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The best way to stifle any vision is to recruit volunteers to your cause. Most churches in the UK are run by volunteers – that is, their engagement with the wider community is facilitated by volunteers. We work hard to recruit volunteers for children’s work, for youth work, for the distribution of food or clothes or furniture, for...And this is perhaps the most effective constraint possible on the effectiveness of that engagement.
One flaw with a culture of volunteers is the difficulty that can arise when someone volunteers for something for which they are quite unsuited. That is to say, everyone has gifts and a role to play, but not everyone has the same gifts or is called to the same roles. Willingness is not, in itself, enough.
But there is a far greater, indeed fatal, flaw. In a volunteer-culture, people volunteer for whatever they believe is important, because if they don’t volunteer, the important thing won’t happen. And, of course, people volunteer for the new thing, because the new thing has a certain excitement and energy to it. What this results in is volunteers who serve in multiple capacities, juggling commitments, and unable to give very much time or effort to any of those things. This gives the church barely-sustainable breadth without depth. It results in frenetic lives, rather than fruitful lives. And it is perpetuated by the false belief that if everyone took an equal share in volunteering, no-one would serve in multiple capacities. They still would: because hole-plugging is integral to a volunteer-culture, which will expand the number of holes so as always to be greater than the number of people to plug them.
By volunteer, I don’t mean unpaid worker. I am not suggesting that we replace volunteers with paying people to do things: that in itself doesn’t address volunteer-culture. By volunteer, I mean something closer to what Jesus called a hired-hand. The things I do as a member of my family, I don’t get paid for, but I’m not a volunteer: I’m a fully-committed stake-holder.
Sometimes in life we have to make a choice between two or more options, and the choosing of one rules out involvement in the others. In marriage the partners make a commitment to ‘forsaking all others,’ not in the sense of abandoning community but in the sense of ruling-out their option of involvement as a marriage-partner with anyone else until released from their present responsibilities by death. Or consider this example: for most of us, choosing to buy one house means we don’t live in several houses; though after a period of time we might sell our house and move to another. In a you-can-have-it-all-and-have-it-all-at-once culture, there are certain things we can’t have all at once. Beyond consumers, we need contributors: but beyond contributors, we need stake-holders.
I have observed volunteer-culture churches where commitment is measured – whether intentionally or unconsciously – by the number of different areas within the life of the church that a given person is involved in. I have witnessed the burn-out that results. I have seen the ability to do many things, not particularly well, and all without capacity to grow.
I have also observed a different culture, one where community is built around shared vision: where people commit to involvement in one ‘extended family’ (at a time), a ‘family’ that shares every dimension of life – loving God, loving one another, loving their neighbour – in an integrated whole. Where team doesn’t simply plan and deliver a programme of activities, but eats and prays and has fun and cries together.
Such a culture has its own challenges, its own messiness. It involves not simply restructuring but a paradigm-shift; and that takes a minimum of five or six years. It almost certainly involves doing less in the short- and medium-term than we might be doing in the present or hope to do in the long-term. It is almost unimaginably costly. But I am absolutely convinced that the volunteer-culture on which most churches is built is the single greatest constraining factor in our seeing the kingdom of heaven take ground.
I just finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy (The Hunger Games; Catching Fire; Mockingjay). The story-arc is very good indeed, and I’m looking forward to seeing how parts 2 and 3 will be translated onto the screen. What makes it good is that, like all good stories, it is true. Fictional, yes; but true...
There is a moment, a third of the way through Catching Fire, when Katniss Everdeen finds herself trapped outside of the fence that surrounds District 12. She has long enjoyed stolen, risky moments of personal freedom beyond the enclosing fence, because it is rarely electrified and she has both the need (to feed her family) and the courage to refuse to be confined. But now the fence is alive. Unbeknownst to Katniss, two Peacekeepers wait at her house; wait to inform those who care about her that she is dead; wait to ensnare them, too. Even though she does not know this, she knows that she must re-enter District 12 and get home; that she cannot allow the Capitol any capital here. Her only hope – and the odds are not in her favour – is to climb a tree that has a branch which extends over the fence; to hang from the tree, and drop from the branch, a fall of 8m, hoping the snowdrift below will sufficiently break her fall. It does, but in landing Katniss seriously damages her left heel.
