A Debt We Must All Pay

Man is born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward.--Eliphaz (to Job) ca A Long Time Ago



Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone—as though we had never been here. -- King David ca 1000BC



Life is suffering.--Siddhartha Guatama, the Buddha ca 530BC



But learn that to die is a debt we must all pay. --Euripides ca 430 BC



Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.--Socrates ca 410BC



That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food to eat or enough clothes to wear. For life is more than food, and your body more than clothing.--Jesus ca 30AD


God’s purpose for my life was that I have a passion for God’s glory and that I have a passion for my joy in that glory, and that these two are one passion.--Jonathan Edwards 18th Century


A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.--Charles Darwin 19th Century


Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.--Einstein 20th century

A Poor Life This

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.


W. H. Davies

Death By Small Doses

To follow yesterday's post of Ode To Life by Pablo Neruda, here is another poem by the same name. I've been told that it is also Neruda, but after scouring a dozen of his books I can find no trace of it. I don't know if it is his or not. Internet sites credit it to Neruda, but where is the paper version of it?

Regardless of who wrote it, it is an intriguing poem. The two are very different in many ways, but both sound clear and ringing warnings, and each are woven throughout with hope and possiblility.


Ode To Life

Slowly dies he who becomes a slave to habit,
repeating the same journey every day,
he who doesn’t change his march, he who doesn’t risk
and change the color of his clothes, he who doesn’t speak to him whom he doesn’t know.

Slowly dies he who makes of the television his guru,
Slowly he who avoids a passion dies, he who prefers
black on white and dots on "i"s rather than a gnawing of emotions
exactly those that make the eyes shine,
those that make the heart beat
before error and feeling.

Slowly dies he who doesn’t overturn the table,
he who is unhappy in his work,

he who doesn’t risk certainty for uncertainty
to follow a dream,
he who doesn’t permit himself at least one time in his life
to flee sensible counsel.

Slowly dies he who doesn’t travel, he who doesn’t read,
he who doesn’t listen to music,

he who doesn’t find grace in himself.
Slowly he who destroys his own love dies,
he who doesn’t allow himself to be helped.
Slowly he who passes his days lamenting
about his own misfortune or the incessant rain dies.

Slowly dies he who abandons a project
before beginning it,
he who doesn’t ask questions about topics he doesn’t know,
he who doesn’t answer when he is asked something that he knows.

Let’s avoid death by small doses,
remembering always that being alive
requires a much larger effort
than the simple act of breathing.

Only burning patience will bring
within reach a splendid happiness.

His Mistaken Solitude

Today I walked around mulling over this question of life: What is it? Why do I sometimes feel very much alive and sometimes I feel hardly alive? Do the dead still feel, to themselves, as if they lived? And as I mused I noticed a bumper sticker that read simply: "Smile. You're Alive!" And so I smiled. Because I'm alive. And I can.


Then I came home and looked up the following poem by Pablo Neruda. While this is called Ode To Life, Neruda also wrote another poem that is much more well known and has the same title. I'll post it tomorrow.



Ode to life

The entire night
armed with a hatchet,
has broken me with grief,
but sleep
like dark water washed away
the bloody stones.

Today again I am alive.
Again, life
I lift you up,
upon my shoulders.

Oh life,
clear cup,
suddenly
you fill up with
dirty water,
lifeless wine,
agony, losses, and
overhanging spider webs,
and many believe
you will guard
this nightmarish tint forever.
That is not true.

A lingering night passes,
just one minute passes
and everything changes.
Life's cup
fills up
with transparent brilliance.
The wide quest
awaits us.
Doves are born in a solitary burst.
Light reigns again over the earth.

Life, the poor
poets
believed you to be bitter.
They did not rise from bed
with you
and face the winds of the world.

They received beatings
without searching for you.
They tunneled
a black hole
and continued their journeys,
submerged
in mourning,
drowning in a well of loneliness.
That is not true, life.

You are
beautiful
like my beloved;
between your breasts,
the perfume of spearmint sings.

