Education is Already Free

Note: It may be helpful to read my introduction to this series in order to have some context and understand my disclaimers. You can find that post here.

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This is one of my favorite videos of the SWEAT pledge. Mike Rowe tells a great personal story about his time on QVC and uses it to make a great point. In his experience, he needed education; he realized education could be found anywhere, and it was his responsibility to get it.

To be clear, I love this video for purely selfish reasons. I have built most of my career on the premise of this particular conventional wisdom. To be fair, I did go to college and complete my undergraduate education, but I did it at an institution that was unbelievably affordable and not academically impressive. None of this, however, impacted the quality of education I was responsible for getting on my own.

I was able to study as hard as I wanted to study and access information from any field I so desired. My education was totally in my control, and my academic institution simply provided me with parameters for focusing that energy and proof of the work that I put in.

After graduation, I was able to use those tools to know how to study well. Not all information is good, academically vetted, or even scientific at all (when applicable), but college gave me the ability to know how to find resources and tools to educate myself.

After college I did not pursue graduate-level study, and to this day have no plans to do so. But I think it would be safe to say I have done far more education since I graduated from college than during my studies as an undergrad. There are some drawbacks: I don’t have letters after my name or degrees to prove the work I have done; I have had to exercise quite a bit of autonomy to accomplish all of this and doing so kept me from increased academic relationships and accountability, and my vocational career does not benefit from the academic network provided by a graduate-level education.

But I have been educated and seek to connect more and more of my students to the proper systems — oftentimes those are universities (sorry, Mike!) — and counsel them in pursuing their own goals. I have become an educated teacher and individual who can quote sources (not opinions) and talk about the larger academic conversations that drive my conclusions. I am not speaking of “rogue science” or self-published authors spouting nonsense. The same study from those fine institutions is available to me as a learner. Although the quality of this education is proportional to the money spent, and the oversight is minimal, the opportunity is still mine to seize.

But these goals are available to all of us. College students and high school dropouts, churches and think tanks, businesses and non-profits — we all have the opportunity to use the resources at our disposal to become better at everything we do. There is nobody who can keep us from this task. Some of us enjoy more opportunities and privilege than others, but all of us can work to become better versions of ourselves. It would also be wise to remember something Rowe hinted at in his video: there are many times when we are each other’s best resource. “Education” is not owned by an elite group of people or a system of institutions; it is a process we can all engage in, and the more we do so together, the better it will be.

It seems to me Jesus told a parable about people who were each given different amounts to invest in his Kingdom project (see Matthew 24:14–30). Some were given more than others, but all were expected to take what they had been given and use it to invest in more. Only the one who took the amount and buried it, refusing to do any more than keeping what was handed to him, was scolded.

May we hear the wisdom in this teaching and know we are invited to invest our blessings. May we remember much of this world’s education is already free, and it is our responsibility to pursue that learning.

Top 12 of CiHD: #1

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

This is it! We’ve travelled this 2018 path of the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust and we have arrived at the end of our list — the most viewed post in my blog’s history. The winner of this title is the blog I wrote on the Resurrection back at the end of August 2015. The post was titled “Empty” and you can read the original post here.

So, for one last time, let’s remember what I’ll try to do.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think these posts got so many views; why were others drawn to them? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

Well, if you would have asked me about which post I had hoped would get the most views, it would have been this one. I am a big believer that the most important truth, the most profound reality, the pinnacle of all theology and of the Kingdom is the resurrection. There are many theologians who talk about the crucifixion as being the most central to theology, that everything revolves around the work of Jesus on the cross. Many of these theologians are men and women I respect very deeply. But I respectfully disagree.

The apostle Paul did not say that without the crucifixion, our faith is in vain. No, he said that without the resurrection, our faith is in vain. That’s a strong assertion to make and it drives my theology.

