Journal for Overture I by Ross Rohde

Ross Rohde’s Overture Journal

January 10, 2005

Jon Sharpe: Introduction

Our introductory time was with Jon Sharpe, who explained the nuts and bolts of the program. I feel comfortable about the tension between being able to focus on what fascinates me, commonalities and distinctives of house church movements around the world, while still being guided and particularly expanded in my thinking. I still wonder if I will be able to do this in three to four years. I am looking forward to my time with Jon so that we will be on the same page and I will have clear direction as to what, how, and when.

I do know that I want to be able to go to Hong Kong to study so that I can meet the house church people in China. I am concerned that the rest of my cohort may not go to China because I like the idea of the relationships that can develop by studying together. I was particularly excited to learn that one of the cohort participants was a Chinese house church planter and leader. I will have to get to know him, but want to do that on a personal level and not just get to know him because I have an agenda.

I am also excited that this will expand my thinking. I really am tired of the Evangelical ghetto and the North American missions ghetto. I like the diversity of people I am meeting here. I want to get their perspectives and hear their stories. I am a bit disappointed that we only have two women participants and that one is not really part of our cohort. I like the idea of peer group learning. I suspect there is a lot to learn here from this group.

Brad Smith: Calling Based Leadership

I can’t believe this guy is from Dallas Theological Seminary. I am surprised they have not given him his walking papers. I find it encouraging and refreshing hearing some one else saying the same things and thinking about the same things I have been thinking about since I started my postmodern ministry journey.

I have gotten tired of the systematized functionalism of ministry models and systems. We seem to have tremendous faith in the model as if the answers lie in the models. Jesus never told us to trust the models, or the paradigms or the systems. We are supposed to trust Him. Brad mentioned that we don’t need the Holy Spirit any more to be successful in ministry, we just have to go through the forms. He is not suggesting this is good, just that this is what we have turned ministry into nowadays in the U.S. He sees this as broken, and I agree. We act as if all that counts is numbers, and that we don’t need Jesus to accomplish our goals. What happened to Jn. 15:5:

I am the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

It was interesting to hear Brad give voice and vocabulary to the hermeneutical issues I have been struggling with. Particularly, he mentions the modernist view of foundationalism and the postmodern view of the impossibility to communicate truth through language. The arrogance of modernism to believe the could construct an unassailable foundation and then build all truth off of that foundation using human logic. However, the postmodern view is also rather stark and hopeless. If I can’t find truth even less communicate truth through language I am left in an existentialist funk. However, both are asking the wrong questions. The modernist needs to learn from the postmodern that the truth is not in the words or the human logic. The postmodern person needs to learn that truth is difficult to communicate; but then, Christian Truth is incarnational Truth. Our Truth is Jesus, not just a bunch of words and concepts. It was refreshing to hear someone else say this. It is even more refreshing to hear that he has found a way to survive at Dallas.

I had a chance to talk at the break with Brad about the concept of verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture. I posited that this was looking at the concept of truth from a modernist perspective. We believe truth to be communicated through language and it must be without scientific flaw or error or it can no longer be truth as we understand it. The Bible says it is the Truth. Therefore the Bible is verbally without scientific error or flaw.
A=B
B=C
therfore A=C

It is so simple and straight forward, but it is flawed in its conception. The problem is that the first proposition is wrong. Biblical truth is incarnational not propositional. The Bible is the truth, and it is God inspired. That is what it claims for itself. The Bible doesn’t claim for itself to be with out factual or scientific error. That is our cultural insertion of what we think truth is and how it must be communicated. The Bible claims for itself to be a communication of God’s truth. It can do that in any number of ways.

If Jesus tells us the story of the rich farmer, do we really have to believe that this specific farmer existed, or was he just a useful figure for Jesus to communicate the spiritual truth focusing on God and not wealth? If Jesus can communicate a truth through parable without all the details being exactly, scientifically infallible, why can’t God do the same thing in the story of creation? Why do we get so upset and spend so much time arguing with scientists about the details ad nauseam, often times incorrectly, when we can just say that the creation story is true? It tells us the truth that God wanted to communicate about creation, and doesn’t necessarily claim to be scientifically accurate. There was no such concept as scientific accuracy at the writing of Genesis. I would undoubtedly send a chill down the spine of my modernist friends with this statement. They think they are defending the veracity of the Bible, but in fact are merely defending their cultural definition of “truth” and their hermeneutical preconceptions.

It was also good to talk to Brad about postmodernism when we went on the first walk downtown in the afternoon. We see eye to eye. It is incredible that he was teaching this stuff in the early eighties. I was so late into this game. It is even more incredible that so many missionaries and church leaders still don’t know or are just hearing about this stuff, or even worse refuse to acknowledge that it exists or is significant. It is also pretty incredible that he has graciously been teaching this stuff (perhaps not all of this stuff) at Dallas Theological Seminary.

January 11, 2005

Jon Sharpe: Reflective Leadership

I found Jon’s distinction between vulnerability and transparency to be interesting. Transparency allows you to see through me, but on my terms. Sometimes it is truly transparent and sometimes it is opaque. It is easily used to manipulate, “see I’m being transparent, now you should be”. Vulnerability carries with it the possibility not only of change but of being hurt. It is giving access to our lives even when it is not particularly convenient.

I was also struck by what kind of ambiance allows maximum change. If we only allow time for academic or cognitive interaction there will be minimal change. I suppose this is because we can mentally compartmentalize the situation. I have analyzed it, now I understand it, my job is done. Because I confront my world through thinking, being a T on the Myers Briggs, this would be my tendency. A deeper more holistic experience is when actually enter into the situation. This involved our actual participation, tangible experience and emotion; hence the city walks and the ministry emersions. It is one thing to talk about theory, another to live something and interact with real people. This allows maximum change. This is what Margi and I have discussed about Jenni, her tendency to intellectualize the world. Her intelligence sometimes tends to isolate here from the world. This helps me think about what kind of situations will help her break out of her categories.

Jon challenged us to consider what our leadership style was. It was no great surprise that coercive leaders were not particularly effective. However, it was somewhat of a surprise that pacesetting leaders were also ineffective, because they tend to burn their team out. Both seem to have in common a view of others as objects to accomplish tasks. The other three value people as people. No one wants to be someone else’s object. We want to be respected as a whole person. Leadership is partially about seeing others accomplish, but if we don’t respect those others as people we destroy. This is done by focus on the task and ignoring the value of the agents of the accomplishment of the task. It seems to me that in the long run we accomplish more by helping facilitate change in people than by merely accomplishing tasks. By equipping people we assure their ability to accomplish task from that point on. However, if we harm them in the process, future task accomplishment is jeopardized.

