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.

PULL UP A CHAIR: Stories on Message

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.

Describing my relationship with Brent Billings proves to be quite a challenge. I knew Brent originally as a colleague to work alongside of at Real Life on the Palouse years ago. Brent then became a student of BEMA and has gone through the study more than anyone I know. Brent has been a facilitator for me on my trips to Israel and Turkey; he has been an unbelievable asset in the production of the BEMA podcast and my recent season of ministry. More than any of that, however, Brent and his family have become great friends of ours. I could think of nobody that has more interaction with the idea of "Message" than Brent Billings.

To say that Marty and the work of Impact Campus Ministries has changed my life would probably be putting it lightly. The narrative view of the Bible as a whole body of work is what I have been looking for my whole life, but I had no idea I was looking for it.

Reflecting on the idea, I see how I was drawn to it. I knew the stories of the Bible pretty well, and the parts that weren’t stories (the prophets, perhaps, or Leviticus) were basically ignored. Of course I knew the key passages, such as Isaiah 53, but I didn’t have an understanding of what Isaiah was doing with his prophecy. (And on top of that, I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how prophecy worked.)

I knew Abraham was a patriarch, but I didn’t know why God chose to partner with him. I didn’t even view their relationship as a partnership, and I certainly never considered the idea that God would want to partner with me in the same way. I had heard of the concept of “children of Abraham” that Paul speaks of in Acts and Galatians, but the implications of that idea were far outside my realm of understanding.

If I’m being honest, I didn’t even consider the “Old Testament” something important. It was more like a collection of good stories and some historical documentation thrown in for good measure. I spent the vast majority of my time in the New Testament, happily taking what it said at face value. I simply didn’t know how Tanakh (the Jewish name for the Old Testament) fit into the story, or my story. Am I even a part of this story?

Today, I don’t spend time fretting about the inconsistencies between the creation stories of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2–3. I see them in the proper context of the entire narrative and reap dividends of wisdom from both accounts. Today, I don’t shudder when I think about the book of Leviticus. I see what the book is doing and I understand how it develops the relationship between God and His people (including me). Today, my eyes don’t glaze over when I open the Text to a prophet. I know where this prophet sits in history, I know who his audience is, and I know the image he uses to speak to them.

Even on the very day I write this, as I am going through the book of Matthew, I see the references Jesus makes to the Words spoken before. Jesus didn’t come to invalidate the Old Testament, but to make it come alive. We see Jesus live out the Text if we can only open our ears to hear it.

The pursuit of Message at ICM has opened my ears to hear things I never knew I was missing. The Bible truly is a single story about God’s work in the world—a story that continues to this day. I have so much more to explore, and there is much I do not yet understand, but I am no longer afraid of the unknown. My faith is not dependent on a perfect grasp of the meaning of every passage. Even though the journey ahead is long, I’m thrilled to be heading in the right direction.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Message

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.

In the previous entries of this series, we’ve been able to cover the most important pieces of who we are. We have talked about our purpose at Impact Campus Ministries of making disciples, and we have journeyed through ICM’s mission of pursuing, modeling, and teaching intimacy with Christ with our students and others.

In 2015 and 2016, Bill Westfall (ICM’s previous president) returned from sabbatical and emerged from a season of pursuing a doctoral degree in global missional leadership. In his dissertation, Bill wrote about the importance of three key ideas: message, mode, and milieu (Mx3). Bill came back from a time of reflection on his leadership of ICM and encouraged us to think about and grow in these three areas.

To be sure, we are still growing. Many of these ideas are just starting to sink in and we feel as though we are charting new ground in these areas at ICM. We do believe in their efficacy and we continue to strive towards growth even as we learn. This is important to know as I begin to write on these concepts, because any perceived “wisdom” is yet to come from years of experience and application. This is all the passing on of concepts that we are beginning to experiment with.

These ideas are built around how to make disciples of these new generations effectively. Specifically, we are talking about bringing effective discipleship practices into the world of Millennials and Generation Z. These ideas will probably not prove to be timeless, but timely, so there is a sense of urgency to the learning curve that we seek to be on. I want to spend the next few posts talking about these ideas espoused in Mx3.

So today we talk about MESSAGE, and we have defined it as “the whole story of God and His invitation to join.”

The effort rests in the idea that our young generations experience life through the lens of narrative. They are used to the ideas of story — being surrounded by shows, movies, story-based video games, sound bites, YouTube, etc.

