I enjoyed the article The Cellular Church which takes a look at Saddleback Church and the small groups that power it. Gladwell s known for the books “Tipping Point” and “Blink”.
Category: spiritual
The spiritual realm. Matters of faith, belief, and philosophy
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Why Do Many People’s Faith Drift After College?
For the last twenty years I have spent a portion of my time each week working with college students at my church. I have generally found the college students’ faith vital with a great interest in making a difference in the world. I have watched these young men and women invest time into serving their communities, devoting time and energy into learning more about God and looking for ways to live out their faith. When I connect up with many of these students several years after they have completed college I typically find folks who still have vital spritual lives who are actively serving in their churches. This is encouraging. Yet, I believe this is the exception. It seems that a large percentage of people who have vital spiritual lives in college end up being “sunday christians”. I have been asking myself and others the question “Why do people see to lose their vitality after college?”
The first thing I have noticed is that once people leave college, they often leave behind a tight knit and supportive community. Often times, people go from living in close quarters, sharing a dorm or a tiny off campus apartment to a place of their own which doesn’t require day to day sacrifice and interaction with others. The Bible makes it very clear that living in community is very important to ongoing growth… but our culture encourages use to “get a place of our own” rather than look for how to build and deepen community. Secondly, young people are often encouraged to “make a good start” in their field of choice. This often means moving to a new city and starting a job that wants way more than 40 hours / week. People do this to get started and tell themselves that once they get established they will be able to balance life. In the mean time, they have a nice income and have the expectation that the their standard of living should go up now that they are no longer students. So money gets spent. Sometimes consumer debt is rung up, sometimes not. But it is no longer possible to live on the same money that was adaquate during student years because the appatite has grown.
So is that all there is to it? Keep hanging with friends and don’t get too caught up with money and you will be find? Unfortunately, I think there is more to it than that. I had a wonderful opportunity to talk with a number of church leaders in the last few months. There are two topics which repeatedly come up.
College Discipleship Often Misses Spiritual Formation
A number of leaders from the church planting community have noted that college discipleship typically stressed learning disciplines and basic practices, but often failed to get to heart transformation or spiritual formation. This is the very lack which Renovare is trying to encourage. More on this later.
Vocation and Work
One of the most common issues is that many people have not been taught to integrate their lives, to understand vocation. So they have a “spiritual life” and a “working/secular” life which don’t get combined. As these two world tug on a person’s heart, the work world often dominates. I tend to agree that this is one of the major issues. The college students that we have explicitly talked with about vocation and integrating faith into all aspects of life have tended to do better in later years.
I believe that the modern church has been it’s own worse enemy in this regard. While the scripture talks about the priesthood of all believers, we need to quickly divide things into spiritual and secular, and clergy and laity. I believe these divisions make it much harder for people to see it is possible to live an integrated, incarnational life dedicated to service.
If I may, let me expand on this a bit. I was at the Intersection conference a few weeks ago. This is a conference dedicated to the mobilization of the church and had a track specifically about the workplace being ministry. In the professional track there were a number of very moving discussions where people like Brett Johnson told stories about how business men were learning to be a blessing to their communities through their businesses, touching people spiritual and materially. There are a number of people who have been seeing first hand revival as well as positive economic and development results such as described in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits by C. K. Prahalad.
Yet I had a somewhat discouraging discussion with one of the gentleman who was in the pastor’s / mobilizing track. This gentleman is a good hearted pastor who has been looking to help his congregation integrate their lives. He asked a simple question to his fellow pastors. He said: “There is a woman in my congregation who is an executive recruiter and a staffing specialist. She has her own business which is reasonably successful. How can I help her be an effective minister of the gospel?” The answers he got were teach her evangelism and take her on short term mission trips. That’s it!! Yet, here is a women who is in a great position to use her business as a way to minister to people. She can help people find their vocation and calling. She can resist the temptation to place the first qualified candidate in a position to quickly get a commission, and instead work for the long term of getting great matches for people and companies (which in the long term pays dividends). She can work with people to find their skills, there calling, which helps those people be more marketable, and helps the companies hiring them find what they really need. I could go one, but I am sure you can see how there are many ways that she can bless her community while at the same time be even more successful as a business women. Even pastors and mobilizes who are attending a conference which is encouraging integration seem to be missing the mark.