Brad Smith: Transformational Leadership

Leadership was traditionally viewed as I have something and I can give it to you. This is transactional leadership. If you view leadership as change in both leader and protégé it can be viewed as transformational leadership. For too long leadership has been viewed as a top down proposition. Leadership view this way is a power transaction, I have it and I control your access to it. Further, you really have nothing to give me. It is a transaction of power. Transformational leadership is focused not on the power transaction but on the transformation of people. This is not about power as much as about human change. Both the “leader” and the “protégé” are subject to change and looking for change.

People who have power are the ones who don’t talk about it. If they talk about it, the subject is about giving it up; therefore it is better not to discuss it. Those who don’t have power think about it all the time. Minorities and women are much more aware of power and who has it. There is much talk about the power of privilege.

To walk away from the power we are given is to misuse it. The lack of awareness of the power we have can hurt people. This is a new concept for me. It seems so benign and somewhat vaguely noble to not be aware of the power we have. Yet ignorance can be used by the Devil to harm others.

We are not giving it away when we can so we are not good stewards. If you have the power you are responsible to use it and also to give it away. This is stewardship. One of my issues with power has always been watching people who have it hoard it and use it for their own selfish purposes. Therefore I have tended to fear power because of what it might do to my soul. Yet power, rightly understood, is not about me at all. It is about facilitating others. Yet, power, like money is inherently dangerous. It is difficult to give away, because it can be used for our own selfish motives. Yet this is not the way of the Kingdom. Thinking of power as a potential gift to others potentially frees me, yet I have to be vigilant that I don’t love and therefore hoard the gift for myself.

It was a bit jarring to hear Brad talk about acquiring power as a good thing. This has always been something I did not respect in others, the intentional acquisition of power. Yet again, if I view it as a potential gift to others it frees me. One of my own points of philosophy of ministry has been, whatever I have I can give away, yet I never thought of power in this light.
Anthony had a keen insight: when power is abused, the wrong person suffers. If our use of power does not free, help, empower or ennoble others then we are abusing not stewarding.

Ron Ruthruff: Incarnational Leadership

Ron said ‘Equality with God, Jesus always was and always will be, but it is not something to be grasped. Jesus understands that the nature of God is not to grasping for power. Instead he pours himself out. We need the same mindset.”

This seems to be in direct contradiction to what we had just learned in the session on transformational leadership. How do we acquire power and yet not grasp for power. The answer is that Jesus poured himself out. He was giving this away as a gift. He was willing to use his power for the good of others. This is not a resource he was holding. So, instead of a contradiction this was more like a paradox and in the end an example of how it really looks.

Incarnation can’t be preached, it is lived, we don’t talk about it we do it. Again, this has a lot to do with the giving away of power through emptying ourselves. It is easy to say and not easy to live. On the negative side every privilege is a potential danger to our souls, not because we have the privilege itself, but because we might hoard our wealth and therefore harm others who could benefit. This is not Kingdom living, but it certainly is a temptation. Sometimes it would be easier to not have the resource in the first place. But that is like the man in the parable of the talents who buried the money instead of taking the risk and investing it.

Conversation with Ronald Yu

I had a wonderful conversation with Ronald Yu today at break. Ronald teaches at the seminary in Hong Kong, is a Chinese house church leader trainer, church planter and church planter facilitator. He talked about his strategy of using micro loans to get a business started so that the church planter would have a business and therefore legitimacy. The church meets in the back room of the business, and further it is difficult for the police to monitor everyone coming in and out of a business. At the same time the loan gives the planter a way to make a living.
It turns out that Ronald knows Brother Yuen “The Heavenly Man”. I asked him what he thought of the book. He said that many had called Brother Yuen a liar because they could not believe the supernaturalism. But supernaturalism is just a fact of life in the Chinese church. God gives them what they need and they don’t have access to good health care and protection from persecution so God provides supernaturally what his children need. We talked significantly about supernaturalism because it is an interest of mine. I told him about the “person of peace” prophecies used for evangelism in Switzerland. The Chinese talk about the “house of peace” more than the person of peace, but they still use the strategy. He was fascinated though in the Lord using prophecy to find the person of peace and questioned me to see how God did it. He was particularly curious if all the information was there in the prophecy. I told him about how God gave part of the information and then it was confirmed by a CD ROM disk of the Swiss National phone book. This seemed to confirm for Ronald that God was in it (perhaps I am reading in here). However, I found it interesting that he did not just assume that something was supernatural without confirmation. He suggested later a book by Jonathan Edwards it had “affections” in the title. He suggested that this would help me understand supernaturalism. I am going to need to talk to him more about this book and what it contains.

Ronald and I had lunch together along with Bernie Chung. We discussed extensively how Chinese house churches function. I was surprised at how big they are. They can have up to 300 people in them and 30 is quite a normal size. We also discussed the difference between urban house churches and rural. This urban/rural cultural difference is proving to be a significant strategic barrier for the Chinese. One issue is monetary, which Ronald has partially solved with the micro loans. Another issue is that urban house churches are smaller because housing is smaller. Another strategic issue that urban Chinese are often recent emigrants so they don’t have the established networks for the gospel to flow along. Finally, young urban Chinese are not as open to the top down authoritarianism of the traditional house church leadership. This top down hierarchical power is the traditional Chinese form, but it is not setting well and is proving to be a conflict generator. Ronald is willing to help set me up to interview his friends when I go to Hong Kong. This time with Ronald was worth the trip to Seattle.

Discussion Group

In discussion group this afternoon we told our stories. We focused on telling the story of our ministries with five other colleagues. We were to do the following: Describe current ministry and what you are planning to do. What is going well, what you have to offer? What challenges are you facing?

The interesting discussion came with David DeVries. Dave is the son in law of Bill Keyes. He is the founding church planter and pastor of a large church in Castaic, CA. He is struggling with one of his staff members who has caught the house church bug and now wants to start a house church network. He shared right before I shared and I had to say I was one of those house church types. It made for an interesting discussion. We ended up making a date to have soup and bread together so that we could discuss his issues.

Dave had me read the ministry proposal that Bob, his staff member, had written. I asked Dave where his points of dissonance were. He struggled with a few things.