Having said that, I wonder if there are other reasons the page views were driven up. I don’t feel like it was one of my best written posts. Are people that driven and interested in the resurrection? That hasn’t been my experience, typically. I can’t seem to find any unique or unusual words or phrases that would have caught some other Google search. Did people think I was posting about how I was feeling empty and so they were driven to click in and read? That could be.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

Well, the truth and power of the resurrection is really, in a lot of ways, a mystery. Part of the reason we don’t get more excited about it is because there is so much about it that we don’t understand. Much of the last century has been misdirected in simply trying to prove the historicity of the event. This is a shame, as the power of resurrection doesn’t lie in intellectually proving that it happened. No, the power of the resurrection lies in realizing what it means for our daily walks, trusting that great truth to be real, and leaning into the consequences.

Even I struggled (then and now) to write about the resurrection in such a way that captures the power of this great truth. To that end, I recommend a great book called Surprised by Hope by NT Wright. It does a good job of talking about the resurrection in a western way that helps us capture some of the applicable ramifications of the resurrection.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

I would talk about the power of hope.

The story of God’s people, all the way back to the story of Abram, is a story about hope. It’s a story about people who believe there is more going on — that more is possible than simply the concrete thing we experience in the Order of Brokenness. This reality is deeper and greater than a battle between optimism and pessimism. This isn’t about whether or not the glass is half-full or half-empty.

This is about whether or not you believe the glass was meant to be full — and, no matter what happens, will be full again.

The resurrection is about what you fundamentally believe is true about the world. What is the truest true? What is the realest real? What is the thing that if you burned away all of the dross, would remain? Does love win? Does life end in death? Or is death not really an end? And no, I’m not just talking about what happens when we die. I’m talking about the true order of things.

Here. Now. When we are alive.

When the Order of Death rears its ugly head, is it a roar of triumph, or is it the gasping and grasping of a creature whose days are numbered?

When you encounter greed and selfishness, are you dismayed? Or are you grounded — as a Child of the Resurrection — in a truth that what you are looking at is a fleeting shadow? And does this change the way you live?

It should. It should make us more selfless. More generous. It should make us better priests. It should prepare us for Kingdom, making us conduits of God’s redeeming work. It should rid us of fear and equip us to lay our lives down — because we understand that there really is no way to lose our life.

Maybe this is the reason the Rabbi said the only way to save your life is to lose it.

Top 12 of CiHD: #2

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

We’re down to the last two posts in the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust series. Today, we’ll look at the second-most-viewed post in the history of my blog. Just what is the second-most-viewed post, you ask? Well, it’s an old post on the book of Obadiah. You can read the original post here.

Wait… what? Obadiah? You’ve got to be kidding.

I’m not kidding, but more on that in a moment.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think these posts got so many views; why were others drawn to them? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

I have absolutely no idea.

I couldn’t even begin to offer a respectable guess on why this was my second-most-read post. I can’t find any keywords that jump off the page. I can’t think of any topical connections. While the ancient city of Petra may have some draw to it, I’m not sure it would justify that kind of viewership.

What about the old Christian rock band? Yeah, I don’t think so, either (although you're welcome for that link).

Moving along…

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

I hope the reader found a helpful dialogue about a book that we spend very little time in. Writing about these prophets is fun because a person could count the number of sermons or lessons they’ve heard on Obadiah on one hand (if there were any to count at all). So to bring an unexcavated portion of the Text out and shine a flashlight on it is a great discipline to be a part of. I hope that experience was beneficial for my readers.

I also hope this conversation on a seldom-talked-about book of the Bible provided a new look at a conversation that we do have often — that is, how we treat other human beings, no matter who they are. These conversations or behavioral soundbites can become like white noise in our world of spiritual development. We hear the “be nice to others” lesson so much that it loses its potency. A book like Obadiah has the potential to jar us to attention because of the unusual setting where the conversation takes place. The context is like its own inductive teaching.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

I think I would be tempted to wax eloquent on how this post is even more applicable now than it was when I first wrote it. The original was posted on June 4, 2014, in a much different world than we live in today. In the last four years, a few things have changed politically, ecclesiologically, and digitally — and mostly not for the better. We now seem to demonstrate even less ability to show the minimal amount decency and respect to others. Quite simply, we need to figure out how to disagree and still have a dialogue. We need to figure out to the find the humanity in our brother/sister and not demonize their perspective or their history. We need to figure out how to learn from each other and seek understanding like buried treasure.