Life,
you are
a complete instrument,,
happiness, sounds
of storm, tenderness
of mellow oil.

Life,
you are like a vineyard:
you treasure and dole out light-and share
in the fruits of transformation.

Whoever disowns you
should wait
a minute, a night,
a short or long year,
to emerge
from his mistaken solitude,
to search and fight, to join
hands with other hands.

Do not adopt, do not praise
misfortune,
Reject it, giving it the form
of a wall,
like the stonecutter with the stone.
Take scissors to misfortune,
and make
a pair of trousers.

Life
waits for us-
all of us
who cherish
the wild perfume of the sea,
and the celebration of spearmint
nestled between its breasts.


.

We Die In Earnest

What is our life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division,
Our mother's wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the setting sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only we die in earnest, that's no jest.


What really is our life? Is it, as Sir Walter Raleigh said, just a "short comedy"? Or should we complain with MacBeth that:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Having come, along with dozens of other big name philosophers, to the conclusion that life has no significance beyond itself (Life, and everything else for them was what they called "absurd.") Camus declared:

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."

He's right. Job's wife recognized this also, and told him that in the face of what seemed to her to be cosmic injustice the only answer was to "Curse God and die." She meant, I think, suicide.

What we think our life is makes a bit of a difference in how we live it. Raleigh at the top of this post really wasn't talking half as much about his doctrine of what LIFE really is as he was poking fun at all of us for the half-hearted way in which we live it. But the two are related. And, as he reminds us, however we live and whatever we think it means, we die in earnest. If Camus and his fellows chose to kill themselves because that is what their philosophical ponderings drove them to, then their deaths would have been absolutely in earnest. They would have been fraught with all the angst and religious and political meaning that Camus et al denied really existed. Their deaths would have disproved the very basis and reason for them. But no matter. They would have been in earnest!

Now, I'd like to present a challenge to anyone who cares to take it up.

Over the course of this month, contemplate life: its meaning, the way it is done, how/why it ends, etc., etc., etc.. Then write a short (or not short) poem about what life is. Any form. Any approach. Any ideas. Anything.

Email them to me at my email address that is on the left hand side of my profile page. If you can't find that, my email is simply my name, with no dots or spaces, at hotmail dot com. I too will try to come up with something. Then, in the first day or two of next year I'll post your submissions.

So Remembering

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, -- so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sheltered From Winds That Beat On Thee

Amy Carmichael: no soft slippers on her feet, no dainty parisian meals to be toyed with and coyly pushed around her plate, no doting hubby protecting her from the scars of the world. In her mission in India she faced the harsh realities of sin in our world, of destroyed lives, of meager rations and little hope for improvement. She willingly sought that life as a young woman, raised in a world of plenty, and more than plenty. Why? For others? Yes. For the girls whom she rescued? Yes! But there seems to be much more to it than that, as this poem and many of her others hint at.


FLAME OF GOD

From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.


From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary
O Lamb of God, deliver me.


Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.


How can I become more like Amy Carmichael?

Your Book, Just As You Laid It Down

Interim


The room is full of you! -- As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick! --

Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
Each other room's dear personality.
The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers, --
The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death --
Has strangled that habitual breath of home
Whose expiration leaves all houses dead;
And wheresoe'er I look is hideous change.
Save here. Here 'twas as if a weed-choked gate
Had opened at my touch, and I had stepped
Into some long-forgot, enchanted, strange,
Sweet garden of a thousand years ago
And suddenly thought, "I have been here before!"

You are not here. I know that you are gone,
And will not ever enter here again.
And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,
Your silent step must wake across the hall;
If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyes
Would kiss me from the door. -- So short a time
To teach my life its transposition to
This difficult and unaccustomed key! --
The room is as you left it; your last touch --
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly -- hallows now each simple thing;
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's grey fingers like a shielded light.

There is your book, just as you laid it down,
Face to the table, -- I cannot believe
That you are gone! -- Just then it seemed to me
You must be here. I almost laughed to think
How like reality the dream had been;
Yet knew before I laughed, and so was still.
That book, outspread, just as you laid it down!
Perhaps you thought, "I wonder what comes next,
And whether this or this will be the end";
So rose, and left it, thinking to return.

