Living Near One Another

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Lewie Clark

Ed is a Jewish friend of mine here in Chicago. Often what to him is a simple side comment is a profound insight to me. Recently he said in passing, “It is unthinkable for a Jew not to live within walking distance of his community.” I stopped him and said, “Ed, wait a minute! What did you mean by that last statement?” He explained that in Judaism the value of community is expressed by a commitment to live within walking distance of one another. The children can play with one another, dads gather in the local park, and wives share a cup of coffee in one another’s kitchens.

Ed’s comment resonated with me because after being involved in disciple-making for 30 years I am convinced that living in close proximity is an essential element to making followers of Jesus. It is not enough just to have a weekly meeting together whether it is a church service, a one-on-one meeting, a small group meeting, or a house church. Living life together plays an indispensable role in making disciples because it is in the “doing life together” that your disciple has the opportunity to experience what it means to belong both in a nuclear family and a spiritual family. You are also able to observe your disciple in various scenarios with different people and it gives him the opportunity to observe you among your family and friends.

Most anyone can sham love for a while whether in a service, a class, a small group meeting, or having coffee at Starbucks, but it is in the daily routine with our mates, children, siblings, parents, friends, co-workers, and neighbors where love engages with reality. I am not advocating that Christianity should stop having services, bible studies, or small groups but I am seeking to raise our awareness to the importance of living in close proximity to one another in making followers of Jesus.

Jesus did not remove his twelve disciples from their hometown of Capernaum but rather he discipled them among their family and friends in the familiar context in which they had been raised.

Remedy for Shame

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Lewie Clark

Mrs. David (Madge) Wallace was the mother-in-law to President Harry S. Truman and as a friend described her “a prisoner of shame”. In 1903 her young, handsome, and prominent husband climbed into the family’s bathtub and shot himself. The humiliation was more than Madge could bear and she never fully recovered. Even Truman’s wife Bess did not want Harry to become involved in national politics fearing that journalists would find out about her father’s suicide. Family status had quickly turned into their shame.

Man was not meant to live in shame. To follow Jesus is to leave the solitary confinement of shame in order to live in connection with God and others. Love embraces all of a person even his shame. It cannot pick and choose which parts to love and which to leave out. Anyone can love the good and attractive but it is only through the good news of redemption found in Jesus coupled with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit that we can love the undesirable in others.

Jesus went right to the shame of a person. Whether talking with the woman at the well who had gone through 5 divorces or having dinner with society’s outcasts, being tainted by another’s shame never seems to be a concern of Jesus. (More than once the question was raised about Jesus, “Doesn’t he realize what type of person she is and the things that she has done?”)

Your disciple will learn how to deal with his own shame and the shame of others by your love for him in spite of his shame. I believe that part of the reason why Peter did not take his own life after his betrayal of the Lord and why he was the first to run to the grave after the resurrection and why he dove out the boat to swim to Jesus on shore, was because Peter knew he could trust the heart of his friend after having witnessed for three years how Jesus loved, forgave, and kindly handled the shame of others.

Crippling Shame

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Lewie Clark

Your disciple cannot follow Jesus if controlled by shame. Following Jesus is about belonging and nothing destroys belonging like shame. It is not an issue he can avoid nor will it just go away. It casts a long shadow so even shame from years ago he remembers as if it was yesterday.

Shame comes in various forms and degrees. Some shame is emotionally crippling while other shame has less consequence. There is shame he has brought on himself and shame that was not his fault. Some was imagined while some was very real.

It could be shame associated with his family or the shame of a mental or physical limitation. A man with a learning disability said to me, Lewie, do you know how painful it is to feel dumb every day of your life? School for me was a walk of shame.

Whatever its source shame makes cowards of us all. It was R.G. Collingwood who wrote:

What a man is ashamed of is always at bottom himself; and he is ashamed of himself at bottom always for being afraid.[1]

Ministries have tried to accommodate people’s emotional fears by creating approaches, curriculum, and programs that limits relational risk for everyone involved, including the leader. It gives the illusion of love and community but behind the façade there are not the bonds of trust necessary for authentic relationships.

Leading a small group, teaching a bible study, leading worship, and doing service projects can be done in emotional safety. One can give the appearance of vulnerability but the test of vulnerability is in relationships. Recently I was with a friend who told me how her boss would display vulnerability behind a podium, but in a staff meeting or one-on-one he was anything but vulnerable.