• 
  Bob seemed to have a root of bitterness towards the “institutional church”.
• 
  Yet, Bob wanted to have the institutional church fund this new venture.
• 
  Bob had identified his target group as 18-25 year old postmoderns, but was not networking with them (this is a really good strategic observation).
• 
  Bob seemed to be unwilling to move to the areas where he could find these people, although he was talking about getting a job at Starbucks, which is a good plan.
• 
  There were issues of competing for the same folk as his church was.
• 
  Bob has built a good team of advisors around himself, which is healthy. He is in contact with some people with Christian Associates, and Dave is a close friend with one of these named Phil. Phil has some inroads into Bob’s life that are being closed to Dave. Phil is willing to be a bridge of communication between Bob and Dave.
  
  I brought up the following issues:
• 
  I brought up the issue of being enamored with a model and perhaps not seeing it as a lifestyle. The power is not in the model but in Jesus.
• 
  We can tend to look for God to bless our plan instead of following Jesus into ministry.
• 
  There should be signs that God is leading into this ministry. He should investigate this with Bob.
• 
  He should discuss with Bob what it would look like if God were confirming this ministry and what it would look like if God were to be leading somewhere else.
• 
  We discussed that this really is a different kind of ministry and that it takes time to acquire the new DNA. Bob will need time.
• 
  Bob will need space, and the tendency is for the established church to proscribe strategy based on their experience, yet since the DNA is different it ends up not being good advice. There is a tendency to control.
• 
  Even though Dave is unsure of what Bob is doing I tried to encourage him that there were strategic reasons why house churches make sense with some types of postmoderns. I explained the concept of sentient boundaries to him.
• 
  I also encouraged him that this has a tremendous potential to become contagious and reach a lot of people so to be careful not to stop it.

I hope I was helpful to Dave. One never knows at what level we are really communicating when we are discussing models with such distinct DNA. However, I feel I made a friend with Dave. I was concerned about this because last night at the pizza parlor I heard him discussing house church and his frustrations and when I realized I was in his group today I though that it could get interesting. But this ended up, at least for me, being a positive time.

January 12, 2005

Class Discussion

We had a particularly interesting class discussion early today. We rehashed some of our work from the earlier days. Jon Sharpe clarified something for me about the issue of stewardship of power. He said “Jesus was willing to give away anything horizontally as long as it didn’t get in the way of anything vertically”. This is true stewardship of power. Christ was more than willing to give anything away as long as it didn’t interfere with the ultimate good of knowing and being in relationship with God. Sometimes we can share things with people which will ultimately hurt them. This is true of power. I think of Lord Acton’s Razor “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. To give something to someone that will harm their soul in spiritual homicide. However, we need to be sensitive to God in this issue. This could be one more excuse our flesh could use to hoard power.

I was also struck by a comment that one of the students made, I think it was Steven Crawford. He used the metaphor of being a cup to hold power or being a funnel to channeled power. This metaphor causes me to think clearly about my function. A funnel collects broadly and distributes narrowly. It can focus and aim, but it can not hold.

I have always had fairly significant access to power, although I have feared it, and never really thought about the power that I had. I have certainly had enough access to power that I never felt the lack and was never concerned about it. I have always had options, perhaps not as much as others, but certainly enough to go and do as I desired. This is the ultimate test of my access to power. I have never worried a lot about not having power, because I had access. This is not necessarily true of significant wealth (although this of course is relative). Were I to have access to what I perceived to be significant wealth I wonder how easy it would be to act as a funnel and not a cup. In fact I suspect it would create a lot of tension and temptation. I suspect it would be easier for me to be a funnel of power than wealth. I certainly don’t crave power, at least I don’t think I do, but I find myself thinking about the comfort and freedom wealth could bring. God will need to work on me so that I can be a funnel of all the resources I have access to. Lord, consider it a prayer.

Another comment that Jon made that struck me was that “the truth of Scripture needs to be discovered in the community of the Spirit”. This is a partial answer to Saratoga Presbyterian’s concern that the right information, be given to the right people, by those who are authorized. Right information being defined as systematic doctrine, of course in the Reformed tradition, preferably Calvin’s Institutes, the right people being “the leaders” of the house church movement, and those who are authorized being “the clergy”. This is a top down presentation of information by the powerful which reestablishes their elite status and harms the church by turning people into the laity. They become ministry receivers and ministry observers instead of instruments of the Holy Spirit (ministers).

However, when we think of the truth of Scripture being discovered in the community of the Spirit it changes the whole perspective. The truth is discovered, it is not revealed from on high by humans. It is done in the community for the community’s good and with the joy and accountability that it brings. It causes the truth to become practical and applicable to life, instead of some static concept. And it is done in the community of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads us unto all the truth. He reveals the Scripture to us. He makes sure we apply it to our lives. This is a supernatural process, which is exactly why modernist Christians distrust it and want to go to systematic theology from the experts. They perceive it as safer, when in fact it has serious potential for becoming dead orthodoxy.

This does not take away the value of systematic theology, it does have value. But we need to see its severe limitations. It only answers the questions that the systematizers asked. It is warped by their worldview. It tries to eliminate mystery, when the deepest spiritual truths can only be expressed in mystery and paradox. And it gives the impression that all the significant questions are answered by the experts. It is a pretty good example of the arrogance of modernism, yet contains some of the benefits of modernism. As long as we see it for what it is; we can use it. It is helpful to understand certain issues and see some of the broad theological issues. It is when we don’t recognize its dangers it actually becomes dangerous.

Another helpful comment came from Ray Bakke today as he taught us about exegeting ministry. He mentioned the difference between pedagogy and androgogy. Androgogy is teaching adults the way adults learn; it is done in context, in community and through reflection of experience. Again this caused me to reflect on how we study the Bible in simple church. We assume that the Holy Spirit is leading us as individuals and as a community. We assume that our entire life is God saturated and that the experiences of life are meant for our development. The scriptures become a divine lens that through the direction of the Holy Spirit helps us interpret our lives and God’s lessons. This is done in community and it is a supernatural process. So, when we meet together and someone brings something they are learning from the scriptures it becomes a gift to the community, exegeted by the community, and applied by the community into practical growth, all under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Systematic theology could be useful in this situation, but it is not sufficient or necessary. The early Church did just fine without it. There scriptures were the Old Testament and the fractions of the New Testament they had access to. Paul felt free to leave a house church network sometimes as early as six months. How could he do this? He could do this because he had taught them to discover the truth of Scriptures in the community of the Spirit. If they knew how to do this they had what was necessary and sufficient for spiritual growth and health.

