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An Interview With Brad Brisco on Missional Living

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Last week I posted a review of Brad Brisco and Lance Ford’s Missional Essentials here.  Brad has graciously agreed to answer some questions I sent him about missional living.  I hope you’ll find this encouraging and helpful.  My thanks to Brad for his willingness to do this.

 

I wonder if you could offer a good definition of “missional” for those who may be unfamiliar with the word?

I usually say I have a short answer and a long answer when defining missional. The short answer is that missional is simply the adjective form of the noun missionary. Therefore missional, like any other adjective, is used to modify or describe a noun. So when we use the phrase “missional church” we are simply saying that the church is a missionary entity. The church doesn’t just send missionaries, but the church is the missionary.

However in most cases that very brief definition isn’t enough. To provide a more comprehensive way of understanding the word I will talk about core characteristics that should inform the way we understand the missional concept? I believe there are at least three major theological distinctions that help to undergird the missional conversation. Without such a foundation we run the risk of simply attaching the word “missional” onto everything the church is already doing, and therefore ignoring the necessary paradigmatic shift. Those three key theological foundations include: 1.) The missionary nature of God and the church; 2.) Incarnational mission; and 3.) Participation in the missio Dei.

How would a “missional church” look different from an “evangelistic church”?

I think the best way to answer that is to say a missional church is one that is organized around, informed by, and/or catalyzed by mission. In other words, the programs and activities of the church are shaped by God’s mission. Therefore, it is not just about having a “missions” department, or an evangelistic committee, but everything the church does has a missionary component. The reality is that the nature or essence of the church is rooted in the nature of a missionary God. If God is a missionary God (which He is) then we as His people are missionary people. Every member is to think think and act like a missionary in their local context.

I’ll be honest:  I’ve resisted studying the missional movement mainly because of a sense of “movement fatigue.”  But Missional Essentials as well as a number of conversations with people I truly respect has led me to think that what’s happening here is really quite important.  Still, for the skeptical part of me, is this all just a fad?  Twenty years from now, will we look at the word “missional” the way most of now look at the phrase “seeker sensitive,” as kind of a quaint moniker that came and went as so many trends do?

I think what is different here is two fold. First this is not a recent phenomenon. Serious theological reflection around missional thinking has been talking place since the 30’s with Karl Barth. Later in the International Missionary Councils in the 50s and 60s. Later through the influence of Lesslie Newbigin, David Bosch and others. It has deep theological and missiological roots. Second, because it has such roots it is not a renewal movement, but instead is a missiological movement. It is not about strategies, human ingenuity or church growth techniques, but instead it is about recapturing the missionary nature of the church.

Are there examples in church history of movements that we might call “missional”?

I think there have been many times in church history when the people of God understood themselves as a sent people. In large part it has been in the last four decades, as the result of church growth mentality, that the church moved from being a “go and be” people to a “come and see” people. The church growth movement put too much emphasis on how to get people to come participate in what the church was doing. With our actions we told the world that if they wanted to know Jesus they needed to come be with us, and be like us. Rather than seeing ourselves as the missionary people of God who are sent to where people are.

I’m curious to know whether or not you think the presence of church sanctuaries and architecture undermines missional living conceptually?

Buildings certainly do not have to be a hinderance. They can become that if the emphasis is on getting people to come to the building, but the reality is that we are a called and sent people of God. We do still need to gather together for worship, study, prayer, etc. We can and should gather together to be equipped to be sent out to participate in what God is already doing. I love the Lesslie Newbigin quote about the church when he states: “[The church] is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave but to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God’s kingship.”

You write a lot about the missional use of our homes.  It has resonated deeply with my wife and me and we are now involved in discussions about home stewardship and reaching our neighborhood.  Should we abandon the idea of the home as an escape?  Should we feel guilty about closing the blinds and doors and unwinding?  Where do we draw the lines on this?

We have to use wisdom in knowing where healthy boundaries need to be set. But in most cases, Christians look at their homes as places of security rather than a vehicle for biblical hospitality. Our focus on the family as a place of safety has been disastrous for missional living. We must learn to overcome our fears and open our lives and our homes up to others. We must welcome the stranger!