Perhaps that chair, when you arose and passed
Out of the room, rocked silently a while
Ere it again was still. When you were gone
Forever from the room, perhaps that chair,
Stirred by your movement, rocked a little while,
Silently, to and fro. . .

And here are the last words your fingers wrote,
Scrawled in broad characters across a page
In this brown book I gave you. Here your hand,
Guiding your rapid pen, moved up and down.
Here with a looping knot you crossed a "t",
And here another like it, just beyond
These two eccentric "e's". You were so small,
And wrote so brave a hand!
How strange it seems
That of all words these are the words you chose!
And yet a simple choice; you did not know
You would not write again. If you had known --
But then, it does not matter, -- and indeed
If you had known there was so little time
You would have dropped your pen and come to me
And this page would be empty, and some phrase
Other than this would hold my wonder now.
Yet, since you could not know, and it befell
That these are the last words your fingers wrote,
There is a dignity some might not see
In this, "I picked the first sweet-pea to-day."
To-day! Was there an opening bud beside it
You left until to-morrow? -- O my love,
The things that withered, -- and you came not back!
That day you filled this circle of my arms
That now is empty. (O my empty life!)
That day -- that day you picked the first sweet-pea, --
And brought it in to show me! I recall
With terrible distinctness how the smell
Of your cool gardens drifted in with you.
I know, you held it up for me to see
And flushed because I looked not at the flower,
But at your face; and when behind my look
You saw such unmistakable intent
You laughed and brushed your flower against my lips.
(You were the fairest thing God ever made,
I think.) And then your hands above my heart
Drew down its stem into a fastening,
And while your head was bent I kissed your hair.
I wonder if you knew. (Beloved hands!
Somehow I cannot seem to see them still.
Somehow I cannot seem to see the dust
In your bright hair.) What is the need of Heaven
When earth can be so sweet? -- If only God
Had let us love, -- and show the world the way!
Strange cancellings must ink th' eternal books
When love-crossed-out will bring the answer right!
That first sweet-pea! I wonder where it is.
It seems to me I laid it down somewhere,
And yet, -- I am not sure. I am not sure,
Even, if it was white or pink; for then
'Twas much like any other flower to me,
Save that it was the first. I did not know,
Then, that it was the last. If I had known --
But then, it does not matter. Strange how few,
After all's said and done, the things that are
Of moment.
Few indeed! When I can make
Of ten small words a rope to hang the world!
"I had you and I have you now no more."
There, there it dangles, -- where's the little truth
That can for long keep footing under that
When its slack syllables tighten to a thought?
Here, let me write it down! I wish to see
Just how a thing like that will look on paper!

"*I had you and I have you now no more*."

O little words, how can you run so straight
Across the page, beneath the weight you bear?
How can you fall apart, whom such a theme
Has bound together, and hereafter aid
In trivial expression, that have been
So hideously dignified? -- Would God
That tearing you apart would tear the thread
I strung you on! Would God -- O God, my mind
Stretches asunder on this merciless rack
Of imagery! O, let me sleep a while!
Would I could sleep, and wake to find me back
In that sweet summer afternoon with you.
Summer? 'Tis summer still by the calendar!
How easily could God, if He so willed,
Set back the world a little turn or two!
Correct its griefs, and bring its joys again!

We were so wholly one I had not thought
That we could die apart. I had not thought
That I could move, -- and you be stiff and still!
That I could speak, -- and you perforce be dumb!
I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof
In some firm fabric, woven in and out;
Your golden filaments in fair design
Across my duller fibre. And to-day
The shining strip is rent; the exquisite
Fine pattern is destroyed; part of your heart
Aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled
In the damp earth with you. I have been torn
In two, and suffer for the rest of me.
What is my life to me? And what am I
To life, -- a ship whose star has guttered out?
A Fear that in the deep night starts awake
Perpetually, to find its senses strained
Against the taut strings of the quivering air,
Awaiting the return of some dread chord?

