Spiritual Growth Through Christian Community

This is a session from Jim Leffel, teacher at Xenos Christian Fellowship on spiritual growth.

There is a wide range of considerations when thinking about spiritual growth through Christian community.

* Theological Convictions - What does spiritual growth look like? What is the relationship between growing spiritually and the church?

* Barriers to Biblical ideals - Are Christians shaped by culture? Are Christians blind to cultural influences?

* The Great Commission - What is the difference between winning converts and making disciples? What is the connection between spiritual growth and winning disciples?

* Practical - How to foster dynamic Christian community?

What does growth look like?

Christianity is not merely credal. It is not a list of things we say we believe and then we move on. The biblical metephors for growth are botany and physical biology (alive, growing, bearing fruit). The vitality of growth is measured relationally, and not by how far we retreat from the world. The greatest commandment is to love God and neighbor.

The fruit of the Spirit demonstrates character change (Gal.5:22-23). All of the fruit are relational. You need to be in relationship with people in order to demonstrate them.

We need to watch for the doors God opens and be prepared for those moments (1Peter 3:15). There is a paradox of discipleship that the more we give up, the more we gain (10:39; 16:25).

Spiritual growth is a fundamental life transformation manifesting the love of Christ. The context for life transformation is the Church.

Individual and Corporate Life

* There is both "me" and "we" in salvation. See the book Community of the King by Howard Snyder and The New Chosen People: A Corporate View of Election by William Klein.

* Individuals matter to God (called, elect, chosen...). These occur in a corporate setting - the Greek word "ekklesia" meaning "called out ones" (Ephesians 1:22, 23). God's work in the world is carried out through the Church.

* We gain a new community (1 Peter 2:9) having radical inclusion: there is a place for everyone in the Kingdom.

* We have an "oikos" meaning household, family. Salvation comes through adoption into the family of God. We have brothers and sisters and we need to be responsible for them (1Peter 4:10).

* We are part of Chirst's body (1Corinthians 12:13).

There are some implications to this:

1) Radical individualism. Isolation is not possible for growing Christians. The cost of individualism is that 25% of people have no one to discuss life with, and of the 75% who do, 80% have only a family member. Only 15% have close friends outside the family. This causes heavy alienation and lonliness. We are less sensitive to the needs of others and can go from apathetic to antisocial. There is increased physical and emotional ill health.
Only 15% of evangelicals have been spiritually mentored. Only 46% feel strongly the responsibility to share Christ. 53% say that their main purpose in life is enjoyment and personal fulfillment (from Barna's book Growing True Disciples).

2) Family life strains. Cultural values and trends are largely reflected in the Church. This leads to too much pressure on marriages, too little support or input, and no models for parenting. The cell provides a biblical context for family. The "household ordinances" are carried out in the context of Christian community. This happens because there is a broad relational base and tangible personal service. This is how we will resolve the tide of selfishness.

Is God calling us to a sense of urgency about spiritual growth?

Becoming a Spiritual Community - Part 2

Here's Part 2 of Larry Crabb's session:

When reading the Bible, we must not come to the text with our questions but listening to the questions God wants to answer. Questions like....
1. Who is God? God is a community.
2. What’s he up to? Teaching us to move with Him. We are often too afraid of intimacy with the Holy Spirit to let him teach us how to dance.
3. Who are we? Gendered image bearers, bearing the image of God.
4. What’s gone wrong? Sin.
5. What has God done? Providing change coming from looking bad in the presence of love. Providing forgiveness.
6. What is the Spirit doing today? Lifting our denial of desire. Showing us we were built for another world. Until we are empty, thirsty, desiring to see Him. Lifting denial of guilt. So that we value Jesus more than anything else.
7. How do we tag along with the Spirit? Through spiritual community.

The Practice of Spiritual Community
What does it look like to participate in the inner life of the Trinity and to carry that life into our relationships?
It looks like reaching with supernatural power into the depths of another person’s heart so that the evil in our hearts that rules so often unrecognized in how we relate is clearly identified and exposed as hateful. The Holy Spirit is given full permission to release our appetite for the Father. Our reality is not God's reality. God wants to show us our reality until we are helpless before him.

God’s Reality: The Trinity - The Church - Our Reality: Seen and Unseen

How does God’s reality become my reality? - Through the Church. He forms us by how we relate to each other.

How to relate to each other:
We must enter the battle raging beneath the surface. We need to look deeper at the battle between the flesh and Spirit as we relate to each other. Rom 8:7
We must see the vision in the mind of God for the person we are relating to.
We must touch the soul with the Spirit’s power that works in us.

