flourish! We need much wisdom about how to get students away from such evil influences and get them to attend our boring, mundane, flawed bible study! But just wait another 50 years… we’ll figure it out eventually. Just show us grace.

“We consider our Bible study ministry so precious because the word of God led each of us to Jesus and eternal life. At the beginning of each semester, I ask my students in my economics classes what their life goal is–what they hope to do after college. A majority of them would say: “to make a lot of money and be happy.” They have no idea on some of the important questions in life, such as “Who am I?” “Where did I come from?” and “What will happen when I die?” Instead, their interest is on how to have fun and pleasure.”

Well ok, we get it. Students just want to have fun. That’s bad. Ok fine. But to say ALL students are just unspiritual, unchristian pagans? Really? So it is ubf against the world afterall? Give me a break!

“I believe that the focus of our ministry on preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ is pleasing to the Lord. However, there is one point that Steve Lutz makes, which we may need to heed. He describes a campus group known for its strong biblical, doctrinal, and teaching emphasis. Their students know the Scriptures inside and out. The problem, he says, is that they are ill-equipped to have a meaningful conversation with someone who doesn’t know or follow Christ (p. 32). “

Yes! That’s correct! Ah so Lutz makes one valid point that you should listen to. That’s good. Now we are getting somewhere. Or are we?

“This is serious. Lutz cites statistics that a majority of college students today (85%) identify themselves as non-believers. Some are downright hostile toward God. We need to understand their way of thinking and culture. We need to know their language in order to serve them more effectively. Studying the Bible with them once a week is not enough. This takes us to our last name in our identity—fellowship.”

Oh so ubf has already solved the problem Lutz speaks about. All that amazing fellowship at ubf creates such eloquent, world-class communicators! Ubf people can have such wonderful, graceful conversations with other people outside of ubf? So I would expect a boat-load of ubfriends articles and comments here, engaging all of the pagans like myself? Don’t hold your breath folks.

“II. UNIVERSITY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP”

Now we get to what Daniel Lee really wants to talk about: UNIVERSITY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP. Such a glorious name! Such a glorious ministry doing God’s work the best ways!

“Several years ago, one Bible student left our ministry, saying, “This church does not have love.” I was shocked and deeply hurt. We had served him with the word of God and prayer. We also shared many meals with him. But clearly he didn’t feel our love. St. Paul said, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1Co 13:2). Since then, our church slogan is “To love God and to love each other” based on Jesus’ command. Of course, we realize that slogan doesn’t make a difference until we practice it.”

Correct! There is no love at ubf, in most ubf chapters. Why? Because serving is NOT love! It took you 50 years to figure that out?

“III. UNIVERSITY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP”

Wait, wasn’t this the title of part 1 and part 2? Oh but we must revel in the glory of UNIVERSITY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP some more. Did you get that? What is our identity? I forgot. Oh yea, UNIVERSITY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP.

“Should we continue to focus on college mission? Well, this is in our name–University. Before we talk about this, let me ask you, “Would you raise your hand if you met Jesus personally while you were in college?” (Most of us!) I think this is one of the powerful reasons why we all love our ministry and want to help college students to come to know Christ.”

Wait, no I did NOT meet Christ first at ubf! I was conditioned to believe that was the case, but many of us had already met Christ BEFORE that fateful ubf bible study appointment. What about us? Why does that diminish your ministry?

“Ever since our early leaders gathered together in college campuses to study the word of God and pray, God has blessed our ministry. He raised up many disciples and sent out many missionaries to all over the world. Just as the Holy Spirit blessed the early churches in the book of Acts, God has blessed our ministries. This is a compelling reason why we should stick to our college mission.”

Ah the nostalgia. Ubf is so much like the early churches in the  bible.  That nostalgia is why we should stick to college mission. Isn’t that the best reason really? We always have done this, our “ancestors” always did this. And what is more, we are doing just what the first churches did. We are so glorious.

“Still, some may argue that God didn’t specifically say we should go to college campuses. Instead, Jesus told us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creations (Mk 16:15). He said we should go and make disciples of all nations (Mt 28:19).”

Correct, that is a good argument.

“So why limit ourselves to college campuses? This sounds reasonable. But I don’t believe that focusing a particular population group for evangelism is unbiblical either. After all, college students are part of the world and part of God’s creation. Just as God has blessed some ministries focused on prison inmates, entertainers or athletes, God can and has blessed the ministries focused on college students.”

Note: All those other ministries did not try to become a church. Ubf wants to be both a denominational church and a ministry network. And that is one reason why ubf will fall apart and split in the future.

“What makes campus mission difficult is that it takes a long time to raise a disciple of Jesus. Most college students do not expect to be longer than 4 years on campus. They want to move on. This makes small town ministries especially difficult.”

Yes this is precisely why ubf developed the six stage training program, to fit mostly in 4 years and to condition and entangle students to stay at least a few years after graduating.

“What I personally learned early on is that we should help students with the gospel of Jesus whether they stay in the ministry or not. If they move on to another city, we are sorry to see them go, but the word of God planted in them will stay with them. We need a long term approach. Lutz says, “Campus ministry can’t be concerned only with programs, events or activities that are happening next week. We must focus on the spiritual formation of students for the missio Dei, a lifetime of following Jesus and joining him in his mission, making our goal to make disciples for the mission of God. After all, wasn’t that Jesus’s primary goal?” (p. 104)”

Correct. Good advice. Let the students go free!

“In conclusion, God has used our Bible study ministry to raise up disciples of Jesus from among college students. Thank God for blessing the sacrifices and prayers of our precious coworkers. We have many challenges ahead. But we believe that God will continue to bless our campus ministries as we take care of young students with God’s words and prayers, out of our love for Jesus. May God help us to hear Jesus when he says to us, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you”!”

Ok fine. But what about the families? What about the children? You speak as though your audience is made up of unmarried students.

Anyone think ubf will change? Think again. Just entertain the idea of a Christian ministry, but keep enabling, propagating and guarding the ubf heritage. World history is at stake and all of Christian history depends on it, apparently.

Director Training Material

As a director at ubf, I expected to be invited to director meetings. I was not however. Not once was I ever invited to attend a director’s conference or even told what a director should do. It’s probably for the best however, because we all know that ubf director’s conferences are held in the Korean language and attended by Korean ubf people. So right away it became clear to me that I was not really a director, but just a figurehead. In Detroit ubf, it became clear to me that ubf HQ (as we called Chicago ubf) only wanted two things: 1) Weekly stats reporting 2) Staff conference attendance. I was rather surprised when no one cared about our $0 offering year after year. Stats and attendance seemed to be vastly more important to the leaders in HQ.

Still as a director I got on some high level email lists (which came in handy :) and was able to obtain some director training material. This material is not much, and mostly just the typical ubf nostalgic hagiography. But one presentation stood out. It described the ubf discipleship training model in stunning clarity. I suddenly began to understand what had been going on all those years at ubf. Why had I felt so much friction? What standard was I being held to? All the undocumented teachings I had vaguely bumped into became clear.

2010 UBF Directors’ Conference: Fishing and Outreach

The title of the teaching presentation I obtained is Fishing and Outreach. Note: This slide is publicly available, so contact me if you want the public link or search for yourself. This presentation is a prime example of how ubf directors are taught and trained.

The slides are grouped into four sections. Most of the slides are odd diagrams and goofy pictures.

1. UBF Growth Principles (slides 3 to 5)
2. Natural Principles (slide 6 to 8)
3. Fishing and Outreach (slides 9 to 21)
4. Motivation (slide 22)

The first group of slides presents various principles of growth. There is mention of “releasing the divine growth forces which God himself grows his church”. The apparent claim is that natural growth is the best way to grow, and that ubf has grown naturally so far. This section contains a confusing slide with a lot of world flags mentioning something written by Christian A. Schwarz from Germany.

High Quality

The second group of slides attempts to explain the natural principles behind natural growth. One slide lists 8 “quality characteristics”, such as “inspiring worship service”, “need oriented evangelism” and “loving relationship”. This section presents the infamous “minimum barrel” principle. So sheep in ubf had better make sure you are not the shortest plank in the barrel…

Disciple Products

This third group seems to start abruptly at slide 9 which is just labeled “UBF Ministry”. No I’m not mocking ubf here. Slide 12 literally shows the ubf process of ministry with the outcome labelled “Disciple Products”. All the normal activities ubf folks know about are listed, such as Summer Bible Conference. Apparently outreach is supposed to be just a lot of ubf activity, which makes up the largest section of this presentation. You have to see these slides, 9 to 21, for yourself. It’s a wild trip through ubf-land.

Shepherds Falling in Love with Sheep

Slide 20 however stands out to me. The title is “Relationship Developing Steps”. The steps are exactly how two people fall in love (maybe). But don’t think this is about dating. No way. This is about how a shepherd is supposed to fall in love!

Now go do it!

The final group is just one slide: Motivation. Only two motivations are given:

1. Absolute Gospel Power
2. Gospel Vision

Summary of the ubf Training Model

The most useful slide in this presentation for me was slide 10, which is titled “Ministry System”.

The goal of this system is clearly to break you down, shredding your authentic identity and give you a new identity as a shepherd. This ministry process was detailed quite well in an old newspaper article.

This is how the model is supposed to work. Six stages and about 7 years and out comes a ubf shepherd or shepherdess. However, because this model is about psychological identity remaking, it has to be an endless cycle of re-orientation and re-building. The model does not always work and has been adjusted at each ubf chapter for each ubf sheep. How does this model compare to what happens in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, China, Mexico, Canada?

The first three stages of UBF training may be categorized as “sheep training”. The goal is to secure a person’s commitment to the UBF ways. The UBF leaders seek to produce a person committed to weekly UBF bible study (Stage 1: Birthing), a person willing to adopt the UBF worldview (Stage 2: Rooting) and a person willing to continue the training and become a UBF shepherd (Stage 3: Growing).

The second three stages of UBF training may be categorized as “shepherd training”. The goal is to secure a person’s resources for the rest of their life. UBF leaders want a person’s identity (Stage 4: Disciple Training), a person’s obedience (Stage 5: Soldier Training) and a person’s lifelong loyalty (Stage 6: Leader Training).

The content of these six stages may be adjusted for each student UBF encounters. The overall plan takes about 7 to 9 years and is practiced with some degree of consistency by UBF chapters around the world. One question though: What do you do after Stage 6? The expectation is that you live as a lifelong UBF loyalist and recruiter.

Based on this director training presentation and my own experience at ubf for 24 years, I came up with this matrix that explains the ubf discipleship training model. One problem (as Forests already pointed out) is that this model does not do well with independent, critical thinkers. So the stages sometimes get messed up. In the past, that is where dead dog training would kick in (sometimes with physical violence) to “produce” a more tame sheep who could then be trained more easily in this system.

“But the proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift. We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. Gift-love…must work towards its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say ‘They need me no longer’ shall be our reward. But (this) instinct…has no power to fulfill this law. The instinct desires the good of its object, but… A much higher love–a love which desires the good of the object as such, from whatever source that good comes–must step in and help or tame the instinct before it can make the abdication. And of course it often does. But where it does not, the ravenous need to be needed will gratify itself either by keeping its objects needy or by inventing for them imaginary needs.”

Applying this to leaders, shepherds, pastors, and Bible teachers, I would say the following:

Good Bible teachers make themselves unneeded. A good leader, Bible teacher, shepherd and pastor makes himself or herself unneeded. He or she make themselves expendable, dispensable, nonessential and superfluous. A good Bible teacher teaches so well until the student no longer needs the teacher to keep having to teach them. C.S. Lewis says, “we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching.” A good Bible teacher mentors, disciples and teach others so well such that the student can lead and teach the Bible independently of their teacher. The best Bible teachers inspire their Bible students to love God and to love the Bible and to become personally motivated and inspired to study the Bible for themselves. Basically the best Bible teachers work themselves out of a job. The best Bible teachers produce independent leaders and self-motivated learners. In contrast, poor leaders produce dependent leaders who do not have the confidence or courage to take risks and to make decisions on their own. Why does this happen?

Inferior Bible teachers refuse to release their student. They do not abdicate. In contrast to good teachers, suboptimal Bible teachers always cause their students to feel as though they desperately need them to always be their Bible teacher and shepherd all the days of their life. I heard about a 62 year old Bible teacher telling his 61 year old Bible student, “You must obey me because you have been my sheep for 40 years.” Based on his words, he still insists on demanding that his Bible student obeys him as his Bible teacher. He has refused to release his Bible student even after 4 decades and even after they are both grand-fathers. I cannot say that he is a good Bible teacher that others should learn from.

The problem with bad leaders is their need to be needed as leaders. C.S. Lewis explains this most eloquently: “…the ravenous need to be needed will gratify itself either by keeping its objects needy or by inventing for them imaginary needs.” Bad leaders make their students feel as though they cannot function independently of their leader. They make their students feel as though they always need their leader and teacher to lead them and to teach them even after many decades.

Have you experienced good teachers who make themselves unneeded? Or have you experienced needy teachers who make you feel as though you cannot succeed without them?

• Trust God, not yourself (Prov 3:5).
• Love God and others (Mt 22:37-39; Mk 12:30-31).
• Believe that God is good (Rom 8:28).

First, trust God, not yourself (Prov 3:5). I said, “One thing you should do every single day as a Christian is to trust God, as Prov 3:5 says.” I said this because she said that she is not motivated to read the Bible daily due to feeling overwhelmed by many things to do. I encouraged her to trust God, have faith in God and believe that God is with her to help her, even if she does not read the Bible. She could recite just one verse such as Prov 3:5 (or certain other favorite verses) with the spirit of contemplation, meditation, reflection, prayer and introspection before God. This could be her communion with God daily while brushing her teeth, taking a shower, getting dressed, preparing breakfast, traveling to and from school, etc, even if she does not read the Bible. She asked me what verse I took for myself. I shared that Mt 6:33 was the first verse I recited daily every morning when I first became a Christian in 1980.

I explained that trusting God or reciting some Bible verse is not some secret formula for spiritual exhilaration or enlightenment, since every Christian goes through phases that St. John of the Cross calls “the dark night of the soul.” I encouraged her to trust God and to trust Jesus (Jn 14:1) even when she feels dry, disconnected and distant from God.

Second, love God and others (Mt 22:37-39; Mk 12:30-31). A healthy introspection would be primarily directed toward God and others, for Jesus commands us to love God and others. I encouraged her to pray to find ways to genuinely love and serve others. An unhealthy introspection would be selfishly concerned with ourselves and our own happiness. Yet as Socrates said to know thyself, we should seek to truly know ourselves, for without a true knowledge of ourselves, we would not grow in a true knowledge of who God is.

To trust God we must know the truth that God loves us even when we feel distant from him, and that He forgives us even when we are sinning. Our unwavering confidence in the unconditional and unchanging love of God for us is the strongest motivator for us to stay close to Christ.

Third, believe that God is good (Rom 8:28). I said, “The third thing that every Christian should do every day is to believe that God is good, even when bad things happen to us.” I regard Rom 8:28 as the “best verse” for Christians. Every person has their own criteria and preference for what they regard as good or bad. Joseph surely thought that being sold into slavery by his brothers was bad as he pleaded for his life (Gen 42:21). Yet, through this brutal horrible event, God intended for good to happen through Joseph’s life (Gen 50:20). I encouraged her to trust the God who loves her and to believe that God is good even through what she may regard as bad in her own life.

How might you counsel a Christian who asks you what they should do when they feel distant and disconnected with God?

One of the most important take-aways from Robb’s book for me is the need for each generation of Christians to seek out and embrace ourselves, our God and our theology in the sea of change. Fundamorphosis challenges us to go beyond a “receive and believe” approach.

A new journey, connected to the past

Throughout history, Christianity has been represented by various symbols. Each generation has struggled to understand the words of Jesus and the Bible authors. We have much to learn from them. The cross was the first symbol, and remains the most important. The fish was used early on, no doubt due to the fishermen Jesus called.

Robb does not dismiss the early tradition and rich history of Christianity. In fact, he points us toward such things, with the hope of instilling a new desire for satisfaction from our Christian faith. At the same time, Fundamorphosis is an invitation to find a new identity. The identity of the butterfly, and the related metamorphosis process, captures the essence of what God through the Holy Spirit is doing around the world today. I say this with confidence based on my own transformation out of my own cocoon of evangelicalism and based on thousands of online and in-person conversations with Christians from around America and around the world.

The power of Fundamorphosis lies not in introducing some “new theology” or a “better system of answers”, but in capturing one man’s transformation out of a static, burned-out, joyless Phariseeism and into a vibrant, ever-changing Christ-followership.

Love and hope, not apostasy

Immediately I could sense Robb’s love for those who “believe with certitude” the tenants of fundamentalist Christianity. Unlike others in our generation, Robb does not condemn fundamentalist Christians. Instead, Robb tells the story of his own journey. At one point he declares: “I still love the church”.

Robb is on an amazing journey, but he has not given up on church. With grace and careful thought, Robb invites all of us to a deeper faith, a more flexible commitment and a broader inclusion of people. Fundamorphosis is filled with words of hope and life and joy from beginning to end. It may be that many will read his book secretly (Kindle is a good way for that :) Those who do will surely find love, not judgement or dismissiveness.

Sharing the pain and struggle

“We wrestled with what to do. We contemplated what it would take for us to be agents of change within our church.” (Fundamorphosis, location 367, Kindle Edition)

Just as a caterpillar might wonder what is happening as the cocoon spins around it, Robb is candid with his and his family’s struggle. His transformation was not without a “dark night of soul”. With vivid memories interwoven into his narrative, Robb gives us a real look into his struggles. Such vulnerability is much needed today.

A journey of self discovery

“Doubt actually frees me to admit that I don’t have all the answers and that I can’t figure it all out. And when I am willing to admit this truth about myself, I experience a true hope.” (location 949, Kindle Edition)

One of the threads throughout Fundamorphosis is Robb’s personal self discovery journey, a journey that includes both doubt and faith. St. Augustine’s prayer regarding “self” and “God” is certainly true.

Conclusion

Fundamorphosis is a snapshot of what God is doing in our generation. These are not times of doom and gloom, but one of the most exciting and hopeful times in all history. Thank you Robb for articulating the essence of what the Spirit has been teaching me and for expressing what is on the minds of many! And perhaps what we all need is a fundamorphosis. Isn’t that a big part of the discipleship Jesus invites us to? We may study the bible for thousands of hours every year. But has all that study lead us into a deep, personal, relational, missional, ecumenical, communal transformation because of the amazing, effervescent, joyful, all-surpassing glory and hope of the new wine Jesus is offering?

Thanks for the helpful comments last week on A is for Accountability. As a result I stressed how important it is regarding who we choose to be accountable to. This resonated with some as they lamented that what they had shared in confidence was used against them. Regarding accountability I asked three questions during the sermon:

1. Do you have a Nathan? (Who are you accountable to?)
2. Are you a Nathan? (Who are you accountable for?)
3. Do you know your ultimate Nathan, who did not confront you for your sins, but died for your sins?

My short (and incomplete) answers are my wife, my friends and my Jesus.

After the sermon an elder of our church confessed publicly to the entire congregation about an episode from three decades ago where he became a father before he married his present wife. He had not planned to say this, but was prompted to share it as he heard my sermon. He wanted to be accountable to the church for what he had done. It was a tender moment and full of the grace of our Lord.

Two sisters in Christ who previously misunderstood each other both decided to be accountable for each other. They began to share with each other freely what was in their hearts, which they could not do so before. I believe that accountability must be driven by the gospel and the Spirit and not ourselves.

The three parts of my sermon on Beauty (using the word loosely) are:

1. Wired for beauty.
2. Deceived by beauty.
3. Restored through beauty.

God created us to love and to be loved by him. We were created to be fulfilled and attracted to God through all of creation that reflects his goodness and majesty. But we were deceived by counterfeit beauties and brought endless tragedy and woe upon ourselves. Now, only through the ultimate beauty of God expressed through the gospel can we ever be restored, redeemed and reconciled.

My plan is to share how Isaac was deceived by the “beauty” of his older twin son Esau and showed favoritism to him over Jacob, which damaged both sons. Esau became arrogant. Jacob became wounded. In searching for the love of his father that he never experienced, Jacob was deceived by the “beauty” of Rachel and then by her son Joseph, which wounded and nearly destroyed his entire family of 12 sons. Despite such deep seated multi-generational pathology, God extended grace upon grace in order to bring to fruition his plan of redemption, which would ultimately cost him His Son. This is the beauty of redemption that can restore us and compel us to gaze on the beauty of the Lord all the days of our life (Ps 27:4).

I was transformed through the majestic beauty of God who loved me unconditionally and showed me mercy, forgiveness and grace despite myself. I regard it as my mystical conversion.

My hope and prayer is that through my sermon we may be enamored and enraptured by the beauty of God through Christ. Did I succeed?

1. Why it’s important: sin deceives and traps all of us without exception.
2. How to do it: humbly and gently with the Spirit’s help.
3. What not to do: being conceited and thinking we are better than others.
4. Who did it best: Only Jesus was perfectly accountable.

Everyone needs to be accountable, even top leaders. Using the account of Nathan confronting David (2 Sam 12:1-14) and Paul rebuking Peter (Gal 2:11-14), my thesis is that two most prominent leaders–one in the OT (King David) and one in the NT (the apostle Peter)–were caught in sin and needed to be held accountable and restored. It does not matter if one is a new Christian or a top leader in the church, everyone needs someone to be accountable to. I hope to encourage my congregation to seek out someone they trust to be accountable to and to be accountable to others. The two questions I pose are:

1. Do you have a Nathan?
2. Are you a Nathan to others?

Shame or selfishness. We might be reluctant to seek out an accountability partner because of shame of confessing our sins and shortcomings, or a reluctance to expose our own dirty laundry. We might also be reluctant to be accountable for others because of selfishness. But our lives will surely be enriched when we have someone to be accountable to and for.

There is only One who was perfectly accountable. Ultimately we all fail being accountable to God and to others because of our shame and selfishness. But there is One who was accountable to God and to others…unto death. He was perfectly accountable to God and to us at the cost of his life. When we realize this and to the degree that we understand this, we too will be compelled to be accountable to God and to others.

Do you have someone you are accountable to and for?

Reason #1 – I was trained by a Korean bible cult

I hate saying this, but it is true. Whatever good things are happening in ubf today, I am not part of such things. I was trained by ubf leaders to believe a Christianized version of Confucianism, and to formulate a belief system based on the 12 point ubf heritage. That is simply not orthodox Christianity. Often I find I am reacting against the ubf heritage instead of discovering Christianity. So I now face the fact that I am not trained in orthodox Christianity.

Reason #2 – I live among American Christians

As I explore American Christianity in its current divided state, I find that I am glad I did not learn American Christianity as espoused by Evangelicals and Fundamentalists in the Protestant world. I find that after leaving ubf behind, I am highly grateful for my Roman Catholic roots. I find these Catholic roots and the current Pope Francis to be my connection to orthodox Christianity. I cannot see Christ in most of the Christian writing and teaching currently in America. Instead, I see bigotry, hatred, division, strife, anger and injustice, toward women, toward gays, toward Democrats, toward liberals and toward just about anything that I might call “my values”.

Reason #3 – The term Christian is just a label

It is sobering to realize that Peter and the others were not Christians. Well at least for most of their life and for many years while they followed Jesus. The disciples of Jesus were just fine without the label of “Christian”. It was in Antioch that the label of “Christian” was applied, as in Acts 11:25-27. And why did other people start calling followers of Jesus as Christians? Because they saw the forgiveness toward the apostle Paul, a man who once tried to kill Christ-followers. Instead of hating the one they didn’t understand, the followers of Jesus made the man a teacher! Such love and forgiveness is Christ-like. I don’t see such a thing in me nor in most who claim the label Christian. Who am I to claim to be Christ-like?

I am a disciple of Jesus, following Jesus

So for now I am a disciple of Jesus. I join with the worldwide church of people who confess that they too follow Jesus. Matthew 16:13-20 is the famous “you are the Christ” passage. But what does that passage end with? That passage ends with a stern warning from Jesus. Jesus strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Is this just a warning for that specific context? Or was Jesus teaching us all something deeper here? I see something deeper. And so this is my attitude right now. I tell no one that I am a Christian.

Instead, I am focusing on learning how to listen to Jesus’ voice through the Holy Spirit, depending on the Holy Father to navigate the Holy Scriptures. For now, Christ who lives in me has called me to go ouside the gates as in Hebrews 13:10-13, to go outside the camp to bear the reproach Jesus himself endured. I will stand with my gay brothers and sisters. I will stand up for justice. I will befriend anyone and engage in dialogue with unconditional love, even anyone in ubf and anyone among the Christendom world, as much as they are willing to talk to me without the label of Christian. And above all else, I will continue to learn how to be a husband and father, making up for lost time.

1. Waste Time Feeling Sorry for Yourself. MSP do not feel sorry for their situation or dwell on how they were mistreated. They take responsibility for their actions and their outcomes. They understand that life is often unfair. They emerge from bad circumstances with self-awareness (Gen 50:20) and gratitude for lessons learned. They may say, “Oh, well…” or “Next.”

2.  Give Away Your Power. MSP do not give others the power to make them feel inferior. They are in control of their actions and emotions (1 Pet 5:8). They manage the way they respond.

3. Shy Away from Change. MSP embrace change. They welcome challenge. An environment of change and uncertainty energizes MSP and bring out their best.

4. Waste Energy on Things They Can’t Control. MSP don’t complain (much) about other people, because they are generally beyond their control. In a bad situation, they recognize that the one thing they can always control is their own response and attitude.

5. Worry About Pleasing Others. MSP are not people pleasers. They strive to be kind and fair and to please others where appropriate, but are unafraid to speak up. They know that certain people will get upset and they navigate the situation, wherever possible, with grace (Col 4:6).

6. Fear Taking Calculated Risks. MSP willingly take calculated risks. This is not jumping headlong into foolish risks. MSP weigh the risks and benefits thoroughly. They fully assess potential downsides and worst-case scenarios before taking decisive action.

7. Dwell on the Past. Acknowledging the past and especially things learned from past experiences is good. But MSP avoid consuming their mental energy in past disappointments or in “glory days” gone by. They invest their creative energy for optimizing the present and future.

8. Make the Same Mistakes Over and Over and Expecting Better Results (the definition of insanity). MSP accept full responsibility for past behavior and willingly learn from mistakes. Research shows that the ability to be self-reflective in an accurate and productive way is one of the greatest strengths of spectacularly successful people.

9. Resent Other People’s Success. It takes strength of character to feel genuine joy and excitement for other people’s success (Rom 12:15). MSP have this ability. They don’t become jealous or resentful when others succeed (although they take notes on what the individual did well).

10. Give Up After Failure. Every failure is a chance to improve. The greatest entrepreneurs willingly admit their many early failures. MSP are willing to fail again and again, as long as the learning experience from every “failure” can bring them closer to their ultimate goals.

11. Fear Alone Time. MSP enjoy and treasure time spent alone to reflect, plan, and to be productive (Mk 1:35). They don’t depend on others for their happiness. They can be happy with others, and they can also be happy alone.

12. Feel the World Owes Them Anything. MSP are prepared to work and succeed on their merits, at every stage of the game.

13. Expect Immediate Results. MSP are “in it for the long haul.” They know better than to expect immediate results. They apply their energy and time in measured doses. They celebrate each milestone and increment of success on the way. They have “staying power” (Rom 8:28). They understand that genuine changes take time.

I would like to think that I categorically avoid all 13 things on this list (…hear the violin playing). But I know my wife will tell you otherwise! Do you have mental strength? Do you belong to the category of MSP?