We often find that the Holy Spirit gives us the issue to discover. This invariably leads to deep ministry in at least the life on one person in the group. The Holy Spirit is exegeting our lives and leading us to the truth as a gift to our community. This is pretty good androgogy, and leads to an environment of deep spiritual growth and deep community. I think this is far superior to the clergy giving the laity systematic theology.

Jon Sharpe and Miriam Adeney: Global Leadership

I find it interesting that most Muslims are coming to Christ through dreams, healings and exorcisms. Again we see God moving in the supernatural to bring people to himself. I have heard a number of testimonies of Muslims who have come to Christ through dreams about “the man in white”. In China there are many forms of supernaturalism and prophecy is common in Switzerland and other places in Europe. I sure would like to know what the issues are around supernaturalism, how God uses it, what parameters He puts around it, how to determine false from true supernaturalism, how the Church has dealt with it historically? I feel that we will not crack the tough nut of the Spanish heart until they see God. We have tried preaching the gospel to them as a series of truths about salvation for over a hundred years and have gotten virtually nowhere. We need to show them God in ways they can’t deny and ways that touch their lives. I don’t think God has a problem with this; after all he is a supernatural being. I just wonder how to participate in it in a healthy way and not try to manipulate God. I have even thought of a title for one of my four unit independent study classes: Supernaturalism, Faith and Magic.

Field Trip

I was struck with the quality of the ministries we visited today: Zion Preparatory Academy, Vision housing for homeless women and children and Northwest Family Life a ministry to those who participate in family violence. The facilities were high quality and the people who were running them were of high quality. The objectives were ministry themselves were high quality. What struck me was that there was not a spirit of poverty; the “we don’t have any money so we have to do things poorly” view. They may have started with a vision and almost no resources but God did resource them and they did things with excellence.

The other thing that struck me was that foundations, corporations and wealthy non-Christians were the primary source of funding to overtly Christian ministries. This was because they were doing wonderful things for the community with excellence. It also struck me that the Church was not a major supplier, and even at times viewed these ministries skeptically or as competition. That is a pretty sad commentary, yet there was not a sense of bitterness, just a clear vision and a heart for those in need.

I was also struck my Nancy Murphy’s ministry to those who commit violence. She was a victim of family violence yet she deals daily with men and women who commit violence in the family. It would make sense that she would have ministry to the victims, but that she also reaches out to the victimizers is a real story of grace.

January 13, 2005

Your behavior will show what your real value is: Dissonance will show where we are in conflict. The dissonance shows up at the conflict between real and ideal.

We tend to talk a lot about our values, but there are different kinds and levels of values. It is true that when it comes to values it really doesn’t matter what we say; it matters how we live. We can say we value servant leadership and then use people to accomplish what we think ought to be done. We can say we value prayer, but not pray too much. It is our behavior that distinguishes between our ideal values and our real values. It is this dissonance between what we say and what we do that should be our indicator of areas we need to release to the Holy Spirit. Dissonance therefore becomes a tool to use in our spiritual growth. Just being aware of the issue of dissonance point out areas of growth should be helpful to me.

Jon Sharpe made an interesting final statement “As an incarnational leader I do not choose what I do, God chooses for me.” This ties in with the idea of the new covenant where Christ is living through me. It also speaks to the issue of stewardship. My life is not my own. I should not be making decisions based on what I perceive to be best for me and my own but what God asks me to do for His Kingdom. I am following Christ into ministry. The scriptures that relate to this that come to mind are, “I have been bought with a price, I am not my own.” “It is no long I who live but Christ who lives in me.” All of this goes so counter to what our flesh and our worldly system says to do. I am struck by how carnal I am and how much of the leadership I see in churches and in missions is so far off the mark.

Bob Ekblad kind of pulled the pin on a grenade and rolled it down the isle when he started talking about contextual theology. This was a significantly different perspective than the traditional evangelicalism that I was raised in. I found myself telling myself to not switch off because it was not what I was used to and sounded dangerous. I had to ask myself, what does he really mean by that? Don’t judge until you are sure that you understand what he is saying, rather than what you think he might be saying. Further, even if I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, what good points is he making. Since it wasn’t clear by the end of the class I decided to ask him out to lunch so I could ask some clarifying questions.

At issue was Bob’s concept of the context being part of determining our message. One lives in injustice so they use the context as a lens to go to the Scripture and help them interpret the Scriptures. If we do this, how do we keep from proof texting from our own point of view? It is easy to lose the complexity and nuance of Scripture and put in our own point of view. This is also an issue in the way we deal with scripture in the context of community in house church. The context can not only inform us but it can also blind us. For example, if one lives in upper middle class American suburbia it is easy not to see injustice in the way we live. Where are people being hurt? I don’t see anyone being hurt? What could I possibly be doing that is hurting anyone? Yet if we were to ask an intelligent informed African American about how our lifestyle harms, we would get a pretty long lecture.

Do we just assume that God will use the text, because it is contextualized, and that He will use this for good; that this would be the message chosen by the Holy Spirit? This certainly goes against the hermeneutical principals that I have been trained in. But then the hermeneutical principals I have been trained in actually have very little to do with what the Scriptures say about themselves but rather what the Enlightenment tells me about dealing with texts. In other words, even my hermeneutic has been contextualized, but until the last few years I did not realize it. Does having a contextualized hermeneutic mean we don’t need to worry about having a balanced or completely correct message? It seems that we end up having a message that is in conflict with other messages. We end up choosing unbalance and subjectivity rather than grapple with mystery. What are our tools that help us to grapple with not preaching an incorrect message?

This is where my struggle was when we went out to lunch together. I was doing my best to withhold judgment, really hear what he was saying and look for lessons even if I ended up not agreeing with what he said. However at the end, I found that he was much less controversial than he sounded. I’m not sure if he intentionally pulled our chain to make us think or not. If he comes to Spain (which is another story) I will have to ask him.

Here is his answer to my questions, which he then gave to the class just after we returned to lunch:

• 
  We need to be honest with your own theological presuppositions.
• 
  We need to be sound in our hermeneutics particularly the literary context and as much as possible the historical context.
• 
  We need to have knowledge of who we are working with and what there context is; how they view God and themselves.
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  We need to be aware of our own cultural context, who we are as readers, social class, nationality, what makes us unique, and how that colors our perspective.
• 
  We need to be lead by the Spirit as we deal with the text. The scriptures are a place of revelation.
• 
  Finally we need to acknowledge that Jesus is the interpreter of the Scripture. How did he deal with these concepts?