Becoming a Spiritual Community - Part 1

Here's the notes from a session with Larry Crabb (psychologist and author of The Safest Place On Earth and a bunch more books).

The premis is that what we need is not professional help but spiritual community as the Trinity models it. We may fall short at this type of Christian community but we can work toward it.

“We who offer spiritual leadership often find ourselves not living what we are preaching and teaching. It is not easy to avoid hypocrisy completely because we find ourselves saying things larger than ourselves. I often call people to a life I am not fully able to live.
I am learning that the best cure for hypocrisy is community. Hypocrisy is not so much the result of not living what I preach but much more of not confessing my inability to fully live up to my own words.” – Henri Nouwen

The Trinity exemplifies perfect communion - perfect relationship. There are no relationships in hell. Sometimes the church becomes a picture of hell rather than a picture of Trinitarian community. Isolation and our own needs are what the Bible considers death. In our age, the therapeutic community allows us to sit in our individual emotional needs and not in relationship. It is important that we live in communion with each other.

The GOAL of SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY:

1) Ask - What we need to know about ourselves and God to aim toward it?

Here's a question: When a first time visitor comes to your church, how would they answer “What’s this church all about?”
In the book Jim & Casper Go To Church, Jim took his friend Casper, an atheist, to a variety of well known churches in the US. Casper's response after visiting all of the churches was, “If people who had never heard of Jesus visited these churches, they’d have to conclude that Jesus’ number one priority was that Christians invest the very best of their energy and their money into putting on a church event. Is this what Jesus told you guys to do?” – Matt Casper

The goal of the church is to change us. To make us Christ-like for the Father’s pleasure and for the mission in the world, not for producing a church event.
“I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” – Galatians 4:19
“We proclaim Christ...so that we may present everyone perfect (mature). To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy which so powerfully works in me.” – Colossians 1:28, 29

We need to make disciples through conversations that matter. We are called to relate in such a way that gifting and talent does not make possible; that is natural. Loving like the Trinity is supernatural. This is why a PhD in Psychology can leave you still not reaching people. This is often uncomfortable for us because we love our own pleasure and our own comforts. We must love Jesus more than our pleasure.
See the book by John Owen – Communion with God.

2) Ask - What is spiritual community?

In the therapeutic community, people focus on individualism. This defines the health of the individual over the spiritual community.
But in John 17:21, Jesus prays that we would be in communion with the Trinity.
Often the Trinity is more like a problem to solve than a reality to enter. We spend forever studying and learning about the Trinity but do not realize the full application of what all of this means.

Perichoresis – Moving together in perfect harmony with love, with the ruling desire to give another what is alive in ones self for the sake of the other’s well-being.
In spiritual community, we attend to what is most uniquely alive in us that comes from the Spirit and we freely give it to others with their well-being in view. This is difficult because we are naturally self-obsessed. From conception the energy ruling from our center is individualistic.
We live to protect whatever we value in ourselves rather than living to give what might prove valuable to another.

The NEW COVENANT, an arrangement conceived by the Trinity that makes spiritual community possible:
A new purity: absolute forgiveness
A new identity: defined by relationship
A new appetite: outside law becomes inside desire
A new power: the energy to love.

Home Group Conference Notes

A group of us just returned from a conference on Home Groups at Xenos Christian Fellowship in Columbus Ohio. It was the most useful conference I have ever attended. Most of the conferences I have been to in the past were put on by megachurches. A lot of times the sessions at these conferences are about new ideas that will bring a crowd to the church building. The Xenos conference was refreshing because it was more value based than technique based. Did I agree with everything they had to say? Not always, but they challenged us with a Scripture based value system and exposed us to things that broadened our way of thinking.

I am going to blog my notes on these sessions, but before I do, I should give some background to the Xenos model. This way there will be a context for the session notes.

Xenos was started in the 70's by a couple of hippies. It is amazing to see how this has developed into 5000 people. They are a House Church based fellowship. Each House Cchurch runs somewhere between 20-50 people (in Columbus, homes appear to be able to sustain those numbers). These House Churches - also called Home Groups - are their core structure.
They have also have a Central Teaching time on Sunday mornings. Groups of House Churches meet at different times on Sunday for their Central Teaching time.
Also within the House Churches are Cell Groups. The Central Teaching and Home Groups are open to anyone. The Cell Groups are men and women (divided by gender) who would like to move forward in discipleship. (So if you are from RVWC - the terms Home Groups and Cell Groups are used interchangeably by us, but not by Xenos - this caused some confusion when we were in the sessions and didn't know this).