Dark, Dark, is all I find for metaphor;
All else were contrast, -- save that contrast's wall
Is down, and all opposed things flow together
Into a vast monotony, where night
And day, and frost and thaw, and death and life,
Are synonyms. What now -- what now to me
Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers
That clutter up the world? You were my song!
Now, let discord scream! You were my flower!
Now let the world grow weeds! For I shall not
Plant things above your grave -- (the common balm
Of the conventional woe for its own wound!)
Amid sensations rendered negative
By your elimination stands to-day,
Certain, unmixed, the element of grief;
I sorrow; and I shall not mock my truth
With travesties of suffering, nor seek
To effigy its incorporeal bulk
In little wry-faced images of woe.

I cannot call you back; and I desire
No utterance of my immaterial voice.
I cannot even turn my face this way
Or that, and say, "My face is turned to you";
I know not where you are, I do not know
If Heaven hold you or if earth transmute,
Body and soul, you into earth again;
But this I know: -- not for one second's space
Shall I insult my sight with visionings
Such as the credulous crowd so eager-eyed
Beholds, self-conjured, in the empty air.
Let the world wail! Let drip its easy tears!
My sorrow shall be dumb!

-- What do I say?
God! God! -- God pity me! Am I gone mad
That I should spit upon a rosary?
Am I become so shrunken? Would to God
I too might feel that frenzied faith whose touch
Makes temporal the most enduring grief;
Though it must walk a while, as is its wont,
With wild lamenting! Would I too might weep
Where weeps the world and hangs its piteous wreaths
For its new dead! Not Truth, but Faith, it is
That keeps the world alive. If all at once
Faith were to slacken, -- that unconscious faith
Which must, I know, yet be the corner-stone
Of all believing, -- birds now flying fearless
Across would drop in terror to the earth;
Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reins
Would tangle in the frantic hands of God
And the worlds gallop headlong to destruction!

O God, I see it now, and my sick brain
Staggers and swoons! How often over me
Flashes this breathlessness of sudden sight
In which I see the universe unrolled
Before me like a scroll and read thereon
Chaos and Doom, where helpless planets whirl
Dizzily round and round and round and round,
Like tops across a table, gathering speed
With every spin, to waver on the edge
One instant -- looking over -- and the next
To shudder and lurch forward out of sight --

* * * * *

Ah, I am worn out -- I am wearied out --
It is too much -- I am but flesh and blood,
And I must sleep. Though you were dead again,
I am but flesh and blood and I must sleep.

For Our Conversation Is In Heaven

Richard Ledderer relates the story that when St. Paul's Cathedral burned in the fire of 1666, Sir Christopher Wren was hired to rebuild it. After 35 years of work the new building was finished and Queen Anne came to see it. After a tour she told Sir Christopher that his cathedral was "awful, artificial and amusing." He was delighted! What splendid praise from the queen!

"Awful" of course meant awe inspiring. "Artificial" meant that it was very artisticly fashioned. And "amusing" meant that it was inspired by the muses, a godlike creation. How could these words have changed meaning so much in just three hundred years? They in fact mean something like the opposite now compared to what Queen Anne meant and what Sir Christopher understood.

It is an odd but common phenomenon that words can have two absolutely contrary meanings. In the end one of them usually gives way to the other so that we are left with but a single meaning and we forget that the other meaning once held sway. This is one reason people need to use their minds extra well when they read the King James Bible and Shakespeare. They are two hundred years older yet, and words have changed even more than since Queen Anne's day. But that's another story.

For now, consider a few words that we use every day that still have two diametrically opposed meanings that are both more or less standard. Will one meaning eventually win out? Who knows?

Weather-- (to wear down, to stand up well) I love the weathered look on old courthouses. This boat is built to weather any storm.

With -- (for, against) If you refuse to go to war with us against the infidels, then we will consider ourselves to already be in a state of war with you.