Your disciple needs for you to place yourself in the vulnerable position to love him unconditionally. To place yourself in the vulnerable position of being the first to say, “I love you.”[2]

[1] Collingwood, Robin G. Retrieved September 17, 2012, from http://www.quoteland.com

[2] Brown, Brene (2010, The Power of Vulnerability, Retrieved October 8, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0)

Author Panel: Discipleship

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Lewie Clark

Today in our three-author panel, authors R. E. Clark, Paul Juby, and myself offer our thoughts on discipleship, practicing faith, and serving as missionaries. I’m excited to post the Missionary section below and hopefully begin a discussion among readers. Please leave comments below and visit the other two authors’ blogs to read through the rest of the panel.

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Love is the Starting Point of All Religion

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Lewie Clark

Love is the Starting Point of All Religion. So how do we effectively spread love? American Philosopher Richard Weaver observed:

It seems to me that the world is now more than ever dominated by the gods of mass and speed and that the worship of these can lead only to the lowering of standards, the adulteration of quality, and, in general, to the loss of those things which are essential to the life of civility and culture.[1]

path, lead, righteous, snow, Christ, disciple

What path do you take to love?

I am afraid that within Christianity we have sacrificed some sacred things on the altars of mass and speed. An assumption has been made that the larger the ministry and the faster a ministry grows, the more God is blessing. Because of this, churches feel the pressure to produce sizable results quickly.

The problem is that loving relationships, which are to be the mark of the followers of Jesus, cannot be made in mass or quickly. To seek to maintain too many relationships or to try and speed up the relational building process will inhibit the love you are longing to experience.

Although counter intuitive, love limits in order to multiply. When a man says, “I do” to his wife, he says “I don’t” to all other women and when a couple decides to have children they choose a lifestyle that seems confining in comparison to their friends with no children. We willingly set margins around our family so that love will multiply to future generations because to neglect a marriage leads to divorce and to be inattentive to a child results in a wounded person, both of which breaks the love continuum.

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Hindrances to Making a Disciple of Jesus in Today’s World

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Lewie Clark

An obstacle to making followers of Jesus in America is America’s aversion to deep friendship. Sociologists Stewart and Bennett have observed:

Although Americans have numerous relationships that are marked by friendliness and informality, they only rarely form the kinds of deep and lasting friendships in which friends become mutually dependent upon each other.[1]

God is relational. The insularly existence so natural to Americans is unnatural to God. Jesus came to earth and demonstrated the beauty of friendship in his relationships with men and women. It was not only through his instruction that his followers learned how to love and to be loved but also through the experience of him laying down his life for them. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:12-13

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A Fear of People

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Lewie Clark

Understanding your disciple’s fear is difficult enough but it is even more challenging when he has a fear of people. A fear of people is a powerful and deceptive lens, which transforms the truth to appear as a lie and a lie as the truth.

Jesus exposed the motives of the religious leaders of his day when he observed: “Everything they do is done for men to see.” (Matthew 23:5). Religious systems are based on pleasing and impressing others, which places a fear of people in the heart of its followers. It was a fear of people that (1) blinded the Pharisees, Sadducees, Priests, and Elders from embracing the love of Jesus and accepting his deity, (2) necessitated that they discredit the miracles that were before their eyes (Luke 6:6-11) and, (3) required them to nullify or modify the scriptures (Matthew 15: 21:23-27; Luke 11:37-53; Acts 7:51-53). A fear of people in a religious context is especially disorienting because it is taught that all we are doing is for God, but in reality many things are being done to please people.

A couple of observations:

A fear of people will cause your disciple to be apprehensive of your relationship with him since you are a “people”.
Getting to know the religious background in which your disciple was raised will help you understand how he relates to people and any misconceptions he may have of God. (Lutheran, Methodist, Mormon, Muslim, Catholic, Non-denominational, Baptist, etc.) Just recently I visited the home church of one of my disciples which gave me new understanding into his perspective.
Teach your disciple to love God and the Bible in such a way that he lets it mean what it says and not what he wants it to say or what others have told him it says.

