Many Seasoned Believers Attend Seminar

Steven Hayner, President of Columbia Seminary spoke at the "21st Century Evangelism Event" held at Lebanon Presbyterian Church last Saturday. Some 180 persons, mostly Seasoned believers, attended with great gusto and excitement. I taught two workshops and the enthusiasm was palpable among the folks who came. They asked good questions and were animated in their responses.

I am posting the slides from my presentations plus additional slides that I think you will enjoy on my web at www.sweetenlife.com. You will also be interested in my new blog at
http://spiritualhealingand growth.blogspot.com

Here is my question: Why do so many churches have no graded adult discipleship classes? All churches have graded classes for children. None of us would think of mixing four year old kids with fourth grade or fourteen year old kids but we do that all the time with adults. Not on age but on the age of their spiritual life.

It would be easy to do and most Christians would welcome it.

Taking Every Thought Captive

I am again teaching the classic course, Rational Christian Thinking, that I first developed and wrote back in the eighties. Pastor Brad Rosenberg asked me to train his staff and Lay leaders how to live in the freedom of Christ and I agreed.

Because his wife Angie had gotten so much out of the training before she asked Brad to let everyone attend so young mothers like her could benefit from the training and rear their children free of fear and anxiety. So, we are teaching over 100 adults each Wednesday evening at Tri County Assembly of God in Fair field, Ohio north of Cincinnati.

It is a thrill to be able to "Equip the saints to DO the work of ministry" and I love training them in ways to "Renew their minds" according to the Bible. The students are eagerly lapping up the information and responding with great interactions in the class.

Over the next few posts I will write some of the basic principles of biblically renewing the mind so the readers can start getting free from cultural, social and devilish ideas. I am amazed at how many Spirit filled Christians are ensnared in old fleshly ways to thinking, feeling and acting yet believe they "Have the mind of Christ."

A mind of Christ is a peaceful mind. It is Free from worry, free from anxiety and free from letting others put them down. They could care less what others think because they know what Jesus thinks.

So, read and reflect on how Gos can set us free from the "Stinking Thinking" that keeps us in bondage.

A Way of Prayer

In order to "abide" in Christ and allow the noise and static of the day slip away from our mind it is necessary to learn how to meditate. The most common barrier to hearing God comes from an inability to rest and focus my mind.

Remember, Jesus promised in John 14 to leave us the Holy Spirit so we would not be lonely or afraid. The Spirit is with us and in us and He wishes to guide us. Can you believe that the Spirit of God has a stronger desire to speak to us than we desire to speak with Him? Why, then, is it so rare that we hear Him?

Too much interference. Perhaps there is so much going on in us and around us that the "still small voice of the Lord" has trouble breaking through. Here is where meditation can help us.

Christians, unlike Buddhists, and Hindus, begin by meditating on something rather than nothing. The Eastern "mantra" is a sound such as, "OOOMMM". For Christians it is different. We focus on a passage of scripture, a prayer or the Name of Jesus. A famous Russian phrase often used to facilitate meditation is:

Lord Jesus Christ

Son of the living God

Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Try this or a prayer and see what happens. Is it helpful to your being calm and ridding yourself of anxious thoughts? Are you more peaceful?

In my Father's house are many rooms.

Are you ready for Easter? I hope to help you prepare for one of the greatest days in the history of the Church and humanity. I am currently studying what it means to be in union with Christ or abide in Christ. This is a central aspect of the Orthodox Church Movement. It is, unfortunately, largely ignored in Roman Catholic and Protestant circles. Perhaps that is because we in the West think like Greek Scientists. Thankfully, Orthodox theology and practice is much more Eastern, as is the Bible.

Yesterday, Saturday, March 15, about fifty of us had a half day of seeking God's presence so we might dwell in Him. It was a great day. Over the following posts I will share my insights and show photos of our time together.

What do you think it means to "Abide in Jesus Christ?" Almost the whole of John 14 and John 15 is focused on describing Jesus' description of the future of Christianity. Yet, many of the conversations and discussions as well as the sermons largely miss the point.

Here is my challenge. Read John 14 and try to imagine what Jesus is talking about. Do not read John 15 yet. Yield not to the temptation to look at the metaphor Jesus used to explain what He meant.

Now, write out what it means to abide. Use other terms and other concepts. In fact, write your own metaphor or word picture as if you had to describe it to another person.

Send your insights and ideas to me and I will print them. The best metaphor will receive one of my books free and get their name and picture on this blog.

Hearing God Speak

It won't be long before we have a gathering for Seasoned Believers who want to learn to talk to and listen to the Lord. When we followed up the October 13 time at Winton Woods with a small questionnaire, it became clear that a lot of people want to return to their first love and learn better how to "Abide in Christ and hear His still, small voice."

Well, put aside the date of March 15. It will definitely be a day of teaching, sharing, journal writing and listening. Our training sessions follow a DREAMS acrostic to make sure we have a time that is balanced, fun, insightful and experiential.