Clip -- (disattach, attach) After you clip the coupon, please clip it to the shopping list.

Left -- (gone, remaining) Q-If six children were playing in a schoolyard, and two left, how many were left? A-None, they were alright.

Of course there are hundreds more of these contronyms. What about fast, bolt, mortal, out, etc.

What favorites do you have that should be added to the list?

Had I Leant My Eyes Unduly?

This is, I think, only the second time that I've posted an original poem of mine on here. I don't normally like to do so, but in honor of my friends Devika and Wan Dee I will do it. This is a first draft, so I totally welcome the harshest criticism while I work toward a final version.

When I wrote this I somewhat used Edna St Vincent Millay's poem Renascence as a jumping off point. You will notice similarities in our beginnings, but not much more. If you click on her name below you can see her poem.




Glimmer

Two tall pines and a sugar maple
Upside down in the pond I see;
Two tall pines and a scarlet maple
With dark’ning sky below the three.

I skip a rock and watch them falter
Just above their dark’ning sky;
But slow their lines return, unaltered,
True and solid there they lie.

Such glory there! Such majesty!
Of leaden pine ‘round maple’s fire;
While underneath their trinity
The purpling sky seems God’s own pyre.

To see them nearer, ‘round I trot
And turn again to where they’d been;
But now a hill, a field, a sunset,
Fill the pond where trees had lain.

Had they been there? Had I seen truly?
Had they existed in that pond?
Or had I leant my eyes unduly
Toward false beauty in that pond?

Was it just a trick of sight
That made me love what wasn’t there?
Did my eye manipulate
The fading light to fit desire?

Back around to where I’d stood
I turn again to face the pond;
But see no more the brilliant wood
Upon that gloomy little pond.

For in their place are silhouettes
Of black above a black’ning sky.
I wonder how I could have let
Such drabness so beguile my eye.

So now, my God, when you I spy,
Is it really, truly, Thou?
Or trick of how I hold my eye
And cup my hand over my brow?

It's Academic

Someone just told me (in an email) that the type of writing I do sounds rather academic. I responded that some of it is, but that the most academic writing I've done (Covenant And Community) has changed me in countless ways. She asked me to explain. Here is my response.



To begin with, you need to understand that I’m religious, Christian. That’s why I do theology.

For years I had seen my religion as being primarily between myself and God. I tried to have a relationship with God, study his word, obey him, etc. Of course, that has plenty to do with other people, because God has lots to say about how we treat each other. But still my personal religion was my account with God.

Thus, I could be a perfectly good Christian with or without other people. And I generally found it preferable to spend most of my time alone. It was just me and my Bible and Jesus. (I exaggerate somewhat, but that was the general direction of my life.)

Then I began studying the idea of the image of God. In the first chapter of the Bible God proposes to make humanity to be his image. That, I think, is our primary purpose in creation. The more I studied, the more clear it was that this image is not each of us separately being God’s image. Instead, we all together are to be his image. That makes personal/private religion almost like no religion at all.
As I worked through some of the implications, I found that I needed to really be willing to become part of a community of Christians, all working together, all working for each other, all building each other up.

This all has changed how I think of myself (no longer so much as an individual, more as a member of a group of like-minded folk), how I think of the church (no longer as a place only to learn, now as a place to work for the benefit of others), how I think of evangelism (no longer as trying to prove my point and convince someone of some vital truth, now as drawing people into the community and letting God work as he chooses). No longer is my religion primarily academic, now it is almost entirely interpersonal.

Thus, my whole life is changed. Where once I was content to do my work, try not to sin, repent when I did, etc, now whatever I am doing I know that God is working through me to build his image through me and those around me. At every moment the people around me (Christians or not, no matter) matter much more now than ever before. And I don’t have to convince them of anything! And everyone is just as vital. No longer are pastors and teachers the great people and the rest of us just followers. Each person has their own gifts to bring, each person is absolutely needed.

Depending on your background, this may sound like “Well, duh!” or it may make no sense. I hope it is at least somewhat coherent.

Hast thou no scar?