Why have our waistlines been expanding so dramatically? Experts agree that there is no single reason; drivers of the obesity epidemic are multifactorial and complex. But one of the crucial factors is our increased consumption of foods that are energy-dense and nutrient-poor. Energy-dense, nutrient-poor is the technical descriptor for what we commonly call junk food: fare that delivers large amounts of calories (mainly from carbohydrates and fats) but little protein, fiber, vitamins and other nourishing substances that our bodies need to stay healthy. Examples of these foods include pizza, french fries, and the classic American donut.

We crave these foods because they taste good. They bring instant gratification to our mouths and stomachs. But over the long term, an energy-dense, nutrient-poor diet leaves us paunchy, sluggish and malnourished. If we want to live long, prosperous and healthy lives, we would do well to limit our consumption of these things in favor of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats and whole grains.

Are there parallels to junk food in Christian discipleship? The answer is yes, according to Randal Rauser, a fortysomething associate professor of historical theology at Taylor Seminary in Edmonton, Alberta. In Chapter 2 of his 2009 book titled You’re Not As Crazy As I Think: Dialogue in a World of Loud Voices and Hardened Opinions, Rauser draws a powerful analogy between junk food and certain kinds of preaching that are popular in the evangelical world. The kind of preaching that can make a crowd of like-minded believers stand up and cheer, because the guy at the podium is “telling it like it is.” The kind of preaching that seems powerful because the speaker exudes a charismatic confidence.  The characteristics of this kind of preaching include

• passion – the speaker displays love for is beliefs;
• conviction –he shows  a high degree of certainty that what he is saying is correct; and
• simplicity – he makes his points in ways that are easy to understand, so that his message becomes as plain as day.

If a speaker displays these traits, many will instinctively think he is truthful and trustworthy. Indeed, these are some of the marks of Jesus Christ. All four of the gospels portray Jesus as a man who spoke with remarkable passion, conviction and simplicity.

If we are faithful followers of Jesus Christ, then shouldn’t we proclaim the truth as we see it with a Christlike degree of confidence? Not really, claims Rauser.  The reason is that we are not Jesus.  Although we should strive to be like him, we must do so recognizing that we are fundamentally different from him. Jesus is God and we are not. Jesus is sinless and we are not. Jesus had special knowledge that we do not have, a knowledge that came from his intimate relationship with his Father and his complete openness and submission to the Holy Spirit. There is a role for confidence in the Christian life, but it ought to be what Lesslie Newbigin called a “Proper Confidence” – a firm commitment to believing that Jesus Christ is the source of all truth, tempered by the recognition that because we are finite and fallen, we often cannot see that truth clearly.

As a primary illustration, Rauser uses the example of Billy Sunday  (1862-1935). Sunday was the most influential  American evangelist of the early 20th century. During the 1880’s, Sunday played professional baseball for the Chicago White Sox (then called the White Stockings) and the Pittsburgh Pirates (then called the Alleghenys). One day in Chicago, Sunday heard the gospel being preached at the Pacific Garden Mission and entrusted his life to Christ. A few years later, he sacrificed his career in baseball for full-time ministry and evangelism. By the early 1900’s, Sunday was crisscrossing the United States, preaching to large crowds at tent revival meetings.

Billy Sunday’s preaching was anything but boring. He combined the evangelistic zeal of Dwight Moody with the one-line zingers of comedian Rodney Dangerfield and the onstage antics of the rock band The Who. He would shout, leap from the piano, run up and down the aisles. Using the moves he learned in baseball, he would slide across the stage floor as if he were sliding into home plate. Sunday’s sermons were filled with memorable sound bytes, like this one which is still in circulation today:

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.

Billy Sunday’s preaching was fervently evangelistic. At his urging, many people were converted to a living faith in Jesus Christ. From the pulpit, he also railed against the evils of theater, dancing, gambling and drinking. His opposition to alcohol was deeply personal. In early childhood, he suffered abuse at the hands of an alcoholic stepfather. Sunday became a crusader for Prohibition, leading the effort to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages in 1920. Even after the social experiment had clearly failed and Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Sunday remained a staunch opponent of legalized drinking and continued to lobby for Prohibition until his death.

Sunday never attended a seminary and had no sympathy for what he called “liberal scholarship.” With a broad brush, he painted the scholars of his day as enemies of the truth. He proclaimed,

When the word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell.

He also adopted a hardline stance against the scientific theory of evolution, which he equated with atheism and godlessness. From the pulpit, he assured his audiences that Charles Darwin was burning in hell. Evolution, according to Sunday, was for “godless bastards and godless losers,” and those who wanted to teach it in schools were poisoning the minds of youth. He said:

I don’t believe the old bastard theory of evolution… If you believe your great, great grand-daddy was a monkey, then you can take your daddy and go to hell with him.

Although Billy Sunday had his critics, many more regarded him as a religious folkhero, a spiritual giant and champion for truth.

Is Sunday an exemplary preacher whom we ought to emulate? Randal Rauser doesn’t think so. Rauser writes (emphases mine):

As I have suggested, this way of identifying the seeker of truth – that is, by looking for blinding passion, unshakable conviction, and a simple clarity – is enormously tempting. It is like shopping for a restaurant by seeking the most caloric bang for your buck. Unfortunately, even if this method has its attractions, it is a very poor way to choose a nourishing meal: fast food may load you up with calories, but it offers very little by way of nourishing content. And so it is often for those who trumpet truth but have no appreciation for their own limitations of vision or fallibility, let alone the complexity of issues they address. Take in a Billy Sunday sermon, and you would get loaded up on a high caloric count of passion conviction and refreshing simplicity, but you would find a disappointingly low level of cognitive nutrition. In order to find a worthwhile meal, you cannot limit your criteria to the cheapest price and highest calorie count, for this is not sufficient for the body or mind. In the same way, when we are seeking truth, we cannot allow ourselves to be persuaded simply by passion, conviction and simplicity. The truthful person just may be the one whose passion is subtle, whose conviction is understated, and whose appreciation for clarity comes nuanced in qualifications that are necessary to capture an often messy reality.

I believe much of the truth passion that is currently gripping evangelicals… is but more of that Billy Sunday spirit that quashes critical distance, doubt and complexity by silencing it with passion, conviction and simplicity.

I strongly agree with Rauser. Passion, conviction and simplicity can be positive, but they are not necessarily the marks of good teaching, and in many cases they can mask immaturity and arrogance. If our goal is to become the kind of disciples who can make tough decisions and discern truth in a complicated and pluralistic world – the kind of Christians who can engage in thoughtful, open dialogue with people of different beliefs and live as winsome witnesses of Jesus Christ in diverse situations – then Billy Sunday-style preaching won’t get us there. Yes, that kind of preaching may reinforce our present beliefs and give us comfort and assurance that we are in the right. But it encourages us to disengage from and dismiss those with whom we disagree. It leaves little room for healthy doubt or self-criticism that are necessary for wisdom and maturity. It offers us the seductive illusion that we are God’s warriors, standing boldly for him on the side of truth, while discouraging us from developing the inner qualities of a person who actually seeks truth.

I have no reason to doubt that Billy Sunday was a sincere believer. I’m sure that God used him to draw many people to Christ. But that doesn’t make him a model for Christian discipleship. Nor does it imply that a steady diet of his teaching can bring anyone to spiritual maturity.

Consider this: If a person is literally starving, then giving him a box of donuts could save his life. But feeding him boxes of donuts day after day might eventually kill him.

Building one’s own kingdom

Leave and go. God’s intent and directional flow is for everyone to leave his father and mother and go forth to begin anew by exploring the world as good stewards (Gen 2:24). But after sin was born, every man’s sinful default is to do the very opposite. Instead of leaving and exploring, man stays to build up their own small kingdoms. Sadly, this is what churches and Christian ministries have done over the centuries. A church starts well by the work of the Holy Spirit. They may grow and even explode, as I believe UBF did for a few decades. But after an initial period of growth, stagnation and eventual decline often happens, as seems to be presently happening throughout the UBF world. Why?

So many good churches. There are many reasons. For one, people have many more options, and choices of many great churches to go to. Even around UIC and West Loop, I have become friends with many local pastors, who are truly godly Christian men and excellent preachers, pastors and teachers, who are serving many in the community I live in as well as reaching out to UIC students.

The need to control others. Nonetheless, I maintain that the primary reason anyone leaves any church is because of a weakened or broken relationship, often caused by the need of one person to control the other person. Again, isn’t it true that so many native leaders left UBF over the past decade mainly because they felt that their chapter director wanted to keep their authority and control over them? Isn’t it true that those chapter director(s) simply could not bear to lose their control and authority over their so-called “sheep”? Didn’t they want so badly to keep their sheep under them that God scattered them to other churches?

Let my people go. A major point that I have repeatedly said over the past decade is: “Let my people go” (Ex 9:1). If Christian leaders try to forcibly and coercively hold their church members, they weaken and eventually break their relationship with them. Worse yet, they are resisting the biblical mandate to go into all the world (Mk 16:15). Even if they do not go to all nations (Mt 28:19), at least let them go out into their own community of choice, based on their own initiative and preference without undue interference by the hierarchy of the church. Can we let local leaders lead? This allows for the free flowing organic work of the Holy Spirit (Jn 3:8), which is sadly often quenched by some Christian leaders who act as though it is their right to control the work of the Holy Spirit.

You’re not ready. UBF grew much initially because the Holy Spirit worked mightily. Samuel Lee allowed able young leaders to have stewardship and leadership over their own chapters and churches in their 30s. But these leaders who are now in their 50s and 60s are not willing to allow their own members in their 30s to lead their own chapters and churches. They say, “they are not ready,” or “they need more humbleness training,” etc. Isn’t this simply an excuse for keeping people with them and controlling people under them?

Is God scattering people from UBF, because some leaders in UBF are trying to hold and control people excessively?

Why do we need such a distinction between good and bad shepherding? It is because every Christian’s default is on the left side of the table. Without the work of the Spirit and the spirit of humility no one falls on the right side apart from Christ. For instance, the 12 UBF spiritual legacies itemized by Brian have tremendous potential for good. What Christian will ever say, “I disagree that we should go back to the Bible”? The problem entirely lies with the way a shepherd or UBF leader understands the phrase “go back to the Bible,” and the way he/she applies and implements it. All the problems of “go back to the Bible” or any of the 12 UBF legacies depend entirely on the way the shepherd/leader understands them and applies them to his/her chapter.

Is this contrast clear and self-evident?

Can you add any further distinctions between these 2 kinds of shepherding?

Reference: Shepherding Sheep (Mt 20:25-28).

AN ANALYSIS OF THE DISCIPLESHIP BIBLE STUDY FOR THE KOREAN IMMIGRANT CHURCH GROWTH

Here is the link to the actual document. It is a fascinating read. I just want to highlight a few points here to spur some of your own critical thinking (which by the way is not the same as a “having a critical spirit” or just plain criticism)

Seminary paper by Yo Sup Lee
Lynchburg, Virginia October, 1998
Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary

Author’s stated purpose

(page 1) “The purpose of this project is to analyze discipleship training Bible study programs developed or used by successful Korean churches and mission groups. The writer will introduce the best model of discipleship program currently practiced by Sarang Presbyterian Church. The discipleship methods will be evaluated, also biblical basis will be traced, and Jesus’ methods of discipleship training and the Korean church Bible study texts will be analyzed.”

Groups Mentioned in the paper

II. AN INTRODUCTION OF MISSION GROUPS DISCIPLESHIP TRAINING PROGRAMS

A. Joy Mission Group …………………………… 67

B. Campus Crusade for Christ …………………….. 70

C. Navigator group …………………………….. 75

D. Korean Inter-Varsity Christians Fellowship Mission group …. 83

E. University Bible Fellowship group …………………. 89

Description of UBF

(page 89) “To be a member of this group one must pledge the substance of 2 Timothy 2: 16. The actual pledge reads, “I as an unshameful laborer of Jesus Christ, will rightly handle the World of Truth, agree with the purpose of U.B.F and pledge that I will do my best for evangelizing the campus and achieving world mission.” This declaration reflects the purpose of U.B.F. There are three major points:

(1) It aims to produce good Bible teachers.
(2) It aims to evangelize campuses.
(3) It aims to achieve world mission.

Positive points

(pages 92-93)

First, their one- to-one Bible study method, which uses the principle of each person being interested in one another, has contributed to the life of the students. This method is being used in some churches today.

Second, their tent-making policy has made a significant impact on the progress of pioneering new nations with the gospel.

Third, the sacrificial stewardship of time and money by UB.F. members has been a rebuke and a challenge to many.

Negative points

First, UB.F’s inadequate concept of the missionary task has resulted in considerable lay involvement but few permanent achievements.

Second, UB.F’s lack of historical perspective results in the tendency to identify God’s purpose almost exclusively with its program.

Third, UB.F does not emphasize personal conversion experience, contrary to all other student movements.

Fourth, UB.F’s negative view of ecclesiology is well known to Korean churches and to other student movements.

Fifth, UB.F. members often seem to be too legalistic, separate and fundamental. Their ardent and subjective Bible study which are devoid of any evident concern for a dynamic and personal conversion experience may lead its members to spiritual Pharisaism.

Concluding thoughts

I found this Korean seminary student to be “right on target”. What could ubf learn from this paper? Why would ubf benefit from listening to critical thinkers?

So, here is the piece:

(Quoted from Control Mechanisms in the ICC)

“The viewpoint generally fostered is that the ICC in general has changed, corrected all wrongs and that any claimed problems are not the way the ICC is any more. If a specific leader is involved, he or she must be seen as having changed unless he or she has lost his position. [When a leader has fallen out of favor, it is permitted to denigrate him or her, provide that his or her misconduct are viewed firmly in the past tense.] It must never be admitted that the ideals of the group are flawed.

Sometimes, particularly on minor issues, a leader will give permission for a problem to be admitted and allow some discussion of possible solutions. This is not a common practice. When it does occur, it will be over something like a group outing or people arriving late to a meeting. But even on such issues, the leader remains firmly in control of what topics may be discussed. An ordinary member will not be given the floor to address serious problems. Similarly, critical matters are not discussed openly, admitted to be current problems, with ordinary members freely offering options for solutions. Members who dare to speak up have been silenced and even ejected from the group.

The only exception to this practice of treating problems in the past tense is to state that the group is not committed enough, not working hard enough, not baptizing enough – this admission must always be couched in terms of the group needing to work harder to achieve its ambitions. Only issues of this type may be considered in the present tense – all others must be viewed as past tense. This exception enhances the control by the ICC leadership by pushing the members to be even more dedicated to following the leaders’ edicts.

This illusion of change helps the member avoid assessing the group. If something bad has happened then it is always in the past, it is time forgive and forget. This very way of thinking allows abuse to continue by preventing open and serious dialog amongst the members. This way of not dealing with problems also grants further power to the leadership by making the only source of change those selfsame leaders. Even leaders have been stifled in their efforts to affect changes, by higher-ranking leaders. Those who have tried have typically been fired and/or kicked out of the ICC.

Previously, anyone who spoke out against Kip’s sins faced serious retribution. Now, his serious offenses are permitted to be mentioned. But the discussions are in the past tense. The problems have to be viewed as being solved. Repentance, forgiveness and love must abound. No demand by ordinary members for serious reform may be made.

Even I, a former member, have received emails from current members to the effect that I am wrong to continue to oppose the ICC since all these problems are supposedly in the past. Since certain apologies have been made, by McKean and other leaders, then everything must be viewed as mistakes of the past. Such views illustrate my point very well: no means exists to admit and address CURRENT problems. They all have to be viewed as being things of the past.

The past tense nature of handling these issues leads to there being no meaningful evaluation of what aspects of the group cause these sorts of problems. Despite the repeated abuses of leadership happening innumerable times, it is all viewed as isolated incidents. The clear pattern of emotional and psychological abuse by leaders on the ordinary members is not taken into consideration. There is no examination into the core beliefs (or lack thereof) that lead to such events. Almost invariably, the view taken is that any problem is just some leaders’ sins and has already been fixed.

This brings me to the point of abusive forgiveness. Forgiveness is a very good thing, but it can be used for abusive purposes. Forgiveness is not just letting something go unaddressed (unless it is a trivial issue such as forgetting to do something you promised). Forgiveness serves to repair a friendship and to promote growth in the relationship. It can be abused by such things as repeatedly doing something, demanding forgiveness each time, but never meaningfully working to change. In that situation, the abuse continues and the relationship cannot grow. This is just what the ICC leadership has done.”

Three “Not so with you” Questions

The first lesson was “Biblical Foundations”, and set the tone for the nine months with three questions. It was emphasized that these are not merely questions for new believers, but questions meant for leaders in the church, and questions Christians must continually ask along their journey. And the other emphasis was that Christ-followers have distinctive answers, approaches and questions related to these questions:

1. Who is God?
2. Who am I?
3. What does God want to do through me?

Jesus’ Words

Here is the “not so with you” text from Matthew 20:20-28.

20 Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something. 21 And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” 22 Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” 23 He said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” 24 And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. 25 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 26 It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant,[c] 27 and whoever would be first among you must be your slave,[d] 28 even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Impact on my life

This nine month study has deeply impacted my life. My approach to the bible, my life, my God, my community and my family has all been changed. I want the “not so with you” and other distinctive marks of being a Christ-follower to permeate my life. Here are just a few ways this study and the people in it have have impacted my life:

• I feel like a human being.
• I am no longer afraid to be myself
• I am free to explore God’s unique mission for my life
• I will pay attention to my family first
• I have a new desire for seminary
• I am free to be emotional
• I am equipped with some ways to listen to the Holy Spirit
• I know something about my strengths and my unique gifts from God

An Example: Pope Francis

When I think about the “not so with you” attitude we learned from the study, I immediately thought of Pope Francis. He is becoming known as the “pope of firsts“.  He embodies the “not so with you” attitude of Jesus quite well. I am glad to see such a refreshing ambassador of the Body of Christ.

Here are just some of the impressive actions Pope Francis has taken to spark a new, distinctive era of reform in the Catholic Church, and in my opinion, in all of Christianity.

· After his election, he came down from platform to greet the cardinal electors, rather than have them come up to his level to offer obedience.
· He appeared on the loggia without the red cape.
· In his greeting he referred to himself only as “bishop,” not as “pope.”
· He referred to Benedict as “bishop emeritus,” not “pope emeritus.”
· He appeared without the stole, only putting it on to give the blessing. He then took it off in public (!), as if he couldn’t wait to get it off.
· He asked for the people’s blessing before he blessed them.
· He doesn’t wear red shoes.
· Though he has taken possession of the apostolic palace, he continued to receive guests at St. Martha’s House rather than the palace.
· He drank Argentinian tea in public when receiving the Argentinian president – protocol is that popes are seen publicly consuming no food or drink except the Eucharist.
· His first Mass with cardinals was celebrated facing the people.
· He doesn’t chant the prayers, he recites them – but this could be because of an impaired lung or his singing ability.

(source)

Some follow-up questions:

– How can your life display the “not so with you” attitude?

– What do you think about Pope Francis?

– How might Jesus’ words “not so with you” begin to transform the fabric of ubf?

When “shepherding sheep,” the shepherd should repeatedly and primarily employ persuasion, reason and gentle appeals. The shepherd should never resort to coercion, intimidation, shame, threats, guilt-tripping, punishment, humiliation, retribution, silence treatment, etc. Why not? The sheep/junior will feel that they have no choice but to “just obey” their shepherd—or face consequences. This is spiritually abusive. It is control and manipulation. Primarily, it miscommunicates the gospel which gives freedom (2 Cor 3:17; Gal 5:1; Jn 8:32).

Ultimately, there must be the utmost respect for the individual person’s choice, even if and especially if it goes against the wishes and direction of the shepherd or chapter director. Communicating that it is either “my way or the highway” is arrogant. It is saying to sheep/juniors, “I am God to you. You must obey me.”

This is NOT what the father of the prodigal son–the perfect shepherd–did in Luke 15:12. He respected his son’s (sheep’s) horribly destructive decision. He continued to love him with brokenness and weakness, without ever shaming him, punishing him, threatening him, or humiliating him in any way.

In brief, shepherding must communicate grace, and not UBF “law” and “core values” which is NOT the gospel.

If just this one single change and shift occurs in the way UBF “shepherds sheep” throughout the UBF world, I believe that many miraculous signs and wonders will happen by God’s grace and power.

Is this Biblical?

Should this be communicated to all UBF chapter directors, shepherds and Bible teachers  throughout the world?

Will these guidelines be accepted and embraced by UBF shepherds and chapter directors?

1. You shall not put your church (core values, methods, legacy) above my Word and my Son.
2. You shall not make your church an idol in Asia or the Americas or anywhere else in the heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
3. You shall not be Lord over your sheep or replace the Holy Spirit in their life.
4. Remember to find rest in God alone, and not be burdened by many church-driven activities.
5. Honor and fear God more than you fear your human shepherd and church director(s), so that you may live with love, joy and peace all your days.
6. You shall not gossip and slander those who leave your church or disagrees with your church.
7. You shall not control who or when your sheep marries, their wedding guest list and menu, or how they live their lives after marriage.
8. You shall not steal God’s glory by having certain people decide the lives of others in the church by their unilateral decisions.
9. You shall not lie and spin stories to justify your church, but simply tell the truth that gives freedom.
10. You shall not judge and belittle other Christians, churches and chapters.

Here are some practical scenarios:

1) If a person wants to date/marry, will your church obey #1, #3, and #7?

2) If a person disagrees with “non-essentials of the faith” (testimony writing, attending your church conferences, etc), will your church obey #1, #3, #4, and #6?

3) Will your church leaders obey #9 and encourage everyone in church to do the same?

4 + 6. These 10 Commandments express love for God (1-4) and love for neighbor (5-10). How well does UBF love God and neighbor?

No growth = Deficiency of leadership.

All four gospels emphasize “no lording over others.” According to Jesus, good leaders lead without lording over others, which is what worldly leaders do. It is to influence without imposing oneself, without being intrusive and without interfering. A few weeks ago I preached on Christian leaders are not to lord over others. Matthew, Mark and Luke all record Jesus’ emphatic negation by stating clearly and explicitly that his disciples are not to lord over others like worldly rulers (Mt 20:25-28; Mk 10:42-45; Lk 22:24-27). John’s version of “not lording over others from above” is Jesus’ attitude toward his disciples as his close friends (Jn 15:15), rather than as their lord and teacher (Jn 13:13). Jesus also showed his leadership as one that takes the lowest humblest role (Jn 13:1-5), which shocked his disciples.

Obedience follows love, not the other way around. Not lording over others is hard for any leader to put into practice because it is easier to “get things done” by telling others what to do based on your position of authority as a leader. What is wrong with this? It reduces the human interaction into a command-style relationship. Command-obey relationships is a lording over others that the NT speaks out against (Mt 20:26; Mk 10:43; Lk 22:26; Phm 8-9, 14; 1 Pet 5:3). To Jesus it is NEVER obey me and be loved by me, which would be a top down manipulative relationship. In fact, it is the very opposite (Jn 14:15, 21, 23).

The Christian leader is functionally the Holy Spirit. Perhaps, the greatest damage of a top-down lording over others ministry is that the Christian leader functionally becomes like God. Even if the leader emphatically denies it, those under his (or her) leadership will feel as though obedience to them is a prerequisite to pleasing God. By lording over others, the leader produces a form of slavery to the leader, and obscures one’s own relationship with God. This also produces guilt not based on one’s sin before God (Ps 51:4), but false guilt based on one’s obedience or disobedience toward the leader who lords over them. This creates an anthropocentric ministry that draws attention to the human leader’s direction and directives, rather than to Christ and Scripture.

Have you experienced a leader who lords over you?

A key to successful leadership is delegation.

“Gopher delegation” and controlling leaders. There is a form of delegation that does not work. Stephen Covey, in his bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People calls it “gopher delegation.” The leader tells his junior leaders “go fer this” and “go fer that.” It is a delegation where the top leader is still in control by not delegating his authority and power. As a result, junior leaders are still expected to continue to defer to the leader for their approval and consent. Ajith Fernando, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, writes:

“…we need to invest in people so that they understand the inside workings of our group. We have to open up ourselves and our dreams to others. Then we have to trust them to carry the ball and move forward. Unfortunately, the controlling type of micromanager may not have people available to take on such responsibilities. Often they have young and enthusiastic workers who are excited by the program and are willing to work under the controlling leader. But once they become mature and have visions of their own, they find the environment too restricting, and they leave. This is usually very painful because often controlling leaders have cared for their people sacrificially. So it is very painful to see them depart.”

Good leaders (like Moses) are humble by willing to surrender their authority and control. When two individuals were prophesying in their own camp apart from the group that met under Moses, Joshua says to Moses, “Stop them” (Num 11:28). But Moses showed that he did not have to have authority and control over them. He said, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” (Num 11:29). Eight verses later, Num 12:3 says that Moses was “more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” An expression of humility is to allow success by others that is not directly under the leader’s authority and control.

Good leaders give new leaders the freedom to do things their way. Good leaders not only let go of their authority and control but they also let delegated leaders do things differently from the way that the leader once did. Because personalities differ, leadership styles and methods of doing things will also differ from leader to leader. Great leaders focus on the grand task and impart their vision to others. Then they allow these other leaders to implement the vision they imparted in the way that the other leaders think is best.

I found such leadership that humbly lets go of control and that trusts younger leaders refreshing and truly empowering. What is your experience with your leaders?

How does the apostle Paul shepherd God’s flock?

What is Paul’s attitude toward his “sheep”? For sure, UBF places a “high value” on being shepherds, which is not a bad thing. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the proper attitude of a shepherd toward subordinates and “sheep” has not been adequately emphasized. So, who else better than to try to discern what “top spiritual general” shepherd Paul’s attitude was toward his sheep. Here are a few verses that come to mind:

“I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling” (1 Cor 2:3).

“I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love… I did not want to do anything without your consent” (Phm 8,9,14).

“I am the least of the apostles” (1 Cor 15:9).

“I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people” (Eph 3:8).

“I am the worst” (1 Tim 1:15).

“I served the Lord with great humility and with tears” (Ac 20:19).

Some questions. So these are some questions that I would like to ask you:

Is this attitude of Paul the sense that you, as a current or former UBF member, have perceived from your top UBF leaders, shepherds, Bible teachers, elders, coordinators, regional or continental directors/coordinators, chapter directors, fellowship leaders, etc?

Do your UBF leaders generally ask you, appeal to you and reason with you, or do they basically command you and tell you what to do (or what not to do)?

Do they approach you with great fear and trembling, or do you feel intimidated or threatened by your leader/shepherd?

Do they speak and act as though they are the lesser, and the least, and the worst, before you, as Paul did before the disciples he led to Christ, and before the churches he planted?

I’m just asking questions. That’s all. Have fun and smile answering them.

The hardest part about leaving spiritual abuse is forgiving myself for letting (spiritual abuse to) happen.

• Forgiving myself for letting my wife to be trampled on and treated little more than just a “sheep’s wife.”
• Forgiving myself for allowing leaders to attack her and malign her while I said nothing.
• Forgiving myself for allowing my children to be cast aside with babysitters even 6x per week, even before my newborn was even weaned.
• Forgiving myself that I allowed my identity, thoughts, and conscience to be systematically rewired through thought-readjustment strategies (“testimony writing”).
• Forgiving myself that I treated my parents and sisters like dirt when their desires weren’t compatible with the activities of the ministry.
• And most of all, forgiving myself that I allowed my personal relationship with Jesus Christ to be dominated by and completely defined by a group of people and a bunch of activities.

I am not saying that such shepherding happens in all UBF chapters. But it did happen in a UBF chapter, for which all UBF leaders should be responsible for, shouldn’t we? May God have mercy on all of us in UBF, for we were a part of such “shepherding” that happened under our very noses. Should we remain silent and just “keep going fishing and feed new sheep”?

My thesis is that spiritual “order” is equality as in the Trinity, not hierarchy. Where hierarchy prevails, it butchers the Trinity, and makes Christianity ugly.