D=Didactic meaning talks and reading. (But brief)
R=Reflection or thinking and discussing what you are learning.
E=Experiential that practice what we preach and touch and see God at work
A=Accountability that keeps us focused on the most important learning's
M=Modeling that allows us to watch others practice God at work
S=Supernatural, encountering God's Spirit personally

On March 15 we will have a half day of DREAMS!

Live Long and Prosper

Dr. Spock, the Klingon not the Pediatrician, became famous for saying it to Captain Kirk on Star Trek. I saw an interview on television one time with Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock, and he was asked where the famous line "Live long and prosper" came from. "He replied, "I am Jewish and it comes from the Ten Commandments to "Honor your father and mother that you may live long and prosper."

The promises of God are powerful and true. On this blog we are very concerned about getting the word out about living a long and prosperous life. There are many medical reasons why folks are living longer and I am happy to take advantage of those good gifts from the Lord.

I have a stint in my chest and I take several medicines each day to keep healthy. I try to eat well and exercise and I quit smoking 40 years ago when Julie was born. I also try to stay deeply connected with family and friends because both science and scripture tell me that healthy relationships are central to a long and prosperous life. After learning about tracing my family history and the importance of honoring my fathers and mothers of the former generations I began to thank God for my heritage and blessings.

Bu that is not all. The Bible also tells us how to "Live long and prosper". And, there is a great deal of research now on the many benefits of prayer, worship, church attendance and Christian fellowship. These are testimonies to the blessings of knowing Jesus Christ as Savior and healer. All in all, I am very, very thankful that God has given us so many wonderful ways to insure a long and prosperous life.

Just think, we get to have romance and it is good for us.

We get to enjoy deep prayer and worship and they are good for us.

We get to have fun relationships with our family and friends and it is good for us.

We have prayer to guide us, heal us and bring us into the love of God.

We get to live longer with physical, spiritual, emotional and financial prosperity because God chose us to be His own. Now that is good news.

Great Article by Pastor Pete Scarrero

I have been recommending Janet Hagberg's book on the stages of spiritual growth for the past year. I recently read a great book by Pastor Pete Scazzero who "Hit the Wall" of burn out and frustration before discovering the need for activating his inner life of prayer and meditation.

Below is an article sent to me by an old friend from Columbus, Buff Delcamp. Read and notice the difference between it and the article by Dan Gilliam protesting a church that canceled prayer meetings that focused on the inner life.

Gary Sweeten

JOURNEY THROUGH THE WALL
by Pete Scazzero

I meet many believers (and churches) today who are stuck at a wall. Some are discouraged. Others have dropped out altogether. They often fail to see the larger picture of the transforming work God seeks to do in them at their wall. The disorientation and pain of their present circumstances blinds them. And they feel unsuccessful in finding other companions for such a journey.

What most don't understand is that growth into maturity in Christ, both for us as leaders and for us as church communities, requires us to go through "the wall."

The wall: stages of faith
Throughout church history, great men and women have written about the phases of this journey to help us understand the larger picture, or map, of what God is doing in our lives. In The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith (Sheffield Publishing, 2005), Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich developed a model that includes the essential place of the wall in our journeys. The following is my adaptation of their work.

Note that each stage builds naturally upon the other. In the physical world, babies must grow into young children and then into teenagers who become adult men and women. In a similar way spiritually, each stage builds on the ones that go before it.

An important difference, however, is that we can stagnate very easily at a certain stage and choose not to move forward in our journeys with Christ. We refuse to trust God into this unknown, mysterious place.

Let's take a look at the stages:

Stage 1: Life-Changing Awareness of God – This stage, whether in childhood or adulthood, is the beginning of our journey with Christ as we become aware of his reality. We realize our need for mercy and begin our relationship with him.

Stage 2: Discipleship – This stage is characterized by learning about God and what it means to be a follower of Christ. We become part of a Christian community and begin to get rooted in the disciplines of the faith.

Stage 3: The Active Life – This is described as the "doing" stage. We get involved, actively working for God, serving him and his people. We take responsibility by bringing our unique talents and gifts to serve Christ and others.

Stage 4: The Wall and the Journey Inward – Notice that the wall and the inward journey are closely related. The wall drives us into an inward journey. In some cases people feel compelled to move into an inward journey that eventually leads them to the wall. It has rightly been said that the perhaps 85 percent of evangelicals do not get through the wall. Often our image of God doesn't allow for such a difficult experience.

Stage 5: The Journey Outward – Having passed through the crisis of faith and the intense inner work necessary to go through the wall, we begin once again to move outward to "do" for God. We may do some of the same active external things we did before (e.g., provide leadership, serve, and initiate acts of mercy towards others). The difference is that now we give out of a new, grounded center of ourselves in God.

Stage 6: Transformed by Love – God's goal, in the language of John Wesley, is that we be made perfect in love, that Christ's love becomes our love both toward God and others. We realize love truly is the beginning and the end. By this stage, the perfect love of God has driven out fear (see 1 John 4:18). And the whole of our spiritual lives is finally about surrender and obedience to God's perfect will. For most of us, the wall appears through a crisis that turns our world upside down. It comes, perhaps, through a divorce, a job loss, the death of a close friend or family member, a cancer diagnosis, a disillusioning church experience, a betrayal, a shattered dream, a wayward child, a car accident, an inability to get pregnant, a deep desire to marry that remains unfulfilled, a dryness or loss of joy in our relationship with God. We question ourselves, God, the church.