What do you see as the great challenges to missional living within the institutional North American church?

There are several challenges, including fear of the world, living lives without time margins, consumerism, and the idol we have created called the American dream.

Finally, how have you and your family lived missionally in your community?  What lessons have you learned?

I like to frame living out missionality in three arenas; where we live, work and play. Where we live includes being a good neighbor to those we live around and opening up our home. Where we work is about vocation. We must rethink what it means to contribute to and participate in God’s mission through our work. And where we play has to do with engaging social space in our community. We must engage Third Places and public space. We must have eyes to see and ears to hear what God is doing in our community and neighborhoods. We must then ask how He wants us to participate in what He is already doing.

Brad Brisco and Lance Ford’s Missional Essentials

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46092205Some months ago, Dave McClung of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention wanted to know if I would like to participate in one of a few small groups working through Missional Essentials by Brad Brisco and Lance Ford.  Now, Dave is a cool, eclectic, smart, well-read guy with a deep love for the church and a keen eye on how the church engages culture.  Furthermore, I have for some time now regretted the fact that I have never seriously wrestled with the whole missional concept , so I said yes.

Missional Essentials is a workbook, though it has some strong sections of insightful prose on the missional church as well.  It is an insightful primer to missional thinking as well as a practical challenge to many of the assumptions undergirding the institutional church today.  The reading sections are helpful and make very good use of other sources and the workbook interaction sections do a good job of (a) leading the reader to interact with scripture and (b) challenging the reader to think through the practice of missional living.

In essence, the missional movement is calling the church to see itself as a missionary in its culture.  What this means is that the local church should stop seeing itself as an entity that engages in mission projects and trips and instead should see itself as the mission project.  What this means is that church doesn’t send out missionaries, the church is God’s missionary.  Therefore, all believers are to embrace missional living, in and through their church, to be sure, but in their neighborhoods as the church preeminently.  If you have grown up in the conservative, institutional, North American church, you will readily get what is so revolutionary about this thought and against what fallacious ecclesiological concepts it is pushing.

I would caution you in one way about reading Missional Essentials:  if you do not want to be seriously unsettled in your complacency concerning loving and reaching your neighbors, do not read this work.  This workbook, especially the last third of it, really engages the reader with pretty direct questions about whether or not we love our neighbors, are actively forming relationships with them, and are being good stewards of our homes.  It has certainly caused me to have a number of conversations with my wife about developing a strategy to reach the streets on which we live.

I have every intention of leading Central Baptist Church through this study.  I believe this is fantastic, biblical, soul-stirring stuff that I, for one, desperately needed to hear.

Simon Blackburn’s Lust: A Review

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In 2002 and 2003, the New York Public Library and Oxford University Press hosted seven lectures on the seven deadly sins.  The lecturers were from various fields and approached the topics from differing angles.  The lecture on lust was delivered by Simon Blackburn.  His lecture, along with the others, were all later published as a series of books on the sins.  I noted this when these first came out about a decade ago, but I remembered it specifically some weeks ago when I was preparing to preach on Jesus’ words concerning lust from the Sermon on the Mount.  I was happy to see that philosopher Simon Blackburn’s volume, Lust, was available on Kindle, and I found it to be an interesting if saddening read.

I knew, of course, that I would not be reading a Christian take on lust, but I was interested nonetheless to see how a philosopher like Blackburn would approach the subject.  Again, the book is very interesting and I actually drew a number of illustrations from it for the sermon.  Blackburn is at his best in trying to define lust and in giving illustrations, often literary, of what lust is.  He defines lust as “essentially the anticipation of the pleasures of sexual activity” and notes that “lust is not only desire, but desire that is felt, the storm that floods the body, that heats and boils and excites” (Kin.Loc.171,178).  His summary definition is helpful:

Putting it all together, we are talking about the enthusiastic desire, the desire that infuses the body, for sexual activity and its pleasures for their own sake, and from now on that is what we shall take lust to mean.