Keep spiritual order. Over the last three decades in UBF, I have often heard and used the phrase, “Keep spiritual order.” I explained the order as “God, man and the world.” It correctly teaches that God, who is the Creator, is the Lord of creation. Thus, in Christ and through the gospel, man should keep this spiritual order by submitting to and obeying God from his heart.

Guilt tripping. However, my implicit practical meaning is that my Bible student should listen to what I (and other UBF leaders) tell them, because I am their shepherd and Bible teacher, who is “above” them. This implicit meaning and communication is what I believe has led to scores of misapplication, guilt tripping, control, manipulation, wounding, and misunderstanding.

Marriage by faith “horror stories.” In my somewhat self-centered assessment, I think I have the best marriage by faith story in UBF, primarily because my wife has loved me and put up with me with endless mercy and grace from Jesus for 31 years. That said, I have also heard not a few “horror stories” of how a shepherd used marriage by faith to control and manipulate those who are marrying by faith–all in the name of “marriage training” and/or “humbleness training.” This, I believe, is a gross misapplication of “keeping spiritual order,” where the marriage couple is expected to subject themselves to the words and direction (and often humiliation) of their shepherd. Many have already commented in detail on this, and I will not elaborate on them.

Wrong biblical understanding of the relationship between the Father and the Son. It is true that the Son obeyed and submitted Himself to the will of the Father. But the Son obeyed as an equal of the Father, and not as a subordinate of the Father. I believe that this relationship of equality between the Father and the Son is key and crucial to us fellow UBFers–regardless of who is the teacher/senior, and who is the student/junior–in our relationship with each other.

Why some people wish that UBFriends would be shut down. What I have heard about UBFriends include (but are not limited to) the following:

• What’s wrong with Joe? What’s wrong with Ben?
• Commenters have mainly become ex-UBFers who are unthankful.
• Some say that Samuel Lee is not a Christian.
• I make sweeping generalizations. (True. Sorry. Please help me.)

Why UBFriends is good for UBF. I think that UBFriends is one of the best things that has ever happened to UBF in the last 50 years. Why? Because now we have no choice but to be increasingly transparent and accountable to each other. We also have to look at ourselves and our practices publicly and openly, without avoiding it, spinning it, or sweeping it under the carpet. If you disagree that UBFriends is good for UBF, then please, please, say so.

UBFriends promotes equality like that of the Father and the Son. In the past, juniors and younger people were always “overpowered” by seniors and older people, because they had no choice but to “keep spiritual order” in terms of submission rather than equality. Now, I believe that the tide is gradually changing, so that a junior or a younger person can freely and boldly speak up without fear, and with love, respect, humility and prayer, which often was not possible in the past.

Do you “keep spiritual order” with equality and boldness? Or do you do so with timidity and fear of punishment and repercussions from your human leader/shepherd?

You struggle with the blessing of others. In 1980, three things happened: I became a Christian in UBF, and Rick Warren and John Piper began pastoring their respective churches. Today, Warren has 30,000 members, and Piper has written 50 books. What about me??? If that is not “self-glorification thinking,” what else is!

You criticize the ministry of others. For decades I looked down on mega churches, thinking that they do not disciple their members and that they mainly produce nominal Christians who do not evangelize others. But criticizing others is elevating oneself, and glorifying myself.

You highlight your own distinctive ministry. For decades I also thought that I had the corner of the market on Christian discipleship through one to one Bible study, testimony writing, message training, marriage by faith, etc. So I despised any Christian or church who did not do the “superior things” I am doing. Whether I criticize others, or highlight what I do, it does not give God the glory, but draw attention to how great I or my church or my ministry is.

You need to have control and have the final say. It is so easy for an older Christian to think that he knows better and is more experienced than younger Christians. Maybe so. But to need to feel that they are the ones in charge robs God of the glory that rightfully belongs only to Him and to no human church leader. If members think that the church is run primarily according to a leader’s direction, it only glorifies the man (his church, his methodology, his vision, his legacy), not God.

What ways do you think you or your church glorifies itself, and thus distracts from the glory of God?

But honestly … I know that I do functionally link my shepherding, my (perceived) success and my salvation together? Every Sun I am happy when and if I preach well. But if I am not moved by the grace of Jesus through my own sermon (and if my wife is not happy with it!), I become depressed for the rest of the day, sometimes for the rest of the week…until I get to do better and prove myself the following Sun! I know I should not be like this. I know, “Jesus is all I want, and Jesus is all I need.” Yet that is not how I often am. It seems that I need some other validation in addition to Jesus. Why do I connect my sense of my own self-worth and my accomplishments (or lack of it!) to my salvation? Functionally and practically, it is because Jesus alone is not enough for me.

Why do we feel defensive and angry if someone criticizes our church or ministry? The “official biblical reason” is, “You must not complain. You must be thankful.” But is the real reason not something deeper?

We all default to idolatry. Before becoming a Christian, our idols are obvious: sex, drugs, rock and roll, and money. But after becoming Christians, we know that we should repent of such sins. But does stopping our morally reprehensible behavior necessarily change our inner heart’s inclinations? Even if it is to a miniscule degree, do we not replace:

• Sex with prayer meetings?
• Drugs with singing hymns?
• Rock and roll with Christian fellowship?
• Money with being fruitful by having our church grow in number with many Christian disciples under our stewardship?

Is the strongest religious idolatry our sense of our fruitfulness and accomplishment as a Christian and as a church? I want to be happy in Christ regardless of anything else. But the reality is that if many are coming to me and to church, I am happy. But if few are coming I am forced to make plastic smiles, which I am not too good at doing! If I am appreciated I feel good. But if I am not, I feel bad. In the words of Paul we exclaim, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24) All Christians know what the simple and exact answer is (Rom 7:25). And yet…

Does this sound bizarre or far fetched? Are our hearts that deceptively and persistently idolatrous?

What does “unobtrusive” mean?

My answer is both Yes and No. Yes, because I am called to be responsible as a Christian and an overseer over the people of God entrusted to my stewardship. No, because I am not God nor the Holy Spirit. So how does this Yes and No answer play out in practical Christian leadership?

Balance and Nuance. My seeming “obtrusiveness” in shepherding sheep for 25 years arose from what I believed I needed to do to in order to be a responsible good shepherd. But I no longer wish to do what I have done in the way that I did them, while still taking full responsibility of those entrusted to my stewardship. I would rather be unobtrusive, even if that is not my natural disposition. I want to allow the Holy Spirit (NOT ME) to spell out the details in the lives of those I influence. In order to let the Holy Spirit work in others, I pray to learn how to be unobtrusive.

Too Laissez Faire? But if I don’t spell out the details for my “sheep,” am I being too laissez faire in shepherding them? I heard it said that I now no longer “train my sheep” and simply “let them do whatever they want.” Yes, I am indeed wishing to give my sheep one of the most unique distinctives of Christianity, which is freedom (Gal 5:1; 2 Cor 3:17; Jn 8:32). I want those who come to know me to find the freedom they never knew outside of Christ. Yes, I want them to do whatever they want, which is to truly delight in the Lord (Ps 37:4) when they hear me proclaim Christ and the gospel of God’s grace clearly (Acts 20:24). If and when they see the beauty of Christ through the gospel (Ps 27:4; Isa 33:17), then what they will want to do more than anything else is to love Jesus and to serve and worship Him alone.

Do I Let the Holy Spirit Work in Others? My wife sometimes jokingly says to me, “I was not like this before marriage. But after marriage, I became annoying like you!” Yes, I want the Holy Spirit to work. Yes, I want to be unobtrusive. But yes, I am still a major work in progress because I am still under construction. Thank God who is ever patient with us (Rom 2:4).

Should Christian leaders be unobtrusive? Do your Christian leaders insist on obedience to them (as I did for 2 decades), or do they trust the Holy Spirit to work in you?

Question

My answer (which may please no one) is: “No, but … UBF has (what cult groups have called) cult-like behavior.” Why?

UBF leadership is authoritarian and hierarchical. Authoritarianism invariably results in cult-like behavior by both the Christian leader and their members. For 2 decades as a UBF fellowship leader, I practiced most, if not all, of what I describe below. I am convinced that many in UBF can relate to or have personally experienced the following (If this is not true, please refute and categorically contradict!):

1) The leader makes you think and feel that he has the God given right and authority to decide your life and your future: who you (can or cannot) marry, when you marry, how you marry, threats to cancel your wedding unless…, not support your independent decisions. As a result, some UBF members live in fear of their leader (cf. Prov 29:25). They learn how to “act” and “behave” to be seen in their good graces, so that they will be given “the blessing to marry,” or so that they won’t be mentioned as a bad example in the Sun message or announcements. I have lied countless times as a fellowship leader by misreporting the number of people who came to church, so as to “avoid receiving training.”

2) The leader is practically and functionally like God. You cannot question the UBF leader without often suffering some retaliation, repercussion, caricature or marginalization. Likely, some will be greatly offended by the title of this post. Likely, they will not read it; if they do, they will not respond. So far, only a few UBF leaders have commented. Some want to shut down UBFriends.

3) Legalism based on the leader’s method, directives, preference, training, which becomes “absolute” and usually non-negotiable. Freedom is lacking because you cannot do what the leader doesn’t like or approve. For eg., “Shave! Otherwise, you cannot marry!” A young man once told me about a girl he liked in church. I said to him, “There is absolutely no way that you can ever date or marry her, because you are a new young unknown UBF member, while the girl is a senior UBF leader’s daughter.” He left UBF.

4) Unhealthy dependency of UBF members on the leader’s direction, and of leaders expecting compliance and “absolute” obedience/submission from members.

5) Leaders have great difficulty acknowledging or apologizing to subordinates for their mistakes. This may be because their mistakes stemmed from their well meaning good intentions, which I believe is often true. Even if they may apologize, they may do so out of “duty,” but it may not be from the heart with brokenness and contrition. I once apologized to a Bible student for calling him a punk. But in my heart I felt fully justified for doing so, and was not really sorry for “telling him the truth.”

6) Deep trinitarian equality and friendship with others is lacking, because the leader may carry themselves as “above the rest.” John Stott says it best in Basic Christian Leadership: “…it is my firm conviction that there is too much autocracy (or oligarchy) in the leaders of the Christian community, in defiance of the teaching of Jesus and his apostles, and not enough love and gentleness. Too many behave as if they believed not in the priesthood of all believers but in the papacy of all pastors.” For decades, I refrained from being vulnerable before my church members; otherwise I could not “train them.”

UBF is not a cult. Despite all the above, UBF leaders are not cult leaders, because they love and trust the Bible, even if they may overemphasize certain teachings, such as obedience to God/them, rather than the gospel of grace (Acts 20:24) or Christ crucified (1 Cor 1:23; 2:2). They do not go off to extra-biblical revelations, as cult leaders often do, as described by Ludy. But I understand that it would be very easy to think of us as cult leaders, because many do not realize how controlling and manipulative they may be. As I said, I know this full well. I did it for over 2 decades and felt perfectly fine!

Christian leaders have historically been abusive. The prior paragraph may be terribly hard to swallow for those who have clearly been abused by some authoritarian UBF leaders, because abuse, intended or not, results in deep inner wounds that may take years, even a lifetime, to heal.

These quotes are my current signature in my Gmail:

• “History is full of disgraceful examples of self-righteous Christians who acted as though their own convictions about God’s call justified their ill treatment of others.” Anthony Gittins, Reading the Clouds.
• “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely expressed for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C.S. Lewis.
• “There is no deeper pathos in the spiritual life of man than the cruelty of righteous people.” Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics.

I am optimistic that UBF will gradually change and is gradually changing, not because we are able to change, but because God is good.

Is this a satisfactory answer? Please chime in, comment, critique, correct, contradict, and communicate in context concretely your consciousness and your conscience, or offer concise (or elaborate) counter proposals.

“The Ends Justify the Means.” I thank Chris, Vitaly and Brian for sharing in detail the abuses of Samuel Lee in my last post. Without in any way exonerating Lee for what he did, I sensed Christ’s love and grace in and through Lee many times a week for over 2 decades up close and personal. That is why I and many others love him dearly, even while knowing the inexcusable unbiblical things that he did. I know that this is very very hard to swallow by those who have been wounded by similar abuses by other UBF leaders, for they adopted similar unscrupulous manipulative tactics in their “shepherding.” A major error here is our erroneous unbiblical perspective of “the ends justifying the means.” I shepherded others likewise countless times. To “squeeze repentance” out of some Bible students, I said horrendous, threatening and even lewd and vulgar things. I justified it because “otherwise, they won’t listen to the Bible.”

Healing and Reconciliation. Mainstream UBF people will not like that I write about Lee. Those who have been wounded by abusive UBF leadership feel that I am too generous in my “defense” of UBF. I am not trying to expose Lee’s flaws, nor am I defending UBF. But without honest, open and vulnerable dialogue, no healing and reconciliation is possible. This can only happen through the gospel of God’s grace (Acts 20:24). We need to be uncompromising of sin and a lack of love (expressed as righteousness) in ourselves. And we need to be gracious, forgiving, and loving to those who have wronged us. Forgiving and loving Lee and other UBF leaders in spite of their abuses and offenses is not being compromising of their sin, but biblical, for that is what God extended to us freely by his grace.

Speak the Truth in Love (Eph 4:15). This is the toughest thing for any Christian to do. Only Christ did it perfectly and we killed him! It is easy for any Christian to “speak the truth” about the abuses of Lee and other UBF leaders. But can we really do so with a longing affection of love (Phil 1:8), which is the primary biblical command? This also applies to UBF leaders who “speak the truth” about those who, in their mind, are dragging UBF in the mud. Can they do so with a genuine affection of love, such that they are more than happy to welcome their accusers into our own homes and share a meal with them? I would personally love to speak about this with you before a meal of steak and wine! Yet, clearly, none of us are able to love as Christ loved us. Yet, we are precisely commanded to do (Jn 13:34), and to do so perfectly! (Mt 5:48)

Weakness and Vulnerability. As Sharon shared in a previous post (The Way of the Cross is Dialogue), the only place we can ever truly meet is with weakness and vulnerability at the foot of the cross. God help us to do so more and more.

Samuel Lee was Meek (and Authoritarian

Not Overbearing, but Meek. Jesus, Paul, and Peter all spoke on this important attribute of an exemplary Christian leader. Jesus said we should not lord it over others like the rulers of the Gentiles by emphatically saying, “Not so with you” (Mt 20:25-26; Mk 10:42-43). Paul said that Christian leaders “must be blameless—not overbearing” (Tit 1:7). Peter said that leaders in the church must be “eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you” (1 Pet 5:2-3). Clearly a Christian leader should be one who is meek, for they (not the overbearing) will inherit the earth (Mt 5:5).

A “not discussed” Weakness of Christian Leadership: Being Overbearing. Perhaps, the most common form of pastoral failure historically is sexual sin. Perhaps, the least addressed form of pastoral inadequacy historically is spiritual abuse and spiritual bullying, which damages and wounds the people of God in the church. Some Christian leaders do not like to hear this because in their heart and mind they truly meant well, which I do not deny. Nonetheless, they need to listen to “their sheep” and be accountable to them, as much as they expect accountability and submission from them.

Even Anointed Christian Leaders are Sinners. The list is endless. John Calvin approved the execution of Michael Sevetus for denying the trinitarian nature of God. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield kept slaves. John Wesley, George Mueller, David Livingston, and AW Tozer were not loving husbands, though they were passionate for Christ. Many notable Christian leaders have a bad temper. Tong, though clearly anointed, offended my wife and son who were with me, by his negative caricature of Catholics and Charismatics. Lee and many UBF leaders after him are authoritarian, which is not unusual in churches throughout Asia. John Stott writes in his book Calling Christian Leaders that the lead pastor is functionally the king of his church, for his word is law and his directives cannot be questioned without consequence.

Is my account of Lee’s meekness and anointing too generous? Is my assessment of UBF authoritarianism too harsh a caricature and generalization?

Dear Ben Toh-1998

I read your real testimony from 1998 with keen interest. Forgive me beforehand for being blunt and brutal in my response to you. I know you well enough to be able to do so. Also, you pride yourself as a man who can take anything thrown at him. But honestly your overuse of Dirty Harry’s “Go ahead. Make my day” is really quite annoying. Anyway, please take a deep breath and begin to brace yourself like a man!

Anthropocentricity: Is it really up to you? You wrote, “I know that I have failed to live up to your grace…” You are anthropocentric. You sound as if it is up to you to live up to God’s grace upon your life. Do you really think that by your own efforts, earnestness and sincerity, you can “live up to” God’s grace? Christians are to work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). But are you allowing God to work in you (Phil 2:13)? If so, it is not clear to me how God has been working/speaking to you. You seem to imply through out your testimony that it is primarily your responsibility to “live up to” God’s grace.

“Incurvatus in se” (Latin) means “curved inward on oneself.” Your testimony seems very much so. It is self-centered and self-obsessed: “I have failed.” “I loathe myself,” “I have grieved you.” “I cling to small pleasures.” “I became corrupted.” You’re self-preoccupied. It is little wonder that you are stuck in your own self! It is quite tiring and exhausting to hear you groaning and moaning about yourself, your inadequacy and deficiencies. Please stop it! Are you not confident and overjoyed in God’s grace already extended to you from the Cross in spite of all your sins?

A debtor’s ethic. Twice, you mentioned grieving God’s servants and about God’s “great servants, Dr. Lee and Reverend Mother Barry…giving their lives.” They are indeed God’s wonderful servants whom I love and admire, for God chose them and used them greatly. Surely they loved you (and me) more than you might ever know. But you owe no debt to them or to God who has freely forgiven you by His sovereign choice and grace. God does not ask of you to pay back to Him, His servants or UBF. Is your motivation gratitude and thanksgiving? Or is it as a debtor who is trying to pay back what is owed? If it is the latter, please repent! It is futile. It cannot be done. It is not asked of you in the Bible.

Are you really that important??? You wrote, “…because of me, your precious flock under me are all wondering and directionless.” Do you think that you are that important and indispensable to UBF? To God? Do you really believe that you can sanctify yourself for others like Jesus (Jn 17:19)? You write as though the work of God in others is up to you. I am not negating the importance of your personal influence. But I am sorry that you have such a false sense of importance about yourself. It is quite sad, pathetic and pitiful!

Obsession with sex? You mentioned your curiosity about sexuality. I do commend you for being open and honest to share how (sexually) sinful you may still be even after 17 years as a Christian and 16 years of a happy marriage. Please share this prayerfully with your wife.

Where is Jesus in your testimony? You pour out and pronounce God’s wrath and judgment upon yourself. This sounds humble (superficially), as though you are repentant for your sins. Perhaps you are. But it seems that you have not deeply accepted, appreciated or applied what Jesus has already done for you on the cross (Jn 19:30; Heb 10:14).

For another day. I should stop though I can keep going! I’ve still not addressed your issues regarding subtle degrees of dualism, gnosticism, paternalism, patriarchy, primogeniture, semi-Pellagianism, and a painful lack of basic gospel understanding in your testimony. I will leave this for another time….if you are up to it!

God bless you Ben Toh-1998. Do make some progress by 2012. Enjoy Jesus. Live in His grace. Rejoice in His Spirit. Seek the whole counsel of God. Devour the Bible. Read extensively. Love God’s people and the church. And for heavens sake, stop moaning and groaning!

Any further admonishments? Adjustments? Advice?

Also, we have stopped going to the campuses to invite students to Bible study. We may have lost our initial “fire,” zeal and enthusiasm, because of the many burdens of life. There is surely also truth to this.

Work Harder. So is the solution simply that we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and repent of our “family-centeredness,” laziness and worldliness, and just work harder to re-devote ourselves for evangelization, “fishing,” and proselytizing? Perhaps, so.

But is this it? Just try harder? Study the Bible more?

Might I propose reasons that some (not all) might find uncomfortable or disconcerting?

Let Local Leaders Lead. David Garrison, in his 2003 book Church Planting Movements, says that once a missionary has established a church among the native people, the task is to instill in them a passion for starting new churches, not under the direction of the missionary, but by the indigenous leader’s own authority and with their own resources. Could this be a reason why the work of God in UBF has stalled for the most part, except for a few places? Our missionaries are still the ones in authority wherever there is a UBF chapter in virtually all countries. Is this bad?

Authoritarian leadership. UBF has an authoritarian leadership style, which Jesus explicitly says that his disciples should not do (Mt 20:25-27; Mk 10:42-44). Both Peter and Paul say the same thing (1 Pet 5:3; Phm 8-9). “Lording our leadership over others” just kills the spirit of those lorded over sooner or later, even if they may welcome it at first when they are new “naive” Christians. After 50 years of UBF history, authoritarian leadership is only now being gradually addressed. Surely, everyone agrees that a leader should not “bully” his members in the name of love, shepherding, or “training.” They should gently persuade others, as both Jesus and Paul did in the NT, and as God Himself did in the OT.

With prayer and respect, everyone in the church should be able to freely speak whatever is on their heart and mind. Once someone asked me, “Can we say this in the church?” I was surprised at her question, because the answer is “Of course,” since we are among Christians who love each other. But the reality is that if she vocalized an objection or posed a disapproving question about a leader’s decision, she would be regarded negatively and unfavorably. So, she “shut up.”

There must be friendship, equality and justice. Jesus, our Lord, calls us his friends (Jn 15:15). David Garrison says that a priesthood of all believers among Christians (1 Pet 2:9; Ex 19:6) is the most egalitarian doctrine in the Bible. But when a missionary is the one in authority over indigenous people, equality is only a theory but not a reality, because the missionary who planted the church will always be “a notch above” his converts and disciples.

Staff education must remove cultural and personal elements as much as possible. Every culture is blind to its own eccentricities and uniqueness. In Korean culture, hierarchy and order is perfectly normal and few would question it. In the U.S., equality, fairness and justice is the norm. When a UBF missionary disciples his American convert, he will inadvertently impose his own cultural values on his American disciple. Unless he consciously “denies himself” to not do so, he will be converting his American disciple to become like a Korean Christian.

Missionary mistakes. According to Roland Allen’s classic Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?, a major mistake of missionaries is that they did too much. The book is available online here. Rather than simply sowing the seeds of the gospel and entrusting the native converts’ growth and development to the Holy Spirit, they over-trained them, thus re-making them into the missionaries’ own image and culture, rather than allowing them to grow into the indigenous Christians that God would have them become. Even after years of ministry, the missionaries continued to impose strict discipline and tight control over the affairs of the native Christians. They did not leave the church in their hands, for they regarded them as immature and “not ready,” compared to the missionaries “high” standards.

False sense of importance and indispensability. Let me conclude with a paragraph from Allen that explains why missionaries have prevented the growth of indigenous Christian leaders (Chapter 8):

“The secret of success in (Paul’s) work lies in the beginning at the very beginning. It is the training of the first converts which sets the type for the future. If the first converts are taught to depend on the missionary, if all work, evangelistic, educational, social is concentrated in his hands, the infant community learns to rest passively on the man from whom they receive their first insight into the Gospel. Their faith having no sphere for its growth and development lies dormant. A tradition very rapidly grows up that nothing can be done without the authority and guidance of the missionary, the people wait for him to move, and, the longer they do so, the more incapable they become of any independent action. Thus the leader is confirmed in the habit of gathering all authority into his own hands, and of despising the powers of his people, until he makes their inactivity an excuse for denying their capacity. The fatal mistake has been made of teaching the converts to rely upon the wrong source of strength. Instead of seeking it in the working of the Holy Spirit in themselves, they seek it in the missionary. They put him in the place of Christ, they depend upon him.”

After 50 years of UBF history, many indigenous converts may have already adopted UBF traditions and methodologies, which are culturally Korean, as their norm of Christian life. Can they still be autochthonous? What can we now begin to do as a global ministry for the next 50 years?

Knowledge. Sadly, some Christians may be quite zealous and excited, but they do not have much to say. Knowledge must be deeply rooted in the Bible and the great theological tradition. Some have said that studying theology is divisive. I would say that ignorance is more divisive. Others say, “Just study the Bible.” This is good. But anyone can very easily “just study the Bible” with a narrow, skewed, rigid, unbalanced, inflexible, tribal and sectarian way that is quite offensive to other Christians with different traditions, cultures and experience. For example, it is not generally regarded as offensive for an American to disagree with their leader. But in Korean culture, it is invariably perceived very negatively as being rude, disrespectful and an anathema.

Audience. In UBF jargon, it would be “know your sheep.” Aristotle said, “Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the recipient (not the teacher).” A good Bible teacher must know the prejudices, expectations, mood and attitude of the one to whom he wishes to communicate. It helps to know which movies, songs, TV shows, and books average people like. If you don’t know the contemporary culture well, you may be correct, but not heard. This is always a hurdle of cross generational and cross cultural evangelism.

Culture. Be attentive to the patterns and events in the world that correspond to patterns and events in the scriptural revelation. That way, you will discover what the church fathers called the logoi spermatikoi, the seeds of the Word, that can see the good, the true and the beautiful in any culture. Karl Barth, the greatest Protestant theologian of the last century, proposed an image for prospective preachers that is just as valid for prospective evangelists: they should carry the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

TGIF. Today’s evangelists, Bible teachers, shepherds should be thoroughly conversant with the new media: Twitter, Google, Internet/Instant messaging/iPad, Facebook (TGIF), along with podcasting, and the myriad other means of communication available through the Internet.  These new media give the evangelist the opportunity to get his message out 24/7, all over the world at relatively little cost. Some old style, old school Christians are uncomfortable with this. But not interacting could lead to increasing irrelevance. This is here to stay and will only continue to explode.

We have to face the fact that the vast majority of eyes today are not glued to books or to newspapers, but to the computer screen.  Many years ago, a very successful writer said, “The first rule of the writer is to read.” Good advice. To follow it today, we have to get the message into the world where the most “readers” are found.

This is a very exciting time for Christians, in many ways as exciting as the middle years of the 1st century when the message about Jesus was brand new, or as the beginning of the 16th century when the printing press first emerged. Now is a kairos, a privileged moment, to declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Viva el Cristo rey! (Long live Christ the King).

Do you embrace Fr. Barron’s 5 points with a sense of excitement and challenge? Can you think of any other points to add? (Here is Fr. Barron’s full transcript of his video: The new evangelization and seminaries.)

Scary

I trust God. MBF means “I trust God (by faith) for my marriage.” I do not trust myself, nor the person I am marrying, nor the one arranging it.  It means, “I trust God, and not just my hormones.” I don’t marry just based on “Something in the way she moves;” someday the song may change to “You’re lost that lovin’ feeling.”

Marry a Christian. MBF also implies that you only marry a Christian (2 Cor 6:14), and that God is the One who ordains marriage (Gen 2:24). I marry based on the Lordship of Christ, and not just my own personal choice or preference. God must be intricately and intimately involved in my marriage. This is all good, godly and biblical.

The problem. MBF has come to mean that you should marry a person who is introduced to you. If you refuse, you may be regarded as less spiritual, less mature, more physical, worldly, lustful or  proud,  “not ready,” picky, uncommitted, etc.

No dating policy. Perhaps, a reason this happened is because of an “unspoken” or implicit, (or openly expressed) NO DATING policy, unless officially sanctioned, approved, recommended, initiated by,  and blessed  by the powers that be, usually the Bible teacher, chapter director, parents.

Of course, it is absolutely crucial that if and when a young Christian couple marries, they need the blessing, approval, counseling and advice  of their parents, Bible teachers, shepherds, mentors, elders, spiritual leaders. But a “no dating policy” until initiated by the church may not be good. Why? Some implications:

1) Dating and marriage is determined/controlled by someone else.

2) A Christian who doesn’t date is better, more mature, spiritual, self-controlled than a Christian who dates.

3) A Christian who dates sins more than a Christian who doesn’t date.

