‘Out of complexity, find simplicity.’ – Albert Einstein
This is the quote that begins the book Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. My conversations lead me to believe that pretty much everyone thinks ministry has become way too complicated. Even more fundamentally, life has become too complicated. My life and ministry can testify to this! Problems don’t have easy solutions, many people don’t ‘fit’ easily into the church community, experiences don’t jive with theology, etc.
I’ve been thinking about all the diverse and complex people I’ve encountered in the past few days – people with problems like demon possession, sexual brokenness, divorce, and unemployment. Is there a place for them in the church? How can we simplify what it means to be the church?
Philippians 3:
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Join with others in following my example, brothers …
Are we joining together in following Paul’s example?
26 responses so far ↓
klampert // April 18, 2007 at 2:56 pm |
I am almost done reading the simple church and plan to do a post on my blog as well…great post there.
rickdugan // April 18, 2007 at 3:12 pm |
Thanks. Look forward to reading your take on it.
In practical terms, I think ministry is simplified when we think in terms of discipleship. Occasionally I get overwhelmed with the scope of people’s problems. Last Sunday was a perfect example. After the baptismal service my phone kept ringing with people needing money, people confessing sins, people just lonely and needing to talk, etc. By evening I was extremely depressed.
I’m not a professional counselor. I’m a minister with a simple calling: to tell people that their sins are forgiven and that by believing in Jesus they can enter into new life. Yesterday I finally told someone that I didn’t think it was helpful to keep meeting to discuss his problems. The only thing I could offer is some guidance in learning to rebuild a life centered on faith in Christ. This is discipleship.
I’ve been using ‘Discipleship Essentials’ by Greg Ogden as a starting point in helping people understand basic truth, develop simple spiritual disciplines such as personal devotions and worship, and hopefully catch a vision for making disciples themselves. But I’m also realizing that with so many people coming to Jesus who are way ‘below zero’ in their spiritual, emotional, and social health that I need some tools to address this. I’m currently looking at a simplified version of Neil Anderson’s Steps to Freedom in Christ.
Any other ideas?
klampert // April 18, 2007 at 4:07 pm |
I think having a good discipleship program in place is key.
We also do an overcomers group which is a christ based 12 step program for any life controlling problem…
Andersons steps to freedom is great and would work well in a small group function…And there is purpose driven life which can be done in a small group also
Jon Swanson // April 18, 2007 at 7:19 pm |
In a book on pastoring which is called, i think, the art of pastoring, with the author __ hansen, (how’s that for awkward), the writer says taht his life changed drastically when he quit counseling and starting discipling. In the latter, the focus is not on the problems but the growth as a Christ follower. What hansen discovered is that he ended up spending less time with the same people since discipleship is much harder than counseling. (yes, I know there is a place for trained counselors to do counseling. But I’m not one of them. I refer peopel to them if the challenge needs that)
I am working to follow that advice. Any more I’m asking, “what more do you know about God?” I’m still listening, but I’m adding in assignments. Depending on the spiritual maturity of the person, I’m pushing harder with difficult questions than ever before. And I’m discovering that I’m finding that as I talk to someone that I often stop, stare out the window, realize that the Spirit is talking to me through my own voice, thank God, and then go back to the conversation with the other person.
I’m struggling with the idea of programs.
I’m working hard to help people have the biblical and thinking tools to use in conversations with other people because I think that we all in the Body need to be able to disciple others, to move them along.
none of this answers your question, Rick, but thanks for listening.
rickdugan // April 18, 2007 at 7:28 pm |
I think I asked the wrong question, cuz these are the answers I was looking for.
You’re a couple of steps ahead of me, Jon, but this is exactly what I’m discovering. Discipleship instead of counseling and don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions.
I share your distrust of programs, but I do think that having some tools are helpful. Many of the people I’m working with have English as a second language and/or minimal education, so the tools have to be very simple. I am also doing this cross-culturally and trying to equip others to be able to make disciples.
But I often tell the people I’m training to use the tools that this is just a starting point. You’re going to have to internalize these truths yourself, you’re going to have to trust the Spirit, and you’re going to have to grow in your ability to use the word of God.
rickdugan // April 18, 2007 at 7:36 pm |
‘The Art of Pastoring: Ministry Without All the Answers’ by David Hansen.
Yet another book on my Wish List … sigh.
Amy // April 18, 2007 at 7:49 pm |
Re: the Philippians 3 verses: I never saw this before–”brokenness” just jumped out me as I read the first part of the passage. It is out of our own brokenness that we become disciples–we can do nothing but follow, trust and obey in a truly broken state of heart (Jesus’ term: “poor in spirit”). It is out of our brokenness that we make disciples–inviting others to get into the race in which we strain toward what is ahead, press on…we are running, in a way, from a position of weakness, carried on by and toward the One who has planned, launched, and, most importantly, ocmpleted the Race already.
jon // April 18, 2007 at 8:53 pm |
this from a man who is coming to the land of plenty soon?
