Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity

I can only say a simple, perhaps too clichéd a phrase, to get at this book: life changing. I think it is freeing to the minister’s soul and revitalizing to the call from God.

Here’s the take-away:

There are three main tasks of a minister (perhaps “lines”): 1.) Preaching,  2.) Teaching, and Administration. There are three “angles” to get at this callings: 1.) Prayer, 2.) Scripture Reading, and 3.) Spiritual Direction (giving and receiving).

Significance and Acceptance

 

The soul strives to be significant, to know its place, to be accepted and in some ways recognized. I’m not talking about egocentrism or any kind of pathological struggle. I’m getting at a striving that has this root of holiness to it, otherness. It desires contentment in uniqueness and within community to have no hindrances to seeing the self as a part of a mosaic.

I think our striving for significance and acceptance are marks of the missing complete Image of God within that is now being rebuilt by the Spirit of Renovation. This urge or desire is some kind of scar where we used to have something but no longer do, yet have now tasted it again and this taste creates some kind of unsatiable hunger within that can only be satisfied by holiness — being absorbed into Christ, becoming like Christ, being renovated inside and out.

This whole adventure begins with the acceptance we hear in the waters of baptism. But it doesn’t end there. The flavor is entered into our souls and we begin to crave completeness, wholeness, salvation, more and more. …that is unless some other taste enters our mouth and masks the beauty — maybe something too sweet or too bitter.

John Wesley | Growing in Christ (Process)

Here’s another neat bit from John Wesley’s mind.

I’ve heard some about the “method” of growth that comes from Christian community and intentional process and accountability.

(This comes from Longing for God, Foster and Beebe, p.189.)

‘Societies’ were essentially congregational churches. ‘Classes’ were mixed groups where no more than fifty individuals would gather for instruction and prayer. ‘Bands’ were single-sex groups of no more than ten individuals who met every week to discuss direct and probing questions in order to bring about character formation and Christlikeness.

In order to join a ‘band’ you had to answer a set of very specific questions. After being granted entrance, weekly you were asked questions as a part of the group’s effort to achieve a depth of commitment that led to a deeper life with God. …the questions for joining the band:

• Have you the forgiveness of sins?
• Have you peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ?
• Have you the witness of God’s Spirit with your spirit that you are a child of God?
• Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart?
• Has no sin, inward or outward, dominion over you?
• Do you desire to be told of your faults and that plain and simple?
• Do you desire to be told of all your faults?
• Do you desire that every one of us should tell you, from time to time, whatsoever is in the heart concerning you?
• Consider! Do you desire we should tell you whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear concerning you?
• Do you desire that, in doing this, we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?
• Is it your desire and design to be, on this and all other occasions, entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart without exception, without disguise and without reserve?

What an intense conversation! I can’t fathom what conversations like this would do to our Christian communities (for the better).

Now, to speak of discomfort, I think it would be a hard accountability for anyone to enter into, especially when we’ve become quite accustomed to personalized Jesus-ing and “only the Spirit is who I’ll let see my heart” lifestyles. Besides that, I think many educational systems in the church today have been far too focused on rote regurgitation of answers — so in the face of such probing questions and to not have a rote answer… I think that will make many uncomfortable.

…but that’s ok. Christ is with us and we have the privilege of helping one another in attentiveness to the Presence of God within us as we believe and rely on the Trinity’s work in, with, and as our foundation.

Now, what do you make of Wesley’s accountability, small group process?

John Wesley: Knowing God and Religious Experience

“I felt my heart strangely warmed…” (Wesley, Journal)

Religious experiences of all shapes and flavors are very intriguing. Many of us are at times in a state of desiring the next “mountain top” in the walk in Christ. Others simply want peace — that state of contentment that words can’t really get at.

John Wesley had some interesting words to think over about religious experiences and knowing God. From a stage of doubt and lack of assurance, Wesley felt his “heart strangely warmed” in a Moravian meeting in the south of London. I’ve read that this experience forever changed this man from a doubting person to someone with deep assurance — all because of this particular experience (and perhaps others down the road).

Drawing from Longing for God, here are some interesting statements from Wesley:

• Wesley states that heart religion is confirmed by direct, immediate, inward experiences of God. Just as we know physical reality because of our natural senses, we know spiritual reality by out supernatural senses.
• “…true, scriptural, experimental religion.”
• By using the term ‘experimental,’ Wesley is saying something crucial. He means, first, that our life with God is built on the vitality of our experiences of God. Second, it is based on experiment and the way in which our experience aligns with those recorded throughout the history of the church. Finally, it is an experience of God that can be known by test and experiment in a way similar to the new scientific approaches that were sweeping England.

Fantastic thinking!

How does this resonate with you?