4) A non-UBF Christian you choose to marry is “inferior” to a  UBF Christian who is introduced to you.

Purity. In the Bible, the problem repeatedly addressed is not whether or not one dates, but whether or not one is sexually pure, regardless of whether one is single or married (1 Cor 6:18; Eph 5:3). A “no dating” policy assumes that one who complies is purer.

Play by the rules. This may tempt a Christian to “play the game” to please the powers that be by not dating and behaving well, so that they can “get the one” they want to marry (by faith) by keeping the rules and regulations expected of them.

Rethink (the Gospel)? As a church should we re-think a “no dating policy”? Any “rule” inclines toward legalism, and does not necessarily promote gospel faith. The gospel must always be central to our life and faith (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2, 15:1-4). The gospel  gives freedom (Gal 5:1), including the freedom to date as a God-fearing, honorable Christian.  But adding a rule, law or expectation, such as “no dating” (or any other rule), implies that keeping the rule or law or pleasing certain people in the church is what brings God’s blessing. This takes away from the glory of grace that comes only from the mystery of the gospel of grace (Acts 20:24). The issue of “no dating” is complex. It needs to be individualized.

Should MBF continue? Should we have a “No Dating” policy in UBF? (This was written in Nov 2010. This is a personal reflection and NOT a generalization to all UBF chapters.)

I am reading “Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer,” by J. Oswald Sanders, a book John Armstrong has used to teach a seminary class on leadership at Wheaton College. Chuck Colson says, “This is the best book on Christian leadership I’ve read.” There are countless excellent quotes on leadership in the book. But this is not a book review. It is a series of 22 + 5 excellent questions to honestly assess your own leadership potential, as well as the leadership potential of others. In other words, “What kind of a leader are you?” Be ready to be humbled!

1. How do you identify and deal with bad habits? To lead others, you must master your appetites.

2. How well do you maintain self-control when things go wrong? The leader who loses control under adversity forfeits respect and influence. A leader must be calm in crisis and resilient in disappointment.

3. To what degree do you think independently? A leader must use the best ideas of others to make decisions. A leader cannot wait for others to make up his or her mind.

4. How well can you handle criticism? When have you profited from it? The humble person can learn from petty criticism, even malicious criticism.

5. Can you turn disappointment into creative new opportunity? What three actions could you take facing any disappointment?

6. Do you readily gain the cooperation of others and win their respect and confidence? Genuine leadership doesn’t have to manipulate or pressure others.

7. Can you exert discipline without making a power play? Are your corrections or rebukes clear without being destructive? True leadership is an internal quality of the spirit and needs no show of external force.

8. In what situations have you been a peacemaker? A leader must be able to reconcile with opponents and make peace where arguments have created hostility.

9. Do people trust you with difficult and delicate matters? Your answer should include examples.

10. Can you induce people to do happily some legitimate thing that they would not normally wish to do? Leaders know how to make others feel valued.

11. Can you accept opposition to your viewpoint or decision without taking offense? Leaders always face opposition.

12. Can you make and keep friends? Your circle of loyal friends is an index of your leadership potential.

13. Do you depend on the praise of others to keep you going? Can you hold steady in the face of disapproval and even temporary loss of confidence?

14. Are you at ease in the presence of strangers? Do you get nervous in the office of your superior? A leader knows how to exercise and accept authority.

15. Are people who report to you generally at ease? A leader should be sympathetic and friendly.

16. Are you interested in people? All types? All races? No prejudice?

17. Are you tactful? Can you anticipate how your words will affect a person? Genuine leaders think before speaking.

18. Is your will strong and steady? Leaders cannot vacillate, cannot drift with the wind. Leaders know there’s a difference between conviction and stubbornness.

19. Can you forgive? Or do you nurse resentments and harbor ill-feelings toward those who have injured you?

20. Are you reasonably optimistic? Pessimism and leadership do not mix. Leaders are positively visionary.

21. Have you identified a master passion such as that of Paul, who said, “This one thing I do!” Such singleness of motive will focus your energies and powers on the desired objective. Leaders need a strong focus.

22. How do you respond to new responsibility?

How we handle relationships tells a lot about our potential for leadership. These tests are suggested:

• Do other people’s failures annoy or challenge you?
• Do you “use” people, or cultivate people?
• Do you direct people, or develop people?
• Do you criticize or encourage?
• Do you shun or seek the person with a special need or problem?

These questions are quite humbling and challenging. I particularly like 7, 6, 11, 4, 12, 21, 13, 8, 19, 18, 15. God bless you to be a leader after God’s own heart.

Emphasizing mission. Since 1961, UBF’s strength has been our emphasis on mission. When I studied Genesis 1 three decades ago, I loved the catchphrase “Man = Mission.” I taught this in Genesis 1:1 Bible study repeatedly for a quarter of a century as my mission until a few years ago. I still treasure my life of mission and Bible teaching. I am as driven and passionate to teach the Bible today as I was when I became a Christian in 1980. The only subtle change is that I now wish to primarily “testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24), and to proclaim/preach “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2) as my primary emphasis, rather than emphasizing mission imperatives. So, my point of Genesis is no longer mission, but Jesus (Jn 5:39,46).

A mission focus avoids Christ. When I emphasized mission (though it is biblical), I focused on verses that compelled me and others to strive for mission. “Deny myself and take up my cross” (Mt 16:24; Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23) was my favorite for 2 decades. So were “make disciples” (Mt 28:19) and “feed sheep” (Jn 21:15-17). Though I “denied myself, made disciples and fed sheep,” I failed to draw closer to Christ and felt burdened and stuck. Why?

A mission focus led to legalism, traditionalism and phariseeism. Emphasizing mission made me legalistic by emphasizing our UBF traditions, such as singing certain hymns, having a fixed format for worship service, emphasizing duty and faithfulness in methodologies, meetings and prayer topics and announcements, etc. In short, I became rigidly inflexible, sectarian and very intolerant of anything done in a “non-UBF way.” I so despised “mega-churches,” “non-discipling churches,” “nominal Christians,” “non-missional Christians,” etc, that I would trash them at every opportunity. I became a Pharisee of Pharisees.

Mission burdens; the gospel gives freedom and rest. From my experience, a repeated (over) emphasis on mission (while assuming the gospel) burdens and wears out Christians. I suffered from CFS: Christian Fatigue Syndrome, while pushing myself to “try harder!” and “don’t be lazy!” It also hinders spiritual growth and maturity. I had to rethink my Christian life. God helped me to find freedom (Gal 5:1) and rest (Mt 11:29) in the gospel after 25 years of Christian life. When I experience freedom and rest in the transforming power of the gospel, God energizes and empowers me to work harder and happier with passion and zeal. This is nothing but the grace of Jesus to me.

With all my heart, I still value and treasure my life of mission of making disciples. But Jesus is greater than my mission. Do you enjoy Jesus more than your mission?

1. The Ministry of Holding One’s Tongue (Ps 50:19-21; Jas 1:26, 3:2, 4:11-12; Eph 4:29)
2. The Ministry of Meekness (Rom 12:3,16)
3. The Ministry of Listening (Jas 1:19)
4. The Ministry of Helpfulness (Phil 2:4)
5. The Ministry of Bearing (Gal 6:2; Col 3:13; Eph 4:12)
6. The Ministry of Proclaiming (2 Tim 4:2)
7. The Ministry of Authority (Mk 10:43)

Who is Greater? Every Christian community begins with a seed of discord, which is “an argument … among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest” (Lk 9:46). “Hence it is vitally necessary that every Christian community from the very outset face this dangerous enemy…for from the first moment when a man meets another person he is looking for a strategic position he can assume and hold against that person. It is the struggle of the natural man for self-justification. He finds it only in comparing himself with others, in condemning and judging others. Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.”

Hold Your Tongue. “To speak about a brother covertly is forbidden, even under the cloak of help and good will; for it is precisely in this guise that the spirit of hatred among brothers always creeps in…” (Ps 50:19-21; Jas 4:11-12; Eph 4:29) This should help us “to cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging him, condemning him. Strong and weak, wise and foolish, gifted or ungifted, pious or impious, the diverse individuals in the community, are no longer incentives for talking, judging, condemning, and thus excuses for self-justification. They are rather cause for rejoicing in one another and serving one another. Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the fellowship. Not self-justification, which means the use of domination and force, but justification  by grace, and therefore service, should govern the Christian community. Once a man has experienced the mercy of God in his life he will henceforth aspire only to serve.”

Meekness. “He who would learn to serve must first learn to think little of himself.” (Rom 12:3,16) “This is the highest and most profitable lesson, truly to know and to despise ourselves. To have no opinion of ourselves, and to think always well and highly of others, is great wisdom and perfection” (Thomas Kempis). “Because the Christian can no longer fancy that he is wise he will also have no high opinion of his own schemes and plans. He will be ready to consider his neighbor’s will more important and urgent than his own. The desire for one’s own honor hinders faith. One who seeks his own honor is no longer seeking God and his neighbor. (Jn 5:44) What does it matter if I suffer injustice? Would I not have deserved even worse punishment from God? One who lives by justification by grace is willing and ready to accept even insults and injuries without protest. If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most grievous, the most reprehensible. Brotherly love will find any number of extenuations for the sins of others; only for my sin is there no apology whatsoever. ‘Never think that thou hast made any progress till thou look upon thyself as inferior to all’ (Thomas Kempis).”

Listening. “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them.” Do not “forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking. He who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but clerical condescension arrayed in pious words. There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that despises the brother and is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.”

Helpfulness. “The second service that one should perform for another in a Christian community is that of active helpfulness. We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions. It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them.They think they are doing God a service, but actually they are disdaining God.”

Bearing (Gal 6:2; Col 3:13; Eph 4:12). “Bearing means forbearing and sustaining. The brother is a burden to the Christian, precisely because he is a Christian. For the pagan the other person never becomes a burden. He simply sidesteps every burden that others may impose upon him. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated.” Jesus did likewise (Isa 53:4-5). “To cherish no contempt for the sinner but rather to prize the privilege of bearing him means not to have to give him up as lost, to be able to accept him, to preserve fellowship with him through forgiveness.”

The key sentence in regards to Ministry: “Where the ministry of listening, active helpfulness, and bearing with others is faithfully performed, the ultimate and highest service can also be rendered, namely, the ministry of the Word of God.”

Proclaiming. “…in which one person bears witness in human words to another person, speaking the whole consolation of God, the admonition, the kindness, and the severity of God. (But if the speaking of the Word) is not accompanied by worthy listening, (active helpfulness, from a spirit of bearing and forbearing rather than impatience and the desire to force its acceptance) how can it really be the right word for the other person?” “We warn one another against the disobedience that is our common destruction. We are gentle and we are severe with one another, for we know both God’s kindness and God’s severity. Why should we be afraid of one another, since both of us have only God to fear?” “The more we learn to allow others to speak the Word to us, to accept humbly and gratefully even severe reproaches and admonitions, the more free and objective will we be in speaking ourselves.” “(The) renunciation of our own ability is precisely the prerequisite and the sanction for the redeeming help that only the Word of God can give to the brother. (Ps 49:7-8; Jas 5:20)”

Authority (Mk 10:43). “Genuine spiritual authority is to be found only where the ministry of hearing, helping, bearing, and proclaiming is carried out. Genuine authority realizes that it can exist only in the service of Him who alone has authority. (Mt 23:8) Pastoral authority can be attained only by the servant of Jesus who seeks no power of his own, who himself is a brother among brothers submitted to the authority of the Word.”

How’s your ministry of being heard/listening? Being helped/helping others? Borne with/bearing with others? Taught/teaching others with spiritual authority?

“Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years…” (21). “Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate” (30). “…the human element always insinuates itself and robs the fellowship of its spiritual power and effectiveness for the Church” (37).

What is a Christian? “The Christian seeks his salvation, deliverance, justification in Christ alone. He knows that God’s Word in Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God’s Word in Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel that he is righteous at all. If somebody asks him, Where is your salvation, your righteousness? he can never point to himself. He points to the Word of God in Christ, which assures him salvation and righteousness. In himself he is destitute and dead. Help must come … daily and anew in the Word of Christ, bringing redemption, righteousness, innocence, and blessedness” (22). This is what a Christian is–what it means to be in Christ.

Christians need community. “When one person is struck by the Word, he speaks it to others. God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s Word to him. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure” (23). True Christian community happens in Christ.

Strive, discord and ego. “Among men there is strife. Without Christ there is discord between God and man and between man and man. Without Christ we would not know our brother, nor could we come to him. The way is blocked by our own ego. Only in Jesus Christ are we one (Eph 2:14), only through him are we bound together.”

We can truly give only when we have truly received. When Jesus took on flesh in the incarnation, he truly took on, out of pure grace, our nature. This is how God relates to us, how He won our hearts by His love. “When God was merciful to us, we learned to be merciful with our brethren. When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we, too, were made ready to forgive our brethren. What God did to us, we then owed to others. The more we received, the more we were able to give; and the more meager our brotherly love, the less were we living by God’s mercy and love (Rom 15:7; 1 Th 4:9-10). Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us” (25).

However, 2 things threaten true Christian community: Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality; Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a human reality.

Not an Ideal, but a Divine Reality

What Bonhoeffer writes here perfectly describes all failed Christian community exactly and precisely. It’s hard to improve on what he wrote.

Idealism does not work. Because of our own ideals and ideas about Christian life together, great disillusionment soon sets in “with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight… The sooner this shock or disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren… He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren…and finally the despairing accuser of himself” (27).

Disillusionment is good. “Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Christ? The very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only that one Word and Deed which really binds us together. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship” (29).

To pastors: Don’t accuse your people. “This applies in a special way to the complaints often heard from pastors and zealous members about their congregations. A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men. …he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament” (29,30).

A Spiritual not a Human Reality

Even devout men cannot cultivate a spiritual community. “The community of the Spirit is the fellowship of those who are called by Christ; human community is the fellowship of devout souls. In the community of the Spirit the Word of God alone rules; in human community there rules, along with the Word, the man who is furnished with exceptional powers, experience, and magical, suggestive capacities. There God’s Word alone is binding; here, besides the Word, men bind others to themselves. There all power, honor, and dominion are surrendered to the Holy Spirit; here spheres of power and influence of a personal nature are sought and cultivated. …devout men…do this with the intention of serving the highest and the best, but in actuality the result is to dethrone the Holy Spirit, to relegate Him to remote unreality. In actuality, it is only the human that is operative here” (32).

Where a superior power rules, spirituality fails. “Here is where the humanly strong person is in his element, securing for himself the admiration, the love, or the fear of the weak. Here human ties, suggestions, and bonds are everything. …human absorption appears wherever the superior power of one person is consciously or unconsciously misused to influence profoundly and draw into his spell another individual or a whole community. Here one soul operates directly upon another soul. The weak have been overcome by the strong, the resistance of the weak has broken down under the influence of another person. He has been overpowered, but not won over…his conversion was effected, not by the Holy Spirit, but by a man, and therefore has no stability” (33).

The idolatry of human love. “Human love…makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person. Human love desires…it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving. Human love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a fellowship that has become false…and human love cannot love an enemy. Human love is by its very nature desire–desire for human community. Where it can no longer expect its desire to be fulfilled…it turns into hatred, contempt, and calumny. Human love creates of itself an end, an idol which it worships, to which it must subject everything. It nurses and cultivates an ideal. Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus, it serves him alone; it knows that it has no immediate access to other persons” (35).

Spiritual love releases to Christ. “Spiritual love will not seek to move others by all too personal, direct influence, by impure interference in the life of another. It will not take pleasure in pious, human fervor and excitement. It will meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be ready to leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him. It will respect the line that has been drawn between him and us…it will find full fellowship with him in the Christ who alone binds us together. Spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ (3 John 4)” (36,37).

The greatest danger to Christian community. “Life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatis, but rather where it understands itself as being a part of the one, holy, catholic, Christian Church, where it shares actively and passively in the sufferings and struggles and promise of the whole Church. Every principle of selection and every separation connected with it…is of the greatest danger to a Christian community. …the human element always insinuates itself and robs the fellowship of its spiritual power and effectiveness for the Church, drives it into sectarianism” (37)

I wanted to write an exhaustive reflection, but Bonhoeffer’s words seem “far too perfect” to add to or to subtract from.

Bad leaders caricature others. In my experience, among the worst things that I have heard repeatedly is when an older leader labels someone else in the church whom he thinks is out of line. Maybe you have heard this too. The leader says about someone else: “He’s proud.” “He’s immature.” “He’s childish.” “He’s selfish.” “He’s untrained.” “He’s lazy.” “He’s worldly.” Now you can add “He’s a Judas.” Whenever I hear these statements, my thought is, “Do you look at the mirror and ever wonder if any of this applies to you as well?” I would call out anyone who calls himself a Christian leader and who dares to say this about someone else. I am pro-church discipline. But this categorization and caricature of others is without question an unhealthy, un-Christian form of leadership. It reeks of a lack of all the major Christian attributes of love, mercy, grace, patience, gentleness, kindness, goodness, self-control (1 Cor 13:4-7; Gal 5:22-23).

No one is a leader simply because they are better than others. As long as we are in the church, we will experience good and bad forms of leadership practiced by our leaders or by ourselves. See my articles on Spiritual Abuse and Spiritual Bullying. When I started writing those 2 blogs, I wanted to address spiritual abuse in UBF, but instead found myself under my own indictment! Dave Kraft, in his book, Leaders Who Last, wrote, “As a (Christian) leader, everything I am and everything I do needs to be anchored in my identity with Christ. Leadership begins and ends with a clear understanding of the gospel and being rooted in the grace of Jesus Christ as a free gift.”

All things to a Christian, is a free gift of grace, including leadership. Christian leadership never gives the leader any advantage or superiority over his members. Christian leadership must communicate Jesus, who is full of grace and truth. Jesus did not use his leadership for political maneuvering, controlling his disciples, coercing them, or forcing them to do what they should (Mk 10:42-44). Jesus loved them and died for them. Jesus was full of grace toward them, never treating them (and us!) as their (our) sins deserve (Ps 103:10). The disciples did not understand Jesus when he was alive. But when he died, they would follow him unto death, even though no one told them to.

What is your experience of Christian leadership?

The world cannot touch Paul. Of course, it is because Jesus is all the world to him (Phil 3:7-11). Therefore, the world has no handle on him whatsoever. There is nothing in the world that can bind him or hold him. Imprisonment has no hold on him. The envy and rivalry of Christians does not bother him (Phil 1:15,17-18). Suffering, persecution and opposition cannot touch him (Phil 1:28-30). Dying is not dreadful, but truly beneficial (Phil 1:21). Like his Lord Jesus, he has overcome this world in every possible way (Jn 16:33).

Curved inward on oneself. In contrast to Paul and Jesus, it so easy for me to be irritated at the most mundane of matters. If I am watching TV with my wife at night and she starts to fall asleep, I do not think of how hard she has worked all day, but how disinterested she is whenever we are together! (Sob, sob.) For sure, I am a sinner who is incorrigibly incurvatus in se, which means “curved inward on oneself.” And this sentiment is toward the person whom I love the most in this world, next to my Lord. What about toward others who are annoying!

Happy, healthy, humble. I realized what Paul’s healthy, happy, humble attitude toward himself was. Because of the grace of Jesus, Paul’s passion was to become like Jesus in his death (Phil 3:10). He was not trying to attain some level of success in the world, or even in the church. Seeing the beauty and the majesty of Christ, he knew and felt that he was the worst person alive (1 Tim 1:15). Whomever he met, he considered and felt that they were all better than he (Phil 2:3). If he did think of himself, he did so with sober judgment (Rom 12:3). His genuine view of himself seemed too humiliating or degrading. But he was fully aware that though he was still a very sinful man, yet Christ loved him and gave himself entirely to him (Gal 2:20). Though Paul’s life was wasting away, he was being renewed day by day with a glory that is out of this world (2 Cor 4:16-17). This ongoing never ending tension of his utter sinfulness and of Christ’s incomprehensible love enabled Paul to be a truly happy, healthy, humble man.

How can we truly be happy, healthy, and humble like the Apostle Paul?

“I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have Holy Spirit power. The die is cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus. I will not look back, let up, slow down, back away or be still.

“My past is redeemed. My present makes sense. My future is secure. I am finished and done with low-living, sight-walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.

“I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotion, or popularity. I do not have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on God’s presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and labor by power.

“My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven. My road is narrow, my way rough, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded or delayed. I will not give up, shut up or let up. I will go on until Christ comes, and work until Christ stops me. I am a disciple of Jesus.”

Is this the language of your heart?

Whenever I taught Cain and Abel in 1:1 Bible study since the early ’80s, I emphasized the utmost importance of “doing what is right” from Gen 4:7. I even titled my Bible study “DO WHAT IS RIGHT.” I taught Gen 4:7 as an imperative/command: “You must do what is right.” But was this how God was communicating Gen 4:7 to Cain?

One of my favorite short (non-theological) quotes is from the movie Hitch (2005)–a romantic comedy where Will Smith plays a date doctor. In advising a young man on how to win the girl of his dreams Smith says, “60% of all human communication is nonverbal body language. 30% is your tone. So that means 90% of what you’re saying ain’t coming out of your mouth.” I love this quote, because it says in a cute practical way what we are truly communicating with anyone (not just the one we love). How was God communicating to Cain (beyond his words)? What are you truly communicating when you preach, teach the Bible, or interact with others?

When Cain became very angry (Gen 4:5), God didn’t say, “How dare you get angry at me? Who do you think you are? Do you know who I am?” God also didn’ say, “Let me tell you what you must do.” Rather, when we observe Gen 4:6-7, God asked 3 questions (Gen 4:6-7a) followed by a statement of truth (Gen 4:7b).

Wouldn’t you agree that our God was full of grace toward Cain when God stated the truth to him in Gen 4:7? Isn’t the gracious God of angry Cain also the gracious God of the wayward younger son and the gracious God of the Pharisee-like older son (Lk 15:11-32)? Shouldn’t grace (not just truth in our words) color all we do as Christians?

YOU MUST NOT EAT (Gen 2:17). This “strange” verse was my conversion verse when I began 1:1 Bible study in 1980 with John Lee, a pediatrician who attends Lincoln Park UBF. I regard this as a “strange conversion verse” because I have not read of anyone else in history who was converted to Christ through this verse. Gen 2:17 caused me to cry tears of repentance for many hours. It convicted me of my life long sin of completely disregarding my Creator and living as though I am my own god, and yet God had not destroyed me, but loved me all my life to that day.

SEEK FIRST (Matt 6:33). After conversion I the word “first” in Matt 6:33 exposed my sin of never allowing God and the things of God to have first priority in my heart and life. “Things” always preceded God: girls, romantic/sexual fantasies, studying medicine, being a doctor, watching movies, watching sports, going jogging, hanging out, etc, was always “first.”

HOW FOOLISH! (1 Cor 15:36). 6 months after conversion, Samuel Lee, the founder of UBF, introduced me to my future bride. I was terrified of her because she seemed too domineering and powerful, and not at all the kind of woman I ever envisioned marrying. I knew she was a good, godly woman who loves Jesus, and I was foolish in my sinful sensual self for not wanting to marry such a woman. So, I married “by faith” by painfully acknowledging that my life and my marriage belong to God, not to me. After 30 years of an utterly sublime marriage, I joyfully and thankfully conclude that God knows me far better than I will ever know myself.

DENY YOURSELF (Luke 9:23). I know how sinful, worldly and selfish I was and still am. Without a doubt, I knew that I could not follow Jesus as I was. I absolutely needed to deny myself in order to follow Jesus. Though I fail daily, I always need to deny myself, especially as I get older.

HAVE FAITH (Mark 11:22). One of Samuel Lee’s great strength was his faith in God. By his faith, our gracious God used him greatly to convert Koreans to be world conquerors. Lee said and I agree that my weak point was my lack of faith. It still is. I need faith to challenge the impossible, which was my back pain and my visa status of being an illegal immigrant for 7 years. God helped me experience the victory of faith by no longer having back pain, and by becoming a US citizen after being an illegal alien for 7 years. Still, faith is my weak point and quite baffling to me.

I HAVE LOVED YOU WITH AN EVERLASTING LOVE (Jer 31:3). In 2005, I was scammed of $1,000,000 because of greed, pride and a desire to retire ASAP. By this sin I totally dishonored my God, my church, my wife, my children, myself. I hated myself. But God spoke to me tenderly through Jer 31:3. I was newly amazed at the love of God that was indeed greater than all my sins.

GOD INTENDED IT FOR GOOD (Gen 50:20; Rom 8:28). When I had conflicts with some friends in church, I felt disillusioned after 25 years in UBF. Though they are godly Christian friends and well intentioned, some of their decisions and words devastated me. Of course, this was my own sin of being affected by their actions. The only respite I found was in the absolute goodness of God (Gen 50:20; Rom 8:28) that could not be thwarted by any man, regardless of what they say, do or decide. Is there a greater verse in the Bible that can help any Christian in any situation in life?

NO MORE FEARING MAN (Prov 29:25). To fear a man is to insult God who is above the man you fear. To cause others to fear man is to play God. “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe.”

JESUS BECAME SIN FOR ME (2 Cor 5:21). Historically, 2 Cor 5:21 is known as the Great Exchange. I never ever quoted or referenced this verse in sermons and Bible studies for 30 years. Now I do so repeatedly with gratitude for what Jesus has done for this soul of mine.

THE OLD TESTAMENT IS ABOUT JESUS (John 5:39). I had studied the Bible as though it was mainly about me and about others. But Jesus said that the OT is about him (John 5:39; Luke 24:27,44), and that Moses also wrote about Jesus (John 5:46). So I asked and answered the question in this post: What is the point of Genesis?

MY UPWARD HEAVENLY CALLING IN CHRIST (Phil 3:13-14). How comforting it is that God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus. Regardless of the circumstances of life, good or bad, this is a constant that never changes. Only in Christ can I forget what is behind, strain toward what is ahead, and press on toward my heavenly goal.

WORK OUT YOUR SALVATION WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING (Phil 2:12-13). Practically, I pray to work out my salvation with fear and trembling and with humility and tears (Acts 20:19). I pray to know with absolute unwavering certainty that this is only the grace of Jesus that God is first working in me so as to enable me to work out my own salvation.

What are the Bible verses that have helped to transform you? To have a crystal clear direction in your life (Psalm 119:105)?

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) understood the difference between Religion and the Gospel when he told the Tale of the King, the Carrot, and the Horse:

Once upon a time there was a gardener who grew an enormous carrot. He took it to his king and said, “My lord, this is the greatest carrot I’ve ever grown or ever will grow; therefore, I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.” The king was touched and discerned the man’s heart, so as he turned to go, the king said, “Wait! You are clearly a good steward of the earth. I own a plot of land right next to yours. I want to give it to you freely as a gift, so you can garden it all.” The gardener was amazed and delighted and went home rejoicing.

But there was a nobleman at the king’s court who overheard all this, and he said, “My! If that is what you get for a carrot, what if you gave the king something better?” The next day the nobleman came before the king, and he was leading a handsome black stallion. He bowed low and said, “My lord, I breed horses, and this is the greatest horse I’ve ever bred or ever will; therefore, I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.” But the king discerned his heart and said, “Thank you,” and took the horse and simply dismissed him. The nobleman was perplexed, so the king said, “Let me explain. That gardener was giving me the carrot, but you were giving yourself the horse.

I first heard this story a few years ago, which I love, for it intrigued me. It seemed to have some profound point and deep meaning. But it took me quite awhile to “get it.” Still, I often need to be refreshed. Do you see what this teaches? If you know that God offers you his salvation freely, and there is nothing to do but to accept the perfect righteousness of his Son, then you can serve God just for the love of God and for the love of people (Matt 22:37-39). But if you think you are getting salvation and “other blessings” in return for serving God, then it is yourself you are serving and yourself you are benefiting.