We believe God has been telling a story, as well. And yes, while we are talking about the Bible, what we have noticed is that our theological world (predominantly in the West) lacks a coherent understanding of how biblical history works as a narrative. Very few biblically trained ministry professionals can articulate the narrative arc of biblical history in less than five minutes. We just don’t have that kind of grasp of the Text. It wasn’t taught to us as a narrative.

What we are trained in is understanding systematic theology. We were educated insistently on a “biblical worldview” in a package that is becoming increasingly useless among a generation influenced by technology and online streaming narratives.

We need to learn how to convey what God’s been doing in the world in a compelling way. We need to be able to talk about how we got where we are now in increasingly honest avenues and to think critically about engaging the mission of God as a partner. In short, we need to be able to show students what God has been up to since the beginning of our world and what it has to do with them; we need to be able to show them that God is inviting all of us (including them) to join in His redemptive work all throughout creation.

Think about it. Could you give a synopsis of how the Bible works, from Genesis to Revelation, in less than two minutes? If you had a whiteboard, could you map out biblical history as a narrative arc? Could you identify the core elements of narrative in that arc? What is the conflict and plot? Who are the major characters? What is the moment of narrative climax? Is there a resolution? Where do you and I fit?

Our young adults are begging for somebody to make the biblical story compelling. Their postmodern world does not put such a high premium on resolving paradox or answering questions; in fact, these approaches seem shallow and irreverent to them. To “fix” this like it’s a problem is a gigantic adventure in missing the point — and the opportunity.

Luckily, this last decade has brought us some attempts at providing resources to these ends. There have been some books, such as The Drama of Scripture by Craig Bartholomew, and a few others. One of the most popular podcasts and video hosting sources is the work done by The Bible Project. Of course, this is also one of my own personal passions, so I have spent the last decade collecting and creating a body of work that I have been making available in different forms. I spent over four years writing a blog series that walked through the narrative of Scripture in detail; the series starts here and moves through the archives (navigable on the right sidebar) through the first quarter of 2017.

I also created BEMA Discipleship, which evolved into a “flipped classroom” that produces (in partnership with Brent Billings) the BEMA Podcast, which does the same thing as my blog and is intended to be used as a discussion centerpiece for students all around the country. I also have hopes to write a book in the next couple of years to put this discussion into a more concise and palatable format.

All that to say, this world of theology is trying to keep up with the very things Bill Westfall pointed out in his work. Would you join us in trying to become a better storyteller?

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Student Ministry

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.

Student Ministry. As I get further and further into my job as President of Impact Campus Ministries, I find I am spending less and less time with students on campus. This is a natural part of my duty to make the difficult decisions to do my job well and lead the organization with the right amount of focus and dedication. However, working with students is still a part of my job that I get to do, and I really enjoy it.

While I am going to end up on campus one or two times a month to meet with a student or two, most of my student ministry revolves around the discipleship program I started years ago, called BEMA Discipleship. With the exception of some of the pastoral duties that naturally arise from this ministry, it is essentially a teaching ministry that utilizes my spiritual giftedness to lead students and find those special disciples who might work with me on a closer level (more on this in a later post).

So what is BEMA? The ministry is situated around a “flipped classroom.” For those of you who may not be familiar with the term, a flipped classroom takes advantage of the technology at our disposal to put the class content online, allowing us to use our valuable “class time” to focus on application and discussion. It’s more of a lab experience than a lecture. While that may sound really impressive, I still don’t do it as well as I should. I’m a work in progress!

We start by recording the weekly podcast; Brent Billings helps me produce a high-quality, top-notch recording that we publish as a public podcast. Listeners can find it on iTunes or any other podcast player. Students listen to the podcast, take notes, and come to class ready to discuss the questions that arose as they studied the material. It’s a really cool thing to be a part of.

Since the podcast has gone public, we’ve had groups start up all around the country. I’ve had the opportunity to meet groups full of people who I’ve never met before as I go about my travels. It’s an incredible experience to see what God does with this decentralized, flipped classroom idea.

People are able to read about this ministry, find the podcasts, stay up to date on scheduling, and even find/start groups around the country by visiting our website here.

Embedded below is a video diary I made that shows the process of making the podcasts, getting ready for discussion groups, and even being at a discussion group in Moscow or Pullman.