Beyond The Misguided Spiritual Disciplines

by Brian Jones

Whenever people talk about moving beyond facilitating conversions to making disciples, someone will inevitably say that teaching and practicing the spiritual disciplines will be vital to making this happen. I couldn’t disagree more.

Years ago Richard Foster released a perennially best-selling book called Celebration of Discipline. In it he outlined 12 disciplines Christians have engaged in over the last 2,000 years to help them live more spiritually abundant lives—meditation, prayer, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration.

The church should be profoundly grateful for that book, and profoundly ticked off.

Someone said a person’s greatest weakness is his or her greatest strength pushed to an extreme. That’s pretty much how I feel about that book, and all the other books about spiritual disciplines that have followed. The way these authors take, digest, and push spiritual disciplines in an extreme way adds more guilt and pressure than anything.

No one I’ve ever met who has read the book or others like it feels like he prays enough. Or reads his Bible enough. Or shares her faith enough. Or gives enough. Or worships enough. And on and on and on.

Can Worship Become a Discipline?

Take worship for example.

Years ago I used to frequent a Vineyard Christian Fellowship’s Saturday night service. I was pretty burned out at the time, and I really liked the pastor of the church, so I’d sneak over there every three months or so to get a spiritual shot in the arm.

I’ll never forget the Saturday the worship pastor stood up and told the congregation, “In my prayer time this week God told me that we are supposed to begin taking our worship to the streets. So what we’re going to do is rent a huge flatbed truck, put our entire worship team on it, hook our speakers up to a generator, and drive it through the streets playing worship music and lifting our hands to Jesus!”

That’s just wonderful, I thought, because, I don’t know, people don’t already think Christians are freaky enough.

The problem wasn’t the goal. As stupid as I thought the idea was at the time, I appreciated the desire to get out in the streets. And the problem wasn’t the method. While I’m not sure turning 10 artsy people loose on a flatbed truck with microphones was the smartest thing to do, at least they were trying something. The problem was with their definition of worship.

Worship = singing songs accompanied by music.

What the worship pastor didn’t understand was his people already hit the streets and worshipped every day of their lives. They did it through their work, their attitudes, by the way they washed and waxed their cars, hugged their wives, and cut their lawns.

But more importantly, the bigger problem with the worship pastor’s suggestion was it belied the fact that he had let his American, utilitarian worldview seep into his understanding of what it means to ascribe worth (“worth-ship”) to God.

Worship can’t be “turned on.” People can’t be “led into” worship. Christians are continuously worshipping—24/7—all the time. Through everything they do, say, feel, and give.

Can Spiritual Growth Happen Without Bible Study?

Or let’s take the granddaddy spiritual discipline of them all—daily Bible study.

Many Christians act as though they believe a leather-bound copy of the Bible descended from the sky immediately after Jesus died, rose from the dead, and went back to Heaven. This Bible—complete with the 27 finalized books of the New Testament and Jesus’ words etched in red—was delivered to the church and has been studied in perpetuity by Christians around the world.

The reality is we didn’t have the New Testament in its complete form until AD 367 when Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria listed all its 27 books for the first time.

That’s more than 300 years after Jesus returned to Heaven. By comparison, it’s like Jesus showing up in the Jamestown colony when it had only 75 people in it, teaching, dying, rising from the dead, and then the Bible coming together in its final form this week right before we head out to Applebee’s for lunch.

It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to be a Christian without a Bible.

One hundred years after Jesus left, it appears some churches had copies of the collected letters of Paul and a Gospel or two, but that’s it. Many had collections with books of debated authenticity that were later ferreted out. No one had a final New Testament like we have today. Whatever copies existed remained in the possession of the local church leadership. No one, it appears, owned his own copy of the Bible for personal “Bible study” unless he was wealthy enough to pay the substantial cost to have it transcribed (cf. Luke 1:3, 4).

Besides, with the high rate of illiteracy among the social groups represented among the rank and file of second- and third-century churches, having a personal copy of the Bible would have been useless anyway. Many Christians wouldn’t have been able to read it.

I bring up all this to make one simple point: the modern-day church places an unreasonable amount of emphasis on studying the Bible.

It’s obvious, from historical observation alone, that one can be a sold-out, fully devout, willing-to-die-a-martyr’s-death follower of Jesus and spend very little time practicing the spiritual discipline of Bible study.

What if one of the reasons we’re so spiritually dead and the church is abysmally failing at its mission to move beyond just making converts is not because we study the Bible too little, but too much?

Instead of being out and about extending the works of the kingdom, Christians are wasting precious time excessively studying the Bible in groups and feeling quite content that if they’re practicing the spiritual disciplines at home, then they’ve done their duty and can call it a day.

Who cares if I never open my mouth and share my faith today? Or forgive those who mess me over? Or share my money with those in need, or my house with the homeless?

All is good. I read my Bible today.

How Does Spiritual Growth Really Happen?

I believe a Christian taking credit for growing closer to God is like a rooster taking credit for the sun coming up in the morning.

Bible study, worship, and prayer are all vital parts of the Christian journey and powerfully aid in creating the context in which God can draw near to us. However, in the vast majority of instances, God makes himself known to us in spite of what we try to do, not because of it.