Why do we serve our king, Jesus? Do we serve Him because we love Him, or because we love ourselves? Do we serve Him because we delight in the Giver, or because we want His gifts? There is a big difference. So, as a Christian, why do you ever do what you do? Be honest now.

Yes, I believe that this is what Jesus meant. In the Old Testament period, God worked out his special purposes within the nation of Israel. But the change from B.C. to A.D. was accompanied by a huge paradigm shift in the way God would continue his salvation plan. The good news of Jesus was to be proclaimed to the nations and take on a new life within each of those nations. A nation is not a collection of isolated individuals. It is an organism, a living system, with a unique God-given character and identity. When the gospel is implanted into a complex living system, it can be transformed into something new and beautiful without sacrificing its special identity and vitality. Implanting a gospel into a complex living system is tricky business. God knows exactly how to do it, but usually we do not.

Sociologist Rodney Stark, in his fascinating book The Rise of Christianity, describes how the faith of the apostles spread over three centuries to become the dominant religion in the western world. This growth wasn’t sustained by Christians locating single converts and training them to make more converts. Rather, Christianity spread through families and communities in unexpected ways, through strange confluences of social, biological, and political forces that defied all human expectation and planning.

In Chapter 4, Stark describes a horrible epidemic that swept through the Roman Empire in 165 A.D., killing approximately one fourth of the population. Some medical historians believe it was smallpox. The city of Alexandria was especially hard hit and lost up to one third of its population. Another disease, perhaps measles, appeared in 251 A.D. and the effects were just as devastating. Historians of religion tend to overlook these epidemics and fail to understand their impact on the church. But Stark believes that these outbreaks played a decisive role in shifting the balance of religious affiliation toward Christianity. He argues that, compared to followers of pagan religions, Christian communities were much better prepared to cope with these tragedies. Christian beliefs and practices resulted in dramatically higher rates of survival. When the epidemics had run their course, Christians comprised a substantially higher percentage of the population because fewer of them died, and the loving and heroic Christian response attracted new followers in the wake of tragedy.

The plagues of 165 and 251 A.D. infected Christians and non-Christians alike. But these groups had very different understanding of what was happening and responded in very different ways. Greek philosophy had no answers. And pagan religion could offer no explanation except, “The gods are angry.” Attempts to appease the gods through sacrifice were ineffective. Wherever an outbreak occurred, pagan priests (along with the doctors, civil authorities and wealthy people) would abandon the city and flee to the countryside, leaving the rest of the population to suffer and die alone. A letter written Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, from approximately the 260 A.D. describes this behavior (p. 83):

At the first onset of disease, [the heathen] pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.

This callous treatment of the sick and dying in the ancient world is confirmed by non-Christian sources. The Greek historian Thucydides, describing a plague that struck Athens in 431 B.C., writes in gory detail (pp. 84-85):

The doctors were quite incapable of treating the disease because of their ignorance of the right methods… Equally useless were prayers made in the temples, consultation of the oracles, and so forth… they died with no one to look after them; indeed, there were many houses in which all the inhabitants perished through lack of any attention… The bodies of the dying were heaped one on top of the other, and half-dead creatures could be seen staggering about in the streets or flocking around the fountains in their desire for water. The temples in which they took up their quarters were full of the dead bodies of people who had died inside them. For the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen to them next, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law… No fear of God or law had a restraining influence. As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing whether one worshipped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately.

In contrast, the Christian response to the epidemic was driven by an outlook of confidence and hope. Historian William McNeill, quoted by Stark (pp. 80-81), writes:

Another advantage Christians enjoyed over pagans was that the teaching of their faith made life meaningful even amid sudden and surprising death… Even a shattered remnant of survivors who had somehow made it through war or pestilence or both could find warm, immediate and healing consolation in the vision of a heavenly existence for those missing relatives and friends… Christianity was, therefore, a system of thought and feeling thoroughly adapted to a time of troubles in which hardship, disease and violent death commonly prevailed.

Instead of fleeing from the epidemic, Christians heroically stood their ground and remained in their communities to care for the sick and dying. Bishop Dionysius writes (p. 82):

Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and administering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead… The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons, and laymen winning high commendation so that death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom.

No one in the ancient world, neither Christian nor pagan, understood how to treat or cure smallpox or measles. But simple nursing of the sick – for example, providing those with food and water who are too weak to feed themselves – can dramatically increase the chance of survival. “Modern medical experts believe that conscientious nursing without any medications could cut the mortality rate by two-thirds or even more” (Stark, p. 89). The differences in survival rates within Christian and non-Christian circles was noticed by ancient people and regarded as miraculous. Apart from any evangelistic effort, the differential rates of mortality during the great epidemics of 165 and 251 A.D. produced a quick and dramatic shift of population toward the Christian faith. And the loving witness and heroic self-sacrifice of Christians in the midst of tragedy improved their reputation in the Roman world, drawing more people to Christ.

The Great Commission given by Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20 is a call to participate in God’s work of transforming the nations through Christian discipleship. Discipleship may include attempts to convert nonbelievers to faith in Christ. But is that the main part of what Jesus is saying? If we try to interpret the Great Commission in the context of Matthew’s gospel, I believe the answer is no. Matthew’s gospel contains five extended sermons by Jesus. One of these, the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), is focused on discipleship. Reading through the Sermon on the Mount, we find very little about direct evangelism. Jesus does, however, present radically new ways of seeing the world (e.g., as in the Beatitudes) and radically new ways of living and relating to God and to people (e.g., doing good to others without expecting an immediate reward). These teachings equip Christians to deal with the triumphs and tragedies of life in unique ways that set them apart them from their non-Christian neighbors when it really counts. The believers’ Christlike responses to the epidemics of 165 and 251 A.D. were not intended to increase the sizes of their congregations. But their congregations did grow as a result.

If multiplication through discipleship training is not the primary engine of church growth, then what is?

Jesus commanded his disciples, “Go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). Yet the biblical record shows that after Jesus issued this command, the apostles did not intentionally implement a program to convert nonbelievers. The first thing they did was to join together in worship and prayer to await the coming of the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:52-53, Acts 1:14). On the day of Pentecost, the supernatural activity that accompanied the Spirit’s arrival caused a bewildered crowd to gather (Acts 2:6). In response to their questions, Peter stood up and began to preach the gospel (Acts 2:14). His listeners were cut to the heart and asked the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). Three thousand were baptized that day (Acts 2:41). This rapid expansion of the church was not produced by Peter’s superior evangelistic methods, personal courage, charismatic presence or persuasive words. It can only be explained as a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit.

In the days immediately following Pentecost, church members did not focus their energies on deliberate evangelism. Rather, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). They shared their belongings and gave freely to anyone in need. They worshiped and prayed in the temple courts and ate together in their homes (Acts 2:43-46). This joyful, faithful, exhuberant community life in the presence of Christ caused the church to grow organically: “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

On many occasions, the Holy Spirit led the apostles to preach to nonbelievers (Acts 3:11-26; 8:29; 10:1-48). The early Christians took advantage of God-given opportunities to proclaim Christ wherever they went (Acts 8:4). But a deliberate, systematic effort by the church to convert people to faith Christ seems noticeably absent until the Antioch church, under direct leading by the Holy Spirit, sent out Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:2-3). The Apostle Paul proved to be a specially gifted evangelist and missionary, planting churches in key urban centers throughout the Roman Empire. Yet in none of his epistles does he ever issue a general call to any church to embark on evangelistic expansion or church planting. He recognized that God has called some individuals to be evangelists (Ephesians 4:11; 2 Timothy 4:5 ). But in his writings to various churches, his main concern is not that the congregations multiply their numbers, but that believers maintain their devotion to Christ, love one another, and live good, productive, godly and holy lives in their communities (1 Timothy 2:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:11, Titus 3:14).

In The Rise of Christianity (HarperOne: 1996), sociologist Rodney Stark attempts to answer this question: “How did the obscure, marginal Jesus movement grow to be the dominant religious force in the Western world in just a few centuries?” Drawing upon all available historical records, he estimates that in the first three hundred years after Christ, the church expanded at an average rate of about 40 percent per decade, or just under 4 percent per year. Compared to other religious movements, this rate is not exceptional. (For example, Mormonism grew at approximately the same pace during its first century.) What is remarkable is that the early church was able to maintain this steady growth for such an extended length of time. If the Jesus movement comprised just 1,000 members in the year 40 A.D., an increase of 40 percent per decade would produce nearly 34 million Christians (about 56 percent of the entire population of the Roman Empire) by 350 A.D. This same rate could not continue indefinitely; it had to slow during the second half of the fourth century as the pool of potential converts dwindled. Growth at 40 percent per decade to 400 A.D. and beyond would have been mathematically impossible, as the number of Christians would have soon exceeded the population of the world.

How was Christianity able to sustain this growth? Writing as a sociologist, Rodney Stark does not attempt to construct theological explanations. Rather, he describes the empirically observable social processes by which the numbers of Christians increased. The picture that he paints is not of one disciple making another disciple in his own image, who in turn makes another disciple in his own image, and so on. Conversion and discipling of individuals did happen, of course. But religious movements — and Christianity is no exception — can only grow if they learn how to inhabit the complex webs of social relationships that exist among members of families and communities. He writes (p. 20):

The basis for successful conversionist movements is growth through social networks, through a structure of direct and interpersonal attachments. Most new religious movements fail because they quickly become closed, or semiclosed networks. That is, they fail to keep forming and sustaining attachments to outsiders and thereby lose the capacity to grow. Successful movements discover techniques for remaining open networks, able to reach out and into new adjacent social networks. And herein lies the capacity of movements to sustain exponential rates of growth over a long period of time.

Imagine a fledgling, close-knit community of believers who, in sharing common life with one another, create such strong relationships with one another that their ties to the outside world become weakened. Suppose they develop their own cultural habits, speech patterns, standards of dress, etc. which clearly set them apart from the rest of society. As their community grows and develops, they build organizations and create their own institutions (e.g., schools) to perpetuate their beliefs and values. With vigorous and intentional effort, members reach out to non-members and attempt to bring them into the fold. But when the occasional newcomer arrives, he is trained and transformed so thoroughly that he can no longer strongly identify with his family or native community. Can such a movement succeed over the long term?

In short, the answer is, “No.” Social movements can sustain long-term growth only when they spread through preexisting social networks. Stark writes (p. 56):

Religious movements can grow because their members continue to form new relationships with outsiders. This is a frequent pattern observed in recruitment to religious movements in modern times, especially in large cities. Many new religions have become skilled in making attachments with newcomers and others deficient in interpersonal attachments… Movements can also recruit by spreading through preexisting social networks, as converts bring in their families and friends. This pattern has the potential for much faster growth than the one-by-one conversion of social isolates…

Sustained growth of Christianity over its first three centuries was possible because the living faith of the apostles was allowed to freely adapt and contextualize itself into the various people-groups of the Roman Empire. One description of how the early Christians lived is found in an ancient letter (Letter to Diognetus) written about the second century. It paints an amazing portrait of an incarnational people who live as citizens of God’s kingdom while remaining firmly grounded and connected to their native cultures:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life… With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in… And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through… Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country… they live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.

In the next installment, I will describe some other unexpected processes by which the early church grew.

Did that happen? Of course not. In retrospect, the idea that consumers would, simply by viewing this commercial, be transformed into an aggressive and unpaid sales force was preposterous. This ad may have sold a few bottles of shampoo to desperate young women who were willing to try anything to have hair like Farah Fawcett and Heather Locklear. But the brand didn’t experience anything like the exponential growth in sales that this commercial envisions.

Ever since my college days, I have heard a similar idea promoted as the best, indeed the only truly effective, strategy for evangelizing the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The idea is that we can carry out the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20) only if we put aside addition and intentionally strive for multiplication. Rather than trying to convert large numbers of people to become nominal Christians, we need to focus our efforts on making a small number of zealous disciples who will make more disciples, who will make more disciples, and so on. These disciples that we make cannot be those typical, average, low-level churchgoers (a.k.a. “cultural Christians” or
“Sunday Christians”) but an elite force of highly committed, well trained, well disciplined, self-replicating apostles. Then, in a few generations, voila! – the Great Commission has been fulfilled.

In his classic book The Master Plan of Evangelism (first printing in 1963), Robert E. Coleman makes a compelling case that this was the strategy envisioned by Jesus himself, his “master plan” for reaching the lost world. Over the course of Jesus’ three-year ministry, the gospel accounts show Jesus paying increasing attention to the twelve apostles. Among them, he places special emphasis on three (Peter, James and John), and among these three he shows special love and care to one (Peter). Jesus didn’t focus on a small number of apostles because he didn’t care about the world. Rather, he did it precisely because he loved the whole world and he knew that the strategy of multiplication was the surest and most effective way to evangelize the planet.

Yes, it is true that Jesus focused his efforts on a small number of highly committed disciples, and it was they who bore witness of his resurrection to the world. But does this fact canonize multiplication as the definitive, divinely mandated method by which Christ’s mission to the lost world will be accomplished?

A generation ago, many evangelicals would have said, “Yes.” Giving top priority to raising highly committed Christians who were passionate about sharing the gospel was the hallmark of 20th century parachurch ministries. The Navigators, for example, developed and practiced elaborate discipleship programs whose main purpose was to create self-replicating disciples. Dr. Samuel Lee, the founder of UBF (who credited the Navigators as one of his spiritual influences), emphasized one-to-one Bible study for the purpose of raising Bible teachers who would in turn raise more Bible teachers.

Ministries based on this idea did at first meet with some success. But most experienced a dramatic slowdown in growth during the 1980’s and 1990’s, and within the last decade those efforts virtually ground to a halt. Many disciples were made, and here and there a few still are being made. But the results have not come anywhere close to the wildly optimistic predictions of a generation ago.

Why didn’t the multiplication strategy pan out?

Here is one possible explanation: The present generation of Christians has lost its zeal. Ministry members became complacent, lazy, worldly, self-centered, and so on. If they just repent and recover the spirit of the ministry founders — their passion, dedication, boldness, and absolute obedience to Jesus’ world-mission command – then the multiplication strategy will surely succeed.

Perhaps that explanation has some merit. But many evangelicals are coming to believe that the basic idea of multiplication is unrealistic. My wife and I have been working through an excellent book published by NavPress called The Complete Book of Discipleship (2006). The author, Bill Hull, is a pastor and writer who was discipled by Navigators and Athletes in Action. Hull used to promote the multiplication doctrine. But on pp. 27-28, he writes:

As many writers and teachers have proclaimed, when all who become disciples make disciples through several spiritual generations, the result should not be reproduction (adding disciples one at a time) but multiplication (one disciple makes two, who make four, who make sixteen, and so on). I’ve heard sermons (in fact, I’ve preached a few) theorizing that if we just follow this multiplication plan, the entire world will be converted to Christianity in thirty years. That was more than thirty years ago.

In spite of how logical it sounds, this plan runs aground repeatedly on the rocks of human frailty and ignorance of how people really change. We must admit that this mathematical formula has never worked in any broad way. It might have limited success in controlled environments, but it would be wrong to claim that multiplication has worked to the extent of reaching whole cities, cultures or generations.

There’s nothing wrong with making disciples of Christ. In fact, Jesus commands us to do it. The key question is: What are these disciples supposed to be doing? Should they be singlemindedly devoted to making more disciples? Or should they be focused on something else?

In the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus said: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

A disciple must be taught to do everything that Jesus commands. And Jesus commands us to do a whole lot more than just making disciples. Hull notes (pp. 29-30) that the New Testament records 212 commands of Jesus. These commands can be summarized in three simple principles:
1. Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Love your enemies.

Faithfulness to the Great Commission requires a kind of discipleship whose primary goal is spiritual formation that produces the inner fruit of the Spirit manifested in loving relationships. When Christ and his love are present, the church sees growth that is natural and contagious. Hull writes (p. 28):

The principle behind discipleship does involve one person influencing another, which does result in a change in heart and mind. The success of discipleship doesn’t depend on soldiering forward in a mechanical strategy of reproduction and multiplication. And discipleship doesn’t involve developing a well-trained, elite sales force. Rather discipleship occurs when a transformed person radiates Christ to those around her. It happens when people so experience God’s love that they can do nothing other than affect those around them.

The heart of being a disciple involves living in intimate union and daily contact with Christ. Discipleship – the effort both to be a disciple and to make other disciples – is about the immense value of God at work in one individual’s life and the resulting impact on other lives.

In the next installment, I will describe some truly surprising, unexpected means by which the early church grew over the first three centuries. Stay tuned.

When I studied Genesis in 1980, I was taught that God created man for mission (Gen 1:28). Dr. Samuel Lee, the founder of UBF, came up with a catchphrase which I loved: “Man = Mission, Mission = Man.” This catchy phrase is found in UBF’s Genesis Bible study materials worldwide. Because of the grace of Jesus poured out on me, I wanted to give of myself for my mission from God, which was to devote myself to one-to-one Bible study with anyone and everyone. This has been my staple of Christian life for the last three decades of my life to this day. This is surely nothing but the marvelous grace of Jesus to me.

So why am I now rethinking the phrase “Man = Mission” which has revolutionized the purpose of my entire life?

Many of our Bible studies could be synagogue sermons. In my article “What is the Point of Genesis?” I argue that Jesus and the New Testament apostles testify that all the Old Testament Scriptures, including Genesis, are about Jesus and the salvation found in him (John 5:39; Luke 24:27,44; 1 Cor 15:3-4). So does teaching that Man = Mission point us to Christ and lead us to salvation? Edmond Clowney says that any sermon or Bible study that does not take into account the full drama of redemption and its realization in Christ is a “synagogue sermon,” one that a Jew would agree with. So if “Man = Mission” is the point of a Bible study or sermon, it might be agreed with by many a non-Christian, while they still remain lost in sin and bound for eternal condemnation.

A “Man = Mission” theology makes mission, not Christ, the focus our Christian lives. Furthermore, the teaching of “man = mission” might shape our Christian psyche in a way that may not focus on or emphasize the main point of the Bible, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27). Mission-centered (instead of Christ-centered) Bible studies and sermons could subtly or implicitly idolize mission in place of worshipping God. Whenever anything becomes an idol, even something good like God’s mission, it stops glorifying God. Then our idolatry of mission, rather than God himself, becomes our practical identity and our self-worth as a Christian and as a church.

Mission as idolatry. Tim Keller defines an idol as making a good thing an ultimate thing. For instance, our children are among God’s best gifts to us human beings. But if our children become ultimate to us, knowingly or unknowingly, they become ab idol, taking the place of God). Then our joy is dependent on our children doing well and making us proud parents. We may unwittingly crush them, spoil them, even ruin them for life. Similarly, when our mission becomes our idol, our strongest joy and delight is not God (Ps 37:4), but how well we are carrying out our mission. The object of our glory becomes a fruitful, exemplary ministry with many growing disciples, growing church attendants, and missionaries being sent out. Then our disciples and members are regarded not as precious redeemed people, but as objects and tools for our glory, church growth, and mission. If any particular disciple in our church disappoints us, or “doesn’t produce,” or leaves the church, they become marginalized or stigmatized. They are labeled as selfish and worldly and are said to have “run away.”

Though mission is important, I do not believe that it can be the major driving force of any Christian individual or church. Even mission can become an idol if it, rather than Christ functions as the ultimate joy and meaning of our lives. So, according to Genesis, how might we rethink teaching the purpose of man’s life?

Before God gave man a mission, he created man for relationships (Gen 1:26-28). When God created man in his image, he wanted man to be a relational being. God created man in relationship to God, to himself, to others, and to the world, which was all broken when man sinned created man for relationships. Only Christ, through his redeeming work on the Cross, restores all our broken relationships. Tim Keller said, “If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about.” If we make mission rather than relationships as primary, we could be “faithful” to our mission while damaging precious and priceless relationships. What if I’m a so-called “exemplary, fruitful, influential Christian leader,” but my wife is not happy, my children don’t relate to their dad, my fellow Christians think I am unapproachable, and my non-Christian friends think that I’m arrogant and self-righteous. I guess you could still insist, “I am mission-centered.” Someone said, “It doesn’t please God to sacrifice our families on the altar of Christian mission,” or something to that effect.

Mission is ultimately the mission of God, not man’s mission. When I emphasize that “man is mission,” I think that mission is what I must do as a responsible Christian. If I do my mission “well,” I could be commended and honored, but if my mission is “not fruitful,” I could be regarded as unimportant. But is mission ultimately my duty, or God’s doing? Countless promises through out the Bible begins with God saying, “I will…” Therefore, God is the One who will fulfill His mission. When I realize that mission is really not my mission or man’s mission, but God’s mission, then all I need to do is to humbly and prayerfully jump on God’s bandwagon, and go along for the ride. God will fulfill his mission, with or without my participation or involvement, and regardless of my obedience or disobedience. Jesus said to Peter, “I will build my church” (Matt 16:18). It is really not up to Peter or me to ensure that God’s mission is carried out correctly or properly. It is nothing but the grace of Jesus that Peter or I or anyone else am enabled and empowered to participate in God’s mission.

Mission is ultimately completed by Christ. Tim Keller’s audio sermon entitled Made for Stewardship (Gen 1:26-2:2, 7-9, 15) explains man’s work and “mission” differently from UBF. Keller explains man’s work in relationship to rest, for God worked for 6 days and rested on the 7th day. God created us to live in a cycle of work and rest. But because of our sin, we lost our rest, regardless of whether we work or not. Also, our work becomes a burden and a curse. Even Christian service, serving God and living for God’s mission is a heavy unsustainable burden and a curse without finding rest in Christ (Matt 11:28-29).

Without understanding the rest purchased for us in Christ, our work, including our Christian mission becomes our sense of identity or self-worth. To Rocky Balboa, his “work” was to go the distance for 15 rounds in the boxing ring. The Jewish 100 meter runner in Chariots of Fire said, “I have 10 seconds to justify my existence.” Even someone like Madonna finds fulfilment and meaning only when she produces creative work over and over again. Otherwise, she feels useless and mediocre, saying, “Even though I’ve become Somebody, I still have to prove that I am Somebody.” Similarly, as a Christian, am I still trying to prove myself through my mission? Am I still functionally finding fulfilment only when I preach well, disciple others well, grow my church well, and am respected by others, etc.? But such a life of God’s mission is a life that is too heavy for me to bear. Furthermore, God did not intend for me to do so with such a mission driven or performance based attitude.

Saying “man is mission” is not wrong. But ultimately, it is not my mission or my work, but Christ completing his mission and his work, when he said, “It is finished” (John 19:20). Only Christ fulfilled perfectly “Man = Mission.” When I realize that Christ completed the mission where I failed, I find rest in Christ’s completed work. Then, and only then can I live a life of mission by His strength and grace alone with the utmost of gratitude, thanksgiving and joy.

Do we overemphasize mission when teaching Genesis? Should Genesis point to Christ who alone fulfilled his mission?

Trust and respect. In Part II I listed sixteen sources of conflict. Are there common underlying factors? I believe so. Trust and respect are the glue that binds people together in friendship. Any fellowship or friendship will weaken if there is disrespect and/or a lack of trust between people. Many of the sixteen listed in Part II communicate disrespect or send the message “I don’t trust you.” If a husband disrespects his wife, or if a wife does not trust her husband, the marriage will weaken. The same will happen within relationships in the church.

Inequality. If I had to boil everything down to just one point, I would say that divisions occur whenever there is perceived inequality in our interactions with church members. Why? God made us in his image (Gen 1:27-28) – the image of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are three distinct persons, and are listed in a specific order (Father, Son and Spirit), yet they are each perfectly one God, and perfectly equal. Human beings, created in God’s image, are perfectly equal in our value, status and standing with one another. But if and when someone is regarded “more equal” or superior, or if some in the church have an unfair advantage over others, or are elevated in status over others, then inequality is ommunicated, and the potential for conflicts increases.

For instance, when you gossip or slander someone (point #1), you are basically implying that you are better than the person you gossiped about. If you say that someone is proud (point #2), you are implying that you are more humble, or not as proud. If you imply that you are the leader (point #4), you are suggesting that the one who is not the leader is lesser than you. Making decisions for others always communicates superiority on the part of the decision maker (points #6 and #7). Not being honest and open with others implies that you have the right to disclose to others what you want, and not share with them what (in your estimation) they do not need to know (point #14). Paternalism and patriarchy always brings advantage to the one who is senior (#15). When you say, “Just obey” (point #16), you are implying (a) that you have the superior position and right to tell others to obey, and (b) that you obeyed when you were supposed to and therefore are superior. If there is an exclusive group in the church (point #11), then there are those who are considered unworthy to be in that group, whose voices are less worthy of being heard.

These are all examples of how Trinitarian equality is violated. Wherever this type of inequality persists, it demonstrates lack of respect and lack of trust.

Now I will offer some practical suggestions for conflict resolution.

1. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. Speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15). Converse with grace, seasoned with salt (Col 4:6). The importance of dialogue cannot be overemphasized. God says to his rebellious people, “Come now, let us reason together” (Isa 1:18). Nothing can ever be resolved among men without honest, open, transparent dialogue, and then more dialogue. Dialogue is not the same thing as a meeting. A business meeting, prayer meeting, agenda-driven meeting, or Bible study meeting does not necessarily produce honest, open dialogue between the persons involved. So much misunderstanding and miscommunication could be resolved if we would just speak to one another saying prayerfully and humbly and freely whatever is on our heart and mind, whatever is troubling us. Like the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, human beings are relational persons. No person can relate to another person without honestly baring what is in his heart. (If you are married, try not speaking to your spouse and see what happens!)

2. The humble person should take the initiative. One cannot expect the proud person to humble himself first. God always takes the initiative in approaching sinners, even though He was never the one in the wrong. God’s initiative toward sinners infuses the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. God took the initiative to look for Adam who hiding in the garden (Gen 3:9). God took the initiative to go out to speak to the lost younger son (Luke 15:20) and to the lost older son (Luke 15:28). God takes the initiative because he is the one who is truly humble. In contrast, sinners are incorrigibly proud, even after many years of living as a Christian. Speaking for myself, I know how true this is. It is so hard for me to say to my dear lovely wife, “I’m sorry,” even when I know that I am clearly in the wrong. We “holy” Christians often wait for the other person, the one whom we consider to be worse than us, to grovel and humble themselves before us first. If God had done that, we would all be in hell.

3. Actively seek reconciliation. Even if we are actively praying and serving God in the church, resolving conflict must take precedence (Matt 5:24). I could reason that, because I’m so busy doing the very important work of God, I just can’t be bothered with some “minor” nagging interpersonal conflict, especially if it is “the other person’s fault.” Forgiveness and reconciliation lie at the heart of the gospel (Mark 11:25).

4. Address problems, sin and wrongdoing directly. Do not insinuate, gossip, beat around the bush, or attempt to communicate through a third party. If that doesn’t work, involve and include other mature Christians as needed (Matt 18:15-17). This takes tact, wisdom, maturity, prayer, compassion, courage and humility. Dealing with sin and wrongdoing in others requires great sensitivity (Gal 6:1). For example, when some Jews raised an outcry against their nobles and officials for charging exorbitant interest, Nehemiah listened to the facts patiently, pondered much in prayer, and then directly confronted the nobles and officials. After that, he also personally followed up with them to make sure they stopped charging interest (Neh 5:1-13).

5. Ponder the depths of God’s forgiveness. None of us can truly reconcile with another without personally knowing how much we have been forgiven by God, not just of the sins of the past, but of our grievous sins that are still ongoing (John 20:23).

6. Study and teach the Bible by focusing on indicatives, not imperatives. Indicatives are the gospel, the good news of what God has done (1 Cor 15:3,4). Imperatives are commands, such as “go and make disciples” (Matt 28:19), or “feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17). The focus and emphasis of the Bible are God and what God is doing (kerygma or proclamation), not what man or the church or what Christians must do (didache or teaching/instruction). Teaching and instruction burdens people with endless requirements, whereas proclamation brings them to Jesus who makes their yoke easy and light (Matt 11:28-30).