This scene gains added significance when it is remembered that the President of Panem is called Snow. (Indeed, his shadowy hand, for good or ill, or intended ill subverted for good, stirs the snowflakes wherever the fall in the story.) It gains even more significance if we recognise that Snow is the perennial poison-tongued Prince of the world in which the story is set; and if we are familiar with the promise of Genesis 3:15, that the offspring of the woman whose husband has been returned to the ground will crush the serpent’s head while at the same time being struck in the heel by the serpent. In her descent from on high, which results in the snowdrift being crushed and her heel being broken, Katniss – whose father died in a mining incident, and whose body was not found; who was returned to the ground – triumphs (not for the first time, nor the last) over death – the impassable fence that cut her off from the community – and over the powers that use death as a means of controlling people’s lives. It is a Christological moment.
Jesus engages people through invitation and challenge: extending grace and affirmation and access, and requiring change. We see this time and again in the Gospels, both with his closest disciples and with more passing encounters. Those who respond to Jesus respond to invitation and challenge (consider Zacchaeus, whom Jesus affirms in the face of being ostracised, and who makes a radical and costly turn-around) and the on-going process of invitation and challenge separates out those who want to follow Jesus from those who want Jesus to follow them (consider the crowds who fall away when he increases the challenge element).
Where invitation and challenge are both low, the defining characteristic of a relationship (between two persons, or within a community) is boredom.
Where invitation is high and challenge is low, the defining characteristic of a relationship is cosiness.
Where invitation is low and challenge is high, the defining characteristic of a relationship is stress/discouragement.
Where invitation and challenge are both high, the defining characteristic of a relationship is empowerment.
With this in mind, let’s revisit the ‘field of discipleship’ I suggested yesterday. Each quadrant is explored and mapped in increasing detail where we experience high invitation and challenge. (Boredom is unaware of its surroundings; cosiness, unconcerned with them; and stress, too agitated to appreciate them.)
Consider the ‘come, and be’ quadrant, where the question is, ‘who am I chosen to be with?’ For me, this question is answered in several ways. There is my life-long covenant relationship with my wife. Then there are our children: and while that is also a life-long relationship, I certainly don’t envisage that they will always live and move with us, so we might consider the present dynamic to be a long-term season. But I also have long-term and/or for-life relationships with a number of friends; and then there are shorter-term friendships and working relationships: those I am chosen to be with for now.
I think it would be fair to say that at times I have related to my wife with low invitation and high challenge, causing her stress; at other times, have retreated into high invitation, low challenge, resulting in a cosiness that does not empower her; or (and it is easy to slide from cosiness to this) with low invitation low challenge, resulting in boredom. But I trust that there are times when, through high invitation and high challenge on my part, she has been empowered to fulfil her God-given potential, to grow into the person she was created to be. To live habitually in that place requires a determination of the will, and a continuous pattern of repentance and belief.
When it comes to our children, I know that my natural tendency is to extend low invitation high challenge, causing them stress; and that I need to extend more invitation – find ways of spending time together, having fun – and step back from inappropriate challenge (they are children, not adults), while not abdicating appropriate challenge (without which it is not possible to move from immaturity to maturity). So often we expect parenting to be easy and find it overwhelmingly complicated, when the truth is that it is very simple and very, very hard.
Many of my working relationships and short-term relationships bore me – not because I want to be entertained, but because I want to be engaged – because the other person does not extend invitation (access to their lives) and challenge (leading me out of my comfort zone) or does not respond to my offers of invitation and challenge. On the other hand, responding to invitation and challenge is a key indicator of a Person of Peace – someone open to you, someone who responds to Jesus in you – and helpful in discerning which people to invest most in.
The same principles apply to the other quadrants: without high invitation high challenge, one will never discover and grow in what they are challenged to do, what they are given to contribute, or where they are invited to go together with others...
Let us consider a visual representation of the field of discipleship, the scope of its concerns.
Jesus calls disciples to come to him and be sent by him into the world. This spectrum, along which the disciple moves back and forth, provides us with our first axis.