So the basic flow is this:

Central Teaching - Home Groups- Cell Groups


The core value of Xenos is relational community. Everything is based on this value. Home Groups grow and multiply - thus the 5000 people attending.

Just one of my observations - I saw Dennis McCallum (the lead teacher of Xenos) walking around on many occasions. When he walked into a room it didn't seem like people really noticed - unlike in many of our fellowships where people flock to the pastor to make appointments etc. At Xenos, the people do the ministry. The leadership team equips them for this work - this includes marrying, burying, counseling, etc.

There are many more observations that I will mention as I blog these notes. I believe it is productive to be challenged and even rubbed the wrong way. When we become set in our ways and think that there is a set formula for advancing the Kingdom, we lose sight of the greater Christian community and the variety found within it. I hope you will be challenged to examine what the Scripture says, like I was, as you read the session notes.

The New Cat

We have a new cat named Gordo. He's affectionate, well-behaved, and cute. Mike likes him and Missy gives him 2 thumbs up. He puts on a good show when people come over. He is a nice cat. Despite all of that, our other cat, Rufus, has no use for him what so ever. Gordo wants to be friends but when he sniffs Rufus' behind he gets hissed at. When he follows Rufus to the food bowl, he gets hissed at. When he jumps on the bed where Rufus is, he gets hissed at. Rufus avoids Gordo as much as he can but when Gordo gets too close - hhhisssssss. Rufus is huge and looks very menacing but he is a big baby and afraid of cats he doesn't know. That is most likely the only reason why Gordo isn't wanking around with one ear and a limp.

There is a reason for Rufus' social problems. We had to put our first cat down because he had cancer. His name was Wally. Wally and Rufus were best buddies. Wally had a bad attitude toward other cats and would protect Rufus even though Wally was scrawny and declawed. It's all about attitude :) Anyway, these two would go wandering in the woods together, sleep together, eat together, and most nights there would be feline wrestlemania on our living room floor in front of the TV. They were hilariously entertaining. When Wally died Rufus didn't know what he was doing. He would hang around the house, going in and out the door. Wally was his only friend because he was afraid of every other cat in the neighborhood.

I think we can learn a lot about people behavior from animal behavior, even though they have no concience and a pea size brain. I think my cats demonstrate resistance to change.

1) Gordo is cute, most people like him, but he's not the same. - A lot of times we love what we had and don't want it replaced by something new. Even though a lot of people like it and we know in our heads that it isn't bad (this is where the analogy breaks down becuase we can reason and cats can't) but we still do not like it because it is not familiar to us.

2) Gordo pushes himself on Rufus. - Sometimes people just need to get used to things and then they'll come around. If we push change on people, they will turn around and hiss at us (figuratively of course). Sometimes in our attempts at trying to get people to change, they can feel that we are violating their personal preferences or their history. Much like butt sniffing to a cat, and no one wants their butt sniffed.

3) Rufus is afraid. - People do not like things that replace things that were important to them. They have nothing to identify with; they are alone. No wonder people hiss at new ideas, especially when it eliminates something they love. Many times instead of hiss, they will just avoid the topic. Especially if there is no one else of like opinion.

So what's the solution then? Wait it out. Here I have two cats who really are very similar, but they just don't know it yet. Instead, they hiss and avoid. I don't know how long they can keep it up but eventually they will have to get along because they live in the same house.

Developing A Theology of Failure

Here's a great - but fairly long - teaching based on lessons from Dennis McCallum and Gary DeLashmutt from Xenos Christian Fellowship. It was given at a time when some of their home group leaders had or were failing at leading their groups. If you are doing anything in life this is a beneficial read.

Developing a Theology of Failure
The biggest problem with many of us is that we are soft from too much success. We are like a child riding a bike on training wheels who thinks he has actually learned to ride. His parents warn him, "It's a little harder when you take the wheels off," but until you actually do take them off, the kid continues to enjoy a false sense of mastery. Once the wheels come off, the child may have to endure a few nasty crackups that could lead to tears, and even a refusal to ride any more. But without removing the wheels, he will never learn to ride.

In our training, failure has played a prominent role, and in fact a crucial role that success never could have played. We have failed at more ministry attempts than most in our church have ever tried! Bible studies, personal evangelism, discipleship, and overall fellowship direction are all venues where we have tasted deeply of failure, often with embarrassment and disgrace. While we still don't like to fail, we increasingly realize that nothing teaches us more than our failures.