7. Emphasize truth before obedience. Truth sets us free (John 8:31-32). True obedience follows as a natural response to the love of God (John 14:15,21). When obedience is placed before truth, the result is law and righteousness by works rather than by faith,

8. Take responsibility for the one thing you did wrong, not the 99 things that the other person did wrong. In a conflict between God and man, God is always 100% right, and man is 100% wrong. However, in conflicts and disagreements between human beings, it is never the case that one person is 100% right, and the other person is 100% wrong. Even when the dispute is between a Christian and a non-Christian, the believer is never 100% right, not to mention conflicts between Christians.

9. View yourself critically, see others graciously. Personally, I have always found this very, very hard to do, especially when I am upset and angry. I’ll share two relevant quotes.

Humility is a spirit of self-examination. It’s a hermeneutic of suspicion toward yourself and charity toward people you disagree with (Richard Mouw, President, Fuller Theological Seminary).

Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, courtesy of John Y).

I will conclude with a brief anecdote. A few years ago, I passionately shared some biblical teaching to a group of young men and women in the church. After speaking, discussing and sharing for about an hour, a young man interrupted me, and asked me earnestly and rather urgently, “Dr. Ben, do you do everything you just taught us?” Though I was shocked by his genuine passionate question, the answer was so obviously easy that I immediately and spontaneously blurted out, “Absolutely not!”

I believe that my above suggestions and proposals for conflict resolution are sound and biblical. I have committed myself to personally practice them in my own life. But if I were asked, “Do you practice what you preach?”my answer would be the same: “Absolutely not!” This is not a copout. It’s absolutely true. That’s why Jesus is all I want, and Jesus is all I need every single moment. Surely there are more genuinely humble souls among you who are able to do these things far better than I.

Based on your own experience and observations and reflections, what practical suggestions and proposals do you have to resolve conflicts and divisions in the church, to promote healing and reconciliation?

1. He is a servant, not a boss (1 Cor 4:1; Mark 10:45).
2. He is to proclaim the secret things of God (1 Cor 4:1), which is the gospel. Any direction and influence that he has must be effected through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, not by the exercise of political authority over the church or lording over others as non-Christian leaders do (Mark 10:42).

In the late 19th century, Charles Spurgeon identified these problems as being oppressive and detrimental to the church in England. In the 20th century, John Stott made similar observations in the church through out the world. Yes, God still worked, and he may continue to work in the midst of such problems. But if so, it is because of God’s grace alone, and the continued presence of God’s work does not justify divisive behavior.

In this follow up article (Part II), I would like to describe how divisions typically start in the church. In the next installment (Part III), I will propose some practical solutions for conflict resolution following some biblical guidelines.

How do conflicts and divisions in the church begin?

Basically, it happens in the same way that conflicts among non-Christians arise outside the church. Here is a list of ways that conflicts start. This list is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive, and you may add to it based on your own observations or reflections.

1. Gossip and slander behind a person’s back, where the person gossipped about is absent, defenseless, judged, and disrespected. Speaking to the person directly is the most respectful, polite, noble and honorable thing to do. Gossip and slander is cowardly and despicable, and it is highly damaging and destructive to interpersonal relationships (Prov 11:13, 16:28, 18:8; 2 Cor 12:20; Eph 4:29; 2 Tim 2:16).

2. Labeling and caricaturing another person. Saying things such as: he’s proud; he’s lazy; he’s selfish; he’s immature; he’s childish; he’s self-centered; he’s stubborn; he never listens; he’s lustful; he’s spoilt; he’s divisive; he’s family centered; he’s a mental patient; and on and on. Statements like these are critical and judgmental. They hurt and wound people unnecessarily and are rarely justifiable, even if they contain an element of truth (Matt 7:1; Luke 6:37; Rom 2:1).

3. Making nationalistic or culturally insensitive statements. One that I have commonly heard in the United States is that Americans are “selfish” and “individualistic.” Remarks like these imply that non-Americans are less selfish and therefore better than Americans (cf. Rom 3:23).

4. Pulling rank. Saying to someone, “I’m the senior. I’m older. I’m the leader. I’m the director. Therefore I am your superior, and you must do as I say.” Of course, no one ever says this directly. But it is often said implicitly. Phrases in common use among us (e.g., “spiritual order”) communicate inequality, breed control and manipulation, and deny our God-given equality and Christian freedom (2 Cor 3:17; Gal 5:1). Although it may be said that everyone is equal, in practice some people are regarded as more equal than others.

5. Envisioning the church as a military operation. The church is not supposed to resemble the army or marines, and its members are not to be treated as cogs in a well-oiled machine. The church is a fellowship, united by bonds of friendship in the Lord (Ps 133:1). First and foremost, Christians are brothers, sisters, and family (Matt 12:50; Mark 3:35). Yes, the New Testament does occasionally use the metaphor of soldiers (2 Tim 2:3), but such language is rare. Any fair reading of the New Testament will show that the Apostles referred to their church members as brothers, sisters and friends, and the body is held together not by a military-style chain of command but by bonds of love. Christians are a “band of brothers,” not a “band of soldiers.”

6. Sending personal messages to another person through a third party. Whatever the reason may be for doing this (e.g., “I’m too busy”), it implies that the person being addressed is not worthy of being spoken to directly. It also subtly communicates that the message is non-negotiable and final, and that the recipient of the message has no choice or say in the matter, because the one communicating the message is not the orginator. This greatly increases the potential for misunderstanding and disgruntlement. Moreover, if the third party has some question or objection about the message he is supposed to communicate, he has been placed in a difficult and uncomfortable position. The recipient of the message then has many unresolved questions. Did the leader mean what he supposedly said? What was his intent in giving me such a message? Did the messenger nuance the orginal message based on his own interpretation and bias? A messenger may exaggerate or say something like this: “Ha, ha, your leader said that you have to do this! Ha, ha!” even though the leader may have never inteneded to say it in such a manner.

7. Making decisions about others without directly involving the persons affected. Countless times it has happened that decisions were made by someone “at the top,” and those being affected didn’t even hear about it until after the fact, and then only indirectly. This assumes that certain people at the top have the absolute right and authority over some other people below them.

8. Blowing up in anger, or losing one’s temper at another person. No one ever quite forgets when someone blows up, reacts angrily toward them, or abuses them either verbally or non-verbally (Eph 4:26).

9. Comparing church members to one another and creating an environment of competition. In a competitive environment, the winner who comes out on top is praised, regarded as superior, more fruitful, and harder working, and the loser is regarded as inferior, less fruitful and lazier.

10. Using the pulpit or podium to embarrass another person publicly by saying something that is negative, unflattering or critical. For example, “She loves her husband too much,” or “He watched a movie, instead of going fishing on campus.” Jesus never embarrassed or humiliated any of his disciples, not even Judas, either publicly or privately.

11. Creating an influential or exclusive group, an in-crowd, whose voices are heard loud and clear, while others are left out, ignored, unheard, or patronized. Exclusivity always excludes genuine friendship (John 15:15). In a previous post Are you a true friend?, I described how exclusivity hurts and destroys friendship. I understand that there must be leaders and elders in the church (1 Tim 3:1-13; Tit 1:5-9). But the members of the church must feel represented by leaders and the elders, not ruled over by them (Mark 10:42).

12. Creating categories of people and making distinctions among them, such as: clergy and laity; senior and junior; shepherds and sheep; missionary and native. Using terms like “exemplary,” “fruitful,” “sacrificial” to describe certain people, which therefore implies that there are those who are not mentioned are un-exemplary, un-fruitful and un-sacrificial.

13. Communicating favoritism, partiality, injustice, or hypocrisy (Exo 23:3; Lev 19:15; Acts 10:34; Rom 2:11; Eph 6:9; James 2:1,9). God is an impartial righteous judge who does not show favoritism. We are made in his image. No man likes to feel that he is treated with injustice or discriminated against arbitrarily.

14. Not being honest, open and transparent (like the Trinity) when interacting with another person. This will invariably cause misunderstanding and miscommunication by causing one party to feel as though the other party is withholding some vital information, or not telling the person the whole story. No one likes to be lied to. No one likes to feel as though someone is withholding some information from them and not telling them the whole truth.

15. Paternalism and patriarchy. This always favors the older, the senior, and the male, instead of the younger, the junior, and the female. This takes away from grace, which is always unmerited undeserved favor (Eph 2:8-9; Tit 3:5; 1 Cor 15:10), with grace being perhaps the most beautiful of doctrines in the Bible. Grace and favor has obviously absolutely nothing to do with whether or not one is older or senior or male. So, if we implicitly favor the older, the senior and the male, then the younger and the junior will always be regarded as wrong or inferior or “less worthy” in any area of disagreement or conflict. The merit of the issue itself, or the case in point will always be secondary, and relegated to the implicit practice of paternalism and patriarchy.

16. Saying, “Just obey,” to anyone, instead of practicing gentle patient persuasion. Even if the intention is to encourage faith, it nonetheless translates as “obey blindly,” or be regarded as no good. True obedience (or, for that matter, true repentance or true faith) is never ever entirely just an act of the human will. Jesus says that obedience or keeping his commands is the result of love (John 14:15,21), with love being the work or fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22). So if anyone says, implies or communicates “just obey,” they make it seem as though obedience is entirely up to you, a mere frail, fallible, fallen human being, and they are implying or assuming that obedience is possible by human effort alone, without God’s help or intervention.

After quite plainly listing the points above, I understand that merely pointing out faults doesn’t help and will not resolve anything. It is because the law by itself is not transformative; the law only nitpicks and condemns the guilty. Law is useless unless it leads to grace (Gal 3:24). Some may regard this list as complaining and church-bashing. Describing these problems may not lead to edification and humble reflection (Rom 12:3; Phil 2:3). It may also infuriate those who feel that they are being unfairly picked on or singled out. But this is not my intention.

Rather, my hope and prayer by painstakingly listing the above is

1. to allow those who have been hurt or wounded by bad practices and blind spots in our church to be heard, and to have a voice and a say,
2. to promote openness, healing and reconciliation between offended parties, and
3. to humbly ponder, review, reassess and reflect upon our UBF practices and, as a 50-year old church, identify the specific areas where we need improvement (unless we think we have none).

In your own experience and observations, how have conflicts, broken relationships and divisions arisen in the church?

I open with these questions as I review King’s Cross (Feb 2011), which is Tim Keller’s new book. The book is adapted from sermons he preached from Mark’s Gospel. (Keller is the senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York.) I was quite impressed and moved by Keller’s presentation and emphasis in his study of Mark’s Gospel, especially in that what he taught as central was not what I had emphasized in my own Bible teaching of Mark’s Gospel. Very briefly, Keller’s emphasis of his Mark’s Gospel study is “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” while my emphasis was “You better be like Jesus and SERVE and GIVE YOUR LIFE, you lazy selfish sinner!” Of course, I never said that, but that was my point. Let me explain.

King’s Cross is neatly organized into two parts, corresponding to Mark’s two symmetrical halves or acts:

1. The King (Mark chap 1-8): The identity of Jesus (King over all things)
2. The Cross (Mark chap 9-16): The purpose of Jesus (dying on the cross)

Hence the catchy title from its two parts (“The King” and “The Cross”), each part consisting of 9 chapters, with each chapter focusing on a particular theme by exploring a selective key part of the story told in Mark’s Gospel, explaining the background, illustrating the main point, and applying it for readers. So the book retains the essential elements of good preaching. (But a handful of well-known passages aren’t addressed in detail in the book.) I will not review each chapter of the book, but only selectively address a few points:

The Dance of the Trinity (Mark 1:9-11)

Chap 1, The Dance, identifies the Trinity during the baptism of Jesus: the Father, who is the voice; the Son, who is the Word; and the Spirit, who is the dove (Mark 1:10,11). Keller makes an analogy to the Trinity being present at creation (Gen 1:1-3; John 1:1-3). He ties the story of redemption through Christ with the story of creation in the beginning to show God’s overarching orchestration of God’s plan and purpose in the Bible, as being both a project of the triune God.

Keller titles this chapter The Dance, which is the description of the Trinity used by C.S. Lewis who wrote in Mere Christianity: “In Christianity God is not a static thing…but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama…a kind of dance.” It is a continual never ending dance of perfect love, submission, deference, humility and service toward the other Persons of the Trinity. Being made in the image of the Trinity, we were created to “dance” around God/others. But our sin causes us to expect others to dance around us, thus breaking relationships. Even among holy Christians in the church (1 Cor 1:2), a leader may expect his members to dance around his directives, while the members may expect the leader to dance around their needs and expectations. Keller’s point is this: “If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about.”

Food for thought: Do we preach and teach the Bible by focusing on relationships, or on making sure that I and others carry out our “mission”? Do I “dance” around others in love, or do I expect others to dance to my tune and expectations?

The Gospel (Mark 1:14-15)

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ opening words of declaration to the world concerns “the gospel” (ESV) or “the good news” (NIV) (Mark 1:15). Keller’s repeated emphasis in his previous books, Counterfeit Gods and The Prodigal God, including King’s Cross, is this: “The essence of other religions is advice; Christianity is essentially news.” Do we primarily see the Bible as what God has done for me in Christ (1 Cor 15:3,4) and communicate it to others as such (good news), or do I present the Bible as what I must do and how I should live and what I must believe (advice for right living)?

I acknowledge that it’s not easy, in fact it’s downright difficult, to teach the Bible simply as “good news.” Why? I think it is because when you ask, “What I must do?” in response to the gospel, the answer is basically, “Nothing! Absolutely nothing!” But we’re afraid to say, “Nothing,” thinking that we will be teaching “cheap grace.” But isn’t it true that I can really do nothing for God, for Jesus, and for the Holy Spirit? Yes, God loves me for sure, and yes, he does have stuff for me to do. But God doesn’t really need me to complete Himself (or His mission), as the cute romantic movie line goes, “You complete me.” So, if I succeed in teaching the Bible as good news, not good advice, and my “sheep” realizes by the work of the Holy Spirit that they don’t have to do anything at all, then I have succeeded in proclaiming the gospel as good news. If not, I would have taught them to save themselves through religion by doing good works as their righteousness before God and people. But when one truly realizes that they don’t have to do anything (because Jesus has already done it through the Cross), it is only then that they will WANT to do all things with all their heart (Deut 6:5), for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). In the gospel of grace, there is no “I have to,” but “I want to.”

The Call (Mark 1:16-20)

In Jesus’ time, students sought out rabbis whom they wanted to learn from. But Jesus sought out and took the initiative to call his disciples. When teaching Jesus’ calling of his disciples (Mark 1:16-20), I usually press others in some way to respond to God’s calling. But the truth of the matter is that no one can really respond to God’s call unless God himself calls that person (John 6:44, 65). My application is that I should teach the Bible not by pressing others for a response (or for repentance or obedience), but to depend on the Holy Spirit to work in that person’s heart (John 16:8). Then their decision to follow Jesus is not because of my human pressure and “push,” but because of God working in their hearts through his word, and by his Spirit. Then they will understand that God’s call is not primarily up to their response or repentance or obedience, but that it is nothing but sheer grace that God called them.

Authority (Mark 1:21-22)

Perhaps, we throw around phases like “spiritual authority,” as though the one who has it has some kind of advantage, or superiority, or an elevated elite status over others. I never thought of this before, but “authority” comes from the word “author,” where the authority does not come from the man, but from the Source. Thus, Jesus taught with original rather than derived authority.

Therefore, my authority as a Christian should not draw attention to myself as having authority that others in the church should acknowledge or submit to. This causes an unhealthy fear of man (Prov 29:25), rather than a healthy fear of God (Prov 1:7; 9:10). Also, if I do come across as the “head honcho” (God forbid!), it functionally becomes as though a man is the head of the church, and obscures the truth that Jesus is the Head of the church (Col 1:18; Eph 1:22). But my sin is to always default to myself and to expect others to submit to my “spiritual authority” in the church, thus clouding God’s glory. Ultimately, only the Holy Spirit can glorify God and enable man to glorify God (John 17:2).

The Ransom (Mark 10:45)

Whenever I taught Mark 10:45, my emphasis was on Jesus who came to serve, and on Jesus who gave his life. Therefore, you and I, if we are Christians, must likewise serve and give our lives, just as Jesus did. But Keller spent 15 pages of this chapter focusing almost entirely on Jesus as the ransom, the substitutionary sacrifice, the debt that had to be paid, either by us sinners, or by God himself. (David Lovi has written on this in 2 parts: The Necessity of Penal Substitution.)

Practically and functionally, we humans think that the route to gaining influence is to have power and control. We hold the power and control whenever we try to ensure that others work hard, serve, live for their mission, and give their lives for the church and for world mission. It then becomes as though our own power and control is the determining factor that makes the church prosper and grow. But keeping the power and controls is really self-centered leadership, and not trinitarian. Moreover, holding and communicating such power and control really doesn’t change sinner’s hearts. Only Jesus who died as a ransom changes hearts. When Jesus died on the cross, he gave up all power and control; he became the symbol of utter weakness, helplessness and vulnerability. But in this way, and only in this way, are we empowered (Rom 1:16), and our hearts transformed by the Spirit (2 Cor 3:18) with gratitude, love, joy and peace (Gal 5:22,23).

Keller closed King’s Cross with these words: “God made you to love him supremely, but he lost you. He returned to get you back, but it took the cross to do it. He absorbed your darkness so that one day you can finally and dazzlingly become your true self and take your seat at his eternal feast.”

By all means, read the book. If not, check out my summary of each chapter:

Chap 1: The Dance (Trinity) (Mark 1:9-11): Do you expect others to dance around you?
Chap 2: The Gospel, The Call (Mark 1:14-20): Is your gospel good news or good advice?
Chap 3: The Healing (Mark 2:1-5): Are your sins against God or people (Ps 51:4)?
Chap 4: The Rest (Mark 2:23-3:6): Are you desperately seeking significance?
Chap 5: The Power (Mark 4:35-41): Do you enjoy goodness and calm in a storm?
Chap 6: The Waiting (Mark 5:21-43): Do you have peace when God delays?
Chap 7: The Stain (Mark 7:1-23): Do you feel unclean, insignificant?
Chap 8: The Approach (Mark 7:24-37): Do you know you’re a dog, yet loved?
Chap 9: The Turn (Mark 8:27-9:1): Why is forgiveness so hard?
Chap 10: The Mountain (Mark 9:2-29): What if you are filled with doubt?
Chap 11: The Trap (Mark 10:17-27): Is money just money to you?
Chap 12: The Ransom (Mark 10:45): Is Jesus all you want and need?
Chap 13: The Temple (Mark 11:1-18): Are you both a lion and a lamb?
Chap 14: The Feast (Mark 14:12-26): Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Keller might be a contemporary champion of the church in regards to presuppositional apologetics (especially Reason For God), which perhaps we might be weak at as a church. King’s Cross is similarly presented presuppositionally and rationally and persuasively (while assuming nothing or very little). It has countless gems in every chapter, which I have not addressed. I’ve only quite randomly and selectively high lighted a very few points.

Perhaps, through reading this post, might you consider reassessing or tweaking how you have personally understood Mark’s Gospel and taught Mark’s Gospel to others?

I found that statement pretty interesting, and I have been personally wrestling with this issue for some time. Although many things have already been said in articles and comments on this website, I decide to write a piece about the relationship between mission and sanctification, in order to clarify these things in my own mind.

Mission has been our context for understanding the will of God in the world around us, especially with regard to preaching the gospel, raising disciples and planting new churches. Our understanding of mission is expressed fairly well in how we select passage for our conferences. First we call sinners to repentance through passages about the Samaritan woman, the paralyzed man, and the tax collectors Levi and Zacchaeus. Then we preach on the crucifixion of Jesus and sometimes the resurrection of Jesus. Then we inevitably turn to the Great Commission and passages that speak about our mission as we understand it. But we don’t say much about growing in holiness or walking in Spirit. Thus it is understood that the mission of preaching the gospel and raising disciples becomes the basic purpose and responsibility of our lives.

The mission, understood as I described it above, is truly a great purpose. It is almost a comprehensive motivator for the Christian life. The goal is preaching the gospel around the world and the subjugation of all peoples to faith. There are always people to whom the Gospel has not preached, someone who has not yet received an invitation to discipleship. This desire to reach new people and raise new disciple does provide us with a dynamic life.

The person who truly accepts this sequence — repentance, gospel faith and mission — can no longer see his life apart from this mission. The mission defines his ministry and determines how he treats the people around him, especially if he becomes a leader at any level. With this orientation, life outside of this mission seems pointless and flawed. If we consistently follow this thinking to its logical conclusion, then every part of life which is not dedicated to advancing this mission appears to be waste of time, and all aspects of life should be fully devoted to this mission. For example, the family becomes a house church for the raising disciples. Work becomes a means of self-support for the purpose of raising disciples.

Although we rarely talk about sanctification, we do have a similar notion as we promote continual repentance and spiritual growth. We do struggle against sins of lust, materialism, selfishness, and other things. But this repentance is usually aimed at leaving something that keeps us from carrying out our mission. To repent of selfishness and laziness means to preach more diligently and make more disciples. This kind of spiritual growth leads to greater degree of preparedness and dedication for of the mission (e.g., becoming a better Bible teacher). Our repentance and spiritual growth are designed to serve the mission and thus are secondary to the mission.

Sometimes we do reveal a deeper understanding of spiritual growth. We do want to know God and be more like Him. However, we rarely consider or discuss these apart from the mission. Mission, it is said, is the context in which we come to know God personally and grow in the image of Christ. And participating in the mission is seen as the outward evidence and fruit of knowing. Therefore, our spiritual practices such as prayer, Bible study and church activities are concentrated around the mission and not much else.

Now let’s think about sanctification. What is sanctification’s biblical meaning and value? Perhaps there is a more precise definition, but here I will define sanctification as an increase in holiness. It is to experience gradual emancipation from the domination of the sinful nature remaining in the Christian life, and to progress in accordance with the spiritual nature acquired by new birth.

In Reformed theology, the process of sanctification occupies the entire period between justification (new birth) and glorification of the saint (physical death and resurrection). Sanctification continues throughout the earthly Christian life, and it is easy to understand why this is so. The commandment that we have been given is no less than “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The depravity of the human being is deep and thorough, whereas the holiness of God’s is infinitely high and wide. The goal of being released from sin and bringing your life into conformity with the holiness of God is so voluminous and ambitious that even if we were to live a thousand years, that would not be enough time to complete it, even though it would move us closer to the goal.

Who can say, “I’m holy enough?” Who can say, “I know God quite well and now am close to Him?” Who among the saints has no craving and necessity to be sanctified more? The Apostle Peter wrote, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do” (1Pe 1:15, NIV). Sanctification is a process that touches every single aspect of human life. If we are in Christ, then sanctification should be happening through and through. We are being sanctified in our thoughts. We are being sanctified in all our dealings with all people near and far, with believers and nonbelievers. We are being sanctified in the workplace, at home, in the church, and everywhere in between. We are being sanctified when we eat and drink, sanctified when we read books, sanctified when we are using the internet.

The process of sanctification requires constant spiritual warfare. If we are serious about our sanctification, then we find a considerable need for prayer, studying God’s word, learning from the Christian experience, communication with other believers, consultation with elders, reading books, and so on.

Sanctification is warfare, but it is also a sweet process of knowing God, being transformed into his image and displaying his glory to world. It is the process that the Holy Spirit is continually doing in us. The process is monumental. It fills the whole duration of life and gives meaning and beauty to all its spheres. Sanctification is sufficient to guide us and provide dynamic development for the individual, the church and society.

Can sanctification be regarded as secondary or subordinate to mission? In my opinion, the answer is no. Sanctification is the direct will of God. It has intrinsic value in itself. God called Israel to be a holy people in the land to which he was leading them. He gave him the law as a standard of holiness. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is often called “the constitution of the kingdom of heaven,” is all about holiness. In 1 Peter 2:9, the apostle called all Christians to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, to proclaim God’s perfection through their words and their lives. And then, in the remainder of 1 Peter, he shows us what that entails: to be holy in every respect, to follow the nature of Christ, to learn to live a holy lives in society, the workplace, family and church. Sanctification is found in so many places throughout the Bible.

No, I do not think that sanctification may be subordinated to mission. But the two are related. Sanctification contributes to the execution of the mission, and it is also produced through participation in the mission. It seems to me that mission must be subject to sanctification. As I mentioned above, Peter wanted the recipients of his letter to be holy in all respects – not to simply avoid sin, but to actively grow in holiness. And Peter is the first one to whom Jesus entrusted his mission. He is the one to whom Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” When Jesus gave Peter and the other apostles the Great Commission, he said, “…and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20). The Apostle Paul described his mission thusly: “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ” (Col 1:28). The sanctification of all people is an integral purpose of the mission.

Mission and sanctification are closely related, but they are not interchangeable. To make sanctification subordinate to mission will inevitably distort both of them.

According to the Great Commission, the mission of the apostles was to preach the gospel and raise disciples. If we understand the task purely in terms of replication – making disciples just for the sake of getting them to preach the gospel and make more disciples, who will then continue to preach and make disciples and so on, until the coming of Christ – then what has become of Christianity? Everything gets reduced to having a saving faith in Christ and living a lifestyle most conducive to continuing this cycle.

Can all of Christianity be reduced to these two steps of having saving faith in Christ and then adopting a mission-centered lifestyle? Or is there something more fundamental that God wants to accomplish in us? Preaching the gospel and making disciples is an outward manifestation of our faith. But these are not effective or pleasing to God apart from the inner reality of holiness. It is the inner fruit that prepares, enables and equips us for the mission.

To clarify what I am trying to say, consider these two alternatives. Do I grow spiritually in order to make disciples? Or do I make disciples in order to grow spiritually? To ask these questions reveals a misunderstanding. Being a disciple or growing as a disciple is no different from spiritual growth. Whether we say, “Grow as disciple to make disciples” or “Make disciples to grow as disciple,” in the end it’s the same thing. Whether we say, “Be a Christian to make Christians” or “Make Christians in order to grow as a Christian,” this definition of the Christian life becomes empty. It becomes a vicious cycle, devoid of content. All that remains is wandering in the darkness and lead others into the same darkness.

It is only when we restore sanctification to its proper place that everything begins to make sense. After justification, we must follow Christ and learn to live a Christian life. Christian character and values have their own intrinsic worth apart from mission. God conforms us to these values through the process of sanctification and then we pass these values on to others. Jesus’ words “Go and make disciples” should not be construed as “Making others capable of performing the same mission.” Rather, it is as Jesus said,” Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” to restore them to completeness.

If we fail to give due attention to sanctification, then our faith becomes shallow and insipid. Moreover, the mission that we are trying to carry out loses its fundamental meaning and purpose. Focusing too heavily on the mission eventually begins to harm the mission. Evangelism and discipleship become less meaningful and reminiscent of network marketing.

I will conclude with a personal testimony to explain how these reflections grew out of my experience. For several years I was a fellowship leader, serving a student mission on campus. We regularly visited the campus, prayed, shouted slogans, sang songs, went into the dorms, preached the gospel and invited students. We were very active. This life was interesting, dynamic and sensational. There was always room to go out and preach more. There were long lists of potential sheep for whom we should pray. There were those who came and we prayed for them to change and grow. We were always inviting someone, somewhere. Overall it was a fun time, and I thank God for it.