This seems honest to me. We are grappling with our own issues and the issues of our audience. We are still trying to be linguistically and historically honest with the text and we acknowledge the role of the triune God in biblical interpretation.

This is really not heretical at all. It is actually more aware of the realities of hermeneutics than what I was raised with. It is asking very valid questions and being as honest as possible with the reality. It is being honest with the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment’s treatment of text in that it acknowledges that I bring a lot into the text. This is going to happen anyway, we might as well acknowledge it and deal with it in an explicit way rather than have it happen tacitly and not be aware of how it has colored the text.

Finally, this seems more humble to me. It is grappling with real issues but acknowledges that interpretation is fraught with danger, mystery and the unknown. Yet, the Holy Spirit shows up in all of this and uses the written word to draw us closer to the living Word. The Enlightened hermeneutic I was raised with was actually rather arrogant. It assumed that if you went through all the steps, most of them having to do with grammar, we would end up knowing what the author meant by what he said. Considering the realities of human communication, significant cross cultural issues, textual issues, and at least 2000 years of separation from the context, this is an incredibly arrogant assumption. Yet, the Holy Spirit still can and does meet us in the Scriptures. That is mysterious in and of itself but it allows the reading of Scripture to be a supernatural experience rather than a mere grammatical exercise.

Dr. Miriam Adeney spoke to us about why Muslim women have been coming to the Lord based on her research. Predominant among those issues were three that struck me: dreams, healings, and exorcisms. There again is the supernatural in the role of our ministry to the world. It again underscores how our evangelical enlightenment upbringing ill prepares us to minister in a world outside of the World War II generation in the west. For the most part, it does not speak to the worldview of anyone in the West younger than 50 and just about any place outside of the West.

Non Pentecostal Evangelical theology does not have an adequate theology of the supernatural nor does it have an adequate practice. This has nothing to do with the Bible, but rather our pagan worldview we inherited from the Enlightenment which inherited its worldview from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. When Socrates is informing my spiritual life and practice more than Jesus is, I am in serious trouble. The problem is that we are not aware of where our doctrine really comes from because we have not been critical enough. Instead we usually assume that some great doctor of the faith has told us what is correct (or our denomination), so we assume that they must know what they are talking about. It doesn’t occur to us to question the presuppositions of their worldview and ours. What we end up with is a theology that is in direct contradiction with what the Scripture really teaches, but we can’t see it. Isn’t that what the Pharisees did? Man is scares me to realize how much like a Pharisee I can be.

January 14, 2005

Dr. Jeff Keuss gave us what he called Stages of Spiritual Questioning:

The Recognition of God – How and when did you first recognized God in your life?

The Life of Discipleship- When have you felt a part of a faith or spiritual community? What was it like?”

The Productive Life – “Which of your talents/ gifts do you feel good about and are willing to share?”

The Journey Inward – “Has your faith fallen apart? When? What was that like?”

The Journey Outward – “Do you have a glimpse of God’s purpose for your life? What does it look like?”

The Life of Love – “What does ‘Love’ mean when you hear “For God so loved the world’? How do you experience that love?”

I immediately thought about the fact that I was going to see my niece Kelly and Chuck her boyfriend. Having had dinner with them already and having spent the evening talking about some rich spiritual life issue, I thought that these questions might stimulate Kelly, particularly considering where she is in her journey with Jesus.

Sunday I spent from 11:00 A.M. until 10:30 P.M. with Kelly and Chuck. It seemed like just about every half hour some topic that I had been talking about the last week came up and stimulated our conversation. The entire eleven and a half hours was like a very fun, loving, house church time. It was very deep fellowship. It was also a blast. Unfortunately, I wasn’t taking notes, I was having fellowship and we were ministering into each others lives. So, I can’t seem to recall all of the issues that came up.

However, just before we went out at 9:00 P.M. to pick up some Thai take out I pulled out my little slip of paper with Jeff Keuss’ questions. Just as I suspected, Kelly zeroed in and it really got her wheels turning. That girl can think! The suffering she has gone through in the last number of years has really grounded her. It is so exciting to watch her honestly process her own spiritual life and soak up any little scrap that she is given. She is really on a growing curve. I am also excited to see how much Chuck respects her, has honest interaction with her, and treats here with kind sensitivity. He is being a good spiritual influence on her life. They are reading spiritual books together and discussing them. They were both just real and honest. She deserves someone like that.

This is so much different than the Kelly I knew a number of years ago. There wasn’t any projecting of an image. She was someone just grappling with life, spiritual and otherwise; trying to figure out how she should live. God is using her, and that will continue as long as she addresses life like this. It will be interesting to see if she continues to respond to Keuss’ questions. I suspect she will, but I may never hear about it.

Jeff Keuss also made the following statement: we need to create a space where obedience to the Truth is practiced through community. He went on to define what he meant by each of the four phrases.

Create a space- opening an aperture
There are times we need to be still and just wait to find out what God would say to us and take out of us. – Kenosis is emptying of ourselves, not to grasp for things that we see as important to our identity. Prayer life as listening not telling; sit in humility.

Where obedience to the Truth –
Obititae - to be obedient John 8:31-32. The truth will make you free. The word Truth comes from the Germanic root of the word which means to be married. What we are willing to be wedded to? Listen deeply to what has been grafted into us. Listening to scripture.

Is practiced
Our faith in Christ is nothing unless we show the “sign and seal of the saving work of our Lord, Christ Jesus.” John Calvin

To challenge the system, to be involved in social action is divine behavior. We should do what we say. We need to challenge the powers and principalities.

Through community
The Gospel is “truth through personalities.” Unity is found in diversity. Be creative and we do this together. The Bible was meant to be read in community. We are all unique, unrepeatable miracles of God. But we are still part of the body of Christ.

We have become so individualistic in our culture that we really don’t know how to do such a thing without practice. First, we are not patient enough to listen to God. We are to busy telling him how he ought to fulfill our agenda. This is making ourselves the protagonist instead of Jesus. He is supposed to be the protagonist of our story. It is so hard to actually allow him to be so.
The issue of what we are willing to be wedded to reminds me of the values discussion we had with Jon Sharpe. Are these just ideals or are we willing to count the cost and ask Jesus to help us live this.