Jesus calls disciples into community and to a distinct part within that community. Personhood exists within covenant relationships, within which we have a specific vocation or kingdom roles. For Jesus himself, his personhood exists in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and his mother, Mary; while his particular vocation is to be the Son (of God, of Man). Paul writes about the Church as the Body of Christ, one body made up of distinct members, each of which play a part on which the body as a whole depends and which is meaningless in isolation/amputation. So inextricably linked personhood (covenant relationships) and vocation (kingdom roles) provides us with our second axis.
We can now consider the field of discipleship as comprising four quadrants.
The bottom-left, framed by coming to Jesus and our personhood – come, and be – is concerned with the question: who am I chosen to be with? (Biblical example: Jesus giving Mary and John to each other from the cross.)
The top-left, framed by coming to Jesus and our vocation – come, and do – is concerned with the question: what am I challenged to do? (Biblical example: the disciples learn to do what Jesus does.)
The top-right, framed by our vocation and being sent by Jesus – go, and do – is concerned with the question: what am I given to contribute? (Biblical example: Erastus was an urban director of public works.)
The bottom-right, framed by our personhood and being sent by Jesus – go, and be – is concerned with the question: where are we invited to go together? (Biblical example: Paul and his team being led into Europe from Asia Minor.)
Each of these questions can relate to more permanent or more provisional, and more general or more specific, calls; and our response will involve attention to both character and competence (skills).
The other day a younger friend asked me a really good question: what is the difference between discipleship and mentoring? In fact, this is a great question, and one that arises from my insistence that discipleship is not primarily about the Christian’s personal and largely unmediated relationship with Jesus but about interpersonal human relationships, the participation in the missio dei (God’s mission) Jesus has delegated to us. If my understanding of discipleship is that it is relational and directive and handed on, is what I mean by ‘discipleship’ mentoring? An older acquaintance who asked me my views on discipleship recently thought so.
There is certainly a degree of overlap, but in my view discipleship and mentoring are not coterminous. While I am aware that there is a (growing) range of nuance to how the term ‘mentoring’ is applied, my understanding of mentoring is that it is vocational and that, while the mentor may certainly address character issues and facilitate networking, the relationship is primarily concerned with passing on specific skills to their protégée.
Another related-but-different field is that of life-coaching, which, unlike mentoring, is not vocational. The aim of the life-coach is to help someone identify changes they want to see in their life and to put in place changes towards that life. They are more concerned with values than particular skills: with helping their client to align their actions more closely to their ‘ideal world’ lifestyle. Life-coaches tend not to be directive: the impetus for change comes from the person who has engaged them; they act as a sounding-board to help that person articulate what they seek. As such, life-coaches – in contrast to mentors - do not necessarily model something they have learnt and are now handing on.
Discipleship is concerned with becoming Christ-like (“imitate me as I imitate Christ”) in every part of life. It is concerned with vocation – that is, our kingdom roles – as inextricably linked to personhood – that is, our covenant relationships. Therefore, discipleship involves a distinctively Jesus-centred form of life-coaching and mentoring, while adapting and exceeding both.
Discipleship as mentoring (as when a Christian businessperson mentors younger businesspeople in engaging in business according to kingdom values) puts one person between me and the place I want to go to – a person who will help me take that step. It may relate to a specific job or employment, or unfamiliar location; or more generally to the unchanging, developing vocation that is expressed through a series of jobs and in a series of locations. While discipleship must always take into account both Christ-like competence and Christ-like character, here competence takes the ‘leading beat.’
Discipleship as life-coaching puts one person between me and the person of Jesus – someone who will bring me to Jesus, just as I am called to bring others to Jesus. While discipleship must always take into account both Christ-like character and Christ-like competence, here character takes the ‘leading beat.’ It may be significantly removed from mentoring – a key observation for church leaders in inherited traditions: we are not primarily called to raise up the next generation of clergy or licensed lay ministers, but to create a culture of discipleship by making disciples – regardless of their vocation – who make disciples.
Both are counter-cultural to the extreme individualism of our age. Both are necessary, as the life of discipleship is a shared life of being called to come to the person of Jesus and be sent ahead of him into every place.
I shall develop these ideas in my next post, The Field Of Discipleship...