Later, however, I became the leader of a ministry in a village where our church was located, and I served there until it left one year ago to pioneer in another place. Many interesting things happened, but I will make just one observation. In the village, a lot of people came to us. They were not like university students. They were men and women with various problems, dependencies and sinful habits. We proclaimed to them salvation in Jesus, but it was obvious that we could not make them conform to our mission plan. We couldn’t just tell them to write a testimony, repent and go out to preach and make disciples. Although it was clearly impossible to do that, I struggled to come up with a plan that was different and more suitable to them. I did not know how to organize a living and dynamic ministry that was not based on an ethic of constant missionary expansion. I even began to think that without a strong focus on evangelism and sending of missionaries, we could not be a church or educate anyone or help anyone. The problem was my poor understanding of Christianity. I did not know how to show people that, when we surrender to Christ, the conversion works in all spheres of our present lives. I did not realize the importance of sanctification in my own life or its relationship to mission, and I could not teach it in to the people who came to us. They needed to be instructed in sanctification, and mission could not fill that role.

A Brief Overview of Philippines UBF

The ministry began in 1984 when Ron Quilaton of Chicago, a Bible student of my wife, went to Manila for medical school and invited William to Bible study. Upon completion of his medical school, Ron returned to the U.S. in 1988. I did not expect the ministry to continue. But William has faithfully led and served the ministry ever since. Thus far, they have established many godly families, and have sent out missionaries to the US (including Hawaii), Canada, Britain, UAE and Baggio, a province in the Philippines. Over the past year, they sent out Timothy Ipapo and Dr. John Talavera to plant two churches in Manila near the University of the East and Fatima University at Antipolo.

When I visited them from Feb 15-20, 2011, I was stunned that there were so many new students coming to their fellowship meetings for Bible study. I was expecting only a handful of students, but 30 new students packed a room on Thursday under Timothy and his wife Esther, and 20 new students came the following day under John and his wife Hannah, with the support of Susan San Marcos. At their main center, William meets a dozen single men for prayer and daily bread at 5 am every morning, while his wife Sarah meets a half dozen single young women at 6 am. Jonathan and Grace Reytos is the only other couple remaining in their main center besides William and Sarah. They also have a growing ministry at UP (University of the Philippines) Manila, the top university in the Philippines, which is being led by Arlene Miranda, a recent graduate of UP.

The Agony of the Plateau Phase

Personally, I have experienced a growth phase in my ministry in Chicago in the 1980s and 90s. But over the past decade or so, I am agonizing about having “flat-lined,” though my passion and enthusiasm has not waned. We have 9 families at West Loop UBF at present. But we might have only a handful of converts each year. While much of our “growth” has come from our kids growing up and participating in the ministry, student ministry has been hard, even though our main leaders are committed and faithful godly men and women.

However, Philippines UBF has been growing with many converts each year, even as they send out their families as missionaries and for church planting, as well as sending their single women to marry men from other UBF chapters. How have they been able to grow continually for a quarter of a century without having reached a plateau phase that does not seem to be coming anytime soon?

Seven Reasons for Continuing Growth

1st, a godly couple, William and Sarah. They are truly the pillars, the power source, the foundation, and the backbone of the ministry. William is like a father to everyone. In addition to his own two children, he adopted three additional children out of compassion, for they were abandoned at the clinic where he worked. Three times he called up his wife from work and said, “Honey, I’m bringing home a baby.” His youngest adopted son is named Obama, who is two years old. William is also a man of prayer and vision and compassion for his people and his country. Everyone in the ministry loves and trusts him without reservation.

Sarah is motherly and sanguine. Her laughter and joy are palpable and infectious. I have never seen her depressed, angry, moody, grumpy, dark, difficult or griping. Truly, it seems like she is always smiling warmly and genuinely from her heart. Most of all, both William and Sarah love Jesus, they love the Bible, and they love their people.

2nd, communal living. Through out their married life, William and Sarah have literally lived communally with all their Bible students from the time they come to Bible study until they marry in the church. Presently, about two dozen adults and a handful of teenagers and Obama live at the church. They eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together every day. They cook together. They do their laundry together. They wash the dishes together. They take collective stewardship to clean the church daily. Literally, they are one big happy family in Jesus. I have visited them yearly over the last few years, and their communal living is like a slice of heaven on earth.

On Saturday evenings, they prepare for the Sun worship service. In the main hall of the worship service, there are individual people practicing the piano, guitar, violin, flute and cello scattered throughout the room. There are also some practicing singing. The remarkable thing is that they are all practicing their own individual parts simultaneously! Just imagine the amount of noise that is created. It is really, really loud and noisy, including babies playing and crying. Yet the spirit and joy of the people strangely makes this collective disjointed loud noise sound like a chorus of angels. I am still pondering how or why this loud mass of noise is not irritating or gyrating, but rather really exhilarating. Surely it is the Spirit of God in our midst.

3rd, contextualization of the Bible in their own vernacular. Philippines UBF is not a cross-cultural mission. It is what Peter Wagner has termed E1 evangelism, which is the most effective form of evangelism, as previously written and explained by Joe. They do not have any cultural misunderstanding or miscommunication, since they are all Filipinos.

4th, unity in the Spirit. Nothing destroys a church or ministry faster than conflicts, politics, gossip, slander, accusation, one-upmanship and divisions. I am sure that on occasion they have disagreements among themselves. But they have such a degree of love, trust, humility and respect for each other, that human conflicts and politics have always been subdued and overcome, not by human authority, but by the Spirit of God.

5th, joy. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace (Gal 5:22). One can fake or force a smile that could even look quite attractive, but no one can fake joy, which comes from the heart only by the work of the Holy Spirit. Where there is true spontaneous authentic unabashed joy, people are always attracted.

6th, informality. They have Sunday worship services, 1 to 1 Bible studies, weekly fellowship meetings, several Bible conferences during the year, testimony writing and sharing, fishing, etc, like most UBF chapters throughout the world. But they have a degree of informality that is quite refreshing. I think that what they learn informally when they eat together, or do chores, or walk, or play sports, or live their daily life together may be more influential than all the rest of their formal church activities and Bible study put together. There is very little difference, if any, in their formal Bible study and their informal chatting. They see and feel and experience the Christian life lived out daily.

7th, friendship. People want to hang out with their friends. No one wants to hang out with someone who irks them, or irritates them, or angers them. Though William and Sarah are the oldest, as well as their spiritual parents, yet they are truly warm open-hearted friends with all their Bible students. There is no sense of any gap or superiority or seniority in all their friendships or relationships.

Some Application from Philippines Ministry

This is in no particular order:

1) Regard Bible students as friends, or even as peers and as trusted colleagues and partners and equals, rather than as “sheep.” It is sad when some Bible students have felt as though their shepherds and Bible teachers treated them like sheep, even after they have been in the ministry for years. We remember Jesus’ words of genuine affirmation when he said to his disciples who would soon abandon him in a few days, “I no longer call you servants… Instead, I have called you friends” (John 15:15).

2) Let learning occur out of the rich informality of life, and not just in formal Bible study settings. This is in keeping with Deut 6:7-9.

3) Let indigenous leaders lead as soon as possible. William was thrust into a position of leadership when his shepherd and Bible teacher returned to the U.S. after just a few years of Bible study. Paul also established indigenous leaders quite rapidly whenever he planted churches (Acts 14:22,23).

4) Be honest, open, and transparent (HOT) in all our interactions. If we are not, others will speculate and think of all kinds of hidden agendas, real or imagined.

5) Overcome the natural paternalism, patriarchy and hierarchy inherently present in all of us. If we don’t, it will seem as though we favor some, not on the basis of grace, but on the basis of tenure, seniority, or some arbitrary partiality, which will inevitably communicate favoritism, control and manipulation.

Final Thoughts

1) How does your church life and Christian experience compare with Philippines UBF?

2) If you have the financial means, do visit them, and your room and food would be provided, or you could make an occasional offering to them, since they are all quite poor. For example, a manual laborer working a 8 hour day gets paid $10/day.

Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Bacon adds that if a man writes little, he needs to be really smart, and if he reads little, he will need to “have much cunning to seem to know (that) which he does not.”

Does “knowledge puffs up” mean that we should not increase in knowledge?

Paul says, “Knowledge puffs up while love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1). As a result, some Christians think that we should focus on love rather than on knowledge. But in context, this verse does not mean, suggest, or imply that a Christian should not increase in knowledge. This verse should definitely not become an excuse for not increasing in knowledge. Knowledge is needed if we are to be good stewards of God’s world. On the contrary, increasing in knowledge should deeply humble us to realize at least these three things:

1. how little we know,
2. how limited we are, and
3. how much we need to dependon God.

Does increasing in knowledge help us to be better Bible teachers?

I thought I knew certain parts of the Bible quite well. Especially Genesis, because I have taught Genesis to hundreds of times since 1981. But as I began to read books by godly Christian scholars and pastors over the last few years, I have become “trembling and scared” to teach Genesis, realizing how limited and perhaps rudimentary or inadequate my limited knowledge is. If you care to be confused and confounded, see part 1 and part 2 of Henoch’s series “The Difficulty of Genesis 1.”

Recently I wrote about the account of Abraham offering Isaac to God (Gen 22:1-19). When I had taught this, I had always emphasized the need for a Christian to offer his Isaac (his heart’s desire) to God, just as Abraham did. But is this passage really about us and what we are supposed to do? Or does it point to Jesus, as Jesus himself said it should? (John 5:39; Luke 24:27,44) Who is the primary subject of this passage, us or God? Does our way of understanding and teaching this passage make it seem that salvation is our work (I should offer my Isaac) rather than to God’s saving grace to me? Aren’t there other ways to teach Genesis 22 that perhaps point to Jesus rather than to Abraham? See if you might consider teaching it this way.

Reading, Discussing, Writing

Now let’s get back to the quote by Francis Bacon:

1. Reading makes a full man.
2. Conference makes a ready man.
3. Writing makes an exact man.

READING

Sadly, many today, including Christians, spend countless and excessive hours reading comics, gossip magazines, sports, entertainment and celebrity news, romance novels, fiction, etc. Also, common daily activities are watching TV and movies, playing video games, cruising the internet, using social media, etc. What then happens to our minds? Paul said, “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom 8:6). Here “the flesh” is our fallen sinful human nature, or our natural selves. When our mind is set on ourselves, we easily become angry, upset, worried, fearful, anxious, bitter, resentful, jealous, envious, etc.

When we read and watch things that do not edify our minds, we likely will think and feel and talk no differently than non-Christians. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “We are what we think about all day long.”

The psalmist knew the crucial importance of what occupies our thoughts. He spoke of the righteous person “whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night” (Ps 1:2). We need to read the Bible daily, and think about it through out the day. We also need to read books. The apostle Paul wrote a quarter of the New Testament. But when he was imprisoned and about to be executed, he asked Timothy to bring “my scrolls, especially the parchments” (2 Tim 4:13), which were his books.

My final quote is from a former seminary professor at Trinity: “You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.”

The more we read useful material, the more we are able to think upon God, which enables us to be full, not empty.

CONFERENCE (DISCUSSION)

To refine what we read and think about, we need to conference. This is to discuss freely with others in order to be challenged, so that our own thoughts and ideas may be clarified and solidified. The more we discuss and sharpen one another, the more God enables us to be ready to seize opportunities when they arise. Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” The sheer brilliance of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien came not just from their extensive reading, but also from their frequent weekly discussions to push each other to a degree of excellence that was out of this world.

If we want to preach the gospel well, we must always be ready. We should always be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet 3:15).

But if we do not make reading and frequent challenging discussions a part of our lives, our “readiness” would likely be inadequate or suboptimal, reductionistic or just too pushy.

WRITING

No one can write anything meaningful or beautiful if their thoughts are not clear and precise. Writing makes a man exact.

As a practical application, I suggest that you read, read, read (not comics) and love the Lord your God “with all your mind” (Matt 22:37, Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27).

Is reading a regular part of your Christian life? Are your thoughts and ideas being challenged regularly? Are you precise and exact in what you write?

Why do we have divisions in church? Surely this happens for a multitude of reasons which are all rooted in our sinful pride, along with interpersonal, racial, cultural and prejudicial blind spots. But let’s look specifically at the church at Corinth and see if we might discover the cause of divisions there, and how Paul dealt with it.

Apparently, divisions occured in Corinth because members of the church aligned themselves with their preferred, particular leaders, including Paul, Apollos and Cephas (1 Cor. 1:12). In response, Paul began to explain to them how they should view their church leaders. More fundamentally, he described who and what a church leader is.

Is the Christian leader above the rest? Many think of a leader as someone who is highly exalted, elevated, or elite. But Paul says, “…men ought to regard us as servants of Christ” (1 Cor. 4:1). According to Paul, a Christian leader is a servant. Paul had already said this earlier: “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe” (1 Cor. 3:5).

But some Christians in Corinth did not view their leaders as servants. Rather, they elevated their leaders, regarding them as special. Then they formed cliques, divisions and factions based on their preferred leader. When some chose Paul as their leader, he was not flattered, but angry, and he rebuked them, saying, “One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor. 1:12,13)

Are you in or are you out? In following their preferred leader, they failed to see Christ as the ultimate leader and head of the church (Col. 1:18; Eph. 1:22). Their functional leader was another human being. Then trouble began as they divided themselves among Paul, Apollos, and Cephas. Paul stressed that a Christian leader, however great, is a mere servant, not a highly exalted or special or elite person whom they should side with or boast about. When this happens, their attitude becomes “Are you with my chosen top leader Paul, or are you with your ‘lesser’ leader Apollos?” In other words, “Are you in, or are you out?” Many damaging divisions in the church have arisen from this.

My supremacist view. I have spent my entire Christian life of 30 years in one church. I love UBF and its leaders, especially those who taught me the Bible, discipled me and mentored me. But without realizing it, I developed a supremacist view of my church and its leaders. Subtly, or even blatantly, I began to look down upon other churches. I despised mega-churches, thinking that people in them must be “nominal Christians,” whereas we in UBF were part of an elite corps equivalent to the Marines or the Navy Seals. I despised churches that were involved in social justice causes such as feeding the homeless, thinking that my own work focused on raising Christian leaders for the next generation was far more important.

I didn’t realize that I had an elitist mentality until one day, one of my kids said to me, “I grew up thinking that UBF is the best church in the world and the only true church in the whole world.” I was appalled and wondered, “Where the heck did that idea come from?” Then I looked in the mirror.

Jesus’ revolutionary view of leadership. Jesus said in Mark 10:42-45: “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

In those verses, Jesus explained the difference between worldly leaders (like the Gentile rulers) and biblical or Christian leaders. Worldly leaders boss people around; Christian leaders serve others at the high cost of painful personal sacrifice. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest leader, because he gave his very life in order to love and serve wretched sinners. Yet many Christian leaders throughout history have led like worldly rulers, exercising authority over others in the church. Then it becomes unclear whether Christ or the church leader is the head. It becomes unclear whether the final authority rests in the words of the Bible or in the leader’s words and opinions.

The Christian leader’s main task. The task of the Christian leader is not to rule over the church. Rather, Paul said that the Christian leader has been “entrusted with the secret things of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). The ESV says, “the mysteries of God.” In 1 Corinthians 2:7,Paul mentioned “God’s secret wisdom.” Here, Paul is saying that a Christian leader’s main work is to reveal/proclaim/declare “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Why? It is because “Christ and him crucified” is the focal point and key to all of God’s secrets and mysteries and wisdom, which is to save sinful man from eternal condemnation in hell (John 3:16; 2 Pet. 3:9). This can only happen through “preach[ing] the gospel” (1 Cor. 1:17). This is only heard from “the message of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18). Paul’s main point in all of his teaching was to “preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23).

Because a Christian leader has been entrusted with such a great task, he must be faithful to this trust with all his heart and his life. Paul says, “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (1 Cor. 4:2). Like Paul, a servant leader does not try to control people in his church, but he is faithful to proclaiming the mysteries God had graciously entrusted to him.

Unless you are dead or dying… Over the years of shepherding Bible students, I thought that my Bible students’ attitudes and obedience toward my directives were a direct indication of their spiritual health. Once a member of my fellowship had a massive toothache that needed continuous ice pacts on his jaw to numb his pain. He asked me if he could be excused from worship service. I said to him, “Unless you are moribund and hospitalized, or on your death bed, you’d better come to church!” So he came with his ice packs and with palpable anger and distress on his face. Nevertheless, I was proud of my firm, absolute “shepherding” and “training.” I thought he was a promising, growing disciple, because he “just obeyed.” I used my position of leadership to make him do what I wanted, rather than embracing him, and patiently proclaiming to him the gospel of salvation. Looking back on some of the things I have done, I am shocked that anyone has remained in this church with me and my authoritarian style of leadership.

Autocracy and oligarchy. John Stott wrote an excellent book on Christian leadership based on 1 Corinthians 1-4 titled Calling Christian Leaders: Biblical Models of Church, Gospel and Ministry. Stott spoke throughout the world for 35 years and observed many church leaders. His conclusion? “…it is my firm conviction that there is too much autocracy [or oligarchy] in the leaders of the Christian community, in defiance of the teaching of Jesus and his apostles, and not enough love and gentleness. Too many behave as if they believed not in the priesthood of all believers but in the papacy of all pastors.” (I added “oligarchy,” which is not in Stott’s quote, but which I felt expanded and clarified the nature of authoritarian church leadership that Stott observed.) Sadly, our present-day church and its leadership model is not much different from that of the troubled Corinthian church.

The church in Corinth was divided because of unbiblical views of Christian leadership. Church members thought of their leaders as “super-apostles” (2 Cor. 11:5; 12:11). Some criticized Paul and tried to discredit him in order to exault their own leadership over him. They failed to honor Christ as the head of the church, and they promoted their own leadership and authority more than they proclaiming the gospel. In this way, they created and perpetuated divisions.

What have you experienced? Do we have problems with divisions and factions stemming from poor models of leadership? If so, what can we do about these problems that will promote unity rather than further division?

Some have said that Christians should fight against this trend by upholding and preaching a Biblical message of absolute truth.

Although I don’t disagree with that statement, I think that it is needs some clarification. Unless we understand what has happened in our culture and why, our response to this trend of moral relativism may be ineffective or counterproductive.

People today still value truth. But the manner in which they think about truth has radically changed.

In previous generations, a statement would be regarded as true if it agreed with conditions of external reality. Suppose you tell me, “It is raining.” If I open a window, put my hand outside and feel raindrops, then I would conclude that your statement is true, because your statement corresponds to what my senses tell me is happening in the real world.

That basic understanding of truth – as a correspondence to external reality – has been a hallmark of Western thought since the Scientific Revolution. And it greatly influenced how Christians shared their faith with nonbelievers. Methods of evangelism that were popular in America a generation ago, and which some Christians are still using, focused on helping people to accept key doctrines and teachings of the faith. By appealing to logic and evidence, the Christian would argue that belief in Christ is reasonable. If the nonbeliever did not think that Jesus rose from the dead, then the Christian might respond by presenting evidence for the resurrection as found, for example, in the excellent books written by Josh McDowell or Lee Strobel. If the nonbeliever did not think that Jesus could be the Son of God, the Christian might present some version of the C.S. Lewis “Liar, Lunatic, Lord” trilemma. Francis Schaeffer, one of the great Christian thinkers of the 20^th century, led many young people to faith in Jesus by showing them that their non-Christian beliefs were inconsistent with their own values, feelings and actions.

Evangelism in UBF has followed a different model. In our ministry, the “shepherd” would engage the nonbeliever in spiritual conversation through one-to-one Bible study. Through this personal interaction with the word of God, the nonbeliever would begin to understand the Bible’s grand story of salvation, and he would begin to see his own life in the context of that story. Along the way, he would develop personal faith and be drawn into a relationship with God and with the church.

Although these methods of evangelism are somewhat different, they both rely heavily on the notion of truth as a correspondence to external reality – that the Bible and the tenets of Christianity are true because they explain the way things really are. But with the rise of postmodernism, that notion of truth has been greatly weakened. An overwhelming majority of westerners no longer accept that truth is absolute.

“Everything is relative,” someone will say. But what does he mean? When a postmodernist says this, he is not claiming that ultimate reality does not exist. Rather, he is saying that ultimate reality is unknowable, because human beings are subjective and perceive truth differently. In essence, he is saying, “You see things your way, I see things my way. We are both flawed. Neither of us should claim to possess moral certainty.” This popular statement that “truth is relative” is actually a statement about persons. It is about the limitations and imperfection of human beings and our inability to grasp truth in an objective fashion.

Interestingly, when the Bible speaks about truth, it is also making statements about persons. In the Old Testament, truth is expressed through the Hebrew word ’emet. This word has complex overtones and is sometimes translated into the English language as “faithfulness.” For example, this word appears in a phrase in Deuteronomy 32:4 as a description of Elohim. The King James Version translates this phrase as “a God of truth and without iniquity,” but the New International Version says, “A faithful God who does no wrong.” In the Hebrew understanding, a statement may be judged to be true because it corresponds to an external reality. But a statement may also be true because the one who said it is trustworthy. Accepting that a statement is true is not just agreeing in your mind that the idea is correct. It is also putting your trust in the person who said it, believing that his character is reliable.

This personal aspect of truth is also found in the New Testament. In John 14:6, Jesus claims that he is the embodiment of truth: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” (Jn 14:6). And in John 18:37, Jesus says to Pilate: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” The authors of the New Testament did not view the acceptance of absolute truth in terms of mental agreement with doctrinal propositions, but as a commitment and trusting relationship with the person of Jesus Christ.

In this respect, a postmodern view of truth is quite consistent with what we find in the Bible. Many people today do not see truth as an abstract quality of propositional statements, but as a character trait of the people who make those statements. Today’s battle for truth is not just war over the correctness of ideas, but over the reliability and trustworthiness of persons.

This shift in the notion of truth has enormous implications for evangelism and discipleship.

Suppose that a Bible teacher says to me, “We are not justified by works, but by faith in Christ alone.” How would I come to believe such a statement? That statement is a claim about an invisible spiritual reality that we cannot see. The Bible teacher says that the evidence comes from the Bible, citing passages such as Romans 3:28 and Ephesians 2:8. But I respond, “Who actually wrote the Bible? How do we know that they were telling the truth?” And then I say, “How do we know that your understanding of the Bible is correct?” After all, the Bible can be used to ‘prove’ contradictory things. For example, James 2:24 says: “You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” Understanding the Bible is not easy. It requires study of Hebrew and Greek and considerable amount of expertise that most persons simply do not have. Ultimately, most of us have to bow to tradition and trust the judgments and wisdom of those who have gone before us.

When evangelizing and discipling in this current cultural climate, it rarely works to tell people to “just believe,” because coming to faith involves wrestling with the trustworthiness of many people: Those who wrote the books of the Bible. Those who collected them and judged them to be canonical. Various persons and organizations who lived out the teachings of Christianity for the last two millennia. Those who are promoting and teaching these ideas today. The postmodern is wondering, “Are these people good? Why should I trust them?”

And perhaps the most fundamental question of all this: “Can I trust you, the person who is telling this to me now? Why should I listen to you?”

It has now become virtually impossible to separate issues of faith from personal trustworthiness. Jesus Christ is alive, and he is absolutely trustworthy. But he has ascended into heaven and has left his mission in the hands of the Holy Spirit who works through the visible Body of Christ (the Church). Those whom we evangelize and disciple do not see Jesus in the flesh. They only see us. Through the culture and their own personal experience, they have learned to be deeply skeptical of all human beings. It will be very difficult for them to believe unless we show ourselves to be exceptionally trustworthy, developing credibility through transparency and complete honesty in our relationships with them and with one another.

As Christians, we may reject the idea that truth is relative and proclaim a worldview that upholds absolute truth. But unless we also become authentic human beings – people who are honest with ourselves and with one another about what we truly think and feel – our witness to this postmodern generation will become less and less effective.

In a shepherd-sheep relationship, who sacrifices more: the shepherd or the sheep?

For clarity, let’s define the terms. A shepherd, in our UBF lingo, is a believer who attempts to evangelize and disciple someone else in the Christian faith. A sheep is the target of his or her efforts, the one who is being actively evangelized and discipled. The main vehicle for this discipleship is one-to-one Bible study, so shepherd and sheep are sometimes called “Bible teacher” and “Bible student,” respectively.

When asked the question “Who sacrifices more?”, many would instinctively respond, “The shepherd.” UBF messages, testimonies and reports are filled with anecdotes of exemplary shepherds who go the extra mile to serve others at great personal cost. And our metaphorical language of shepherds and sheep is rooted in Bible verses that emphasize the sacrificial life and death of Christ: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Because Jesus, our Good Shepherd, gave himself so completely for us, we ought to follow his example and do the same for others.

This common understanding of the shepherd as the one who gives, and the sheep as the one who receives, influences our reactions when someone decides to leave our fellowship. When a person leaves, the one who shepherded him often feels betrayed. “How can he do that to me now, after all I’ve done for him?” Those feelings of hurt run especially deep if the person who is leaving criticizes us as he goes. The pain of rejection and broken relationship, combined with our dashed hopes and expectations, is almost unbearable. Many of you know that feeling. I know it too; I have experienced it multiple times. It may produce antipathy and hardness toward that person. It may lead to bitterness toward God who, despite our best efforts and intentions, did not answer our prayers to transform that sheep into someone who would pay back the love and service he received from us by doing the same for others.

But this conventional wisdom – the idea that the shepherd sacrifices more – deserves to be scrutinized. In many respects, I believe that we have underestimated what it truly costs for someone to become a sheep in a ministry like ours.

The shepherd-sheep relationship is asymmetric. Is there ever any doubt about who is in charge? The shepherd is the person who is considered older, wiser, more mature in his faith, or more committed to the UBF ministry. He is the one who initiates the relationship, proposes the agenda, and leads the Bible study. The sheep is the one who follows his lead. Outside of this discipleship process – in “real life,” as one might say – these same two persons might relate to each other in other ways. Perhaps they are friends or classmates. Perhaps they are husband and wife. Some UBF members have become Bible teachers to their own parents, a very interesting situation with unusual personal dynamics. Nevertheless, once that process of discipleship begins, the one being discipled very quickly figures out that within that context he is the passenger, not the driver, and the spiritual journey will continue only if he continues to yield control to the other person.

Thus, from the very beginning, the sheep has sacrificed something of immense value: He has swallowed his pride and allowed himself to be led and instructed by someone else.

And that’s not all. Here are some other sacrifices made by the sheep.

The sheep allows his worldview, spiritual practices, lifestyle, character and culture to be probed, questioned and challenged by the shepherd. To allow these aspects of his personal identity to be critiqued by someone else – by someone whom he may have just recently met and still barely knows – requires a remarkable combination of courage and humility.

Very early in the relationship, the sheep understands that the shepherd has hopes and expectations for him that he may not share. If the sheep is not yet a professing Christian, he realizes that the shepherd would like to convert him. If the sheep is a believer, he realizes that the shepherd wants him to join the UBF ministry and become a shepherd too. In many cases, those hopes and expectations are not openly discussed, but they are communicated implicitly through the shepherd’s actions and prayers. When the sheep realizes that the shepherd has an agenda for him that he does not yet agree with, he finds himself in a very awkward and uncomfortable position. Yet the sheep endures this discomfort and continues the relationship anyway.

And as the discipleship process continues, the sheep begins to expose to the shepherd his true self: his feelings, problems, inadequacies and sins. He makes himself vulnerable, providing information that could hurt him if the shepherd indiscriminately shares it with other people.

Now consider the sacrifices made by the shepherd. The shepherd spends considerable time, effort and resources to be with the sheep, to pray for him, to show him love and care through Bible study and sharing meals, conversation and recreational activities. These sacrifices are real and important. However, when we compare them to the sacrifices made by the sheep, they are of a completely different nature. These sacrifices made by the shepherd are not intensely personal. They do not place him in a position of weakness, undermine his beliefs and values, or threaten his sense of self. Rather, the sacrifices made by the shepherd tend to reinforce his own faith and values and strengthen his identity as a Christian worker and disciplemaker.

Consider the UBF shepherds and Bible teachers that you know, and ask yourself the following questions.