The spiritual disciplines gurus imply that our personal spiritual growth is something we have complete control over. They’re convinced it’s something we initiate, structure, and maintain.

The reality is if you talk to 100 Christians about where they were spiritually five years ago and where they are today, the vast majority will tell you their spiritual growth had more to do with what God did to them than all their feeble attempts to practice the spiritual disciplines.

Looking back at the last five years, here were the major culprits in my spiritual advancement . . .

Suffering: I grew because God allowed painful things to happen in my life.

God nudged me to get away and listen: I look back in wonder at how many times I heard nothing during my planned prayer time, but sensed the risen Jesus pulling me away to come into his presence during utterly unexpected times.

A friend’s rebuke: Someone I trusted saw something in my life that needed to change and had the gumption to call
me on it. Having friends who obeyed James 5:19, 20 and Galatians 6:1, 2 profoundly impacted me over the last five years.

God caused hurting people to cross my path: I didn’t plan it. I didn’t want it. I wasn’t looking for it. Yet God allowed, caused, or nudged some hurting person to cross my path. And in the process of helping them I grew as a disciple of Jesus.

God’s silence: Looking back, I’m surprised at how much God’s silence, not his speech, produced remarkable levels of spiritual maturity in me.

In Advice to Sufferers, John Bunyan observed, “It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit, because there is no winter there.” I’ve come to believe that life in the Spirit is the same way.

The corporate worship gathering: It’s become quite the fad nowadays to slight the corporate worship service as an impotent spiritual experience. I couldn’t disagree more. I can look back on countless times over the last five years when God showed up in our weekend gathering: in a message, the Lord’s Supper, a song, or when someone was sharing a part of his pilgrimage.

What do all of these situations have in common? I didn’t initiate any of them.

Does this discount the practice of the spiritual disciplines? Of course not.

But it does, in my mind at least, help us accurately gauge their perceived importance within the conversation about moving beyond facilitating conversions to making disciples.

What the church needs right now are evangelistically passionate disciples, not guilt-ridden, would-be monks.

And in the words of the great American theologian Forrest Gump, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

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Brian Jones is founding pastor of Christ’s Church of the Valley in Royersford, Pennsylvania. He’s the author of Second Guessing Godand Getting Rid of the Gorilla: Confessions on the Struggle to Forgive. Learn more about his ministry and writing at BrianJones.com

Saul, hated Christians. He hunted them down, broke up families, threw them in prison, and even had them killed. However, God had a plan and even Saul was not out of God’s reach.

Norman Vincent Peale said,

Plan your work – work your plan. Lack of system produces that “I’m swamped feeling.”

I think we can also get that feeling when we are not grounded in the one thing that gives us a glimpse into the way God sees the world.  Regular Bible reading can not only be a source of comfort during tough times but also a source of direction when making choices and wisdom in daily living. However, when some people look at the Bible the just don’t know where to start and that is where You Version can help. On their website You Version says,

We aren’t just building a tool to impact the world using innovative technology, more importantly, we are engaging people into relationships with God as they discover the relevance the Bible has for their lives.

Technology really has made reading the bible easy.  After creating your account (which is free) you choose your plan and begin the readings for that day.  There are over 20 reading plans to choose from, to view them click here. After you choose you plan you can get started today! They’ve also made it easy to read on the go.  You Version can be accessed easily through your web browser, cell phone, blackberry, and i-phone (or i-pod touch).  They have lots of different apps to make it easy.  So, hopefully you’ll join me in choosing a plan for reading the Bible this year! Here is a video that gives you an idea of how easy it can be…

Michael wasn’t strong enough to rip the strings from the table so he just stood there holding these two balloons tightly, giggling and happy to be holding such a prized possession. He had no idea that there was so much more to the party that he was missing out on. There was another whole world of slides, swings, tunnels, see-saws and wooden towers to explore right next to the pavilion where he stood with a tight grasp on his balloons.

I think at times we do this in our relationship with God. There is some area of our life we think we need, but we are afraid of letting go. We are scared to let go of that something that has got our attention and that distracts us from the awesome deep relational connection he desires us to have with him.

The funniest part of all this is Terri, one of my coworkers, cut the string and he still didn’t realize he was freed from the table! He stood there playing with his balloons never leaving to explore the rest of the party or the playground.

When we decide to do life God’s way (early Christianity was actually called “the way”) we are set free. Much like Michael was set free from the limitations placed on him by the string. We get so engrossed in our selfishness that we are blind to what God has for us in this existence. Sometimes the challenges we face seem insurmountable.  We ask ourselves, “How could God allow these things to happen?” Or our pride gets in the way and we wonder, “How could God let this happen to me? I don’t deserve this?”

When in fact, we really deserve nothing.  Our own selfishness keeps us tied down and blinded to the world God wants to open up for us in the future.  Hopefully I can stop acting like a two year old and open my eyes to the things God wants to show me.