And that means this book has a deeply serious message for us: God expects a certain amount of human decency from all people — how much more the people of God! It is not OK for human beings to treat other human beings in need with disdain or negligence. I have always felt like the words that fell from Cain’s lips in Genesis — “Am I my brother’s keeper?” — are the words that sit unspoken by the people of Edom in Obadiah. And God’s response is telling: “Yes, you are your brother’s keeper.” We all have to look out for our brothers, our half-brothers, our distant cousins, and even our enemies.

It doesn’t matter if the person you are talking to wears a MAGA hat or voted for Hillary. It doesn’t matter if they are pre-millennial, post-tribulation, Muslim, or Baptist. They are people; they are divine image bearers with thoughts and values that lead to convictions, just like you. There is a shared humanity being lost and I have great faith that our children are going to teach us how to reclaim it. My prayer is that their instruction will come in time, before the condemnation of Obadiah passes for too many of us Edomites.

Top 12 of CiHD: #3

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

This month in the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust, we’ll look at the third-most-viewed post. And again, like last month, there is a little bit of a disclaimer. If I would have been true to the “twelve most-viewed posts” on my blog, then nine out of those twelve posts would have been posts on the book of Revelation. Instead of making this series a review of my thoughts on Revelation, I chose to pick the most viewed of my Revelation posts, which happens to be my introductory thoughts and a great place to have a conversation. You can read the original post here.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think these posts got so many views; why were others drawn to them? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

I don’t think there is any reason to doubt or wonder why this post (and apparently eight others) made the list. We have an infatuation with the book of Revelation. I mean, just let the idea sink in. One of the most recently written sections of my blog is on the book of Revelation. The series has only been up for just under two years, yet the posts on Revelation overwhelmingly dominate the most-viewed list.

I’m not sure there has ever been a book of the Bible so ripe for sensational reading (and mis-reading), more misunderstood, bringing more anxiety, and usurping the rest of the teaching of Scripture like that of Revelation. As I allude to in the original post, it would seem that there are two dominant groups in terms of studying this book. Either you feel like the book is so crazy and confusing that you refuse to engage it — or you are obsessed with the future forecasting, absolutely certain that you are reading it correctly, and you are so committed to your interpretation that you will undoubtedly break fellowship with other believers over its content.

It’s ridiculous. And both extremes seem unbelievably foolish and destructive to me.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

I hope the reader found an objective and respectable hermeneutic grounded in critical thinking, legitimate history, and backed by biblical scholarship. If the reader was a member of the “I Don’t Read Revelation” camp, then I hope they were given some tools and a little hope that, in fact, this book is worth giving a second chance.

If the reader was a member of the “Revelation or Bust [Someone’s Face]” camp, then I hope they realized their position was more asinine than they’ve realized and were able to be honest about the unbelievable complexity of the book and the problems we have to face when we interpret it. All in all, no matter the reader, I hope we always approach the Bible with a sense of reverence and humility, while still being unintimidated by the task.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

If I were to say something in addition to what I’ve already written it would be an encouragement to truly examine the way we approach and interpret the scriptures. Brothers and sisters, it matters. And I’m not saying it matters because of some childish commitment to orthodoxy. I’m saying it matters because of the implications.

Around the same time I wrote this series, our church was preaching through a series on the book of Revelation. It was insane. While I enjoyed the series immensely, my comrade Aaron Couch swears he will never preach through the book again. I saw things in people that concerned me deeply.

First, I saw people absolutely gripped with fear. If we know anything about the other 65 books of the Bible, we know this is not the posture that the gospel, the Church, or God is supposed to invoke in others. However, we’ve cloaked the discussion of the “End Times” in so much doomsday, apocalyptic, fire-breathing, demonic nonsense that people can’t even think straight when they start thinking about the return of Jesus and “the end of the world.” How did we get here?