1. Does the shepherd ever assume the role of the learner? Does he ever allow himself to be instructed by the sheep, to learn something of lasting value from the sheep, to the point where it may visibly change his own life?
2. Does the shepherd ever allow his own beliefs about God, his church, his lifestyle, his character, or his culture to be probed and challenged by the sheep to the extent that it actually becomes uncomfortable and causes him to seriously wonder whether he is correct?
3. Is the shepherd truly upfront and honest about the hopes and expectations that he has for the sheep? Does he make this agenda explicit, or does he keep it completely or partially hidden?
4. Does the shepherd expose his true feelings, current problems, inadequacies or present-day struggles with the sheep? Does the shepherd openly reveal any weakness or doubt? Or does he merely wear a mask of joy, confidence and strength, sharing only good things about himself to be a “good influence” and uphold himself as a good example for the disciple to follow?
5. Does the shepherd ever allow the sheep to serve him, to do something of value for him that he cannot do for himself? Does the shepherd give the sheep any opportunities to occupy the moral high ground by becoming the giver, allowing him to experience the joy of serving in real, non-symbolic or non-token ways?
6. Does the shepherd ever entrust the sheep with confidential information about himself, information which makes him vulnerable and would hurt him if it became the subject of gossip?

If the answers to these questions are “Rarely,” “No,” or “Never!”, then how can we honestly claim that the shepherd sacrifices more?

Of course, many of the students I have spoken to believe the straightforward doctrine that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that we are saved by placing our faith in him. But if I probe a little further, I have noticed a very common response from younger UBF members: “That stuff isn’t important to us.” Here I am talking about nontrivial questions such as, “Can we lose our salvation? Is there such a thing as purgatory? What happens to people who die but never know Jesus — will they be saved?”

I don’t think this is true of all UBF members. I have met with some older missionaries who certainly hold affirmative views on some of these questions. I know this because I have gotten into some fiery discussions with some of them. I also sense that many people do have a positions on these issues but they don’t bother to express them because they would be preaching to a choir (no pun intended). But how can some of the younger UBF members not be interested in taking stances on some of these doctrinal questions? I am not talking about students who have recently accepted Christ or who have just started studying the Bible. I am talking about people who grew up in the UBF community who have studied the Bible for years. Isn’t doctrine important in at some point in missionary work? After sheep accept Jesus Christ, don’t we at some point need to start feeding them solid food?

Doctrine can determine the kind of attitude people take towards developing and maintaining their faith life. The purpose of doctrine then is not to create a sort of tool of social conformity to filter out those who do not believe the same way we do, but instead to give us proper direction in living life.

I suppose one way of looking at the matter is that doctrine will only get in the way of affirming every day the fundamental reality that Jesus Christ died for us so that we might have life to the full. After all, even meditation on that doctrine alone is enough to change lives and keep us well fed until the day we meet our Savior. I can also see how some people might feel that doctrine can slow down the discipleship process, because some new members may get turned off by certain doctrines and may not want to continue their otherwise valuable Bible study.

But it seems to me that, whether we acknowledge it or not, we are affirming doctrine all the time: Jesus Christ is Lord. There are such places as heaven and hell. The Bible is the inerrant word of God. Shouldn’t we be willing to venture beyond these to other questions that may be important in our lives of faith?

Of course, “Do dogs go to heaven?” is not one of these.

This is the third article in a three-part series. These articles were meant to be read in their proper sequence. Please do not look at this article this until you have read parts 1 and 2. No peeking!

Now I’m going to get very personal. Not because I’m eager to talk about myself. On the contrary, what I’m going to say is uncomfortable, and it would be far easier to keep quiet. But I will go ahead and tell this story, because it may be helpful for some of you to hear it. (By revealing these things, I am making myself vulnerable. There is plenty of ammunition here for anyone who wants to gossip about my family. Honestly, when I hear some of the rumors that have been circulating about us, it is remarkable how wrong they are. Instead of listening to rumors, you can now hear it directly from me.)

In the first article of this series, I mentioned that for several years I had been languishing in a state of spiritual malaise. When I had seen other UBF members experiencing similar things, it was usually said that they were “becoming difficult.” It was diagnosed as a personal problem, a failure to live up to the ideals and disciplines that they had been taught, and it was supposed to be curable by personal repentance, prayer and Bible study. Sometimes the blame was placed on a spouse: “He’s acting that way because his wife didn’t do such-and-such.” Knowing full well the kind of things that people could say about me, and not wanting to subject my wife to this kind of gossip, I was reluctant to talk about what I was experiencing.

And, truthfully, I did not know what I was experiencing. For a long time I had been denying and suppressing my emotions to the point where I could no longer identify what I was feeling or why. Gradually, I succumbed to emotional deadness which could easily have been diagnosed as clinical depression. In public I tried to maintain a cheerful appearance, but in private I became irritable, moody, hypersensitive and despondent. Trying to carry out my duties as a teacher, researcher, chapter director, husband, and father, and trying to live up to the overwhelming expectations placed on me in each of these areas, I felt as though the whole world had turned against me. The slightest criticism from my wife would set me into a downward spiral to the point where I no longer wanted to live, and several times I literally prayed that God would take my life.

Despite all this, I refused to acknowledge what had become painfully obvious to Sharon and to others around me: Something had gone terribly wrong in my life. I was a very broken person.

My turnaround, which is still in progress, began during the spring of 2009. God began to work in my life in new, unexpected ways to help me break through this particular instance of The Wall. My breakthrough started in the following manner.

First, I began to read Christian books. Although my wife has always been an avid reader, I had essentially stopped reading. If you know me, you understand that I am introverted (nerdy?) and intellectual. My vocation as a scientist is to observe, think, understand, and synthesize. But in the hectic business of life, I stopped thinking about God. I continued to study the Bible and prepare Sunday messages as part of my ministerial duties, but this interaction with scripture had become mechanical and formulaic. I no longer spent any significant time contemplating and reexamining the fundamental issues of life and faith. My life had become an endless whirlwind of activity with no pauses to reflect, and the intellectual components of my faith had been withering away.

However, after I became a regular reader of the daily blog of John Armstrong, my intellectual curiosity was gradually rekindled. During Spring Break of 2009, Sharon and I got into a car, drove to a Christian bookstore in York, Pennsylvania, and returned to State College with several armfuls of books. For the rest of the week, I sat motionless on our living room couch, soaking in new perspectives on things that I had never really considered before. Worship. Trinity. Ancient Church traditions. Relational apologetics. The person and work of the Holy Spirit. Experiencing the presence of God. None of the books made a deep, instant impression on me. There was never a moment when I shouted, “Eureka! That’s exactly what I have been missing.” On the contrary, I tried to keep an open mind, approaching every book with a mixture of hope and skepticism. I was not so naive as to think that any of these authors, who came from diverse Christian backgrounds and denominations, had all the answers. But neither did UBF have all the answers. The collective wisdom and disciplines that I had learned from nearly three decades in this ministry were insufficient to sustain my long-term spiritual growth, and I desperately needed fresh input from other parts of the Body of Christ. The insights I gained from reading these books greatly refreshed my own personal Bible study. My Sunday messages began to improve, and the members of Penn State UBF could see it.

Second, I began to acknowledge that a great deal of emotional pain and stress had been accumulating in my life. This stress came from three sources. (a) The pressure of being a faculty member at a high-powered university where tenure and promotion literally requires you to be an international leader in your field of research. (b) The difficulties in caring for our eldest son, who is autistic and borderline mentally retarded, along with three other children whose needs were often neglected because of him and because of our ministry. (c) The internal and external expectations placed on me as a UBF senior staff member and lay chapter director. Now this may well get me into trouble, because UBFers have always been reluctant to speak publicly about problems in our ministry. But it is undeniable that we place very high expectations on ourselves and one another, “encouraging” one another in ways that can be crushing. Rather than try to write about this now, I will quote from report that I wrote and distributed to North American UBF leaders last year:

UBF chapter directors tend to be disciplined, hard working, high achieving people. And we hold up as our ideal the person who is successful at everything, the person who can “do it all.” Let’s face it: the ideal UBF leader is a man of steel. He gets up by 5 am and always attends early morning prayer, never missing a single day of Daily Bread. He has a Ph.D. from a top university and is highly successful in his career. He has mastered numerous books of the Bible and has dozens of binders of Bible study notes arranged perfectly on his shelf. He exercises and plays tennis every day. He is not “family centered,” yet he pays close attention to his family. He never argues with his wife and always praises her as “the most beautiful woman in the world.” His children are well behaved, get excellent grades in school and play musical instruments. He himself takes lessons to play a musical instrument. He stays well informed about current events and reads many books each year. He keeps close watch over each of his chapter members, knows about their problems and struggles and helps them with personal spiritual counsel and 1:1 Bible study. He maintains close ties with UBF chapters in his region. He sends regular reports to UBF headquarters along with generous tithes and offerings. Although he takes good care of his chapter, he knows what is going on in UBF chapters all around the world. And he does all of these things with gladness in his heart because, apart from all his outward activities, he prays intensely and maintains a close personal relationship with God.

Yes, that is the UBF ideal. But an actual UBF chapter director is made of flesh. Because he cannot live up to these implicit expectations, he feels like a chronic failure. He is reluctant to attend national staff conferences because his chapter has not grown over the last ten years and he feels ashamed. He doesn’t want to hear any more reports, panel discussions or presentations by “exemplary shepherds” whose ministries are growing, because he does not share their talents and feels that he will never be able to do what they do. He does not want to hear prayer topics like “every chapter director should maintain five 1:1 Bible studies each week and master one book of the Bible” because he feels it is hard enough just to finish his Sunday message on time. Expanding his chapter does not seem realistic; his only goal is to survive.

When I wrote this, I was using comic exaggeration. You may disagree with what I wrote, and that’s fine; I don’t claim that this has been the experience of everyone. But in my case, the expectations that others placed upon me, and which I also placed upon myself, were very strongly felt, and my failure to live up to them has been a major source of tension in my inner life. Honestly, I have no regrets or bitterness toward God or anyone else about the way that I have been living. I feel truly blessed to be where I am. But honesty also requires me to admit that this was my experience. Without becoming honest about this, it would be impossible for me to move forward.

I publicly shared some of this pain and stress in February 2010 when I delivered a message on Acts chapter 2 at the North American staff conference. While preparing that message, I vowed to myself and to God that I would put aside all pretense and strive to be utterly honest. Some who attended that conference liked my message, and others did not. Ironically, it was about that time that people began asking, “What’s wrong with Joe Schafer?” When I was truly at my lowest point, languishing in spiritual depression, no one in our ministry (except my wife) saw it. But when God began to lift me out of that dreadful state, as I was becoming more honest about myself, wrestling with God and experiencing his work and presence in my life in new and exciting ways, it was then that rumors began to circulate that I had a “spiritual problem” and that I was “becoming difficult.” (Now I do not want to hold anything against anyone. But I would like to point out that our ability to diagnose one another’s spiritual problems is very limited. Please understand that things are not always as they seem. When someone appears to start “becoming difficult,” they could actually be getting better.)

Third, my wife became honest with me about the mistakes and trauma of her past. Before we were married, Sharon had hinted to me about some of the things she had done in high school and college. But she hadn’t told me the full story. In fact, her shepherds had explicitly advised her not to, saying that if she did it could “ruin” our marriage. I believe that the advice was well intentioned, and perhaps it was even appropriate at the time. But keeping those things bottled up for many years prevented her from addressing the pain and guilt that were a very real part of her inner life. And it was driving a wedge between us, keeping us from knowing and accepting one another at the most intimate levels as a husband and wife should. Subconsciously I knew that she had not been open and transparent with me, and I was not open and transparent with her.

So Sharon finally told me the truth: While she was in college, she had immoral relationships with men, and the consequences were devastating.

(Now if anyone who reads this has the urge to start gossiping about my wife, I have just one thing to say: Shame on you. Gossip — even if it is true — is hurtful and terribly wrong. If you have the perverse desire to start wagging your tongue about this, then at least do the right thing. Instead of telling others what I just said, urge them to come to this website and read my articles, all three of them, so they can hear it from me, not from you. )

Now for the surpising part. After Sharon opened up and told me the painful details, it did not damage our relationship at all. Quite the opposite. Suddenly I began to understand her, know her, and empathize with her in ways that I never had before. In fact, something amazing took place inside of me. An emotional floodgate was opened, and I began to feel an overpowering affection for her at every level: physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Again, don’t get me wrong. I have always been attracted to Sharon. Ever since we met, I have liked her and felt so fortunate to have married her. But because of my own emotional immaturity, I could not properly feel, process or express the love that a husband should have for his wife. For example, I could never look directly in her eyes and say “I love you” without a great deal of self-consciousness or embarassment. But things are truly different now. After twenty years of marriage and four children — and actually for the very first time in my life — I can honestly say that I have fallen in love. Not a superficial hormone-driven crush, but full-blown, electrically charged, head-over-heels love. And not with some fictitious woman of my imagination, but with an actual flesh-and-blood person who stands before me, whose merits and flaws I already know.

Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to suddenly fall in love with the one woman who happens to be your wife?

For the first time, I think I am beginning to understand something of what God intends a marriage to be. I think I am beginning to taste something of the affinity that God has for the people he created in his image, the love that Christ has for his church. This understanding is not doctrinal but experiential. Because of this precious gift that God has given me — the gift of an amazing woman — I know that God loves me, and I want to thank and praise him from the depths of my heart.

Don’t think that people haven’t noticed. Earlier this month, when we visited Sharon’s parents, her father took me aside and told me that something very different, and very good, was happening in our family. When Sharon’s mother saw the two of us sitting together at the dinner table, noticing how affectionate we had become, her eyes lit up and her face started beaming.

Something significant is happening in my life. I am starting to become a normal, healthy person who is capable of feeling and expressing love.

This story is just beginning. While God has been bringing me through this crisis, I am not so naive as to think that there will be no more crises ahead. We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). But one thing I have learned is this. There is much more to spiritual maturity than self-denial, discipline, effort, and perseverance. There is life on the other side of The Wall. There is real joy. There is unmerited grace. And there is true love.

Certainly Jesus did not enjoy facing the physical pain of crucifixion, nor the emotional and spiritual agony of bearing our sins and being cut off from the love of his Father. But the overall picture of Jesus found in the New Testament, and our understanding of the Godhead in the doctrine of the Trinity, is that Jesus and his Father are distinct persons united in a perfect love. The obedience of Jesus to his Father was never forced, but flowed from his perfect affinity for the Father carried in his heart, soul, mind and body. When Jesus served his Father, he was doing what he truly wanted. When Jesus served other people, he was doing what he truly wanted. And when Jesus was deeply conflicted, as human beings often are, he did not hide his feelings by putting on a stoic face; he exposed his anguish to those around him in a very transparent way.

If this understanding of Jesus is correct, then spiritual maturity will be measured by how transparent we are, and by much we actually want to serve God and other people. The good works of a mature, healthy Christian should spring forth from genuine love that is not unnaturally forced; they should be acts of self-fulfillment, not merely self-denial. Spiritual immaturity, on the other hand, will be characterized by emotional disconnectedness: a tendency to hide one’s feelings and a consistent, long-term discrepancy between what we want to do and what we are actually doing.

It is possible for us to deny what we feel for short periods of time. But sooner or later, even the most highly disciplined and strongest among us will succumb to feelings. Torn between what we have believed to be true and acted upon, versus what our emotions are actually saying, we eventually hit The Wall.

The Wall is not simply a time of difficulty. The Wall is a true crisis of faith. Becoming aware that we are at The Wall requires an honest admission that our belief systems have been consistently and severely challenged by our experiences.

Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the great Christian philosopher of the 20th century, hit The Wall shortly after he moved to Switzerland. Until that time, he had spent a great deal of energy fighting to uphold conservative theology within his denomination. He had been utterly convinced of the rightness of his doctrinal positions. But while he was contending for the faith, he could not help but notice that many church leaders who were fighting to uphold correct teachings and moral values were acting in ways that were harsh and ugly. Men who claimed to be fighting for Christian truth seemed utterly devoid of Christian love. By 1951, Schaeffer’s intellectual honesty forced him to return to agnosticism and re-examine the foundations of his faith. He went back to the Bible to investigate whether the gospel that he had embraced many years earlier was in fact true. What he found was startling. He discovered once again that God’s word was true and developed a new confidence in Scripture. And he experienced a genuine personal rebirth. Prayer became much more real to him. An inexplicable flood of joy, thanks and praise overflowed from his heart, which he expressed in poetry and song. This experience of passing through The Wall, and what he learned from it, inspired a Christian lecture series that brought numerous young people to Christ during the turbulent 1950’s and 1960’s, and these lectures were eventually published in 1971 in his classic book True Spirituality.

The Wall is also described in the recent book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero. He describes his own painful experience as an apparently successful pastor whose ministry and life began to crumble because of his inability to recognize his emotional immaturity. Scazzero explains that we cannot break through The Wall by self-effort. Only God can bring us through The Wall, and he will do so in his own way and time if we allow it. That process will require us to become very honest about our feelings, experiences, and current situation. It may bring up painful events that happened in the past in our lives and families, mistakes and sins that have never been acknowledged, wounds that have never healed, and so on. As these painful things are brought to light, we will have to lay them before God and allow the grace of Jesus to cover and heal them.

If you are going through The Wall, it may appear to people around you that you have become spiritually weak or unfaithful. You may be misunderstood or criticized by well-meaning Christians (think of Job’s friends). People may whisper about you and say that you are “becoming difficult.” But in this stage of apparent weakness, you are actually getting stronger. God is working to bring you to a better understanding of who you are, so that you can understand him better and experience a more authentic personal relationship with him.

(Read parts 1 and 3 of this three-part series.)

Or is it? My own personal experience contradicts this pattern. After many years of living in that servant phase, I stopped growing and began to regress. Serving ceased to be a joy and became a burden. I had little desire to worship God and was not intrinsically interested in people. Outside the boundaries of formal ministry activity, I had almost no personal interaction with God. In my heart there was little love, only a deadness that I did not want to reveal. The answer to spiritual malaise, as far as I knew, was to repent, pray more and study the Bible more – to do exactly what I had been discipled to do, but more often and with greater intensity. That answer – which was based on the assumption that any spiritual problem that I had was purely my own fault – was unbearable. And revealing my personal weakness was not acceptable behavior for a “spiritual leader.” So I refused to be honest about what was going on inside of me. As long as I continued to do what was expected of me without making waves, everyone assumed that I was fine. No one in the church ever asked the kind of penetrating personal questions that would have revealed my true state. The only one who did so was my wife, and when she did so I became defensive and brushed her concerns aside. I assured her that I was okay. But I was not. I had hit a wall in my spiritual life, and she knew it.

My story is not unusual. In the book The Critical Journey, Stages in the Life of Faith, authors Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich report that many Christians throughout history have hit this wall. The experience seems especially common among pastors and church leaders. Realization that we are at The Wall is often accompanied by illness, family crisis, spiritual dryness, burnout, and loss of joy. If the Christian is honest, he admits that his faith doesn’t appear to “work” anymore. Pat answers that used to sound spiritual now seem inadequate. He may become so disillusioned with himself, his spouse, God, and the church that the very foundations of life appear to be crumbling. If he is not honest, he may continue to soldier on, serving in an almost mechanical way.

Fortunately, there is life on the other side of The Wall. But in order to get there, we need to start paying attention to our own inner condition and emotions. We need to understand what we are feeling and why. For many of us, this journey inward will be uncomfortable, because it will bring us to some painful realizations about who we are. If we examine our emotions – especially how we react under stress — we are likely to find that we are self-centered, fearful, easily upset, defensive, jealous of others, closed-minded, unwilling to listen or learn from all but a few select people or sources, driven by the need to save face and bolster our own self-image, and so on. We will discover that we are emotionally immature. And it is a plain fact that no one can become spiritually mature if he remains emotionally immature.

I suspect that some of you will object to what I have just said. You might respond, “How we feel is not important. We must not pay attention to or be driven by our feelings. We live by faith in the word of God, not by what we feel.” Until recently, I would have said the same thing. I would have said that the mark of spiritual maturity is to deny yourself and obey God regardless of how you feel. Indeed, this is a common theme in modern evangelism and discipleship. For example, one Christian website says this:

Do not depend upon feelings. Tied as they are to your ever-changing circumstances, feelings are unreliable in evaluating your relationship with God. The unchanging promises of God’s Word, not your feelings, are your authority. The Christian is to live by faith, trusting in the trustworthiness of God Himself and His Word. A train is a good illustration of the relationship between fact, faith and feeling:

Feelings are like the caboose – they are important but are designed to follow a life of faith and obedience… But you should never depend on feelings or seek after an emotional experience. The very act of looking for an emotional experience is a denial of the concept of faith, and whatever is not of faith is sin.

This de-emphasizing of emotion and experience in favor of objective fact and propositional truth is a hallmark of modernistic evangelical Christianity. (The term modernistic refers to patterns of western thought that were heavily influenced by the period of Enlightment and Scientific Revolution that began in the late 18^th century.) And it is easy to find Bible verses that support this idea. For example, Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

We all need to put aside our feelings from time to time. But to consistently ignore our emotions over the long term is neither sensible nor healthy nor biblically supportable. Human beings are persons, and persons have emotions. When we examine the whole Bible, we cannot deny that emotions play a major role in the spiritual life. Turn to any page in the book of Psalms, for example, and you will find a wide range of human emotions expressed directly and honestly.

Moreover, it is impossible to truly obey the two greatest commandments – to love God and to love other people – apart from feeling. Of course, love is not merely an emotion. Love involves commitment and self-sacrifice. But if love has no emotional component, is it truly love? Love without feeling is unnatural, forced, stunted and unhealthy. Jesus said in Mark 12:30, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” And the Apostle Peter wrote, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1Pe 1:22).

Can you imagine Jesus obeying and serving his Father without feeling any love toward him? Can you imagine Jesus taking care of people without ever liking them, without affection or compassion? No, I cannot. Whatever Jesus did for his Father and for the people around him was never insincere or forced. All of his actions sprung naturally from a heart overflowing with love.

Early in our Christian lives, many of us have learned to put aside our feelings, thinking that if we simply believe and do as we should, then right emotions will follow automatically. But what if they don’t? What if, after many years of following Christ and living by faith, we remain unchanged on the inside? What if, instead of experiencing the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, etc.) we are filled with worry, anxiety, anger, jealousy, despair? Or what if we are just dead inside, not feeling much of anything? After many years of denying my emotions, I became dead inside and no longer knew what I felt. I denied myself and went on, trying to persist on that “soldier spirit.” But the ideal Christian is not merely a soldier. A soldier is trained to obey without question and kill without remorse. He is a robot, a machine, not a whole person.

Someone whose will, decisions, actions are consistently inconsistent with his feelings is disconnected and broken. One who has little or no emotional component to his spiritual life – who is driven primarily by obligation, duty, loyalty to doctrines, principles and organizations rather than by real affinity toward God and the human beings who bear his image – is not a mature Christian. He is a conflicted, unhealthy person who desperately needs to be healed.

That is who I was. That is who I still largely am. But over the last two years, God has been working in my life to heal me in ways that I did not expect. He has been slowly bringing me through The Wall.

(Read parts 2 and 3 of this three-part series.)

This book is about practitioners – architects, engineers, psychotherapists, and others – and how they perform their work. Schön’s main assertion is about a new type of thinking, what he calls reflection-in-action. It is this type of thinking that I believe will help Bible teachers become much more effective, and reflective, in our effort to help others find Christ.

Schön begins by explaining a vast change in the professions beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “The professions are in the midst of a crisis of confidence and legitimacy…the professions themselves, the long-standing professional claim to a monopoly of knowledge and social control is challenged.” Put bluntly, once doctors, lawyers and professionals were seen as all knowing. But now, with the increase in knowledge for common people and growing arguments in the field, they have lost this status. Schön stated that the age of “technical rationality,” or the thinking that professional activity consists in instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique, is ending. In other words, the notion that every problem is a neat package that can be solved through equations, research, and an existing body of knowledge is over.

Let me give an example of the end of “technical rationality.” During the 70s and before, you may remember going to a doctor, and him (usually a him, at that point in history) giving you medication for this illness or that. It didn’t matter what he gave you or how much, you took it. We trusted their opinion and advice without question. Now, however, most of us will go into the doctor’s office with some theory about what we have (we looked it up on the internet according to our symptoms), we have some idea what medications we are willing to take, and for the most part we can tell our doctors what we want and don’t want. And this is not just limited to medicine. This end to technical rationality can also be seen in law, construction, architecture, and so on. For good or ill, practitioners have lost their stranglehold on the world and power is much more evenly divided.

Schön explains that with every practice, there is a high ground and a swampy lowland. The high ground is “where practitioners can make effective use of research based theory and technique.” Those who dwell here are devoted to an image of solid professional competence and are fearful of entering a world in which do not know. This high ground, Schön asserts, often contains problems of little importance. The swampy lowland, on the other hand, is “where situations are confusing messes incapable of a technical solution.” Professionals who dwell in the swampy lowlands face the crucially important problems of the world. They are willing to forsake their places of importance, and often describe their methods of inquiry as “experience, trials and error, intuition, and muddling through.”

The training that many practitioners receive in college is no longer adequate if they wish to get to the swampy lowlands of practice. Schön speaks about a new kind of knowledge professionals need, a reflection-in-action. A kind of thinking that is “implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict.” Much like a good jazz musician manifests a feel for the music as they make on the spot adjustments to the sounds they hear, practitioners who use this type of thinking make judgments about the best course of action second by second. “As a practitioner experiences many variations of a small number of types of cases… He develops a repertoire of expectations, images, and techniques. He learns what to look for and how to respond to what he finds…thereby conferring upon him and his clients the benefits of specialization.” Reflection-in-action is central to the art through which practitioners sometimes cope with the troublesome “divergent” situations of practice.

So what does this have to do with teaching the Bible? Are we practitioners? In a sense, we are. We have a practice to teach others the Word of God and do so in ways that they can best learn, accept, and thrive in. The easiest way of teaching the Bible is to get a question sheet, write down the answers we learn, and then transfer our knowledge about the passage to those who are willing to listen. “Good” Bible students listen and take notes and then write a testimony. “Not so good” (never bad) Bible students question the answers, won’t write notes, won’t write testimonies, and so on. This is, in essence, a form of technical rationality. We know the answers, we have a beeline to God through His word and through our ready-made question sheets. We tell them the answers and as soon as they respond to the answers we give them, they are growing. This is truly the “high ground” of Bible study. The Bible students of yore looked forward to earning their titles, loved attention by senior leaders, and could look forward to a life of leadership as defined in the past.

But, in the famous words of Bob Dylan, “The times they are a’ changing.” From what I have seen, the old ways are wearing thin and we can no longer rely on the high ground to help most people grow into Christian leaders. Many young people don’t want to earn a title, let alone use them. Many want little – or no – contact with leaders, and are much happier in the ministry if they have none. Moving into the swampy lowlands seems an integral part of helping the new generation. The new generation wants to be heard, and it takes time and effort to understand them and the way they think. It takes careful listening on the part of both the teacher and the student in every Bible study. Gone are the days of telling people to write a testimony, and them doing it without question. Guilt rarely works, and telling people they need to repent eventually turns into a “white noise.” Now, more then ever, Bible students need to understand the explicit value in everything they do, or they will not want to do it.

I don’t claim that this is a positive change, nor a negative one. Nor am I making any judgments about what is done by anyone currently, or what was done in the past. I know for a fact that some Bible teachers have taught in this “reflection-in-action” way for many years, as I have been cared for by some of them. I am also not calling for comprehensive changes in the way things are done, simply a call to discuss this new view toward the work we are doing. I am calling for us to understand the complexity of each person, and their life situation, and their emotional and intellectual state, and to love and serve them accordingly.