From what I understand so far, Monvee is a spiritual formation program that custom designs a path of spiritual growth based upon an individual needs through a pretty cool electronic evaluation tool. Here is how they describe it,

Monvee is designed to quickly discern how people learn, how they relate to God, and where they are on their personal spiritual journey. monvee™ produces a customized spiritual formation plan designed just for them. In other words, monvee can help you do what no one person or group of staff people can do. Think of monvee™ as “spiritual formation staff” for your church. If you have spiritual formation staff, monvee will help them accomplish what they cannot accomplish by themselves.

Check out what some other church leaders are saying about Monvee – I think I’m going to keep my eye on how this new tool develops,

1. Become Part Of It

Often, the people that are negative about change, are struggling because they are resisting what is happening. These people refuse to let go of the past and some even actively pursue opposing objectives to resist the change that is going to take place. The people that cope best are those that trust the leaders around them and engage in whatever it is that is happening.

If your church, job, family, or volunteer organization is going through some rapid changes you should involve yourself in the process. Connect with the leaders in your organization and ask how you can help implement whatever changes that are going to take place. By doing this, many times you will be provided with information that puts your mind and heart at ease. This new information that you have been provided with will help you understand more clearly why the change was necessary.

2. Focus On The Positive

Sometimes staying positive is hard. Even after you have made a decision to trust your leaders, it can still be challenging. I recommend sitting down with a pen and paper and writing down some good things you can come up with about the change you are experiencing. Then when you hear others say negative things you respond with the positive things you wrote down. Challenge yourself to avoid negative talk and track on paper how well you do. You’ll probably be surprised at how negative you really are. Most people have a habit of ignoring their negativity simply because they believe they are right.

3. Deal With The Negative

Becoming part of the change and focusing on the positive DOES NOT make the negative stuff in your head go away. They do help you become a more positive person but you can’t ignore your thoughts forever. To deal with your concerns about the change you are experiencing, communication is KEY. A lack of communication can actually cause more negative feelings between you and others around you. Go to the person that is most excited about the change taking place and ask them questions about your concerns. DON’T COMPLAIN, JUST ASK QUESTIONS. After receiving your answers, relax and take a day to process the response.

What if this doesn’t work?

Change is easy for no one, not for those that initiate it nor others that have to implement it. We have to remember to be flexible and patient so that we can witness the results of the changes happening. The better you are at dealing with change in a positive way, the more potential you have for success!

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter is so clear in his explanation: if faith, goodness, knowledge, self control, and these other qualities he mentions, are growing in your life you will actually be productive as a follower of Jesus.  What that means is that we have to take time for self reflection.  We need to stop and take a moment out of our busy lives and do the hard work of self-evaluation.  Often I think we are afraid to evaluate ourselves.  At least I am.  I want to avoid asking myself the hard questions like, “Am I demonstrating brotherly kindness more frequently in my life?”  Or, “Am I able exersicse self-control more effectively?”

I think we can fall into the trap of becoming a lazy Christian and get stuck in routine.  We go to church, maybe attend a small group, or serve as an usher or in a kids classroom on Sunday and think, “God and I are on good terms!”  I think following Jesus is more than that, and we need to get our act together and be productive Christians.  We need to hold ourselves accountable and make sure these qualities are increasing in our lives and be certain we are not maintaining status quo.

Over the last couple of years I’ve tried to expand my food selections. I’ve been a chicken and potatoes and burger kinda gal my whole life. In the past two years I tasted salmon – and liked it; ostrich – too salty; crocodile – yucky tough; and, bleu cheese dressing – wow good! And, of course, tofu. I actually tried tofu several times, I just didn’t know it. Tofu is an impostor food. It takes on the taste of whatever food it’s mixed into. So, I have had tofu that tasted like butter sauce, Italian tomato sauce, cheese whiz (oh yeah!) and, my favorite, chili sauce! Same tofu. Different sauce.

Over my years as a Christian, I have attended a dozen different protestant denominations. Looking back there were several times that I began to think and act like the denomination – charismatic, evangelical, Presbyterian, pentecostal (oh yeah!). Each with their own unique ’sauce’ added to the basic tofu.

It has only been in the last ten years where I actually claimed my faith as MY own, and not a denomination’s. Essentially, I was a Tofu Christian – I sounded/tasted like the church that I claimed as my home at that time.

Best thing about growing through this is that right now, a funky decade or two later, I know exactly what ’sauce’ I do not want to ‘taste’ like ever again. Sometimes it’s hard to figure that out when you are wandering around, drenched with sauces and sparkling color.

I’ve been meditating a lot on the verses for our current teaching series at church, Secret Service. Jesus says,

“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”

Brian taught on this verse this week. As I have been trying to follow through with our prayer challenge I’ve noticed that it is so helpful praying with silence and without distraction. However, Jesus also acknowledges that God is an unseen entity. An unseen force that sees all of our actions. Sometimes, for me, it feels unfair. But I think that is why he gives us The Lords Prayer as a model. I think He knew this would be really, really challenging to pray to an unseen God. A God that is smarter than we are, sees our every move, and already knows that we will mess this thing up before we can even share our stuggles with Him with our own words in prayer.

So this week don’t forget this understanding that we gain from Matthew 6. When you pray,

1. Keep it private
2. Keep it short
3. Keep it Sincere