And second, I have never seen so much rage come out of people that I have had fellowship with for years. All of a sudden our relationships were in jeopardy, our friendships rendered meaningless, and many found other churches. The only thing that even begins to rival the work of this book is the topic of politics (an issue I won’t even begin to touch here). We have some serious idolatry issues in these areas. Its horribly out of whack. We can talk about racism, loving our enemies, the glory of the empty tomb… and we get nothing. Nobody is sweating or has spit in their beard. Nobody is leaving the church and writing emails laced with profanity. But you mention some other idea about Revelation…

We are followers of Jesus. We should have a Christocentric theology (meaning that our theology should center around Jesus). Nothing should be more important than the teachings of Jesus. Not politics. Not eschatology. Not philosophy. Not Torah. Not Paul’s letters. And not Revelation. Not crazy YouTube videos about how some unaccountable Messianic Rabbi is convinced he broke the “Bible Code” and figured out the date the world comes to an end. Not some slick presentation on Blood Moons and the ancient Jewish calendar. Not the current events and how they line up with misinterpreted prophecy.

Nothing before Jesus. Jesus came so we would be one (John 17) and that through this oneness the world would know who He is. Jesus came to teach us how to chase down prodigal sons and welcome the sinner. Jesus came to tell us how to appropriately read everything else — including Torah and the book of Revelation. Jesus came to teach us how to forgive and live at peace. Jesus spoke very little about how the world would end.

I think that was on purpose.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Bema Trip

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the second week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

I have recently returned from my third student trip to Israel and Turkey. I call these study tours “BEMA Trips” as they are a part of my larger BEMA Discipleship program. I try to lead study tours every other year as an opportunity to allow students to engage the world of the Bible experientially. If you followed the other series on my blog this year, you might remember this post on MODE for Impact Campus Ministries. The BEMA Trips are a great example of how I try to pursue MODE with my students.

This year (2018) was the final instance of a combined trip to Israel and Turkey. The three-week experience was an incredible time — designed for students who only had one opportunity to do this and limited funding, the bang-for-the-buck of one trip ($5800) was something that couldn’t be beat by the price (and time commitment) needed for two separate trips ($4300 each). However, as my job has taken me further from students, and as I have lost a scholarship fund that allowed me to give out $50,000 of support to students who wanted to go, I have needed to shift my focus.

In the future, we are planning for two groups on separate trips to Israel and Turkey. While this will be more expensive, it will be much more feasible for the typical participant who has a job and can’t get three weeks off of work. It will also enable us to have different focuses for each trip. Everything being said, the trip participants are pretty tired by the time they approach the end of a three-week adventure where we hike 7–12 miles a day with over 1800 feet of elevation change. We are beat up physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Oh, but we are also filled up like never before. It is an opportunity that I thank God for every year. It really is my version of living the dream and I am blessed beyond belief to have the opportunity to do it!

But if this is something that only happens once every other year, is it really something that belongs in the A DAY IN THE LIFE series? The answer is yes, because of all the ongoing work needed to make these trips a reality.

After I return from a trip, I commit to my participants one year of focused, pastoral follow-up. I want to use my experience and the experience of my past alumni to help students make the most of their opportunity, so I will offer them some provocative guidance to help stimulate growth and appropriate responses (e.g., new habits, new community, new disciples) in their lives. I will also be available to them should they need to ask questions or wrestle with new efforts to become a more devoted follower of our Rabbi.

As that year comes to a close (and even a little before), I begin recruiting for our next trip. When we are ten months out, we open official registration and I am busy collecting information, paperwork, funding, and sending our preparation videos for those participants. Simply put, I am always doing something in preparation for or in response to a BEMA Trip.

Want to experience a little taste of our trip? I made a video with some snippets from each day of our last time in Israel and Turkey. (I even remembered to shoot a few introduction videos in Israel!)

Top 12 of CiHD: #4

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

This month in the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust, we’ll look at the fourth most viewed post. Sort of. You see, when I constructed my “Top 12” list in January, I apparently did not count well, because I ended up with a baker’s dozen. (Hey, cut me some slack — they didn’t make me do math in bible college!) So in order to make the list work, I’m going to talk about two posts that go together here at #4. Surprisingly, they were both about trees of the desert. The first was called “Trees of the Desert: ACACIA” (you can find it here), and the second was called “Trees of the Desert: AR’AR & TAMARISK” (you can find it here).

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think these posts got so many views; why were others drawn to them? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

I would assume that these posts got so many hits because of the tree names. But not only did we get biblical interest in the posts, we also had some other key search engine words in the titles, like “desert.” At the core, though, we had trees that would have been very commonly searched for: acacia tree and tamarisk tree. There would have been much interest for these trees beyond the biblical content, so that probably skewed our results for the “fourth-most-viewed blog post.”