We discover for the first time that our faith does not appear to "work." We have more questions than answers as the very foundation of our faith feels like it is on the line. We don't know where God is, what he is doing, where he is going, how he is getting us there, or when this will be over. On a certain level it is correct to say that walls come to us in various ways throughout our lifetimes. It's not simply a one-time event that we pass through and get beyond. It appears to be something we return to as part of our ongoing relationship with God.

We see this, for example, in Abraham waiting at the wall for 25 years for his first child with his wife, Sarah, to be born. Later God led him again to another wall – the sacrificing of that long-awaited son he loved, Isaac, on an altar. Regardless of how we get there, every follower of Jesus at some point will confront the wall.

The best way to understand the dynamics of the wall is to examine the classic work of St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, written over 500 years ago. He described the journey in three phases: beginners, progressives, and perfect. To move out of the beginning stage, he argued, required the receiving of God's gift of the dark night, or the wall. This is the "ordinary way" we grow in Christ. A failure to understand this is one of the major reasons many start out well in their journeys but do not finish well. How do we know we are in "the dark night"? Our good feelings of God's presence evaporate. We feel the door of heaven has been shut as we pray. Darkness, helplessness, weariness, a sense of failure or defeat, barrenness, emptiness, or dryness descends upon us. The Christian disciplines that have served us up to this time "no longer work." We can't see what God is doing and see little visible fruit in our lives.

This is God's way of rewiring and "purging our affections and passions." He does this so we might delight in his love and enter into a richer, fuller communion with him. God wants to communicate to us his true sweetness and love. He longs that we might know his true peace and rest. He works to free us from unhealthy attachments and idolatries of the world. He longs for an intimate, passionate love relationship with us. God's desire is that his will truly be our will. Failure to understand and surrender to God's working in us at the wall often results in great long-term pain and confusion. Receiving the gift of God in the wall, however, transforms our lives forever.

Pete Scazzero is author of the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (Integrity, 2006), a groundbreaking work on the integration of emotional health and contemplative spirituality in our discipleship and formation in Christ. He has also authored The Emotionally Healthy Church (Zondervan, 2003), winner of the Gold Medallion Award for 2003. For tools on leading an emotionally healthy church, go to www.emotionallyhealthy.org

Add your 2 cents worth on these stories in comments or by mail

gsweeten@cinci.rr.com

Revealing Research

Taking care of the Babies

I greatly disliked the statistics and research classes I had to take in Graduate School. I was always somewhat afraid of math and statistical correlations, terms of significant to the .001 level and so forth me. However, looking back I am convinced that those classes were extremely helpful to me as a Minister and Counselor.

One of the oldest saws of research statistics is that there are "Liars, dang liars and statisticians", implying that we can make stats say almost anything we want. That is only true if we are explaining something to a person who knows nothing about how data can be manipulated.

The lesson for us is to remember that the research contained in the Reveal Book are not as valid as the Bible nor do they replace Holy Scripture. However, the gutsy approach of Willow Creek can be very useful to check up on how we are handling holy matters in a practical way.

For example, I was teaching in Singapore at the TESS Bible School and unconsciously using an Americanism that was offensive in the Chinese culture. Hoe Sing Ho, one of the brave students, took me aside and let me know what I was unconsciously doing. That was research in action and I stopped the offensive gestures.

Willow Creek's research is not perfect but it can give them and us cause to evaluate what we are doing to disciple and equip the saints to grow up into adult believers. The data SEEMS to indicate that they, and several other congregations, were not doing an adequate job of taking their people beyond the Baby Stage of Christian Growth.

Such feedback is cause for a pause and . The data did indicate that there was a spiritual growth continuum.

Reveal shows a Four Stage Growth Process:
1. Exploring Christianity: Interested but not committed
2. Growing in Christ: Attending, learning
3. Close to Christ: Attending and Giving
4. Christ Centered: Sold Out

These stages may be inadequate explanation of the dynamic process of faith but it is a good beginning. The next time, the surprising difficulty of growth and the questions it raises for all of us.

Revealing Research

The research from Willow Creek Church in the book by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson is shocking to many church leaders. In my last post I put up a chart showing the spiritual growth was not related directly to church attendance. The chart on the right shows the assumptions of the authors prior to doing their surveys.

I hope all my readers will order the book from Willow and read it carefully. I think they have hit upon a very important insight. Many Christians, including seminary professors and pastors, share the faulty assumptions as indicated on this chart.

Hawkins and Parkinson say: "If increasing participation in church activities (such as attendance at services and participation in small groups) drives spiritual growth, we would see a direct linear correlation (shown above) between low-medium-high levels of participation and low-medium-high levels of spiritual growth."

But, as the chart on the previous chart shows, there is no such correlation. Attendance alone does not seem to lead to additional spiritual growth. (I think that is especially true for Seasoned Believers who have been involved in Christian activities for several decades.)