From failure we learn what works. Biblical guidance is important in ministry, but we are still left sto apply biblical teaching in area after area, and these are often judgment calls requiring wisdom and experience. Success in ministry can often lead to the wrong conclusions. We may conclude that because of our success, our ministry methods must be on a especially correct. Meanwhile, our success may be the result of something completely different. Our attribution of success to our superior methods is wrong, but we usually have no way of knowing that until we fail using those same "miracle methods." The experience of failure throws us into state of amazement and disillusionment, and this confused state of mind is exactly what God needs to bring us out of our ego-driven paradigm. Only then can we listen to new ideas, new ways of explaining past success, and engage in original thinking for the future.

Through failure we learn dependence (2 Cor 11:30-33): At the heart of our carnality in leadership is often a self-sufficient attitude. Our shortchanged prayer life is a warning signal, but we find that easy to ignore. Failure is much harder to ignore. As we strike off in first one direction and then another, failing at each turn, God is able to corner us into conclusions we weren't willing to look at before. A growing sense of ineptitude at the deepest level begins to strike a note of caution in all we do. Ironically, this sense of helplessness grows at the same time we know we are increasing our competence in the basic skills of ministry. Such an inner tension is exactly what God uses to convince us that he alone can bring us to ultimate spiritual success.

Through failure we deepen our discernment: One of our problems in ministry that we may be driving for the wrong goals. We often assume that things which bring more results, like greater numbers, are the will of God. We may think certain types of people are best suited to lead. These assumptions may be partly right, but they often overlook important exceptions that could lead to unfairness or corruption in the church. God often shows us through failure that we are looking at things superficially and that we need goals more in harmony with the deeper picture. We may realize that our pragmatism leads to outward results without inward spiritual reality. At other times, we may see that our super-spirituality has led us to ignore the plain facts of our situation. After training in failure, some things that used to impress us as guaranteed to succeed now remind us of times when similar things or people were great disappointments. Our pronouncements become less dogmatic, and more humble. At the same time, we may have viewed certain problems as negative, but not really dangerous, until one of those problems rose up and confronted us with outright failure because we ignored it. We cannot downplay such problems in the future. Therefore, a leader trained by failure may become concerned about things that seem less important to others.

Through failure we learn how to minister under grace: Personal sin often teaches us the urgency of clinging to the grace of God in our lives. In the same way, failure in ministry teaches us how urgent it is that we learn to appreciate and appropriate God's grace in a living way. Most of us come into ministry feeling on some level that the work depends on our competence and personal charisma, and this becomes confusing, because on some level our gifts and abilities are instrumental. God may have to work with us for years to bring us to the place where we understand in our heart how it can be possible that my abilities matter, and yet take no sense of egotism from that fact. Most young ministers insist on taking their identity from their ministry results. Usually, only profound failure will convince us that "apart from the vine we can do nothing," and yet we need to strive all the harder. (I Cor 15:10) This is the paradoxical outlook of the mature worker--an outlook only accessible through a combination of success and failure.

Through failure we develop deep spiritual convictions about ministry: Most of us become excited about doing ministry because of the thrilling experiences we have while doing it. Such profound thrills are hard to find apart from illicit drugs, romance, or materialistic advancement. On one level, God must approve of our feeling good from ministry victory, because he says we will be more "blessed" if we serve. (John 13:17) But feeling pleasure is not the proper foundational motive for serving God. We must learn to do it because God wills it, even if no one else does it, even if we don't succeed at it, and even if it brings us pain and frustration. (1 Cor. 4:2 note, "trustworthy" not "successful") Failure separates the quitters from the servants. Failure is a painful experience that puts the question squarely: Am I going to continue doing something that often brings me pain? God also uses other painful experiences to put this question, such as betrayal by friends, suspicions, lack of appreciation, and accusations from our people, but failure seems to be the supreme negative experience. God wants to know whether we are prepared to serve in failure, or only in success? (II Tim 4:3) Isaiah's call in Is. 6:8-13 basically promised a ministry characterized by failure throughout. But Isaiah was willing and faithful to that calling. God will test each minister on this point (often though failure) to purify our motives.