When God was converting Saul (Paul), he didn't suggest that anyone tell him how much rosier his life would be with Christ. Instead he promised Ananias that:

"I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." Acts 9:16

That was God's appeal to Saul? Is that how we sell the Gospel? Paul later seemed to assume that suffering for Christ was a proof of our usefulness to him.

"Are they servants of Christ?-- I speak as if insane-- I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death." 2 Cor 11:23

Is that how we assess God's movement? Do we brag that we are suffering? Or do we rather brag about the great band at church, or the new coffee bar where we have "fellowship."

Those who have had the greatest beneficial impact on the church throughout history have all gone through tremendous personal suffering. Why do we think this norm should not apply to Americans? Are we exempt?

"Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." Rom. 8:17

Why do we not preach suffering with Christ as a sign that we truly have been adopted into his family?




Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?

--Amy Carmichael--

Church Happens When . . .

A few years ago, two friends were acting as missionaries, befriending and evangelizing a group of people who would never intentionally go to any church. They purposely gave up their own ownership of their lives to be available to their new friends. Their goals were to:

A) live out the Gospel in community with these people
B) show them Jesus through their relationships (more than in talk or on paper)
C) see them come to know Jesus for themselves
D) help them find good church homes in which to grow

One day, as they were meeting with some of these friends who had become as close as family, a woman who had come to faith with them asked, "So . . . is this my church?" The leader answered that, no, this was not a church. This was a faith community.

The woman persisted, "Yah, that sounds good, but I came to faith and so have some others here, so aren't we supposed to go to a church?"

In that moment this man who had no intention of starting a church knew what he had to tell her. "Actually, church is something everyone should be a part of, but it's different than being a faith community. Church happens when a group of people decide to go on mission with God together."

In that moment this mission gained a new and un-looked for goal:

E) guide converts to pursue these three goals together

And very quickly it became clear that their friends were on board with them, for better or worse seeking to also give up their lives to grow the mission of Christ in that neighborhood. And so a church was reluctantly born.

As Matt Smay and Hugh Halter worked through the practical and theological implications of what God was doing with them, they came to understand a great truth: God gathers people together in the body of Christ (community), so that he can scatter them into the world (missions), so that in every place they find themselves they can gather new people into the body, so God can scatter them . . .

You see the pattern. The body of Christ is constantly gathering together and purposely scattering. Or it should be. In general we are better at the gathering than at the scattering.

And so they wrote AND: THE GATHERED AND SCATTERED CHURCH.

Among all the church planting/missions/street evangelism books I've read, this one tops my list. It is altogether down to earth. There is no great promise of huge crowds (in fact that isn't desired) but the true promise of great sacrifice and blessing in the living out of Christ's body.

They ask, "How can we engage the culture to which God has called us?" To reach the unreachable, discourse on theology, frightening sermons and tidy church services wouldn't do. They also needed to overturn the framework in which people understood themselves. And cultures, worldviews, and frameworks don't buckle to reasoned argument. The answer, they learned, was "The community, not the individual, is the primary witness to this 'bigger' gospel."

I am truly excited to recommend AND. It is the first book I've found whose message of a real, solid, tried and true, biblically reasoned lifestyle of community and self-sacrifice corresponds in great detail to many of my conclusions in COVENANT AND COMMUNITY. Christ is seen as his body functions together, as the hands and feet and eyes all live in love/service to the others. And in every way the community/church that they have grown seems strikingly similar to the community/church of the New Testament.

At last! A church planting book that I can highly recommend.

Exponential Growth

"Half of all churches in America did not add one person through conversion last year."

Read that again.

Now, read it again.

That is pathetic! Our nation is crumbling, the people are searching, searching, searching. What they are searching for, no one seems sure. But they are searching. This nation is hungry, and we in the Church know that we have access to a food that truly satisfies.

So what is wrong?

Jon and Dave Fergusson, two of the founders of a fantastically quickly growing circle of churches, think that they have the answer. In part I think they are right. As the foreword says, "They are as many of us desire to be--successful leaders of a very large multisite church." Well, I tend to like neither very large, nor multi-site churches, but let's let that go for the moment.