Blackburn makes some memorable observations (“Living with lust is like living shackled to a lunatic.” Kin.Loc.63) as well as some patently absurd ones (“Sexual climax…drives out prayer, which is part of the church’s complaint about it.” Kin.Loc.223).  He does rightly show that some Christians have taken a tragically low view of sex itself.  I would simply want to point out, however, that Scripture itself does not take this low view, and that the view that sex is inherently dirty or wicked is a blasphemous notion to orthodox Christians who see creation as good.  Sex is not dirty, but the abuse or misappropriation of it is.

Anyway, his survey of approaches to lust, religious and otherwise, is indeed interesting and helpful, but Blackburn’s great error is in his dismissal of the Christian sexual ethic and in his possible caricaturing of it as well.  Blackburn’s personal conclusion is rooted in Thomas Hobbes’ notion of lust as a movement towards human completion.  He likens lust, when it is reciprocated, as something of a symphony, a relationship between two people in which lust acts as an agent of longing for unity.

What is interesting about this is that, as I read it, this mitigates a bit against Blackburn’s own earlier definition of lust as a desire for sex in itself.  What Hobbes seems to be describing would be something like mutual desire leading to completion.  As a believer, that is seen as a good thing so long as the sexual act of completion is reserved for the bonds of matrimony.  But lust itself is, I would say, a pernicious longing for pleasure that is dependent upon the objectification of another as an object of pleasure.  Which is simply to say that what makes lust a sin is its consumerism and objectification devoid of God and residing in a vacuum of the self.  It seeks to own and to use.  It does not desire reciprocal motions.

Reading philosophers is always a bit of a challenge, for it’s never really clear what exactly they’re saying, but as I understand Blackburn I think what we have here is simply a green light for a kind of benevolent lust that does not seek to harm another.  As a Christian, this view of human sexuality is naive, for it does not honor the divine intent of the marriage bed and it does not take into account the effects of lust on the human heart.  Lust is never benevolent.  It is always selfish.

It really is a very dangerous sin.

Timothy Keller’s The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness

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I picked up The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness at the 2013 Gospel Coalition meeting in Orlando, FL.  It’s a helpful booklet that is essentially an exposition of 1 Corinthians 3:21-4:7.  In it, Keller extols the Christian virtue of self-forgetfulness.  He points to Paul’s assertion that he, Paul, did not live his life under the bondage of what others thought about him or even what he thought about himself.  Rather, Paul’s sense of self and of value came from who he was in Christ.

Keller does a good job of handling the text and of critiquing the modern culture of self-esteem and self-affirmation.  He points out the danger of ego and self-reliance and points instead to a healthy sense of self-forgetfulness and reliance on Jesus for one’s sense of worth.

It’s a very simple, short work that would be an encouragement to anybody bound up in concerns about what others think of him or her.

Umberto Eco’s Confessions of a Young Novelist

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Like most of Eco’s non-fiction work (and, now that I think of it, like most of his fiction as well) these essays are a difficult-to-categorize and spell-binding collection of illuminating insights, esoteric observations, literary references, and fascinating hypotheses.  This intriguing book is ironically and humorously entitled Confessions of a Young Novelist (ironic and humorous given Eco’s age).  It is a collection of the four Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature that Eco delivered at Harvard University.

There’s a great deal of literary theory in this book.  I found much of this enlightening, though a lot of it was technical and simply beyond me.  However, I suspect that any layman reading this book would appreciate Eco’s insights, even though the more easily grasped insights are sometimes buried in a sea of verbiage that, for me anyway, was not terribly accessible.  Let me quickly add, though, that if you intend to read anything Eco has written you’ll need to get accustomed to this.  Without fail, the insights are worth the wading it takes to get to them, and the wading is not without its own profit.

I did appreciate Eco’s pushback on the more radical fringes of postmodern literary theory.  He tellingly voices his suspicion that the “rights of the interpreter” have likely been overstressed today.  I have no doubt that’s the case.  It certainly is the case in the realm of biblical interpretation.  It was refreshing to see Eco push back against the idea of the utter meaninglessness of texts, even while his view is nuanced and complex.