Leaders thus broken through failure become suitable tools in the hands of the Lord. But unbroken leaders pose a threat to the health and spirituality of the church. Leaders accustomed to nothing but success become, themselves, hard to lead. They are always convinced they are right, and will fight to preserve their base as though their self-worth depended on it, which it often does. In their dread of failure, they may become downright unethical and manipulative. They find it hard to listen to the wisdom of others because they can't help but observe that their own ideas seem to be working perfectly well. Such unbroken leaders not only fear failure in themselves, but also in others. They may become unwilling to let others have the chance to fail, and this leads to poor delegation in discipleship. When success becomes the be-all and end-all in ministry, it is an idol that God must throw down. Note that failure may come in an area other than our main ministry, but it will surely come.

Nothing would advance most of us more than getting some good failure under our belts! It isn't that bad once you get used to it, and the fruit over the long haul is well worth the pain. Consider how fear of failure can affect the church:

Home church leaders who suffer from excessive fear of failure are reluctant to plant new churches. They know the mother church works, so why take risks with an unproven plant? The result is tardy planting or no planting, both of which retard the growth of the church and stifle the development of young leaders.

Young leaders are hardly ever as competent as older ones, and history shows they are more likely to fail. But this observation begs the question: Is such failure necessarily a bad thing? We argue that it need not be bad, especially when our new leaders have been well-trained in their view of failure. The experience of failure is always a crisis, since Satan will move in and suggest God let them down, or that they are unworthy for such work. But as discussed above, failure becomes the occasion for a new questioning of motives and deepening of commitment if properly understood. We should be actively preparing our disciples for failure as well as for success.

Those who dread failure tend toward a conservatism that seeks to protect the existing ministry rather than to open new ministry. When the church becomes conservative and self-protective, it loses the offensive spirit needed in spiritual war. We find ourselves unable to penetrate tough sectors of the non Christian community.

If you suffer from fear of failure, ask yourself, "What is the worst thing that can happen to me if I fail?" Does failure in ministry really endanger our lives, or only our egos? The ego-centered minister dreads failure mainly because he will have to admit it to colleagues or others he hopes to impress. Just imagining himself admitting defeat can send the ego-driven leader into a panic of self-protection. But God calls us to deny self and serve in ministry, not to glorify ourselves through it. Mentally practice shrugging your shoulders before colleagues and saying, "Yeah, that didn't work out, but at least we tried" and don't forget to add, "I guess we'd better try again!" The only defense you need is, "I felt like I did my best."

The Death of "I"

Here's some more random thoughts for all 8 of you who enjoy my blogs. It's been awhile since I have had a chance to sit down and really think about anything at all, so I am probably full of rants right now.

Have you ever noticed how it is very easy to become convinced that you need to be the best or do the best according to the world's standards? That we can subconsciously compare ourselves to others? We don't even know we are doing it but it is easy to do when we are told what success is. Success is being the smartest, richest, and most respected, right??? Wrong. We are told every day, in a variety of different ways, that these three things are important and then we get to a point of realization. These things are useless. They don't make us feel better about ourself. There will always be people smarter, richer and more respected than us, but for some reason we have convinced ourselves that there is an attainable goal. If you are in this way of thinking, you usually say things like, "When I am less busy, I will _____", "If I do _______ then I will be _______" (you fill in the blank with whatever your thing is). Notice how much this pronoun is used in these sentences: I

The truth is, there is no end. We can do this until we are old and then look back and see how much of life we wasted chasing something. I think this is what Solomon meant when he said, "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). Not that life is pointless, but that things we think are important, really are not that important in the grand scheme of things. God's priorities are are very often different than ours. Isaiah 55:8- "My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts," says the Lord. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine".

There are many, many, many opportunities in the Kingdom of God. Ways to serve, ways to learn, ways to be a blessing to others. Satan uses our well intended goals as a distraction from what really counts. I speak from experience. I love goals. I love to see things progress and that includes my personal life, my work, and my ministry. I can get lost thinking about and doing things that don't matter one iota to the Kingdom. Really, even though I don't even realize it at the time, they are so I can feel successful. Somewhere along along the way I have to take "I" out of it and think about what God would rather have me invest my time and energies in rather than continue on with Satan's distractions.

This is where the cost of being a disciple is. We seem to think that what Jesus says in Matthew 16:24-27 is only meant for the disciples and not for us, and that it is only about being willing to die physically. Many of us will not of the chance to die physically, but we have a choice every day for our "I" to die.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross (the same discussion recorded in Luke 9:23 inserts the word "daily" here. How can you take up your cross daily? Obviously it is not just talking about physical death here) and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done." (Matthew 16:24-27)