Their new book, EXPONENTIAL, is a high octane description of how they have grown from four evangelistically minded college kids into an enormous network of churches, many of them multi-site congregations. These churches, in many cities and increasingly many countries, have all grown from the initial set of four friends, dreaming about how they could impact Chicago for Christ. Crunching the numbers that were involved in this rapid growth feels like I am crunching my skull! How is it possible? And is it what Jesus called the Kingdom of God? Is this how church is supposed to be?

Imagine the worst it could be: huge churches that function like social clubs, with maybe a few truly saved Christians among them. Is that any worse than that half of all American churches that grew by NOT ONE SOUL last year? I honestly couldn't answer that, but I'm glad to say that that is not what I think Dave and Jon Ferguson are all about.

Church growth for the Fergusons takes place on three levels, or in three spheres: the personal, the numerical and the structural.

PERSONAL GROWTH, as they describe it, is all about moving from one level of leadership up to a higher level of leadership. Yes, their system is very hierarchical. Don't let hierarchy scare you off quite yet, it has its strengths as well as its drawbacks. But, so far as I can tell from this book, personal growth has little to do with "knowing Christ in the fellowship of his sufferings." It has little to do with growth in grace, or with walking as Jesus walked, which John encourages us to do. When looking for someone who is ready to move from one level of leadership to another, they do not encourage us to examine a person by the criteria that Paul sent to Titus and to Timothy: temperate, gentle, not a lover of money, not quarrelsome, etc. Instead they point us to their main criteria: that "a leader must be able to attract followers."

As Dave writes, "I had to set aside my selfish reluctance and begin encouraging Troy to continue moving forward on his leadership path by planting this new church." Throughout much of the book, that seems to be the real goal, each person's "leadership path."

They are right that within the church, "Everything rises and falls on leadership." A church without a leader will fly as well as a kite without a string. But they take this fact and elevate (if one can take the book at face value) anyone who is a natural leader into positions of leadership over God's people. Not all leaders are Godly leaders. Ask Germany. Ask Chicago. Ask anyone.

If we are going to use some principles from EXPONENTIAL, we must do so with care and caution. But don't misunderstand. I honestly don't think that this is how the Ferguson brothers built their churches. I think they did use discernment, and caution, and biblical principles in choosing future leaders. But this does not really come through in the book at all. They seem to assume that naturally we will use such discernment. But the real danger is that once one makes a strategy--and this book is a strategy for rapid church growth--once we make a strategy our focus, we run the risk of losing sight of such details as biblical qualifications for leadership in the Body of Christ. In fact, if the way this book is written is any indication, I wonder if the Fergusons have become too enamoured with the strategy and have lost sight of the goal.

NUMERICAL growth is, for the Fergusons, the purpose of God's Church. A child is born to grow, if it does not grow then something is very wrong. Perhaps that is why new churches grow rapidly and churches more than ten years old rarely grow at all.

They are right, churches should grow. New converts should be added to their numbers. A stagnant church is a dying church. A church that does not feel compelled to reach out beyond those church doors should be tossed out into the streets where they would have no choice but to mingle with the hoi-poloi.

But growth by itself is not evangelism. While their approach really does encourage evangelism and sees conversions, that is not the only source of their growth. Although they do once mention that they do not seek to draw members from other churches, still they mention at least one leader whom they drew away, and I get the impression that much of their rapid growth comes from such "stealing." How else do you get (after months of canvassing and tele-marketing) four to five hundred people at the first service in a new church? The huge success they have enjoyed is the triumph of highly professional marketers for Jesus. And like any marketer, they pay great attention to the packaging.

STRUCTURAL GROWTH takes place, in the Ferguson system, when leaders move up to higher levels and eventually one or two are deemed ready to head their own congregations, using of course the Ferguson strategy in those new congregations. Thus the strategy spreads, and in theory (they do crunch the numbers) soon the whole world will be Christian, living in an EXPONENTIAL church, all hoping to move from one level of leadership to the next.