His discussion of fiction and non-fiction was very interesting indeed.  I was struck by his noting the effect that fiction can have on the people who read it.  This can be extreme, as in the case of “the Werther effect,” or humorous, as in the examples of people writing Eco who do not seem to understand that his fiction is actually fiction.

The last essay was devoted to lists.  Eco has written an entire book on lists and their function within writing and literature.  Among the many uses of lists, the most interesting that he mentions are lists created in an effort to express the inexpressible, that is lists written with an eye toward created a sense of transcendence.  The chapter is filled (note: filled) with fascinating lists, many created by Eco himself and from his own works.  I suppose it is a mark of Eco’s genius that he could make a subject like lists interesting and thought-provoking, which he does here.

This is an eclectic little book, that, like his co-authored work, This is Not the End of the Book, will fascinate, occasionally befuddle, and frequently challenge the reader.

Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere’s This is Not the End of the Book

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If you are a bibliophile, you simply must read this book.  This is Not the End of the Book is a transcribed conversation between the great Italian novelist Umberto Eco and French writer and playwright Jean-Claude Carriere on books.  Yes, a book of two guys discussing books.  The two were interviewed by Jean-Philippe Da Tonnac on various questions concerning books, collecting books, whether or not books will survive the internet, the nature of libraries, threats to books, past, present, and future, and the history and future of books.  Eco and Carriere are both avid book collectors.  Eco estimates his collection to be around 80,000 volumes and Carrier, 50,000, many of which are antiquarian.

The conversation is enthralling.  I had a great deal of trouble putting the book down.  I mainly bought it because I try to read Eco whenever I can, but, in truth, Carriere’s comments were fascinating as well.  It is a dizzying, often humorous conversation filled with arcane and eclectic insights.  It is replete with fascinating anecdotal stories about the authors’ personal encounters with books.  It is also filled with references to the history of book making and the history of books in general.

It is hard to describe this book because it is so all over the place!  But if you think you would enjoy sitting in the corner of a room listening to two brilliant, eclectic minds discussing all things book related, you really should get a copy of this work.

Giorgio Agamben’s The Church and the Kingdom

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It’s rare that I’ll pick up a book I do not know from an author I’ve never heard of from the Philosophy section of a Barnes & Noble, but that is precisely what I did with Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s The Church and the Kingdom.  I did so because I have been thinking a great deal lately about precisely those realities (i.e., the church and the kingdom) and because I thought a different take on the question might be, at most, illuminating and/or, at least, interesting.  I’ve been thinking about these things lately because working through the Sermon on the Mount on Sunday mornings has (thankfully) forced me to do so.  It is not a new concern or a new question.  Indeed, for two millennia Christians have been discussing these questions:  What is the church?  What is the Kingdom of God?  How is the church to operate in the world?

What struck me about Agamben’s little book is that it is, ostensibly, from an outsider, yet it is from somebody who has obviously thought deeply about the question at hand.  Agamben is apparently one of a number of modern philosophers who are interacting with theology today.  It is an intriguing turn of events, and one about which I know very little as I do not read much in continental philosophy.  But it is, as I say, intriguing nonetheless.  I have long thought that we can learn a great deal by listening to how those outside of the church speak about the church, though there are obvious limitations to such observations as well.  That is precisely what Agamben is doing here.  (I should say that I do not know whether or not Agamben is a believer.)

This book consists simply of a sermon that Agamben delivered in Paris at Notre Dame Cathedral in March of 2009 in front of the Bishop of Paris and other church officials.  It has been translated into English by Leland De La Durantaye of Harvard University who also provides a helpful reflection on the sermon in an Afterword entitled, “On Method, the Messiah, Anarchy and Theocracy.”  Furthermore, the book is a beautiful little work consisting of compelling photographs by Alice Attie.

Agamben’s primary thesis is that the New Testament envisions the Church as abiding within “messianic time.”  Messianic time is not chronological time (i.e., historical time) and neither is it the time that begins at the consummation of all things.  Rather, it is the time between those two times.  It is a time within chronological time that began with the resurrection of all things.  It is Kingdom time, the Kingdom that Christ Jesus came to usher in.