Finally the whole issue of actually exegeting the Scriptures and our lives in community, allowing Jesus to meet us in the midst is a significant issue. We have our spiritual growth and relationship with Jesus because of our culturally imposed individualism. It is hard for Americans to truly understand what community really is, yet we long for it. At least we long for it as long as it doesn’t get too messy and convicting.

Simple churches give us the framework to actually live this out. However, it is just a framework; we still have to actually do it. The framework itself is neutral. Unless we actually seek to have Jesus meet us in the midst; unless we are willing to be vulnerable instead of occasionally transparent; we will fail to have true community. And, we will miss the spiritual growth and the deeper aspect of our relationship with Jesus that we can have through this.

I also doubt the ability of anyone to truly understand the truth of the Scriptures, let alone the Truth, apart from the input of others. Basically that is what Keuss is saying. We can Lone Ranger our relationship with God, no matter what our culture and flesh tell us.

Ray Bakke talked about Roger Williams’ concept of ordination. When you baptize someone you are ordaining them because they become ministers. Call to ordination is not to status, it is to task. I give up my authority to work under and for the good of others and the Kingdom, but I have been given responsibility. This allows for women leaders, because they are not ruling over men, they are serving men in their giftedness. Williams turned hierarchy upside down. He had a more biblical view of leadership, leadership as service rather than the power, status and position view, which is so common in the Church today. This is also a better view of the priesthood of all believers rather than a quasi priesthood of the “clergy” which is a non biblical concept that just drives me crazy and has done unbelievable damage to the Church and the Kingdom of God.

Bakke also mentioned that inerrancy is not a Biblical word, however the Bible is the truth, which it does claim for itself. Jesus took the Bible very seriously. I won’t go into the issue of our understanding of verbal plenary inspiration again because I referred to it above. But it is refreshing to hear others grapple with this false cultural understanding of what truth means without demeaning the word of God and recognizing it as God’s truth.

January 17, 2005

Brad Smith talked about four ways we can deal things we tend to have trouble with such as sex, power and money.

Pietistic – I have got to be holy and this is a problem, so I will try to avoid it, hide it or ignore it.

Consumerism – I have got to have it; I want it.

Pragmatic – I will do whatever works.

Stewardship – Steward it well. It is my job to deal with this to maximize God’s agenda.

While I can see the church and myself doing all of these things I think there is a strong tendency for the pietistic approach and the pragmatic approach. What least common view and behavior is the one that God’s wants from us, which is stewardship. Stewardship asks “What is the Lord telling me to do with this? Stewardship is taking care of something that belongs to someone else, God. Knowing the goals of the owner and working towards that goal is what I should be doing. I am responsible but I don’t own that which I am in stewardship of. God is the owner. He is not only the owner of my wealth, he is the owner of my life. As Laura Trautner mentioned in church a couple of weeks ago, I am not the protagonist of my story. When I think of this and the parable of the talents and I look at my life, it causes me to realize how far I fall short. I tend to compare myself with others, which Jesus tells us not to do, instead of looking at the Scripture as my mirror.

I see so many Christians being pragmatic with their wealth rather than stewards of their wealth. This is particularly true of investment. Would Jesus care if the money we made from investment was harming others? Of course he would care. Yet, if I ask that question I am going to get less return on my money. But then, it isn’t my money and Jesus didn’t necessarily call us to a life of comfort, ease, and avoidance of difficulty. My culture and flesh demand that, but Jesus doesn’t. Nor is he impressed if we made a 16% average return this year on our portfolio instead of 7%. The parable of the talents isn’t really implying that God wants more bang for our buck, but rather are we leveraging our resources for his purposes.

I wonder what I would do if I had significant wealth, which I have mentioned above. My reaction of fear of dealing with this is the pietistic approach. However, I should be a steward of this wealth for God’s purposes. There is a dissonance between what I know is right and what I am, at this point, afraid I would do. In other words, it is time to ask the Holy Spirit to start dealing with me on this issue.

Bakke also mentioned that the Puritans never understood business as profit maximization, which would be greed. When source of capital and management of business comes from the same place, the attitude is different than when they are separated. But when those are separated we can do things we wouldn’t do face to face. The source of capital and the management of that capital being in the same community was much more common in years past. The concept of profit maximization is only about 40 years old and comes from Milton Friedman. Yet this is considered an unquestioned doctrine among many today in our society. Yet what would Jesus have us do when our maximization of profit harms someone? Again, we are allowing a pagan culture to drive our values more than Jesus does. Who do we really belong to?

There is nothing wrong with business. In fact I am surprised at how pro business this course has been. But when business is about me instead of helping others it can become sinful. Dennis Bakke’s view of being called to business to be about the Lord’s business is an interesting concept. He does not have to feel guilty about being a millionaire or a billionaire or what ever he is. He only has to steward what God has given him. If God gives him this wealth to do Kingdom work, then do Kingdom work.

Ray Bakke talked about the history of how we got the clergy/laity split. He also explored how this wasn’t really a dichotomy but a trichotomy with three classes of Christians:

Class A – Sacred job in sacred place (dessert or monastery).
Class B – Sacred job in a secular place, i.e. the society.
Class C Christians- secular jobs in secular place.

In fact the Roman Catholic church still call priests secular clergy – monks and nuns are the spirituals.

We have pulled this over into Protestantism and then Evangelicalism. Now we have regular folk who are class C Christians, Class B folk who are pastors, and the real spiritual folk, the Class A Christians, foreign missionaries. I have the M word on my forehead, yet I hate this class system with a passion. This is a real struggle with me and has been a real struggle for Phil and Becca Ault. I still don’t know how to resolve this because by functioning within the system I am functioning in I fail to live what I believe.

Still, I don’t think I am a Class A Christian, or a Class B Christian. I don’t think there is any such thing. There is obedience to a call. I suspect that we will be judged by our obedience and things like stewardship, rather than what position or ministry were had, or how much visible results we had.

Dennis Bakke’s idea of being ordained to work is a tremendous concept. The very thing that he has longed for is what we can provide in house churches. We don’t believe in a clergy/laity distinction. We believe in giftedness, stewardship (although we didn’t use that vocabulary), and call. We, as house churches have a unique opportunity to endorse ordaining everyone to their God given calling and doing that in community. Because we don’t have clergy/laity issues and because we are just getting started we can build this concept of everyone being released into the ministry God as calling into foundation of the DNA of the network. Now that it has become explicit instead of a vague tacit longing it will be more easily dealt with.