Sound a bit like Amway hype? Oh, it is. Very much like Amway hype.

But still . . .

I think that many church leaders could learn a lot from tiny workings of how the Ferguson brothers explain the system.

Consider Charles Spurgeon, that prince of preachers. A great man, a Godly man, a superhuman evangelist. But where is his church now? What happened to it? It has become just a wispy shadow of what it once was. Within just a few years of his death, the Tabernacle had veered away from his great and true doctrines, and had lost the power that his careful passion had overseen. What happened? Well, it seems that he prepared no successor.

And that is what the Ferguson strategy is all about: successors.

They make much of Paul's instructions to Timothy: "The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others." If you look at that carefully, you will see that there are four generations mentioned: Paul, Timothy, Reliable Men, Others. And the idea is that those others will then be able to continue the pattern.

Timothy was Paul's protégé, his apprentice. And Paul was telling him that Timothy was to do what Paul was doing, that is, he was to take apprentices and teach them to take apprentices. This is what Jesus had also done; he took disciples and trained them to make disciples, who would in turn make disciples.

Simple? Well, duh! But the problem is, we don't do this in most of our churches. The church is full of people who can teach, and many of them do. But how often do they make a focus of also training one or two to be able to also teach? Where do most churches get their leadership? their pastors? their priests? their musicians? Don't they expect them to come from a seminary or the music department in some university or some burned out rock musician? Why do we not train our own pastors and leadership and musicians?

The pattern that Jesus and Paul display and encourage is that they expect each person who is any type of leadership to prepare others to also fill that type of leadership. Thus, the leader of a Bible study does in fact teach the Bible study. A group of people are in fact edified through the Bible study. But one or two of those in the group are also being shown exactly how the leader prepares, are praying with the leader for the members of the study group, are paying close attention not only to the lesson but also to how it is presented. Over time the "apprentice" learns how to lead a group, and also how to train a new leader. The Fergusons lay it out simply:

1) I do. You watch. We talk.
2) I do. You help. We talk.
3) You do. I help. We talk.
4) You do. I watch. We talk.
5) You do. Someone else watches.

It is that simple. But by doing this over and over, preparing new leaders for new Bible studies, one soon multiplies the leaders of study groups exponentially. Bravo!

But the process is not lightning quick, for it takes time to really train a new convert to lead a Bible study. The Fergusons have the advantage in that many of their leaders came to them ready equiped with a grounding in the Bible. My church has no such luxury. We intentionally seek those who have no such grounding.

And training a new leader involves a HUGE investment of time on both the current leader's part and on that of the apprentice. They spend time together preparing and discussing each meeting of the study group. They pray together. As is stressed in the book, the time investment is crucial in order to really train a person, and the time investment also makes it impossible for any person to train more than one or two at a time.

Simple!

Simple in the extreme!

Simple but not easy.

Simple, but also thoroughly biblical. One to one training, training within the church, these are the pattern that we see in the Bible. Sending our bright young folk away to seminary for four to six years, having them trained by professionals, and then probably never seeing them again because they will be sent elsewhere to lead some other church: that is not the biblical pattern. If they are sent elsewhere, it should be their home congregation that has trained them and sends them off with their blessings to further God's kingdom.

Interestingly, while the hype of big numbers and rapid growth tends to mask it, the Ferguson's strategy is one that actually engenders a true sense of community. It is all about one person spending and being spent for the building up of another person. Strip it of the grandiose ego pumping hoopla (OK, then it would be 20 pages) and you will find that at the core of what drives their machine is one heart beating alongside another, as they each learn to keep time with Christ's heart.

If every leader within our churches were intentionally guiding and training an apprentice to do that same work, then would our churches be dying? Begin simply; lead a Bible study including both Christian and non-Christian friends (you can do that, right?); and work with one of the people to get them ready to lead a Bible study. When they are ready, you help them launch their study group, and help them to pick and to train an apprentice of their own. Simple.