Anna // April 18, 2007 at 9:12 pm |
I was reading Philippians 3 just yesterday. Isn’t it funny how God does that? And the thing that jumped out at me was “to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me”. This is it. It’s the answer to every question and the tune to every song. Be a disciple, make disciples. Programs are the beginning, one answer to where to meet people, one venue to train and teach. But personal one on one discipleship is the middle and the end (AND sometimes the beginning).
What we never want to fall into is “doing it this way because we’ve always done it this way.” Because the world is changing faster than the speed of light. I don’t say we have to keep up. But individual relationships are always relevant.
One of the values in the model Jon is talking about – discipleship instead of counseling – is that it is duplicatable. Anyone can do it, all of us can do it. It’s just the working out of our faith together. And it’s about time the church starts asking the hard questions of each other. Because otherwise we stop here.
Whew, sorry, preaching a little bit – to the choir, i suspect.
Laurie Nichols // April 18, 2007 at 11:51 pm |
I think you all must be on the right track, my friends, because when we look at the early church, who was it made up of? The demon possessed, the sexually immoral, the sinners, the destitute…they flocked to Jesus; after His resurrection, He told the 11 to go and make disciples. Didn’t talk about programs. Simplicity is indeed the key, and I wonder at times how we’ve drifted so far off course. But the point is to get back to what we’re called to, which is welcoming them in, and teaching them how to press on toward the goal…
Jon Swanson // April 19, 2007 at 5:38 am |
At the risk of arguing, simplicity of church? simplicity of Gospel? simplicity of what?
I mean, as I reresd your list of conversations, Rick, I know those people, too. It’s takne m three weeks to cover the same list, and I’m still missing one, but…
However, we need a simple faith and a complex web of relationships. We need simple access points so people don’t have to navigate a complex hierarchy, but we need (at times) a complez strucure of caring to help with the complexity of humans fearfully and wonderfully made (and unmade). We need simple devotion but willingness to help people navigate through the social support systems that are available.
On the other hand, the simplicity of an almost daily, 1 hour, discipling process that I’ve been part of for three weeks has been wonderful.
Seek and you will find…the Spirit. Ask and you will receive…the Spirit.
rickdugan // April 19, 2007 at 7:21 am |
All of the above …
Church, gospel, worship, life, etc…
Life *is* complicated. The web of relationships in which I exist not only influence who I am, but they will influence how I spend this day and how I act towards others. And people will react to me in certain ways today based upon things that others have done to them today (or 20 years ago), which will make me react to others in certain ways or say certain things. Things you comment on here may influence a conversation I have with someone else later. Some of these encounters may be small and relatively meaningless. Others may be life changing in good or bad ways. It’s relational chaos theory.
This is why simplicity in church and gospel are so attractive and maybe so necessary. The gospel is simply the forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ. Church is a bit more difficult because its relational (not that the gospel isn’t). Some things can be simplified by making discipleship rather than attraction the primary emphasis (but making the shift can be complicated).
Worship can be simplified by returning to basic liturgy. (Liturgy when combined with discipleship is powerful. In fact, liturgy is a type of discipleship.)
Community can be simplified when it’s focused on the quality of relationships and conversations rather than programs.
Ministry can be simplified when it flows out of a community of believers who are free and willing to use their spiritual gifts and material resources generously for the sake of the Body and the community.
I think that relationships (and life) in general are simplified by grace.
That may be a bit idealistic, and may raise some more questions specifically on how to do this, but I think it’s something many of us are looking for.
rickdugan // April 19, 2007 at 9:13 am |
Two more things …
Faith simplifies things. I believe God is here. I don’t believe he pulls all the strings, but that somehow the strings WE pull he can use for good, and even if we pull some bad ones, nothing can thwart his purposes for creation. God walks with me in every situation. God intervenes and responds to prayer. The interaction is complicated, but trust is simple – though that doesn’t mean its easy.
Second, there’s a difference between simplicity and simplistic. We can strive for simplicity while recognizing that there are no simplistic answers. The dictionary says that simplistic is the characteristic of ignoring complexities. Interestingly, simplicity is the opposite: ‘freedom from deceit or guile;’ or ‘freedom from complexity.’ Wow. Simplistic remains a type of bondage. Simplicity is freedom.
Anna // April 19, 2007 at 1:20 pm |
And yet, and yet. What about programs like the easter egg hunt where 80 kids heard the gospel message? What about programs like breakaway where we serve those who need to re-charge from the strain of 24/7 caretaking of their special needs children? What about programs like teen mops where we provide a safe haven for young moms and training and support and unconditional love?