However, I would say that these lessons continue to be some of the most poignant that I teach to my students. I can remember how these lessons hit me originally. The word pictures contained in these lessons are so strong and visually profound that they were stunning to learn in their context. Obviously, the lessons of the desert are so meaningful for so many of us because the “deserts” of our lives are so defining and shaping. Anything that helps us relate to and understand these experiences is powerful.

Even though the newness of those lessons has worn off for me, the power of them in the lives of others hearing them for the first time is still significant. I have recently returned from a trip to Israel and Turkey where the first few days are filled with time in the desert. These lessons still impact the trip participants in the same way they impacted me years ago. So maybe all of those page views aren’t coming from a bunch of botany enthusiasts on Google.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

I hope the reader found encouragement in their deserts. For too many of us, deserts are just a metaphor for our spiritual experiences. I can vouch for the ability to walk through the deserts of the Bible and the ability to connect those very real physical experiences with very real spiritual seasons in our lives. The connection is palpable and the images of the desert provide comfort that words, explanations, and theology just cannot. In a sense, these physical pictures are like God’s “artwork.” One of the profound things about art is its ability to speak and communicate things that words cannot. I find the same to be true about the images of the desert. I hope, for instance, that people can put up a picture of an acacia tree (whether literally or figuratively) and let it remind them of the reasons why we walk the path of spiritual practice with faithfulness.

I also hope the lessons give the reader a call not just to receive the comfort of God in the desert, but to physically participate in that comfort for other people. So often the fruit we bear, the shade we provide, the tamarisks trees we plant for others — these are things that we experienced once from God in our deserts, but the experience also equipped us to be able to serve others in those same places. Oftentimes we received the desert provision of God through other people. Why not be that desert provision — the vehicle God uses — for others?

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

For one, I might be more quick to point out how thick the debate is about identifying these trees in real life from the ancient Hebrew. I was recently reading a book about the botany of the Bible and realized how many of their conclusions differed from the lessons I was taught. Like I stated in the first “Trees of the Desert” post, I based my work on the conclusions of Nogah Hareuveni, who in many circles is considered the leading authority on the plants of the biblical world. I have been told that his work is still the textbook for studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Anything else I would say is probably best consumed by listening to my most recent work through the BEMA Discipleship podcast. I spent time discussing this in Session 1 about Torah. You can find that specific podcast in iTunes or by going to this link. If the conversation about acacia trees and spiritual discipline intrigues you, I would recommend listening to this conversation and a follow-up conversation here.

Top 12 of CiHD: #5

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

We’re getting closer and closer to the most-viewed post in the history of my blog! This month in the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust, we’ll look at the fifth-most-viewed post. It was a post titled “JUDE: False Teachers” — and you can find it here.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think this post got so many views; why were others drawn to it? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

For me, seeing this post on the list makes sense on many levels. While I don't know if there is a single reason that predominantly drove the number of views, I would guess it is a combination of both of the following (and maybe others).

First, I think Jude is a book shrouded in mystery for many Bible students. This short letter raises so many questions for those who dare to dig in to the details that it has to be a book people are Googling and searching for left and right. What is this reference about the body of Moses? Why the fascination with Enoch? Why does it feel like there are so many things going on “behind the scenes” with the book of Jude? While we talked about much of this in the original post, I’m sure it’s driving a lot of interest in finding posts and articles discussing the content of Jude.

Second, I think anytime you write a post titled “False Teachers” in our day and age of Evangelicalism, you are going to get some views. We have such an unhealthy (most of the time) fascination with doctrinal correctness and those who color outside the lines that Christian readers go a little gaga over the need to categorize people into one group or another. As we’ve chatted about before, the concern, as we are familiar with it, is not one that existed in the apostolic age and mainly arose as the result of losing our Jewish roots as a movement and dealing with the impact of the Gnostic Crisis in the second century and beyond. But let’s pull some of that apart below.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

Some might ask, “How in the world can you say this wasn’t a concern in the apostolic age when the book of Jude (and others!) write about the need to be aware of false teachers?!”

