Variations on a Theme

I realize that New Years Day is actually kind of an artificial construct. There really is nothing magical about turning the page to a new calendar when it comes to how we organize and discipline our daily lives. But sometimes an artificial construct is useful in getting us to change our behavior.

In that light, I would like to approach 2011 as a new start in how I approach my online interactions. Several years ago, when I made my first attempt at learning to think online, I christened this blog "Variations on a Theme", with the idea of discussing various aspects of what it means to me to be a Christ follower.

With that theme in mind, I want to attempt to blog my thoughts as I read a book specifically about being a Christ follower. The book is Eugene Peterson's The Jesus Way: a conversation on the ways that Jesus is the way. I started reading this book on one of my trips sometime in 2010, but I didn't get very far. Now seems like a good time to pick the book back up, and I think I will benefit from the discipline of "thinking on paper" as I read it.

I don't have a clear vision of what blogging through this book will look like. I definitely don't expect it to be neat, well thought out outlines of each chapter. Often my best way to think through something I'm reading is to grab hold of some of the key thoughts as they come and basically wrestle with them for a while.

One of the key thoughts in the parts of this book that I have previously read is the importance of a conversation. To quote Peterson: "I intend the term "conversation" to be taken quite literally - a back and forth between the writer and reader. Matters of spiritual theology in general, and the spirituality of the ways of our Lord taken up in this conversation, are not categorically precise and cannot be pinned down with formulaic definitions or prescriptions. There are ambiguities that can be worked out only in prayer and practice on the way."

I know that such a conversation may take a while to develop. When you haven't written in your blog in over 18 months, there will be no one around, and least for a while, to have a conversation with. So for now I will probably be talking to myself. But if you do happen to read this, I would love for this to be a real conversation. So I invite you, friend, to walk along with me as we think about the ways that Jesus is the way.

In his introduction to The Jesus Way, Eugene Peterson sets up a strong contrast between "ways and means culture" of North America and what it means to follow Jesus as "the Way." The ways of Jesus are personal, relational, particular, local, "flesh and blood", while the ways employed in our North American culture are "conspicuously impersonal."

I think Peterson is right that too many of us who claim to be followers of Jesus "without hesitation, and apparently without thinking" embrace the thinking of our culture as we go about living our daily llives. This has obvious implications both for the individual and the local church.

We can think through what this means for the church in a couple of days. Let's start - and I do mean start - thinking through what it means for me in my day to day choices and actions.

Peterson makes the following key statement, which flies in the face of our Western individualism: "I cannot follow Jesus any which way I like. My following must be consonant with His leading." Sounds simple enough, but if I take any time to scratch below the surface of my daily life, I find that it is rife with instances of basing my choices and directions on things that are, sadly, often the exact opposite of where Jesus would be leading.

What would it look like in 21st century America for me to follow Him in such a way that my lifestyle choices, my time patterns, my "free time" ... my whole life was in concert with His leading?

I think ultimately that's the question that I need to wrestle with in working through this book. But I don't need to do it in an academic way. The goal is not to understand more, the goal is to actually follow Him. I like the way Peterson describes it - "to really live, to live eternal life in ordinary time."

A quick entry tonight, but one that I've been thinking a lot about all day. Early in his introduction, Peterson makes the following statement: "We cannot use impersonal means to do or say a personal thing - and the gospel is personal or it is nothing."

There's an awful lot of implications flowing from that sentence. If what Peterson is saying is true, and I have a feeling it might be, what does that say for some of our "techniques" of evangelism? Does it mean that "Internet evangelism" is not possible, or does it mean that we must very consciously shape and personalize the way we do evangelism online so that we are not misrepresenting a gospel that is personal and incarnational?

I need to do some more thinking before I begin to formulate some answers, but I'd love to hear input from others.

I could probably stay in Peterson's introduction to The Jesus Way for a lot longer, but if I do, I'll never make it through the book.

One area that he addresses in his intro, though, is very applicable to where I am living right now as a campus pastor at Bridge Bible Church - and that is the very nature of the church.

A couple of quotes:
"A Christian congregation, the church in your neighborhood, has always been the primary location for getting this way and truth and life of Jesus believed and embodied in the places and among the people with whom we most have to do day in and day out."

"... the local congregation is the place where we get all of this integrated and practiced in the immediate circumstances and among the men, women and children we live with. This is where it becomes local and personal."

"As created and sustained by the Holy Spirit, it [the local church] is insistently local and personal. Unfortunately, the more popular American church strategies in respect to congregation are not friendly to the local and the personal."

Is Peterson right in stressing the "local and personal" center of what a church ought to be? If so, then the fact that most of us only see people from the church on Sunday mornings (or maybe one other time at a formal small group or Bible study) would say that we are sadly missing the center.

I realize a lot of this is as much a function of our culture (lack of relationships with neighbors, no more real "front porches", how we busily fill up all of our available time) as it is a function of the nature of how we go about church, but a large part of it is a function of how we go about church. And anyway, the church is called to be counter-culture, not to mimic culture.

What would that kind of "local and personal" community look like in a church today? Is the fact that we have built so many large churches that have people drive in from miles and miles away contributed to a lack of emphasis on incarnation and community?

A lot to think about ... now on to the first chapter.

Early in the first chapter of The Jesus Way, Peterson uses the following phrase in describing the book of Psalms - "a life lived attentively and responsibly before God." There are a lot of potential thoughts and themes in that phrase, but the one that jumps out to me first is that of intentionality. I'm not going to "drift" into leading the life to which God calls me. I must make intentional and informed choices - choices about my daily activities, choices about my spiritual disciplines, choices about where I am going to invest my time and resources, choices about the importance of others vs. the draw of my own ambitions and desires.

What would it look like for me to live my life "attentively" before God? Would my choices of input, of reading, of where I spend my "free time" look different (probably drastically different) than they do now? What is the ultimate cost of not being intentional about my daily life?