What To Do?
Live intergrated lives. Understand that the workplace is as much a ministry as someone who is a fulltime pastor. Your ministry is not just evangelism… it is how you love and serve your coworkers and customers. If is making a difference by bringing character and quality to your work. It is makes good things that will last. There are a number of resources which can be helpful. One of the best books on this subject is Richard Lamb’s Following Jesus in the Real World has been a helpful resource.
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Renovare Conference
This past weekend I attended a Renovare conference hosted by MPPC. The primary presenters were Dallas Willard, John Ortberg, and Richard Foster. It was a lot of fun to watch these three men teaching and interacting together. You could tell they held each other in great respect and are great friends.
Renovare is an organization formed Richard Foster with the assistance of Dallas Willard, Bill Vaswig, James Bryan Smith, and Marti Ensign to promote spiritual formation. At the core of Renovare is the belief that God wants us to experience continual renewal. Renovare highlights six “streams” or traditions related to spiritual development: contemplative (prayer), holiness (integrity), charismatic (spirit powered), social justice (compassion), evangelical (Word centered) and incarnational (sacramental). These themes are fully developped in Foster’s book Streams of Living Water.
The conference was wonderful balance of encouragement, practical exercises, and teaching. It is easy for a conference to be so focused on knowledge transfer that people walk away bloated. Other conferences focus only on encouraging folks and leave them with a “rah-rah” emotional high, but little more. Renovare attempts to facilitate transformation. If this conference is any indication, I think they are doing a great job.
I would highly recommend checking out one of the Renovare conferences. You might also want to consider the Spiritual Formation Forum’s Conference
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Faith
Everyone has a personal faith. Some people place their faith in traditional religions while others collect ideas from various sources and create a unique, personal faith. Sometimes people put their faith in social or political movements. Still others place their faith in progress or technology, that is the future. Not everyone has a well thought out faith, not everyone recognizes what their faith is, but everyone lives by some sort of faith.
UPDATE 2025: The core of my faith hasn’t changed, but a number of the references needed to be updated. I have also added a bit of what the last 35 years has taught me since first writing this post.
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What is Faith?
So what is faith? It is trusting in something you can’t prove and living based on those core beliefs. That’s not to say that faith is irrational, or that there isn’t evidence backing your conclusion, just that you have to go beyond what you can see. Even the pure “rationalist” has to make a “leap of faith” to trust their thinking as discussed by Timothy Keller in his Authors@Google talk. A great illustration of this comes from the book Flatland. Just as the two dimensional residents of Flatland struggled to imagine the greater reality of three dimensional space, so we struggle to see the full reality that goes beyond what we can see with our eyes. C.S. Lewis’ discussed this struggle in The Weight of Glory. There is a spiritual dimension that anyone can discover, but no one sees naturally.
My “Faith” Journey
I grew up in a secular Jewish home. I had faith that I was a good person who could make a difference in the world. I had faith that science and the advances in technology would ultimately address any problem. In my teens I discovered that I wasn’t as good as I had hoped. I could be selfish or cruel when I wanted to be gracious and kind. I started to fear there was more evil in the world than good, and wondered if there was any hope. I also started to see how technology was a two edge sword, useful to do great good, but often came with unintended consequences and could be misused. Would mankind destroy ourselves and our planet?
I read the books of many faith traditions and several philosophical systems from Autobiography of a Yogi to Zen Mind, with the Bible, the Koran, Mere Christianity and many others books in-between. Nothing gave me the answers I was looking for. I decided that there must not be a God. I started to think that the nihilists were right. In the midst of this my heart longed for hope. Then one night I woke up and felt the need to pray for a friend (who I later learned was in grave danger). It was odd, I don’t recall praying before that night, and even stranger was praying to a God I didn’t believe in. Over the next couple of years I found myself continuing to talk to God, even though I doubted there was a personal God, nor did I hear any reply.
