Category Archives: Discipleship/Formation

Desert Fathers and Western Christianity

Over time I have become more convinced, not less, of the application of the radical simplicity of the Desert Fathers of the 3rd t0 5th centuries. They fled to the desert in order to seek God and eventually serve as a life raft for a church that had become almost indistingishable from the world. The church in the West is in a very similar state. The answer begins with us as pastors and leaders of God’s flock, I believe. As Tolstoy once said, “Everybody wants to change the world, but noone thinks of changing himself.” I think he was right. There is only one pathway – the pathway of Jesus. Ronald Rolheiser in The Holy Longing outlines this as the only way to profound transformation. We repeat it over and over again in our walks with Christ. 1. Name your deaths (Good Friday) 2. Claim your births (Easter) 3. Grieve for what you have lost and adjust to the. Read more.

Impatience and Leadership

Now that we are entering fully into new year here at NLF and the flurry of activity that goes with it, I find myself feeling the winds and waves of our culture, demonic forces behind that, and my own tendency to do my will and get caught up in the anxiety around me. I am reminded of Tertullain (155 – 222 AD), a church leader and prolific author of early Christianity), said that it is God’s nature to be patient, and that when the Holy Spirit descends, patience and waiting is always on its side. Eugene Peterson once remarked that “impatience is the besetting sin of pastors.” The more I ponder that remark, both in my life and in Scripture, I think he may be right. It is a deep, wide root out of which many other smaller sins fall – at least in my life. I medidated deeply this morning on Psalm 27. Read more.

The American Consumer Church and the Gospel

One of the texts I spent the summer meditating and memorizing is the account of Peter saying, “Never Lord” when Jesus informs him about suffering and the cross (Matthew 16:21-26). I understand Peter and his commitment to avoid pain. Don’t we all? So I am spending time with God, with our staff, pondering what it means, truly, to lead our people to Jesus. I am concerned at how I (we) too might be creating a Jesus I think I want or need. The following excerpt from Eugene Peterson’s The Jesus Way (Eerdmans, 2008) sums it up well: If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and most effective way to get them into our congregations is to identify what they want and offer it to them, satisfy their fantasies, promise them the moon, recast the gospel in consumer terms: entertainment, satisfaction, excitement, adventure, problem-solving, whatever…We are the world’s champion consumers, so why shouldn’t we have state-of-the-art consumer churches? . Read more.

Disneyland, the Church and our Success

I am wrestling. Wrestling with I observe and experience in the North American church. I, along with many of you, am passionate for people to know Christ as well as for the church to be the church – i.e. healthy, growing into adulthood, mature, full of the life of Jesus per Eph. 4:11-16. I love the church. More importantly Christ does also. When I visit with other traditions (e.g. Orthodox, Roman Catholic, monastic), part of my tension is their lack of cultural relevance to communicate Jesus Christ into our culture. I see few young people. When I visit evanglical churches, the over-concern for growth in numbers seems to overshadow any time for genuine formation. Shallowness prevails. Dr. David Wells, a professor at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary recently published a book The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World. While I am not in agreement with everything he says or writes (I actually had. Read more.

George Whitfield and Applying the Gospel

I returned this week from 5 weeks away and began the difficult transition of coming down off the mountaintop of being away with God for a sabbatical rest (i.e. vacation) and returning to the ordinary, the mundane, the imperfect, the very real work of life. The work of bills, house, cars, parenting our four girls, congregants with cancer, families in crisis, a sermon to finish and the rest of what makes up pastoring a church. It sure is easier to be a contemplative away from it all! I am sobered by my limits and body resisting too much activity after time away. By God’s grace, I am trying to listen to the Spirit in my body/spirit to live slowly. Each year I teach a course for 3 consecutive weeks on a book of the Bible. This year it is Galatians and the theme of Sonship and the gospel, one of the greatest contributions of the. Read more.

Reflections on a Weekend with the Trappists

This was my fifth retreat with the 70+ monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts. Maybe since it was the end of my 6 weeks away from the responsibility of leading New Life, but I entered into a deep calm, silence and rhythm with their life almost immediately. One of the highlights of the weekend was a conversation with Father Kizito Kwame, a West Indian who has been with them for 49 years. He joined at the age of 17 when the monastery was at its height (1958-1960) of 200 monks. He recently returned from 10 years of serving among the 25 Trappist monasteries in Africa. A part of me so longed to remain on the mountaintop with God and not leave return to checkbooks, house, problems, needs, noise and traffic of NYC, that I complained to him for a while, shared with him this inner compulsion I often feel to be a monk, etc.. Read more.

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