Recently I wrote a post on the book The Hunger Games, and in particular the way in which the motif of ‘grain’ as a strategy of control and ‘bread’ as a tactic of subversion recalls the use of grain by Rome and use of bread by the Christian community within that world of ‘bread and circuses.’ In Panem, the Capitol controls the distribution of grain to the 12 Districts as both carrot and stick; and the Districts each make their own forms of bread, in distinctive shapes that reflect their primary employment and with regionally-available additional ingredients, so carrying their own identity in a way the Capitol cannot crush. Moreover, bread is used as gift, a way of sharing meagre resources to ensure that the Capitol does not crush someone else: it is the ultimate symbol of solidarity, of refusing to put oneself before another.
In the film version, this motif (along with most of what makes the book interesting and disturbing) is largely lost. Bread combines the lives of the two boys who are in love with Katniss – without her being aware in either case – when, near the start of the film, Gale offers Katniss a small loaf sold to him by Peeta’s father, the baker, which she breaks in two and shares with him. But the act is easily overlooked, in a scene which struggles to convey a gesture of unconditional love being returned with a gesture of conditional friendship. The significant moment when Peeta provided Katniss with bread recurs in flashback several times; but its story-telling power as testimony to the depth and length of his love is almost entirely negated by setting it in the very recent past rather than some years before, not long after her father’s death, when Katniss, her mother and sister were close to starving.
There is a moment in the film where grain – used by the Capitol as a strategy of control – is directly appropriated as a tactic of subversion; a moment we do not see in the book, told as it is from Katniss’ perspective, trapped in the Games arena. When she shows solidarity with another District, honouring Rue’s life and death by placing flowers around her body and signing respect to the girl’s community forced to watch on a big screen, a riot ensues in District 11 in which the trappings of the Capitol are targeted and grain silos are opened with the grain, pouring out, becoming a means of obstructing the ‘peacekeepers’ and even a weapon to crush and drown them.
Whereas the book is narrated by Katniss, the film is mostly presented from the perspective of the Capitol. This has the effect of turning the story on its head. Rather than side with the oppressed people of the outer Districts, we are encouraged to identify ourselves with the privileged, self-indulgent, but morally complex (as opposed to one-dimensional villains) population of the Capitol. Indeed, they are a hyper-real vision of our own culture; and so such identification is closer to the truth, however disturbing that truth may be. Such a directorial decision may itself be seen as a tactic of subversion intended to undermine bread and circuses as a strategy of control. If so, it is a gamble...
Further reflections on conversations with Mark Carey.
As noted in my previous post, discipleship is relational, directive, and involves both being a disciple (being led, or following) and making disciples (leading, and being followed). This post is concerned with the stages of leading, and the styles appropriate to each stage, as we seek to lead according to the pattern of Jesus.
The first stage of leadership is an apostolic phase. Its focus is casting vision. The primary work is setting out revelation (this is what we are going to do) and the restraint (what we are not going to do) that comes with revelation (without revelation, restraint is cast off, and the potential for momentum dissipates).
The second stage of leadership is a pastor/teacher phase. Its focus is embedding values. The primary work is encouraging those who have responded to the first-stage vision to stay within the restraints established then, coaching them in the core values of the vision. So, for example, if hospitality is a core value, we model what hospitality looks and feels like, in our context, with gradually increasing teaching following experience.
The third stage of leadership is an evangelistic phase. Its focus is shared vocabulary. By ‘evangelist’ I mean someone who, by natural preference, cannot help but communicate good news stories; and by evangelistic phase I mean taking on this discipline whether it is our natural preference or not. In this stage of leadership, Jesus sends his disciples out to do the things he has been doing. They can be entrusted with this because they have a shared understanding, a common ‘vocabulary’ for describing the in-breaking kingdom of heaven. But they return to Jesus as the one who gathers-up their good news reports. The primary work of third stage leadership is passing-on the good news stories concerning those we lead: no longer telling our stories, but telling theirs; the leader as collector and distributor. So, for example, by the third stage of transitioning a church to missional communities, a key role for the bigger gatherings is telling the stories of the pilot communities.
The fourth stage of leadership is a prophetic phase. Its focus is releasing vehicles, as one community of disciples multiples. The primary work is supporting those you have led (your disciples) to develop their own vision (that they will cast, becoming first-stage leaders) as they listen to what God is putting on their hearts, ensuring that the necessary ‘cover’ (or structure for ongoing accountability) is in place for them as your own relationship with them changes from day-to-day discipler to more removed mentor or overseer (Jesus leaves his disciples, but sends the Holy Spirit). Note: the question of providing the right cover for those leaders we release is one that, to date, the fresh expressions and pioneer ministry movements have not adequately engaged with; it is also the key element of fourth-stage leadership that, in failing to put it in place, led to the most costly relationship breakdown with people we had led Jo and I have experienced.