This is where the irony runs thick. In the New Testament, a thoughtful examination of the arguments against false teachers will reveal that the danger is not in its orthodoxy, but in the orthopraxy. Obviously, the orthodoxy is important; without a doubt, the content of teaching drives our behavior. But the danger of the teaching is not in what it gets wrong, but in how it leads us to live. Consider the constant rebuke that exists from the Evangelical Doctrine Police of the world today. Is there any concern for the “living out” of a theologian’s position? Do we write posts ad nauseam about whether or not a teacher demonstrates the fruit of the Spirit in their life?

No. Too often, the lifestyle of a teacher and the fruit that comes out of his or her ministry is not the source of critique or the concern of those so driven to a flurry. They are worked up about the theological accuracy of a belief. They are worried about how it lines up against a creed or a statement of faith. But this is not what concerned the authors of the New Testament. What concerned them was that a person’s theology led them to be exclusive and inhospitable. It caused them not to show love to others and led them to pursue self-indulgence rather than selfless generosity. This kind of behavior was seen as a grave threat to the gospel. In the letters of John, this criticism was about whether or not a teacher led his students to be more loving. In Jude, the concern is that the teaching leads to debauchery and self-indulgence.

In all instances, the writers spend zero time critiquing the theology that lies behind the behavior; they spend their time critiquing the fruit of the tree itself. This is a thought that I hope people found when they got to this post.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

I’m not sure I would add much else to this post over I’ve said above. I really do wish we (in the world of western theology) can demonstrate a greater ability to navigate this conversation in a way that mirrors the teaching of the Apostles and writers of the New Testament. This isn’t just an idea that shows up in writings about false teachers. It’s not just a theme we find in John, Peter, and Jude. As mentioned above, it’s also present in the teachings Paul. But maybe most importantly, it was a theme in the teachings of Jesus.

Jesus told us himself that you cannot pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles. Jesus said that something can look one way on the outside, but the fruit is what gives it away. It might look like a chicken, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and lays duck eggs — we have a duck. It appears that his disciples understood this and later applied it to their experiences with false teachers. They were not primarily concerned with whether the words were right. They were more concerned with whether or not it (i.e., the teacher and his students) looked like Jesus.

It seems we have a lot to learn about whether or not our actions look like Jesus; Evangelicals are having to spend more and more time trying to explain why they are right because the words are correct. We seem to be spending an awful lot of time arguing about appropriate interpretations of Romans 13 and visions of heaven with walls. I think people like Jude would look right at it and say, “That’s easy. I don’t care what your words say; however you’re living out the words doesn’t look at all like Jesus.” I think Jude would find a lot of false teaching.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Spiritual Practices

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the second week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

Spiritual practices really are the center of everything I do. Organizationally, this is the spiritual DNA that Dean Trune instilled in Impact Campus Ministries (and me personally) years and years ago. You have seen me write about the importance of pursue in the work of ICM and I wrote earlier about our counter-intuitive definition of success.

Personally, this space in my life has been incredibly important to me over the last decade. I am thankful that my mentors (not only people like Dean, but also Steve Edwards and Bill Westfall) have invested in me to the extent that they taught me how to possess the same passion for pursuing God that they had. This was even more important when I met Ray Vander Laan and traveled to Israel and Turkey and was challenged to get the Text inside of me like I had never known. For years, I had gravitated towards the Text and struggled with our conventional understandings of prayer. ICM’s commitment to spiritual practices, combined with Ray’s passion for the Text, made for an experience that would change my life forever.

Emotionally, these practices have been a life saver. Being a person who struggles with anxiety, I find the daily rhythms of spiritual disciplines allow me to manage my anxiety in a way that is incredibly helpful — and healthy.

Vocationally, it is the center of the work I do with students. As we seek to make disciples through the art of mimicry and imitation, this is my starting place. With every student I have ever intentionally discipled, I have started with this premise: it all begins with your daily pursuit of God; imitate me as I show you how I make space for Him in my life.