Are these just a cop out? A complex web we’ve woven because we are unwilling to love our actual physical neighbors? A bring and preach the gospel because we won’t go and preach?
Is it possible to go back from here? Back to Acts Chapter 2? Is it practical? Is it obedience?
rickdugan // April 19, 2007 at 3:00 pm |
Very, very good questions.
I’ll post some thoughts later.
Laurie Nichols // April 19, 2007 at 4:20 pm |
Anna, each of those programs you mentioned was born out of the passion of an individual to reach out to a specific group of people and love them with the love of Jesus. (Which of course you know already.) It would be simplistic to say “Do away with programs.” Could it be that simplicity means waiting for the prompting of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a person or group to coordinate such a program? Simplicity means we don’t manufacture and multiply programs and events because “all the other churches are” or we want to impress people, or “this is what we were doing when our church was big and strong, and somehow bringing this thing back will take us back to the glory days…” It all comes back to motivation, doesn’t it? Loving people for Jesus’ sake and wanting to meet their needs has lots of different faces. Maybe that’s why it feels complicated now. We are in a very needy time in our social history, with more broken families, broken lives. Or is it that the Church has swung ’round again to paying attention to brokenness instead of waiting for people with their act together to walk thru the doors? I don’t know. I suspect that both are true: there are more needs, and the Church is becoming more aware of them. And if Christians–leaders and disciples–aren’t staying close, close, close to the Lord, those needs can seem overwhelmingly complex. Thanks for getting this conversation started, Rick. As always, you spur my thinking in good, deep ways.
go somewhere else. « Levite Chronicles // April 19, 2007 at 5:32 pm |
[...] Filed under: just musing — Jon Swanson @ 11:32 am A couple days ago, Rick Dugan started a wonderful conversation about simplicity and simplifying life, ministry, church. As of this writing, there have been 16 comments from three [...]
desert mom // April 19, 2007 at 11:29 pm |
A great topic, Rick, and a good conversation. I especially liked Jon’s comment regarding a shifting from counseling to discipleship. The author he quoted succinctly states what I’ve been suspecting for years. Guess that is why he is writing books while I struggle with a blog comment! Though I think the shift may be hard going in our theraputic oriented culture. Regarding your ideas request, Rick, I am reading a book now that I think you would enjoy and which would speak to some of the issues you brought up: _Christianity for the Modern Pagan, Pascal’s Pensees_, edited, outlined and and explained by Peter Kreeft. (I would say the title could easily be “for the Postmodern Pagan” as well). This is obviously not a program, per se, but the wonder of the book (I’ve only read about 100 pages so far) is the paradoxicality of Pascal. As humans, we are wretched and we are great. Both. Even after salvation. This is where I think the Andersen material fall short. He tries to tell us that we are no longer wretched, but we know that we are. Maybe an oversimplification, but that is what I remember of Andersen. And since you’ll be book buying soon, here are a couple more titles I think you might enjoy:
_Lost in the Cosmos_ by Walker Percy (on my reading list for this summer–a satirically billed as the “last self-help book.”)
_The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Uses of Faith After Freud_, by Philip Rieff. This book was first published 40 years ago and has just been re-published. Rieff was renowned as a brilliant cultural sociologist and the little I’ve read of him is uncannily prophetic.
Laurie Nichols // April 20, 2007 at 12:25 am |
Desert Mom, I’m glad you mentioned Pascal! “Christianity for Modern Pagans” was the best book I read last year!
rickdugan // April 21, 2007 at 7:35 pm |
I’ve been busy the last day or so with soccer, Monopoly, and a college student party at my house last night. Plus … trying to get ready to teach on ‘clubbing’ tomorrow. I’m really not looking forward to this series, and I wish I had more time to prepare. A group of students have put together a skit to help illustrate the dangers of clubbing as well as what healthy clubbing may look like. I haven’t seen it yet.
There are a number of things that have surfaced in this thread, and I appreciate everyone’s comments. I wish we could all sit down for an hour or two and just talk about these things. But considering we are literally spread around the globe, I guess this is the best we can do!
rickdugan // April 21, 2007 at 7:54 pm |
Re: programs in church. Nothing wrong with programs per se. But the programs need to facilitate redemptive relationships and not exist for themselves. The measure of a good church is not how many relevant programs they have, but if people are being equipped to be followers of Jesus, learning to walk by faith in relationship with God, learning how to be a community formed by the presence of God, and engaging the world around them. While we can’t go back to Acts 2 exactly, we can go back to a relational type of Christian faith. An overemphasis on programs with a lack of emphasis on living out our Christian faith within our existing relationships results in a dualistic Christianity that segregates between the sacred and the secular and reinforces attractional over missional Christian living. When we look at what our programs are trying to accomplish, its always good. But we are doing very little to prepare people to go out into the world to live out their faith.
Counseling vs. discipling: I’m one who has benefited from Christian counseling as well as medication to help manage problems. I think there’s a place for it. But the primary thing the church can offer is not counseling. It’s discipleship. In fact, we’d probably need a lot less counseling if discipleship was taking place. But even when discipleship doesn’t solve our emotional problems, we just continue to obey in faith. You’re right, desertmom, that we are great and wretched at the same time. Embracing both these truths and the God who makes us great in spite of our wretchedness is really the only way to spiritual and psychological wholeness, I think.
Finally, I’m not totally sold on Neil Andersen. I had some of his books in the past but got rid of them. But his theology aside, I think there is a place for taking people through a process of renouncing certain past practices and beliefs (kind of a specific repentance) and affirming their new beliefs and loyalties. Also, on a few occasions I’ve encountered demonic powers that don’t respond to cognative solutions such as Bible studies. Prayer, fasting and actually commanding the spirits in the authority of Christ become necessary. I’ll have to check out those other books as well.
Whew …
The link between discipleship and simplicity is the main thing I’m taking from all of this.
rickdugan // April 21, 2007 at 8:07 pm |
I was just struck by a link between this thread and the Agents or Instruments discussion. Simplifying our living would create more resources for giving. I think the impetus for simplifying could be giving, and visa versa.
The one thing that concerns me about the giving trends of the emerging church is it’s focus primarily on social issues, somehow implying that this is more ’spiritual’ than addressing the spiritual issues of a community. Didn’t we try the social gospel thing a couple of generations ago? Didn’t it fail? Focusing primarily on the social issues of the world or local community is kind of like ‘corporate counseling.’ There’s a place for it, but we need Christian communities defined by faith in God more than their social agenda.
Even the idea of community itself can become in idol of sorts.
Am I right or wrong?
Anna // April 21, 2007 at 9:29 pm |
I wonder if discipleship vs programs is the wrong question, and programs vs. ministries is a better question.
rickdugan // April 21, 2007 at 9:52 pm |
That could be a good distinction. In the churches I work with, I just try to make sure that ministry doesn’t get limited to certain times and places. I also try to cultivate a missional rather than attractional environment.
paul merrill // April 23, 2007 at 9:28 am |
This is a great discussion.
“Even the idea of community itself can become in idol of sorts.”
Totally true. I think anything can become an idol short of the simple worship of Jesus in our words, deeds & thoughts. But “simple” is WAY hard.
As to simplicity, we are dreading the necessitated switch away from simplicity in our soon move back to the USA. Life is so simple here in Kenya for us. We’ll greatly miss that aspect.
24/7 caffeine patches are not my idea of fun. (Great little bit on that in the kids’ movie, “Meet the Robinsons” that we saw this past weekend.)
rickdugan // April 26, 2007 at 8:53 am |
Paul … my friend Chris sent me an mp3 clip of Timothy Keller talking about legalisms in the Emerging Church. On the one hand, the EC is rightly rejecting individualism and the presentations of the gospel that are merely doctrinal and ignore the ’story’ behind it all. On the other hand, they have a tendency towards being nothing more than invitations to join a community of people who are not living for themselves. You don’t hear much about the grace of God, faith, and discipleship. But lots of talk about community. Missional churches can also fall trap to this.
This is part of my problem with the whole idea of the kingdom of God as it is discussed in Emerging circles. ‘Living out the kingdom’ as they describe it means that God gives us a certain agenda/values and we need to make those things happen. As a South African friend of mine describes it, this is just neo-legalism. God remains removed from the equation other than to give us a list of instructions. For the Judaizers those instructions had to do with bacon and circumcision. For certain American fundamentalist groups, it had to do with alcohol and movies. And for the Emerging churches, it has to do with ending poverty in our generation. In the end, it doesn’t matter what the standard is or what the agenda is. Legalism is legalism.
This is hard to articulate, but I see the neo-legalism of the emerging church as macro-legalism or community-based legalism. At best, legalism is trusting in our good works to accomplish God’s purposes (whether that’s personal holiness or environmental reform) rather than trusting in God and letting him work through us. At worst, legalism is an attempt at cultural, religious, political, or economic engineering – controling others and making them like us.
It’s all got to get away from the agenda (whatever it is) and back to simple faith and trust in God. The church is not defined by an agenda, but by her relationship with God. We have this relationship with God not because we share his agenda, but because we simply acknowledge our sinfulness and trust in his grace and mercy. Faith.
So when I address issues of poverty or injustice, it is the fruit of faith rather than proving that I am living according to kingdom values. A subtle yet vital difference, I think.