Agamben is arguing that Paul did not see the Church as simply waiting within chronological time for the coming of the Kingdom at the end of all things, but rather that the Kingdom has come now and is coming yet (shades of George Eldon Ladd here).  That means that our very lives and vocations are revolutionized by the breaking in of Messianic time into chronos (Agamben does not use the chronos/kairos distinction, but it seems to be connected to what he is saying).

Let me suggest that Agamben has actually been a pretty faithful biblical interpreter in arguing this point, as I understand him.  The New Testament does indeed view the Kingdom as “already/not yet” and, I believe, does indeed view the current time of the pilgrim church as a kind of time within the times.  What is unclear about Agamben’s proposal is whether or not he has an overrealized eschatology, that is whether or not he is weighing the “already” so much more than the “not yet” that it lets the latter die the death of a thousand qualifications.  This is not necessarily the case, especially as Agamben does acknowledge the “not yet” aspect of the Kingdom.  On the other hand, in pointing to the linguistic commonalities between paroikousa (i.e., sojourners) and parousia (seeing the root of each as a call for immediacy and “nowness”), I do wonder if there is room in Agamben’s eschatology for the future, though imminent, return of Christ.  Regardless, the upshot of Agamben’s concerns is clear enough:  by losing a sense of Messianic time, the Church has become simply one of many institutions within chronological time.  The Church, then, has lost a sense of ultimate things and has become simply one more purveyor of temporal power.

Now, I rather suspect Agamben has a particular goal while speaking in a Roman Catholic Church to Catholic authorities, but as an American Protestant I see application as well.  Agamben is correct to suggest that the Church should not forsake its place in the Kingdom of God in order for inordinate fixations on the power structures of the kingdom of the world.  He is correct that if the Church diminishes itself to a merely human organization within mere chronological time, it is setting itself up to suffer the inevitable fate of all merely human organizations.  For me, Agamben’s cautions are worth heeding for those Christians who would like to see the Church become simply another political party.

Agamben’s primary concern may be political.  I do not know.  What I do know is that this Italian philosopher, believer or not, has (largely) correctly diagnosed a major malady in much ecclesial life today:  namely the abandonment of our Kingdom identity rooted in the time-altering act of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for the a paltry place at the table of modernity and its numerous special interest groups.

We are to be salt and light, showing the verities and values of a greater Kingdom.  That includes responsible citizenship and political involvement to be sure, but it is much, much more.

Reflections on Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World

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I’ve fallen into the habit of listening to audio books as I drive (through the Audible app on my Kindle).  This is because I realize I will never be able to read all of the great books I’d like to read in my lifetime and, at the least, this gives me the opportunity to hear stories that I may be familiar with but have not actually read.  On a practical note, it has made driving a lot more enjoyable and informative!

The last three books I’ve listened to are Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  I’ve long been a sucker for the futuristic and apocalyptic genre, be it Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz or McCarthy’s The Road or Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or others along those lines.  Viewing depictions of what the future might look like holds a fascination that, I trust, need not be explained.  What is striking is the shared note of pessimism among these works.  As I listened to 1984 and Brave New World in particular, I was struck by both the similarities and differences between the two books.

For instance, both books depict a terrifying version of the future consisting of totalitarian governments, the dehumanization of the populace, extreme social conditioning from on high, rigid, prescribed caste systems, and the obliteration of Christianity.  A kind of religion survives in Brave New World around Fordism, the worship of “Ford,” based on Henry Ford (thus, the triumph of consumerism and mechanization).  The old Christian crosses have had their tops sawed off, making them all into upper-case “T’s,” evoking, no doubt, the image of Ford’s Model-T.

In both stories there is a “hero” who gradually awakens to the horror of the society in which he finds himself.  In 1984, it’s Winston and Julia.  In Brave New World it’s John, “the savage,” and, to some extent, Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson.