It is important to go through the stages – not in a mechanistic sense, but not attempting to short-circuit the process Jesus models. Short-cuts (such as attempting consensus decisions from the outset) result in the people we lead having a vehicle for discipleship without understanding the values that drive discipleship (akin to a car without an engine – which is an expensive box), and this leads to problems that undermine the whole process of discipleship. Short-term gain ends in long-term loss.
Which stage of leadership is most suited to your natural preferences?
Which is least suited?
From whom can you learn (be discipled by) how to grow in competence within your strengths?
From whom might you learn (be discipled by) how to grow in competence in those stages/styles that lie further outside of your comfort zone?
(Not because we are one-man bands – I believe in complementary leadership teams – but because we are all called to grow more into the likeness of Christ, personally as well as corporately.)
Three key observations concerning discipleship:
Discipleship is relational
Jesus models a life-on-life relationship of invitation (“come and spend time with me”) and challenge (the call to repent of an earth-bound perspective on life and believe a kingdom-of-heaven perspective). Paul models the same approach, inviting others into relationship, and challenging them to imitate him as he imitates Christ.
Discipleship is relational...contrary to the belief that Jesus disciples us directly through the Holy Spirit (Jesus explicitly charges disciples with the responsibility of making disciples); or that we can be discipled remotely by Christian authors (they can be helpful to us, undoubtedly, but it isn’t discipleship – not least because they cannot engage us in discussion or hold us accountable, essential ingredients in the difference between passing on information and handing on transformation); or that we can deliver discipleship through packaged courses.
Genuine discipleship consistently points the disciple to Jesus, not through abstract ideas, but through embodied evidence of transformation – imperfect yes, but real life examples. The good news (the invitation here) is that we all have relationships, and that you don’t need to be an expert. The challenge is to make some of our relationships intentionally discipleship relationships.
Discipleship is directive
Again, this is because discipleship is concerned with handing on transformation, not passing on information (which can be passed on in other ways). The key questions of discipleship are: what has the discipler learnt, that the disciple needs to learn at this moment? and, how might the thing that the discipler has learnt be applied in the life of the disciple? This second question is important for two reasons: firstly, because we are not concerned with the acquisition of knowledge (what to believe) but with the application of wisdom (how to believe); and secondly, because the outworking of the same wisdom will look different in two different lives.
The implication of discipleship – disciples who go and make disciples who go and make disciples – is that it is not a peer relationship, not a mutual discipling of one another (however valid mutual edification is). In over-prioritising mutual edification, we have effectively contained the momentum of discipleship (rather than one discipling a few, each of whom disciple a few, we tend to gather in groups that ‘disciple’ one another within the contained group, or to seek – potentially conflicting – investment for ourselves from several other voices at once). Discipleship is directive: it is about being led, about following, and about learning to lead, to call others to follow.
Andrew was John the Baptist’s disciple before becoming Jesus’ disciple: I would suggest that Andrew and John were not simply filling time, but that John took Andrew as far as he could – teaching what he had learnt, pointing (literally) to Jesus – at which point someone else (in this case, literally Jesus) took over the role of his discipler – a relationship which lasted three years, before the nature of that relationship, too, moved on.
Likewise, I would suggest that our expectation should be that we learn from someone who is sharing their life with us, and that we invite a few people at a time into our lives to learn from us...and that both the person who is discipling us, and the people we are discipling, will change from time to time as we each in turn journey through the process of becoming disciples who make disciples (a process that moves from unconscious incompetence in any given aspect of our lives, through conscious incompetence and conscious competence, to unconscious competence).
Discipleship involves both being a disciple and making disciples
You can’t make disciples outside of the parameters you have been discipled in (again, not least because all you can do is pass on information rather than hand on transformation)...and you can’t be a disciple unless you are learning to make disciples (that is, you are not the end product or point of this process).
Who is discipling you? Who has discipled you in the past? Who are you inviting into your life, to disciple?