One day a friend succeeded in getting me to a bible study after persisting for months. The study from James 2 made sense. One of the observations the teacher made was that if Christianity was true, it should make a huge difference in people’s lives. I thought “Exactly… that’s why Christianity must not be true, Christians are such hypocrites”. I looked around the study. There were people I had known for several years. I was fairly self-righteous, and thought I was better than they were. Yet, I could see a love, a unity in that community that I couldn’t explain, and that I wanted. I later learned the Bible (John 13:35) noted “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”. Maybe there was something more to Christianity than the hypocrisy I was so quick to point out. The teacher called for people to commit themselves to Jesus. All of a sudden, everything I read in the last few years snapped into focus: foremost the amazing life of Jesus described in the the book of John and C.S. Lewis’ Liar, Lunatic, Lord argument. That night I became a follower of Jesus.
Over the next few months I continued to examine my new faith. Did it truly make sense, or was it an emotional reaction to a meeting? I reread the gospels and several books from the New Testament. I learned much of the material found in Discovering God which convinced me that I could trust the Bible. The more I investigated my new faith, the more it made sense. I concluded that I really did think the Christian faith was true. Furthermore, I had a sense of God’s presence in my life. I started to see God’s hand in the world. Decades later, I find the core of my faith unchanged. I still encounter things I just can’t get my head around. Life is filled with paradoxes which defy understanding. When I encounter something that is beyond me, I have learned to admit I don’t understand and then I choose to wait for God to make it clear.
The Core of My Faith
My faith is centered on a person, Jesus. On who He is, what He did, and what He taught. In a sentence I would say “Jesus loves me and gave me a new life which I didn’t deserve.” Romans 5:10 put it this way “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” I think it’s important to say Jesus rather than Christian because in the mind of many people, the term Christian is link to very un-Christian images. Saying follower of Jesus brings front stage that the Christian faith is centered on a personal relationship, not a system of beliefs, a strict code of ethics, nor is it an alignment with the political left or right. I appreciate the attempt to recapture the word Christian in Carol Wimmer’s poem entitled When I Say “I am a Christian”.
In my original post I listed a description of my theological beliefs… but I have come to see that there is a great risk to over emphasize orthodoxy. Ultimately unconditional, self giving love is the heart of everything. That said, having a well thought out theological / philosophical system can be helpful when not held rigidly. My theological beliefs are rooted in classic orthodoxy, along the lines of the Nicene Creed. If ever wrote a personal statement of faith it would look something like the Missional Manifesto. My personal theology is more expansive that the Nicene Creed or Missional Manifesto, but I am much less dogmatic about “my” additional details. I recognize that many of my beliefs are my opinion, not fact, and not so important that I should let them separate me from others. As my friend Danny Hall says, “there are very few beliefs I would be prepared to die for.” I wrote a bit about finding unity in essentials and granting freedom in everything else.
Gain Understanding of the Christian Faith
I think the best way to explore Christianity is in community. I would suggest seeing if the alpha course is offered near you. These gatherings provide a place to discuss important issues. While the group is lead by Christians, all viewpoints are welcome and honest discussion is encouraged. It’s an opportunity to learn together.
There are numerous books that explain / explore the Christian faith. I would suggest the best starting place would be reading the “book” of John found in the Bible. The books A Search for the Spiritual by James White and Discovering God by Dennis McCallam are brief but excellent guides to the process of exploring spiritual issues. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller clearly addresses the most common questions related to the Christian God. The identity of Jesus is the single most important issue when considering Christianity. Is there credible evidence that Jesus is the Son of God? The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel attempts to answer this question. Basic Christianity by John Stott has one of the clearest explanations of the core of the Christian faith.The good and beautiful series and the book/materials from Practicing the Way provide excellent frameworks to understand how Christianity, a life centered on following Jesus, works out in everyday life.
How Faith Shapes My Life?
I think people often make the “Christian” life too complex. They have a long list of rules, things that they should do, things they should avoid. I think it’s much simpler. I think the most important thing is to understand love. One of my favorite Bible passages that gets at the core of how following Jesus should effect our life:
He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your Lord.