I see a potential problem with congregational forms of organization of the Church, just because it is too big. It, by its very size, forces a clergy/laity distinction. I suspect that just by organization alone, we marginalize people away from being “ordained into the ministry through baptism” as Roger Williams conceived it. It will be interesting to see how much clergy/laity DNA the Chinese house church movement has when they have house churches of 300. We will see if my theory holds water or not.

January 19, 2005

Reading the sanctuary

Reverend Lex Braxton “read” his sanctuary for us today. He told us how the church was formed in a cross to represent their Christology. He talked about how the church was also built to represent an African hut and the altar made of African wood to represent their African heritage. The beams made of cedar represented the Pacific Northwest. The stained glass windows were heroes of the African-American church and the older windows represented windows from the old sanctuary that had been donated by significant families which told quite a bit about the politics of the church.

This idea of reading a sanctuary is not new to me but I have rarely seen someone be so intentional about their symbolism. I think we do give clear messages with our architecture, our art and our symbolism. We also need to be aware how the unsaved will read our messages. Besides the things that Lex Braxton mentioned I would also like to read a couple of other things that I noticed in the sanctuary. The centrality and size of the pulpit spoke of the centrality of the preaching of the word of God or at least to preaching. The size also represented the centrality of the pastor. The chairs behind the pulpit spoke of the power of the elder or deacon board, but I noticed that the central chair, right behind the pulpit was larger and taller; again a symbol of the power of the pastor. The area of the pulpit was raised by three steps. This is a symbol of the clergy/laity distinction, with the clergy being more important and more powerful. The cross beams of the cross were used to house a large area for the choir, which means that choral music is important to their worship. The pews were lined up and facing one direction, the chairs on the platform and the pulpit the other. This is another clergy/laity distinction.

I think we need to analyze these things using the concept of sentient boundaries and the message they give to our congregation. If I were a new member in this congregation I would probably be pretty clear that my voice would not be respected and heard. I would not come from one of the old families. I would not be part of the vested power structure and if I felt myself significantly gifted and desiring to minister, I would feel stifled. This is architecture for observation of the ministry, not participation in the ministry in any significant way. As a non-African American I would suspect that I would be further marginalized. However, that would probably be a fair turn of the screw, since African Americans are so marginalized in most U.S. suburban churches for the same reasons.

If I went to this church just one time I would not return, unless it was to visit friends or enjoy a show. This is not a church where I could minister significantly or where I would grow beyond what was given to me by the powers above. Is this any way to significantly mature Christians?
If I were a non-Christian I would get some very significant power messages. If I were a postmodern I would not even think about coming back because of the institutional and power messages. These would be such significant sentient boundaries for me that I just wouldn’t return. I probably would not even be able to articulate this, it would be tacit, but it would keep me out of the Kingdom.

I also noticed something else that was a sentient boundary for me, although it was not in the architecture. Every time that Rev. Braxton mentioned a clergy, he mentioned their titles. For example he would call someone Rev. Dr. so and so. I didn’t even know the protocol on how to handle those two titles together. Frankly, it turned me off. It made the importance of clergy explicit and also that this is a status based culture. Titles are important. Having lived in Latin America for so long, and watching what a status based culture does to the church was uncomfortable. Now, I don’t know how this church deals with status, because I haven’t been able practice participant observation. But if I were doing an ethnography, status would be one of the first things I would zero in on.

This makes me wonder if the African American culture puts emphasis on status because it has always had so little and has been marginalized. It makes me wonder if this status thing is true of all African American culture or if this is a church thing, or even this churches thing. I think I know the answer to this, but I haven’t observed and tested so it is still and opinion. I wonder if Rev. Braxton (I call him that out of respect, because I suspect he would appreciate it) realizes the other messages his sanctuary is sending. However, again this whole status thing would be a big turn off with many postmoderns. However, I have no idea what the postmodern African American culture is like or actually even if they are postmodern; although I suspect they are in many ways.

January 20, 2005

Potential resources for poor communities

· Look for assets and resources that are already here
· Give information transfer and skill transfer by getting a carpenter to train carpentry
· Build asset based development through leverage- force them to green line
· Building Communities From Inside Out – John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight shows how to use assets that are already in the community to build the community- this is a philosophy of empowerment
· Urban equivalent of language/culture is to learn to understand community development-work at least two years before you plan anything.
· You should know how the urban flow of assets in the community

We should learn to do this for community development in simple church

How do we develop a community so that we make contacts for the gospel while developing the community?

One question Ray Bakke asked is “Am I the pastor of the church for this community?” In other words part of what the church is about is beings God’s assistance for the community. We should be a positive influence on the community in more than just spiritual ways. This should include financial, educational, artistic, and cultural to name a few. One of the requirements of an elder is that he be respected in the non-Christian community. This implies that such a person is making significant and positive contact there.

Four types of growing church in the city:

Mega church – people need a upper to worship.

Storefront church – need for intimacy, church as family.

Missional church – give me a chance to do something – can’t join, join a mission group- mission group nominates you when they think you are ready.

Liturgical Churches – something that goes all the way back to the early church – tradition .
How can we use the best of each of these, as house churches, without loosing our integrity? Here are just a few thoughts on how we can gain from each of these models.

Mega church – people need an upper to worship.
We can bring the network together and have significant celebrations. The different models for this type of gathering would in part depend on the size of the network: it could be an encounter, workshop, fair, conference, labyrinth, festival, etc. We should also consider having some part of bigger network celebrations have the involvement of the extended body of Christ and we should consider how to invite the not yet Christian community. They could be ministered to, but we should also consider how we can minister with them and allow them to minister to us. Perhaps we could organize with them the cleaning up of a creek, or vacant lot, the development of a park, or the collection and distribution of clothing, food and medical supplies for the communities needy or the needy in other areas of the world. This cooperation with the community at large is a way to let our light shine and reflect Christ without having a building, and while being a part of the bigger community, not just located in it.

Storefront church – need for intimacy, church as family.
Simple church, done well, already has this in spades. That does not mean we should assume that we can take community and deep commitment for granted.

Missional church – give me a chance to do something – can’t join, join a mission group- mission group nominates you when they think you are ready.

We should view part of our mandate as missional. What ministry is the Holy Spirit leading this individual too. How can we as a community and a network cooperate with the Holy Spirit in seeing this happen? Ministry calling can come to a group, a simple church, network, or multi networks. We should not get caught in the modernist trap of viewing everything as individualistic. We need to allow Christ to lead as different groupings of his body as well as individuals.