John and Winston both feel the need for a sense of transcendence to help them escape the suffocating confines of State-sanctioned reality.  Winston says this to O’Brien, though he denies he believes in God.  Even so, he appeals to something more, the human spirit, he suggests, or something along those lines.  John, on the other hand, holds to the strange, syncretistic version of God he received on “the Savage Reservation.”  In both stories, the heroes feel that there must be more than State-constructed reality.  Yet in both stories the heroes end in despair and defeat, unable to change the social structure or see the victorious intrusion of greater transcendent reality into their bleak worlds.

In both stories, books are outlawed, individuality is suppressed, free thought is unacceptable, and a suffocating collectivism defined and controlled by the State is enforced.

The differences are striking too.  For instance, Orwell depicts a future of government-enforced sterility.  Sex is essentially outlawed and taboo.  Huxley, on the other hand, depicts a hyper-sexualized society in which sex has not been outlawed so much as desacralized.  Children’s erotic games are encouraged, monogamy and marriage are unheard of, and promiscuity is a virtue.  Sex is simply a mechanical diversion for the pleasure-seeking people.  In this, Huxley was certainly more prophetic than Orwell.

War is another difference.  Orwell depicts the future as one of constant if largely imaginary war.  War is always in the air as a means of keeping patriotic fervor at a fever pitch.  Not so in Huxley’s future.  There is no war and there are no conflicts.  Indeed, the masses are controlled by the euphoria-producing drug, soma, as well as constant tappings of the conditioning the brainwashed people have all undergone since birth.

Another difference is Orwell’s prolonged depiction of State-controlled historical rewriting.  In 1984, Big Brother is constantly rewriting history and controlling it.  Teams of workers, like Winston, spend their days rewriting bits of newspaper articles to make them fit more neatly into the State-approved version of reality.  In Brave New World, the story of the past is allowed to be what it is because the people have been conditioned to find it repulsive (i.e., that people used to born literally of their mothers ((and not in laboratories)) and live in families and marry a single person, etc.).

These two works have affected me pretty deeply, especially where they seem prophetic (which they frequently do).  The disintegration of the family, the conditioning of people to think certain ways, hatred of Christianity and what it stands for, the unquestioned orthodoxy of State-constructed and media-supported narratives of reality, the redefining of ethical mores, homogenous collectivism around, again, State-defined guidelines, political correctness, the dissolution of the Christian sexual ethic (in one way or another), the reduction of human beings to consumers, the redefining of words and language, etc.  It all has a too-close-for-comfort feel about it.

Let me quickly say that I am no Chicken Little.  I do not claim that we live in either Orwell’s or Huxley’s nightmarish visions at present, nor that we necessarily will.  I simply claim that there is an eerie familiarity to certain themes and imaginings that one finds in these books, especially when one compares these themes to certain trends in our country.  Regardless of their accuracy, these books are necessary if flawed warnings about what could be.

For this reason, if for no other, they should be taken seriously.

G.K. Chesterton’s St. Francis of Assisi

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Chesterton’s little biography of St. Francis is essential reading, not only because of its penetrating insights into the magnificent person of Francis but also because of its insights into the magnificent person of Chesterton.  It is not a conventional biography, but then it is not a conventional subject, much less a conventional author. (See how you start sounding like Chesterton when you type right after reading Chesterton?! Ha!)  Rather, it is a spiritual biography of Francis of Assisi that seeks to explore a matter more interesting than the details surrounding his life, mainly, Francis’ actual mind and heart.

The book does assume some knowledge of Francis, but, in truth, enough of the rudimentary details of his story are provided where the reader with no knowledge of Francis will not be completely lost.  Still, if Chesterton’s approach is confusing, it may be better to read one of the more fundamental biographies available today, probably Omer Englebert’s work (which is at least available on ebook format).

What Chesterton does (with uncanny but, for him, typical brilliance) is draw the reader into the mind-boggling simplicity and singleness of vision that characterized Francis’ view of life after breaking with his old way of life as the son of Pietro di Bernardone.  Chesterton treats Francis sympathetically, describing him as a man who, quite literally, started over.  When Francis gave himself to God, embracing the principles of poverty, charity, and obedience, he did so with a startling purity and, some might say, naiveté.  Chesterton is at his best when defending this naiveté.  He recognizes the danger of trying to institutionalize or force these virtues on all of Christendom in the way that Francis embraced them personally, arguing that it was more necessary for Francis to be absorbed into Christendom than for Christendom to be absorbed into Francis, but he sees Francis nonetheless as a necessary and crucial reminder and challenge to the church and the world.