Untangling Fear

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Lewie Clark

Veterinarians at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium regularly run blood tests on their dolphins to check for disease since a dolphin conceals its illness because in the wild a dolphin that appears sick becomes at target for lunch to its predators. In a similar way people mask their fears to avoid becoming the emotional prey in unsafe schools, homes, jobs, and churches.

A key component of disciple-making is addressing your disciple’s fear. It is not possible for him to follow Jesus and to fear because fear will inhibit him from forming a love relationship with God and others and it will keep him from obeying the Lord. (Jesus leads his followers into the teeth of their fear.) But to come along side of your disciple to help him face his fears is one of the more difficult and challenging aspects of making a disciple for a couple of reasons:

1. People avoid fear.

Your disciple will avoid whomever or whatever he fears to the point that he would rather lie than face his fear even if it means his demise. (As illustrated by the Priests and Elders lying to Jesus when he confronted their fear of people. For them to have followed Jesus would have meant that they would have to face their fear of people, which was the core of their existence. Matthew 21:23-27) Your disciple imagines that irreparable harm will come to him if he faces his fear when in reality calamity will mark his life and the lives of those whom he touches if he does not confront his fear.

2. To untangle fears requires perseverance and patience.

Your disciple has masked his fears for so long that it can be difficult for him to discern reality from a lie. One fear led to a lie, which led to the dread of getting caught, which led to another lie, and so the tangled knot was formed. Although love, grace, and belonging, will provide a new perspective for him, you cannot expect him to be able to untangle years of fear in a short time.

Friendship and Surrender

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Lewie Clark

As Jonathan and David’s story unfolds, we see deeper into Jonathan’s heart. He was in line to inherit the throne from his father, Saul, but due to Saul’s stubbornness and disobedience, his family lost the right of succession. Jonathan’s loss of the throne was due to no fault of his own, and yet he stayed submissive to the purpose of God even though it meant a lesser role for him. Not only was it a diminished role, but he submitted himself to the very man who was to take his place on the throne.

And Saul’s son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and

helped him find strength in God. “Don’t be afraid,”

he said. “My father Saul will not lay a hand on you.

You will be king over Israel, and I will be second to you.”

Even my father Saul knows this.” (1 Samuel 23:16-18,

emphasis added)

Jonathan had the freedom to love and serve David rather than consider him a threat because he was surrendered to God’s purpose in all things. Viewing others from a surrendered heart removes all threat and gives us the opportunity and privilege to lay down our lives for our friends, first out of our love for God but also out of love for our friends and disciples. Also, David could trust Jonathan because Jonathan’s surrendered heart would never allow him to thwart God’s plan. A surrendered heart finds joy in making others a success, no matter the cost.

In closing:

As a disciple-maker you must surrender to the Lord’s purpose not only for your life but also for your disciple’s life (or your child’s life if a parent) even if it does not fit into your ideals or desires.

Trust is built between you and your disciple and between your disciple and the Lord as he witnesses your continual surrender to the Lord’s purpose for your life and for his life. (David observed Jonathan’s life for 13 years.) Many have felt like pawns in the hands of others, sadly even in the name of God and Christianity, so it will be extraordinary for him to find someone who has God’s purpose and concern for his life over other agendas.

Your surrender to the Lord’s purpose will empower your disciple to surrender to the Lord’s purpose for his life.

Your Disciple, Your Friend

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Lewie Clark

The concept of friendship begins in the essence of the Godhead. As the Trinity relates to one another in love, delight, and service, so should our friendships be. God relates to man as a friend with Adam, Eve, Abraham, and Moses, and later when Jesus comes to earth as God in human form, he is a friend with his disciples, Lazarus, Martha, Mary, and even sinners.

As children of God our friendships are never just between two people. As Jesus’ friends were drawn into relationship with his Father, because he and his Father were one, so our friends are drawn into relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, because we are united with God.

The triad nature of our friendships (my friend, me, God) makes them fundamentally different than the world’s model of friendship. We are one with God and therefore he is in the midst of each of our friendships. This safeguards against dysfunction and selfishness and empowers us to extend love to our friends as an outflow of God’s love for us. We are able to absorb rejection and are immune from manipulation because our security is based on a relationship with the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and not in human relationships. In fact, we are simply adding our new friend to our already established relationship with God.