There are lots and lots of ways people can create this kind of space. We are all wired differently and we gravitate towards different practices and expressions of worship. I have a teaching that I give every year to my students that you can find here. It describes many (but not all) possible ways we can create space for God in our lives. For years, I have been surrounded by people who are deeply committed to prayer. I, however, have always struggled to pray and gravitated to more structure in my pursuit. Having not been raised in a church experience of heavy liturgy, I have found structural disciplines to be life-giving.

Some of the books that have shaped me the most in this regard are Celebration of the Disciplines by Richard Foster, The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard, Sacred Rhythms by Christine Sine, The Contemplative Pastor and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson, Finding Our Way Again by Brian McLaren, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, and many other specialized works (like books on fasting or prayer).

No series on A Day in the Life would be complete without talking about the daily spaces I create to passionately pursue God with my time and attention. I made a video diary of my practices here:

Top 12 of CiHD: #6

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

The next post in our series examining the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust is a teaching on the Tabernacle. I called it “Falling on Joyful Faces” — and you can find it here.

In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think this post got so many views; why were others drawn to it? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?

WHY THIS POST?

To be honest, I don’t have many ideas as to why this teaching made the list — let alone so high up. I do know this is one of my favorite lessons to teach in person, either in the classroom or on my trips in Israel. There is a built-to-scale model of the Tabernacle in the Negev desert and I love to take my students there. I know that it communicates well in person, but I never felt like written teaching was the way to go here. Maybe I’m wrong.

I also remember this post being shared by others more than usual. Many have pointed out that there is no science behind why something gets shared and some others do not — there is no correlation to quality of content — but I imagine those shares were a big part of the view count.

The only other idea I can come up with is that if people were searching the Internet for Tabernacle and Temple and their relationship to each other, this post would have shown up on the search.

WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?

Obviously, this is one of my more “poetic” pieces, so it would be safe to say I hope people found inspiration and a compelling call to engage the missio Dei in the world.

I hope it challenged readers to pause and consider the reaction of the people. Growing up in the Church and being exposed to the Bible routinely had caused me to make some assumptions about God and His presence. I had picked up the idea that God is scary; when people meet God, they fall down terrified. Without a doubt, there are those instances in the Text. But with that being my go-to assumption, I read over instances like this one — so much so that I remember having to give serious thought to what it would have looked like to “fall on their faces in joy” when I first heard this teaching.

WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?

I would certainly point out how much the original lesson impacted me and provided the basis for my own teaching. I first heard this lesson in 2008 from Ray Vander Laan while we were spending time in the Negev desert. Later, I was able to revisit the lesson when it was produced by Focus on the Family in the That the World May Know series (Volume 10, “With All Your Heart,” Lessons 1–2).

If I could, I think I would have added more to the idea of the corporate “we” being the Temple of God. It’s a common idea and so I think I just assumed it at the end of my original post, but I would have been wise to let more of the Text speak there. I would have included passages from the New Testament like 1 Peter 2:4–5:

As you come to him, the living Stone — rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him — you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

I would have also included 1 Corinthians 3:16–17:

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

Connecting this idea to Pentecost is a powerful way of reminding the readers that we all — as the corporate Body of Christ — are a new Temple, opened on that day. If we are familiar with how people responded to the grand openings of God’s other spiritual houses, it would be an easy assumption to make about how they ought to respond when they meet us. In order to make this point even more poignant, one could hear this idea of God using us as living stones as a call back to Isaiah 51:

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousnessand who seek the LORD:Look to the rock from which you were cutand to the quarry from which you were hewn;look to Abraham, your father,and to Sarah, who gave you birth.When I called him he was only one man,and I blessed him and made him many.”

It would be a powerful consideration to think about the qualities of Abraham and Sarah that we studied early in the series. If they are people of radical hospitality (referenced by Jesus himself!), it would give us an indication of the missional methodology behind the reaction of people who see the goodness of God and the enduring nature of His love.

PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Mode

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the fourth week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

Zack Dean is the team leader for Impact Campus Ministries at our location at SUNY Albany. Being an alumni of that university and our campus ministry there has always given Zack a unique perspective. None of this should take away from the fact that Zack is such a unique person! Zack has been on two BEMA Trips and was able to take his wife Melanie on the most recent trip in 2016. I thought it would be insightful to ask Zack about his perspective of "MODE" as it pertains to his experiences in Israel and Turkey.