Chesterton fairly marvels, as any observer must, at Francis’ courage and daring.  His treatment of Francis’ attempt to convert the Muslims to Christianity during the Crusades is fascinating and insightful.  Furthermore, Chesterton’s treatment of Francis’ “ignorance” (in his discussion of Francis as a poet) was really well done.

Along the way, Chesterton rightly skewers the skepticism of the modern world, specifically regarding the more fantastic stories surrounding Francis (which Chesterton, himself, does not necessarily buy hook-line-and-sinker), but more generally regarding the modern penchant of swallowing camels and straining on gnats.  He is right to do so, and Chesterton is at his best in pointing out these modern hypocrisies.

Above all, however, this book, more than any Chesterton book I have ever read, is amazingly inspirational.  There are times when your heart soars reading a book like this.  I suspect that part of this is the similarity between Chesterton and Francis.  Now, of course, there are MANY dissimilarities.  Chesterton could not be called a champion of self-discipline and restraint!  However, they both maintained a kind of childish wonder at the world that God has made.  They both evidenced a purity of faith.  They both, in a sense, lived lives quite against the current of the cultures into which they were born.  One can imagine Chesterton laughing at a bird just as easily as one can imagine Francis doing the same, and both from the same deep theological storehouse.

Chesterton is no Francis.  Chesterton himself would say that very quickly.  But it is hard to imagine a writer who could understand Francis like Chesterton did, or who, in ways fascinating and compelling, saw the world in the same way.

This a very good book.

Read it.

Eric Geiger, Michael Kelley, and Philip Nation’s Transformational Discipleship

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I was asked to read this book for a LifeWay pastor’s conference I’ll be attending in a couple of weeks.  In general, I would rather choose what I would like to read than be assigned it, a shallow fault I’ve had since middle school.  However, I really did appreciate Transformational Discipleship.  The book is a careful, studied, and measured look at how genuine discipleship actually happens.  It is based on an extensive LifeWay study that was the basis for the earlier Stetzer/Rainer book, Transformational Church.

In this book, the authors describe what they call the “Transformational Framework.”  The framework is depicted as three circles representing the three realities of “Truth,” “Leaders,” and “Posture.”  The authors look at “Truth” through a consideration of the gospel, our identity in Christ, and the Christian disciplines.  They look at “Leaders” by discussing what healthy leadership is.  They consider “Posture” with a discussion of weakness, interdependence, and outward focus.  Within the framework, the “Transformational Sweet Spot” is that area where these three realities overlap, and can be defined as “the intersection of truth given by healthy leaders when someone is in a vulnerable posture.”

Now, I’m hesitant about buzzwords (i.e., “Transformational Sweet Spot,” etc.), but the authors are making a very good point:  true transformation comes about when solid leadership imparts solid truth to a person who is in a position to receive it.  The basic premise is that the appropriate convergence of truth, humility, and a godly leader is critical for growth in discipleship.  There is a great pastoral challenge here, which the authors rightly return to time and again:  the challenge for pastors not to miss these moments for great transformation in the lives of our people or in our own lives.

The book is well-written, solidly biblical, and helpfully illustrated.  I appreciated the fact that not all of the illustrations were modern.  In fact, many are taken from antiquity and church history.  There is an earnestness about this work that is engaging.  The authors seem truly convinced of the importance of what they are doing.  Their discussion of the gospel was particularly helpful, and they offered some very helpful reminders about the need to understand who we are in Christ.  Furthermore, I appreciate their take on the need for a humble posture to receive divine truth.

As a leader, I found this work appropriately challenging and full of significant content.  I look forward to discussing it in the conference to come, as well as in thinking more deeply about what is being proposed here and how it can effect my own pastorate.