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Tag: asbury

Starting a New Adventure

April 22, 2016 /

Dear Friends,

I am excited to share with you that I have entered a new phase of life and ministry. I am now officially an onine Doctor of Ministry student at Asbury Theological Seminary in the Activating Missional Communities program, while still serving as pastor at Hope. This new journey means a lot of things, not the least of which, is that my Kindle and I are becoming close and personal friends.

As individuals hear about my taking this step the first question is often, “Why?” While the answer is somewhat complex I wanted to take a moment to share with you some of my thoughts, largely taken from my program application.

The purpose of studying, at this time in my ministry, is about increased potential and opportunity. As a leader, as I grow the church grows. Maybe not necessarily numerically but certainly in ways that matter. From my perspective, working toward a D. Min. is a unique opportunity to learn and grow from some of the greatest leaders in the church and bring their wisdom into our particular situation at Hope. Studying in this type of program is also an opportunity for me to exponentially increase my knowledge in ways not so easily done through self-study.

One particular area of leadership growth and development I am particularly interested in is the area of discipleship. When I was in seminary Dr. David Holdren, who was then a General Superintendent, spoke with the Wesleyan students. On a white board, he drew out for us a system of discipleship he had just learned about that used a baseball diamond. As he described this baseball-based model, he said that all of us needed to develop a model of discipleship. At the time, I did not fully understand his advice, but I have always remembered those words of counsel.
Years later I read the book Home Run Life by Kevin Myers and realized this was the model Dr. Holdren was showing to us. I have also read other books explaining a particular pastor’s model for discipleship. I have been struck by the realization, if you boil them all down, they are really all about the same. This realization regarding each of these models brought me back to the words of advice from Dr. Holdren when I was in seminary.

I feel one of the greatest challenges for the church is in the area of discipleship. Our current answer to the question of whether we are effectively developing wholly devoted followers of Christ is a poor one. As I have been processing this reality, I have been working to formulate an effective system for our particular context. Much work remains, but I believe such a system:

  • needs to be self-assessing. The church no longer has the authority, if it ever did, to say to a person you are a spiritual infant (even though you have been in the church for 40 years).
  • while self-assessing, must naturally lead people to movement and growth. There is no condemnation for where a person is at. What is important is not where a person is at. What is important is that they are moving.
  • must take into account the realities of church membership/attendance. A “committed” church member may realistically only attend 50-75% of the time.
  • must take into account, even if a person attends 100% of the time, Sunday morning is not enough.
  • must go to where people are at. Church attendance is not a natural choice for the spiritual “nones.” John Wesley would go in the early morning hours and stand on the coal piles outside the coal mines and preach to the miners before they would go down into the mines each day. Where are the coal piles today? Every day people walk into darkness. How do we give them light to take with them, even if they are not followers of Jesus?
  • must make use of, build on, and find fresh expressions of the disciplines and traditions of the past 2,000 years of Christendom.
  • must make room for the Spirit to work in people’s lives on the Spirit’s timeline.
  • must be Kingdom centered. God is not a respecter of people, cultures or nations.
  • must be full of grace and truth.
  • must challenge people to, as Richard Stearns says, to “go nuclear.” In generations past missionaries would load their belongings into a coffin knowing they were never coming home. Today hundreds of thousands of people applied to be the first humans to travel to Mars, knowing it will be a one-way journey. Are we calling and challenging people to do great things for God, even things as crazy as traveling to Mars?
  • must scale up and scale down. Will it guide people as effectively in their spiritual growth in a church of two as a church of 100,000?
  • must empower others to lead and reproduce.

In the process of implementing such a system, we have many amazing resources available to us today to help us connect with each other and grow together. These include, but are certainly not limited to podcasting, webinars, blogging, and various social media platforms.

Along this journey I will be sharing in this blog insights I am learning and questions I am pondering. I encourage you to interact and share your thoughts. Some of the things I may share may be controversial or push some buttons. I don’t promise to even completely agree with everything I post. This will be a learning opportunity for all of us to be stretched and grow and I welcome  the chance to process these concepts with all of you. I know that I have much to learn.

Blessings,
Stephen

The Name at the Bottom

July 7, 2014 /

Dear Friends,

During most of my time in seminary I worked across the street from the seminary in the Registrar’s Office of Asbury College. One of the functions that was occasionally part of my job was the preparation official transcripts or other documents. Preparing these documents might mean stamping the signature of the Academic Dean, Dr. Thomas and pressing the seal of the college into the paper with an embosser. When I placed these stamps and seals upon a transcript I put upon them the integrity of the institution and the authority of the dean. He had entrusted to me the authority to work on his behalf knowing that if I was to take advantage of this privilege and place his signature and the school’s seal upon a fraudulent document I violated a trust that had been given to me and would cause his character and the integrity of the institution to be called into question.

signatureEach of us has had times when we have been given the authority to speak on behalf of another or have given others the authority to function as though they were us. There is a great trust being placed in the person, one we don’t often think about, even if it was something as simple as signing a birthday card and putting your spouse’s name on it.

Do you know when you pray you are doing much the same thing? Speaking and acting on behalf of God.

In John 14 Jesus is preparing his disciples for his departure. He is laying the groundwork for what life and ministry is going to be like for them without him walking beside them. The beginning of this chapter includes the verses that many of us are so familiar with. Jesus has said to his disciples he is going away. They want to know where he is going. Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life . . .”

They still don’t get it so Jesus continues to instruct them and that is where we get to these verses in chapter 14:

“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” (John 14:11-14, NIV)

Did you catch that all important line in verse 13?

Have you ever thought about why we end our prayers “in Jesus’ name” it is because Jesus has granted us the authority to speak on his behalf? Much like a supervisor giving us permission to make choices on their behalf, Jesus is saying that when we pray, whatever we pray in his name he will do. Why? Because we are speaking with his authority not our own; the authority of the one who created this world and holds it all together by his own hand. And when we pray for power to be revealed it is his power not ours.

So, here is the question: Are you praying the kind of prayers that Jesus would pray?

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

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