Discipline II

"The key...is to develop two practices.  First, systematically build pockets of solitude into your life.  We all have no more than twenty-four hours in a day, and they will be chewed up unless you deliberately structure time for solitude, inserting some "white space" in your calendar.  White space does not mean vacation; it simply means nothing scheduled....time scheduled with yourself, honored as you would any other vital appointment.  The second discipline is to recognize unexpected opportunities for solitude and seize them....an unexpected life change...or...in a more pedestrian form.  What do you do when stuck in traffic or with an unexpected flight delay?"

Jim Collins
in his forward to
Lead Yourself First

Discipline

I've been reading and pondering a great deal about discipleship.  Here are some thoughts on a closely related word - DISCIPLINE:

"Leading...requires discipline - disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who take disciplined action.  To engage in disciplined action first requires disciplined thought, and disciplined thought requires people who have the discipline to create quiet time for reflection.  The next result is not doing more, but doing less.  Stop-doing lists reflect greater discipline than ever-expanding to-do lists of frenetic activity.  This book is all about creating those pockets and putting them to good use."

Jim Collins
in his foreward to Lead Yourself First

The "accidental encounter" as a call to adventure

I - Departure
    1 - The Call To Adventure

"...one of the ways in which the adventure can begin.  A blunder - apparently the merest chance - reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood.  As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance, the are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts.  They are the ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs.  And these may be very deep - as deep as the soul itself.  The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces

The American Evangelical Church

Bill Hull starts his assessment of American Protestantism with a quote from de Tocqueville:

"Where you expected to find a priest, you found a politician - or a salesperson."

Hull seems to feel that the emphasis on numerical growth in your congregation, or on the increasing number of souls who have gone through a one time experience of being "saved" is one way that America's background culture affects the outlook of its pastors and teachers.

Hull goes on to give what he feels are the characteristic flaws of what he calls "the American Gospel."

• It "limits grace to the forgiveness of sin."
• It "separates justification from sanctification."
• It "teaches faith equals agreement with a set of religious facts."

He feels that American Christians feel that Discipleship, rather than being integrally bound up in their faith in Jesus Christ, is instead an option that those who have been "saved" from their sins might follow if they choose to do so.

He very much disagrees and spends his book urging a "faith that embraces discipleship."

Discipleship - II

"Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"We have not only been saved by grace, we have been paralyzed by it."

Dallas Willard

"Discipleship is the relationship I stand into Jesus Christ in order that I might take on his character.  As his disciple, I am learning from him how to live my life in the kingdom as he would if he were I.  The natural outcome is my behavior is transformed.  Increasingly, I routinely and easily do the things he said and did."

Dallas Willard

"For two years, one of my friends followed the rock group The Grateful Dead.  He was known as a Deadhead.  he didn't follow the Dead casually like a fan who follows baseball.  He travelled from city to city, living out of his car.  He wanted to live the same life the band lived.

My friend might have been misguided, but he was totally committed.  He was a true disciple in much the same way the New Testament describes discipleship."

Bill Hull

All quotes taken from
The Complete Guide to Discipleship:
On Being and Making Followers of Christ
Bill Hull

Discipleship - I

I've run onto an interesting protestant book titled "The Complete Book of Discipleship."
I've found it fascinating.  The author is one of a group of protestants calling for a renewed emphasis on discipleship in American Christianity.

Names that seem to be important are -
Simon Chan
Robert Coleman
Richard J. Foster
Bill Hull
Brian McLaren
Michael Wilkins
Dallas Willard
William Law

and looking backwards they draw a great deal of inspiration from -
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
C. S. Lewis
St. Benedict
Phillip Jacob Spencer

Monomyth III

"The cosmogonic cycle...gives to the adventure of the hero a new and interesting turn; for now it appears that the perilous journey was a labor not of attainment but of reattainment, not discovery but of rediscovery.  The godly powers sought and dangerously won are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time.  He is "the king's son" who has come to know who he is and therewith has entered into the exercise of his proper power - "God's son," who has learned to know how much that title means.  From this point of view the hero is symbolical of that divine creative and redemptive image which is hidden within us all, only waiting to be known and rendered into life."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces