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:

PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Teach

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.

Tom Neyhart is the Lead Campus Minister for Impact Campus Ministries in South Bend. I love to watch Tom grow in his passion for discipleship; he is a model campus minister in his work to develop his young student leaders and teach them how to do the work of leadership. When I thought of ICM's commitment to TEACH, I immediately thought to ask Tom to share his thoughts on the idea here.

I love working with college students! They can sometimes be frustrating, but more often, I am simply amazed as they grow in their faith. Our mission statement focuses on three things: pursuing God, modeling that pursuit in front of others, and teaching students in furthering the discipleship process. In many ways, this is like the ripple effect when you drop a stone in a still pond: the rings continue moving outward, one after another. When we instruct others to further the discipleship process, the idea of pursue, model, and teach continues to grow outward.

But if we leave the Teach out of the process, then we lose the ripple effect and we have a crucial problem. We end up with “disciples” who may grow in their own faith, but that is where it seems to end because of a struggle to apply and integrate their faith on a consistent basis. For me, vulnerability is a key aspect. How do I walk with a student through their current struggles if I am not willing to be vulnerable enough to let them see how I walk through mine? I believe those whom we disciple need to see us walking through the fire while relying on God and relying on spiritual disciplines to keep us moving forward in our own faith. It also requires us to show them our failures, even though it is uncomfortable. I have learned more lessons from my failures than my successes.

It is really a matter of understanding more than just knowing how to study and read biblical Text, how to pray, or engage in other spiritual disciplines; it’s also knowing why it is important and how to take the truths discovered in it into everyday life. It will not do much good if my students only know how to read the Text and it doesn’t filter into their lives.

There is another aspect to Teach that is crucial to our vision. If my students can’t further themselves in the discipleship process, they will not have much impact on students around them (impact the U) or have a lasting impact when they move beyond their campus (impact the world).

When I meet with students, I usually ask some leading questions that allow them to break down their day or week. What was good? What was bad? Where are you in your reading or what have you been reading this week? Usually they will talk pretty freely about what has affected them in school, at home, or at work, which gives an opportunity to bring it back to the biblical Text.

A few weeks ago, we were on a weekend retreat when one of the students I disciple, Spencer, had an opportunity to speak into the life of another student. It was unplanned, but God opened a door and Spencer took an approach similar to what I have often used in listening and allowing this student to share his heart and struggles. More importantly, he built a bond with another student, shared a bit of life with him, and was able to encourage him. Spencer took an opportunity to positively encourage and influence another student from another campus. That is exactly what I want to happen! When students start to grasp the pursuit for themselves, they begin to model it and connect to other students in a way I will never be able to as a 49-year-old Campus Minister.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Teach

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

We started this series by introducing our definition of discipleship and the role that imitation plays in making disciples. We begin to expand on those concepts in our mission statement, to pursue, model, and teach intimacy with God on the American university campus in the context of Christian community. This is the kind of imitation we want to create space for. First, we want to intentionally engage spiritual practices in our own lives; we want our staff to be pursuing a certain level of expertise in this area. If we are trying to make disciples through imitation, however, we also want to be pursuing God in front of others. But there is still one more word/idea expressed in our mission statement that is important to this process.

We define “teach” as instructing others in furthering the discipleship process.

In order for imitation to find its fullness, it needs to transcend the mere work of mimicry. It is possible to mimic an instructor and still have no real concept of what you are doing, why you are doing it, or how it works. I can remember being a much younger preacher and imitating the sermons of my favorite preachers. I would mimic them to perfection. This was problematic in some ways and incredibly beneficial in others. This happened for a season of my life and then I continued to grow. My point is that during that season, I was mimicking incredibly well, but I did not truly possess the content. I was not intimate with the teachings in a way that the original teachers were; I had not done the work and taken the material through my own heart.

The same is true for our students. They can mimic our pursuit of God as we model it for them. This is good and a part of the greater process, but we ultimately want them to own and possess the pursuit for themselves. We don’t want them to simply mimic intimacy with God, we want them to truly have intimacy with God! And this means we must be ready and able to TEACH.

As with everything we’ve been talking about, this needs to begin with our pursuit of God. What does your pursuit of God look like? Maybe you memorize the Text and pray with a prayer journal. How intentional are you? Do you truly understand and “possess” those disciplines? Do you know them well enough that you could explain to your disciple how you memorize? Most students of mine will say, “I’ve tried to memorize… I just can’t do it!” What is your next step? We must be ready to do more than shrug our shoulders and say, “Keep trying!”

We need to know how to help them learn the essence of the discipline. That might involve learning how they interact with information and what kind of a learner they are. It might require immersion in the discipline. It might be as simple as a step-by-step approach. The first thing you need to do is this, and the next is that. The same thing would be true for a prayer journal. How do you interact with your prayer journal? What do you write? When do you write it? How do you use it?

Do you see how critical this is? It’s certainly not theological “rocket science,” but our typical discipleship methods are too often void of these crucial elements. We meet for coffee on Thursday morning and ask, “Did you read your Bible? Did you pray? What are you learning from God this week?” These are fantastic questions! But did we teach people how to read the Bible? Did we teach them how to pray? Have they ever seen us pray? There’s a good chance they are at home, trying to pray, completely frustrated, thinking, “Is this how everyone else does it? I don’t feel like it’s working!” And then, too ashamed to admit the struggle, the discipleship process breaks down. Did we ever teach them how to “learn from God” or hear His voice? How many people reading this understand these concepts? Probably very few — and at some point, none of us did.

I know I learned how to listen for God and learn from Him daily because of spiritual mentors who taught me how to do it and helped me ask questions and deal with the frustrations. They shared real life stories and experiences with me and it helped me find my way.

But I might even go one step further and say that this principle goes far beyond our spiritual practices. True discipleship happens in absolutely every facet of life. We should be pursuing, modeling, and teaching all kinds of aspects of life as their spiritual mentors. It needs to begin with and be centered around our pursuit of God; everything needs to flow from that time spent abiding in the Vine (John 15). But it also needs to influence our relationships and our work ethic. Our disciples need to see us model healthy relationships and boundaries with others. They need to see us repent, say we are wrong/sorry, and forgive others. They need to see us submit to authority with humility and grace. They need to see our character and integrity.

And more than just modeling, we need to be able to teach them all of the things mentioned above. Can you teach somebody how to forgive? We need to be able to. Are you prepared to take every opportunity to talk about why you dress a particular way at work, turn in paperwork on time, and say no to work and yes to family? These are things that must be taught! We have an entire generation suffering from a world that just expects them to do these things —  a world that is unwilling to teach.

And yes, this even gets down into the business of sacred vocation. This work of discipleship isn’t only for church leaders and Bible students. This work is for all people in every facet of life. Let’s say you are a mechanical engineer. Do you know why your job matters? Do you know how it is holy and sacred work, blessed by God? Do you see yourself merely as an “employee” of Such and Such, Inc.? We need to be able to disciple people in their vocation. And I’m not just talking about how we try to be hard workers and nice to others (although that is important; see the paragraphs above). I’m talking about the actual work we do. Every job is, at its essence, about the proper ordering and stewarding of God’s creation. That means my work, my art, is a craft, and I need to disciple all of the potential I can out of others by pursuing my craft, modeling its proper engagement, and teaching others how to excel (even beyond my own abilities).

God has placed each and every one of us here on this earth to impact the world. Becoming absolutely everything we were designed to be is critical to being part of a beautiful story that God is telling in history, because we each have a role to play.

It’s all holy, sacred work.

It’s all discipleship.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Disciples

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.

It is the most meaningful work I have done in over seventeen years of ministry.

It has not drawn crowds of hundreds and it doesn’t involve speaking from a stage. It isn’t something I do by leading trips across the world or being an important leader in our organization.

It is the daily pursuit of discipleship in the real lives of real young adults. They are the people who go on to impact the world. Now, for another series, I wrote about discipleship here. I won’t repeat myself, but I remember coming back from Israel and Turkey in 2010 and praying that God would give me the opportunity to make just one true disciple. I got into campus ministry and knew I would be running ministry programming and probably finding different places to serve as a teacher of the Text. But what I was really convicted about after my time in Israel was experimenting with a more “rabbinic” discipleship model.

A real “come, follow me” approach to mentorship and spiritual formation.

I didn’t want a hundred disciples or even twelve. I actually didn’t even want three. I prayed for one.

God started by giving me two: students named Megan and Nate. They raised funds for a full-time, paid internship and walked with me every day as I did my job. They lived life as closely as they could to me and learned how to mimic my every move. Life eventually called Nate on to new things within the year, but Megan continued working with me for the next couple of years. (You heard from Megan in the guest post last month.)

And so I was left with exactly what I asked for — just one disciple. Megan poured her life into the work and the art of discipleship; I poured my life into her development and personal growth. In the end, it paid off in ways I still struggle to explain. It is… the most meaningful work I have ever done. We walked to class and drove to events. We debriefed at staff meeting and worked together on projects. But what really made an incredible difference was the “regular ol’ life stuff”: talking about roommates and conflict, character and integrity, hospitality and generosity — not for job purposes, but for a real conversation about who we were becoming as people.

I say “we” because the process of discipleship has been as much about me being vulnerable as a leader and working my own stuff out in front of others as it was about me sifting through all of their baggage. Sometimes I think the best things I did to help them was simply work through my own struggles with determination, resilience, and — on my better days — humility. And they taught me with their youthful willingness to do the right thing all the time, even if it was crazy and not lining up with “social norms.”

It continues to be the most meaningful work I do.

God has brought different disciples into my life, family, and ministry at different times and in different ways. After Megan transitioned on, there were two, then there were a handful. I took what the LORD gave and tried to do my best with what was in front of me.

Eventually, it came down to two disciples. Tyler is now a full-time associate staff member at ICM; thinking of him as a “disciple” may not always be the best fit. He’s often more of a colleague, but I still appreciate our relationship and discipleship walks. And Kevin is still here, hanging out with the rabbi and following him around Moscow — rain or shine, snow or sun. I caught myself even this last week thinking back over the last few years and my time with Tyler and Kevin, realizing how meaningful the work that we do is. It has been more deep and true and profound than any sermon I have preached, homeless dinner I have served, or BEMA Trip I have led.

I am proud of all my disciples and the people they are becoming; I’m proud like a father is of his children.

I am humbled, honored, and privileged that I get to do this work every day.

Here is a fun video diary I made of our time in discipleship this year:

PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Model

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.

You've heard and read me refer to Megan before; in my first few years of campus ministry, she was my first disciple and I learned more about discipleship in those few years than all of my other ministry experience to that point. Megan worked for ICM full-time before moving on to work in the non-profit world of homelessness and poverty. She, her husband Chris, and their son Josiah now reside in Raleigh, NC and Megan is currently serving as our chairperson for ICM. After talking about MODEL last week, I asked Megan to share what it was like to follow me around for that season of her life.

When I was first learning about the original context of discipleship, I was told this short anecdote of a rabbi and his disciples. “There once was a rabbi walking through the airport who was closely followed by his young disciples. The rabbi then walked into the bathroom, and the disciples followed. The rabbi then walked into a stall, and still his disciples followed!” This can be shocking for our typical American coffee-date discipleship, but this rabbinic style of discipleship is imitation with the purpose of becoming just like the rabbi.

I spent more than a year imitating Marty as closely as a female disciple could. I imitated Marty in the office, in the classroom, and at home. Practically, this means Marty crafted a schedule that included staff meetings, sermon club, spiritual disciplines, BEMA class, Sabbath, and more. I gained so much from the structure alone, but I believe the true discipleship experience started once we settled into the schedule and got comfortable living among each other.

Through my experience imitating Marty, I learned lessons about discipleship that completely transformed the way I engage my spirituality and Jesus.

I now believe a disciple is as capable of as much as the rabbi, and the rabbi sets the bar. When I first became Marty’s disciple, I thought I was just an intern. I know many people saw me that way, too. However, Marty didn’t. He required of me the same spiritual disciplines he required of himself (although, slightly less). He believed I could do more than I thought I could, and his belief didn’t waver. Together, we were able to establish discipline in me. I could write the Text! I could memorize!

A rabbi and a disciple must have a safe relationship to make mistakes and ask hard questions. I probably thought this beforehand, but now in the depth of the rabbinic discipleship context, it seems more crucial. Of course, I never made mistakes… (Editor’s note: Ha!) But assuming I did, there would have to be a safe space for me to reject religious shame and embrace Jesus. I do know I asked a lot of hard questions. Since we had a safe space for questions, I was able to wrestle with my community and God. That is the Text incarnate.

Discipleship inherently creates accountability as well. There is a certain expectation in the construct of rabbinic discipleship. For my discipleship experience, I was expecting Marty to be disciplined, dedicated to the Text, and supportive. I think he expected me to be faithful, available, and teachable. We both showed up in those ways because we had to be accountable to one another in order for the process to bring forth our desired results. If one of us did not fully show up, the discipleship experience could be a waste of time for both of us.

I believe discipleship transforms both the rabbi and the disciple. You cannot follow, nor be followed by, a person for a year and not learn profoundly from them. We experienced transformation on many occasions. The most memorable for me is in regard to my friendship with a recovering addict. My passion for the marginalized brought this friend into our community. It was a blessing for me and for Marty’s family to be able to love and support this new friend. However, Marty’s family was providing respite care for foster children at the time. Marty and I had to discuss legal boundaries and ways to protect everyone in our community. This transformed both of us because it forced us to have eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand multiple vulnerable populations.

I treasure most the walks and drives to campus. These were the moments when Marty was not on stage or in front of a classroom. It felt like it was on these walks and drives that our relationship grew from a rabbi and disciple, to friends and co-laborers. Eventually, he could be himself freely and process more than just Text with me. I can imagine the disciples experienced something similar with Jesus. And I am excited for the day when we get to share our rabbi pranks!

MAKING AN IMPACT: Model

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

We’ve covered our definition of discipleship as being imitating a mentor who imitates Jesus, and we’ve even hinted at the fact that, for years, we’ve had a mission statement that serves this end by providing us a roadmap to discipleship. For a long time, we have said ICM exists to pursue, model, and teach intimacy with Christ on the American university campus, in the context of Christian community. In our last post we spoke of the first word on that roadmap — pursue. We spoke of having an intentional pursuit of God and defined the word pursue as intentionally engaging spiritual practices.

But is this enough? Is it enough to pursue God, creating space for Him and letting Him bear fruit?

On one hand, yes! If we truly pursue God in a way that resembles the “abiding” of John 15, the idea would be that God will call us to do what He wants us to do. The “fruit” is a natural (or supernatural) byproduct of our intentional pursuit of God — without a doubt.

But God also told us to do a lot of things. The Bible is a big book full of a lot of big ideas, so there are probably a few more things we can use to give us guidance. Of that whole big book of God’s dreams for this world, which ones do we use to give us direction?

Fortunately, this is where our purpose of making disciples and our definition of discipleship serve our mission very well. If we are to make disciples who make disciples, and we have defined that as a process of imitation, then the next word to come is only natural: MODEL.

If we really believe that pursuing God will lead to intimacy with God (what we define as success), and if that intimacy with God is what He uses to bear fruit that will last in our lives and ministries, then discipleship is the process of teaching our students how to do this well. Our job becomes one of pursuing sustainable spiritual formation. In this regard, it is not enough to simply pursue God and create space for Him in our lives. We also have to show our students how to do this. We’re going to show them in a very literal fashion… by modeling it.

ICM’s Vice President, Jeff VanderLaan, has one of my favorite sayings in relation to this topic. He likes to say, “Just because you’re wearing clothes, doesn’t make you a model. A model is somebody who wears clothes in front of others for the purpose of being seen.” This is a fantastic metaphor and drove us to define the term ‘model’ as pursuing God in front of others.

This is also a natural progression from the rabbinic idea that discipleship is about mimicry and imitation. You cannot imitate a rabbi or a mentor if you don’t have a model to mimic. I would never have learned how to tie my shoes without a model to follow and a teacher to imitate. I would never have learned how to do a load of laundry without imitating my mother’s example. Why do we think others can learn ideas like memorizing scripture or taking a sabbath by merely talking about it? Aren’t these things that need to be seen?

Now, some very astute Bible students will be quick to point out, “We aren’t supposed to do our spiritual deeds to be seen by others! We’re supposed to pray and pursue God in secret, without the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing.” And this desire for secrecy is a good point and certainly worth addressing. The reference comes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6) and reads as follows:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

But we would be wise to remind ourselves of words Jesus spoke as part of the very same teaching in the previous chapter:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

So what gives? Obviously Jesus taught us that the way in which we live is to be seen by others so they can know and glorify God. But what we have to be careful of is our motivation. Jesus says not to do these things “to be seen.” If this is the reason you are doing them, you are going to be disappointed in the reward you receive. You’ll end up with the praise of others as your reward, but not the mission of God (i.e., disciples).

And so we model our pursuit of God on purpose in front of our students. We pursue God in front of them so they can see what a healthy pursuit of God looks like. We do not do this in order to be seen, but to instruct them and help them develop as maturing followers of Jesus.

But speaking of instruction, is pursing and modeling the whole of the process? Is it enough to merely mimic our instructor? Or is all of this imitation a part of something bigger?