Liturgical Churches – something that goes all the way back to the early church – tradition.
How much farther back can we go than to the very beginning? However the earliest church wasn’t liturgical. That does not mean we can not incorporate elements from any point of our 2000+ years of history. Giving the history allows people to realize that they not only are part of the current worldwide body of Christ, but that we have mystical communion with the saints of 20 centuries and every continent. We should not just limit ourselves to liturgical, although we can use these elements, but what about African worship elements, or Latin American or Figian?

I don’t think, personally, that we should get stuck in a rut. When liturgies become ritual there is a tendency for them to lose their meaning for some and deepen their meaning for others. But the reality is that some meaning gets lost for some people in ritual. But, we can still gain the valuable meanings of all of these things. For example, we don’t have to recite the Apostles or Nicene Creeds each time we meet, but when we do we should explain the historical context and the rich meaning. Beating an African drum and participating in African dance may be fun, but if its context and meaning are not developed, we lose an opportunity to deepen in our relationship with Christ and experience Him in the midst of the community.

January 28, 2005

Transformational Leadership As a Two Sided Coin

While talking with Margi about the concept of Transformational Leadership I had a metaphor come to me that I think will be helpful in teaching about transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is like a coin, it has two sides. On the one side, lets call it heads, we have the image of Christ. Every Christian is being conformed to the image of Christ. This is part of the work that God is doing in their life. The image of Christ is His character. This is the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control as well as some other issues, like appropriate confrontation. The character of Christ looks the same in everyone. We should all be gracious, patient and loving.

However there are two sides to the coin. The other side speaks of the unique work that God is doing in every life, this would be “tails” of a European Euro. One side of all Euros is the same, but the other side is determined by the country it comes from. In this metaphor this has to do with the unique talents, personality and giftedness that God is building in the individual. Not every personality is the same, nor should it be. God distributes gifts, talents and experience as He wills. Even the same spiritual gifts may have different manifestation in different people.

We can discern the image of Christ in each individual by comparing their character to the character of Christ revealed in the Scriptures. As said above, this should be uniform. However, each person is uniquely made by God. They will have specific personalities, talents and spiritual gift mixes. This is what God is uniquely doing in their lives and we should not try to mold it to any specific design other than the design that the Maker is weaving in them. This design must be discerned by the power of the Spirit. God could use insight, the gift of discernment, the gift of prophecy, and the Scripture to do this. There is a great danger to try to conform unique individuals into a form that they can not and should not fit. This could be a particular denominational structure, the structure of a seminary, or a cultural structure. If this is not how God has designed them, to try to force them into one of these structures will damage their souls. Further, it will make them feel inadequate, different and out of place, when, in fact, they are just not designed to be that way. Our tendency is to believe that one shape fits all. Since God gifts some to have the gift of tongues, a little logical deduction could lead us to believe that all godly people should speak in tongues. This has been a fallacy with some Pentecostals. One person could struggle with outbursts of anger, while another may sharply express righteous indignation brought on by the gift of prophecy. We need to be careful to understand the unique individual and what God is doing in them so we are not too quick to judge.

Sin has marred the image of Christ in all of us and it requires more than a lifetime for Him to rebuild what we have lost at the fall. The same is true of the unique work God wants to build in us. We have not arrived in Christlikeness, nor have we fully become the unique person God wants us to be. Both the conformity to the image of Christ and becoming the unique person that God wants us to be is spiritual growth. To work on one without the other, would be damaging to the soul. Transformational leadership requires that we do both and at the same time. This is a process of cooperating with God in what He is already doing in the life.

To see what God is doing in conforming an individual to the image of Christ requires careful exegesis of Scripture. This should be done in the community of the Spirit because we are all blind to certain things and the Spirit can not be fully expressed in one individual. In the same way, to help someone become fully the unique individual that God is making them, the individual character needs to be exegeted in community. Again we tend to be blind as individuals so we need the power and insight of the Spirit in community to have a full picture. This may use the gift of discernment of spirits, the gift of prophecy, the gift of wisdom, as well as divinely given insight. It is the job of the community of the Spirit to discern what Christ is doing in the unique individual and cooperate with this supernatural movement. It is not our job to decide what that should look like. To do so is to take on the work of the Holy Spirit and risk damaging a soul.

Spiritual direction and transformational leadership are two ways to view the process of cooperating with God to help shape them into the unique person God wants them to be. Really they are much the same thing. Sometimes spiritual direction is viewed as a deep one on one discipleship process. While I don’t doubt the value of such a relationship, I do doubt the ability of one individual to ask all the right questions and have all the insight necessary for an individual to reach their full God given potential. The individual character must be exegeted in community to have a fully orbed perspective. This does not negate however the value of one on one discipleship or spiritual direction. It does however expose a danger; the danger of the shortsightedness of any spiritual director. A poor spiritual director might be arrogant enough to not see his own warped perspective and inadvertently try to conform someone to his or her own image rather than the image of Christ and the unique work that Jesus is doing in the individual. Therefore, it takes the body of Christ to help disciple an individual. It takes the whole body of Christ that an individual is exposed to for this to fully happen, even if it is not his or her “church”. If someone from another body has a word of prophecy, an insight, an exhortation or discerns something they should be free to speak.

A house church is an ideal setting for this type of discipleship or transformational work to take place. House churches, if healthy, have the intimacy, security and broad perspective necessary for the transformational process to work. However, it is doubtful that a group of six or eight people will have every spiritual gift and adequate insight to have a fully orbed perspective, so they should be willing to rely on other Christians to provide this. In a fairly large house church network there should be adequate spiritual maturity, perspective and giftedness for this to happen.

Finally I think if I were to teach this in a class or group setting in the United States I would bring a set of U.S. commemorative quarters. These are the quarters that represent different U.S. States. I would give a different quarter to each person and ask them to look at the “heads” side of the quarters and have different individuals describe it. I would ask the class if this is a fairly accurate representation of what they are looking at on their quarter. This is like the image of Christ, it looks pretty much the same in every individual.

I would then have them turn over the quarters and have different individuals describe what they see. There would be disagreement because some would have a wedge of cheese from Wisconsin, and others would have a horse from Kentucky. This represents the individual work that Jesus is doing in each person. There is no use arguing about it because each individual is unique and can not fully fulfill what God wants them to be without being unique. To allow someone to be whole, we must cooperate with God on both sides of their coin at the same time, the “standard” part and the “unique part”. If I were doing this same training in Europe I would not insult my European friends with a U.S. metaphor, I would just switch to a set of one Euro coins.