In July of 2014, a conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip began. Within a week, I and 25 others landed in Tel Aviv and traveled south to the Negev Desert to begin the first Bema trip to Israel and Turkey. After 24 hours of air conditioned train, plane, and automobile travel, we were dropped off in the desert wilderness. I used to live in the Mohave Desert in California. I was used to jackrabbits, Joshua trees, cactus, and tumbleweeds. You know, desert. It’s a dry heat, so it isn’t as bad.

This wasn’t southern California.

There aren’t jackrabbits or Joshua trees or cactuses (cacti?). There is nothing. No plants. No animals. No shade. No water. There aren’t tumbleweeds, because there aren’t plants that grow then die and roll around.

The heat was terrific. It was the type of heat that is impressive when you first feel it; we stepped out of the bus at 9am and said wow. The sun is beating down and the rock is radiating heat up. There is no escape. Again, it is 9am. Wow.

I think Marty wanted to take it easy on us the first day. We walked the desert with what will later be seen as minimal hill climbing. As we walked this scorched earth, our shoes began to fall apart. Literally. Our soles were peeling away. Some people pulled out tape to try to coble their shoes back together, while other people started vomiting. People were coming close to passing out... from walking flat terrain.

The condition of our group was unexpected. Here we are, people who have trained to hike 7-12 miles a day while hiking thousands of feet of elevation change each day, prepared for an intense trip.

We were ready.

Day 1: We were falling apart walking on flat ground.

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wildernessthese forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was inyour heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbledyou, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, whichneither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does notlive on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth ofthe LORD. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell duringthese forty years. 

Deuteronomy 8:2-4 

Today as we look at Mode from the Mx3, we look at how we open the story of God for students. Mode is defined as engaging the mind, heart, and body.

As I read this passage from Deuteronomy, I see that God takes care of His people. Intellectually, I know that our God is good and takes care of His people. That has been taught to me. It is clear from scripture. This has engaged my mind.

I used to live in the desert, so I can relate to the toughness of desert living. Our air conditioned home was on the edge of town. When we drove to the store for food, it was hot as I walked between the air-conditioned grocery store and the air- conditioned car (at home we parked in the attached garage because we aren’t animals and didn’t deal with the heat if we didn’t have to). My heart can be engaged because I can relate to the situation more than just intellectually. I have lived in similar situations as the Israelites walking the desert for 40 years...

The Bema Trip is an experience of engaging the body. I knew God took care of His people. I knew what it was like to be in the desert. Going to the Negev Desert and learning from experience why people accept lying down and dying changes the whole idea of what that passage is talking about. On day one, our shoes had fallen apart. God took care of their clothes for 40 years and mine only lasted a few hours? There is no food of any kind, or water or anything. God provided food on these hot rocks? It is hot enough to bake bread, so that makes sense.

If I were to just walk this desert, my shoes would fall apart. I would be hot and tired. I would be feeling all the same things. My body would be engaged, but that’s it. Only one aspect of mode isn’t the best way to teach or learn. Without engaging the mind and heart, without knowing the story of how God watches over His people who would normally struggle to survive, the lesson is missed.

If I know the story of God in my mind, if I can engage my heart and emotion to empathize with the people of the text, and if I engage my body by trying to step into their world, I will learn in a way that I’ll remember for years to come.

I know this to be true, because the mind, heart, and body engagement of the Bema trip has been life changing. Four years later, I still talk about it all the time. It still influences how I understand the narrative of scripture. I have spoken about it so much that two years after the inaugural Bema Trip, I brought four people with me as I went on the trip again in 2016. This year, 2018, someone who I brought is sending a friend of his on the Bema trip. Life change is infectious.

We might not all lead trips to Israel, but we can all find ways to engage the mind, heart, and body. When we teach and learn about the biblical prerogative to care for the alien, orphan, and widow, we can remember a time when we were seen as an outsider. We can engage the body to serve these people who are marginalized in a multitude of ways in our hometowns.

The mode in how we teach is greatly important. Each mode by itself can be good, yet incomplete. The best and most difficult mode is to combine all three, but it is also the greatest experience for both the teacher and the student.