Micah 6:8A similarly brief formulation was provided by Jesus:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 22:37-40 (ESV)How does this work? The life of a follower of Jesus is spent learning about who Jesus is, understanding His love, and letting His love set them free to live a meaningful and loving life. As you grow to know a friend, and to appreciate them, your life changes a bit and you take on some of their characteristics. A follower of Jesus will slowly have their life changed so that it looks more like the life of love that Jesus lived. Not because they are now following an external set of rules like the Ten Commandments, but because they have love in their heart. Book of Galatians which can be found in the Bible’s New Testament says that the fruit of the Spirit, that is the result of God working in a Christian’s life, should be love. Then this book goes on to enumerate what this love looks like: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Jesus himself said that people will know we are His followers by the love which is manifest in their community.
Key with following Jesus is remembering that we are responding to His love. Grace, not works!! God initiated not us. My breath prayer is “Lord so fill me with your love that it overflows on others”. We shouldn’t be surprised when we fall short. The gospel is at the core of not just being “saved”, but also how we live. A few months after I had starting following Jesus, a dear friend shared an observation which has shaped my life.
The sign of maturity is not the lack of sin because in this life you will never be free of sin, but how quickly you return to the throne of grace.
Doug LawverMy Experience with Churches
I have a seperate post which summarizes what are church essentials.
After I decided to follow Jesus I attended Fish House Fellowship, later called Xenos, and now Dwell Community Church. There is an interesting thesis that examines the development of Dwell and Vineyard Columbus. During my twelve years at this church I along with my co-leaders started and ran small groups, conductive evangelistic Bible studies, planted a house church, started a ministry to international students, establish a missions program, and sent mission teams to Brazil and to Southeast Asia. Xenos provided a great foundation in both practical and systematic theology, advanced hermeneutics and provided an effective framework for service which I am forever grateful. The church had it’s issues… it was a bit too focused on methodology and some of the leaders, especially the younger ones, could be overly controlling because they had not yet learned how trustworthy God is, and the futility of striving to control life.
then moved to the SF Bay Area and attended Penisula Bible Church which helped me trust God more deeply in day to day life and to find common ground with people who embraced different traditions and beliefs thanks to the example of Doug Goins and several other people of faith. At PBC I co-lead small groups, served and provided mentorship to college students, young adults, and young married couples. I coordinated the Perspectives class several times, co-lead our missions team and I participated in PBC’s intern program.
I moved to Menlo Church, Cafe Campus to join Jackie and her (now our) daughter who loved their junior high youth program. At Menlo I was involved with small groups and Stephen Ministry.
When Menlo closed the Cafe campus Jackie and I started to search for a new spiritual home… we aren’t completely settled yet. We continue to be involved with the Side by Side Community at Menlo. Most of our friends from Cafe ended up at A New Community Church in Menlo Park.
Some hints about finding a good church.
Caring for “The Other”
The heart of orthodox Christianity is love, that is caring for others. Our identity, allegiance, and citizenship is as a member of God kingdom, not the nation/state here on earth, or tribe, our political party, or other any other human organization. We are called to care for and treat all people the same, not to favor people like “us” and be against “them” which was is eloquently explored in several of Miroslav Volk’s writings such as Exclusion and Embrace.
Alas, evangelical churches are breaking apart due to political tensions because people have forgotten that we are Jesus’ people, not the follower of some political ideology or a political personality. The universal call to love “others” has been replaced with a political identity which is being used to separate people rather than to promote reconciliation… the mission Jesus wants us to attend to. I believe a huge issue is that the church in the USA has been victim of what Os Guinness called “cultural containment” thinking our culture is Christian without looking for how our faith and culture are in tension.
I have a post which discusses why God calls us to love our neighbors, not to seek power!
Additional Resources
There are countless resources and books to explore different belief systems. It would be hopeless to try and keep a good list. When I first wrote this post one of the best sites was Websites about Religion: originally created by Wabash Center. These days I would say use a search engine.
There are a number of other books have been pivotal in shaping my world view. Some of the most significant authors that have shaped my faith have been C.S. Lewis, Dennis McCallum, Watchman Nee, John White, Francis Schaeffer, James Sire, Os Guinness, J. Oswald Sanders, Ralph Winter, Larry Crabb, Richard Foster, Kenneth Bailey, D.A. Carson, Dan Allender, Henri Nouwen, Dallas Willard, Timothy Keller, and Miroslav Volk. I have benefited from many of the ideas popularized by Renovare.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
Hebrews 11:1-3 ESVin your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being 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 – I Peter 3:15 (ESV)