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ACT 3 Weekly

January 18, 2010

 

When Discipleship Becomes Creative

(Number Ten of a Series on Discipleship)

 

John H. Armstrong

 

I argued in my last ACT 3 Weekly that it was time for Christians to ask: Why not? It is time to also ask: What if? As I personally embrace what is the final phase of my public ministry life the temptation is to accept what has happened as the expectation for what should or will happen. I am determined to think and live otherwise. Because I embrace the virtues of faith, hope and love as the core of my being I ask how living as a mature disciple can make a real difference in the lives of others, especially those who come behind me.

 

Nothing Is Completed in Our Lifetime

 

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote, “Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime. Therefore we must be saved by hope.” The whole Christian life is one that embraces hope. This stance leans into the future and seeks to constantly discover how to live between what is and what will be. Korean theologian Jung Young Lee speaks of people who live “in between” different worlds. He also speaks of those who live “in both” worlds or “in neither.” I have known a lot of Christians who settle for one of these stances, or a combination of several without a great deal of thought about why or how. Lee calls contemporary Christians to live “in the beyond.” This is the stance Niebuhr spoke about in the first half of the last century.

 

The radical disciple, disturbed by God, should choose to live “in the beyond.” By this choice the faithful modern follower of Jesus seeks to build a bridge between what is (the mundane, modern alternatives to deep faith) and what ought to be (the reign of Christ demonstrated relationally in lives empowered by love). This was why I spent the previous two weeks underscoring the importance of the story told in the movie The Blind Side. This very real human story provides a simple, powerful and workable model of what I am talking about theologically.

 

Living on the margins of society, on the edge, is never easy or comfortable. If you want to follow Jesus and play it safe then what I am calling for in this series is of no importance to you. You must be willing to take risks! You must be willing to embrace the unpredictable, the seemingly impossible. This is where imagination comes to bear on radical discipleship.

 

Children and the Kingdom

 

Jesus speaks of God’s way by saying that the Father hides kingdom mysteries from the “wise and intelligent” and “reveals them to infants” (Matthew 11:25). We later read in the same Gospel:

 

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:1-5).

 

And in Matthew 19:13-15 we read:

 

Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them, but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.

 

I have pondered words like these for more than fifty-five years. I conclude that they are staggering in their implications. Mark, by the way, says that Jesus “blessed them” (Mark 10:16), demonstrating just how amazing Jesus’ response really was to infants who could contribute no money or talent to the kingdom.

 

Note that the disciples had no patience with these people bringing little children to Jesus to be held, touched and blessed. They spoke “sternly” to those who bothered Jesus with these mundane interruptions. They thought just like most people think and in the process they were actually missing the kingdom.

 

What is really going on in these various texts about children? Some see here an embrace of children into the realm, reign and reality of the kingdom. I think this has to be true. But I see even more. We commonly think of little children as those who possess an almost limitless ability for imagination. Children’s literature, drama and response all demonstrate this point powerfully. I think it is quite likely that Jesus is openly endorsing the idea of an “upside down kingdom” where the weakest and smallest are the strongest and the greatest. Why? They have the imagination to adapt, to be resourceful, and to see life as an adventure.

 

The Creative Element

 

Children know how to play. They understand creativity without even having to think about it. Some children have an incredible imagination. They then get it knocked out of them by their peers, their teachers and their parents. Generally the more creative the child the more people will work to challenge this aspect of their development. When this happens these children grow up to be even more timid and cautious as adults. They learn that the way to make it in this world is to play it safe, to not challenge much and to get along. Anthony Gittins is right: “Some families and communities simply cannot cope with too much imagination” (A Presence That Disturbs, 49).

 

Not everyone is as creative as the next person. But all of us can learn to embrace new ways of thinking and living if we had the faith to ask the right questions and to pursue new ways of responding to the challenges of our lives. All of us cannot live exciting lives and do exciting things but all of us can develop relationships with people who are imaginative and creative and embrace a world of great challenge and opportunity. In this case your life will be impacted profoundly by who you choose as your friends and role models.

 

Statistically it is more likely that we find our imaginations inhibited rather than stimulated, especially if the number of our friends who are creative is small. Let me explain this a bit more concretely.

 

Many of us, whether we become this way by temperament, by influence or by a combination of both, lean toward being sensibly conservative. The older we get the more cautious we become. This seems to be especially true of Christians are orthodox in their belief and moral practice. (I am among those who believe and practice the faith in an orthodox way.) But such orthodox people find risk-taking extremely difficult. The question here is vital—how do we balance conservatism and wisdom with experimentation and risk-taking? The task is never easy. To take risks means we must ask questions, challenge ideas, explore new ways of thinking and living. But we have been taught, in many cases, that we must take no risk of error. “Such an attitude produces fearful and stunted adult human beings—the very opposite of what Jesus was [is] seeking” (Gittins, 49).

 

Christian Think Tanks

 

Most of you know what a “think tank” is. They are virtual laboratories where very bright people gather to work on solving serious problems. Such think tanks seek to solve problems of science, medicine, education, philosophy and politics. There are even Christian think tanks. But the average church leadership group is deeply set against the whole idea of “thinking” with any degree of freedom and imagination. They are opposed to creativity in problem solving and living.

 

What if we fostered an atmosphere where Christians who were imaginative could actually address particular problems and actually imagine a different church, a different way of living and a different world? What if we made disciples who truly imagined people thinking and living very differently?

 

When I came to embrace the idea that I call “missional-ecumenism,” an idea which is central to the thesis of my forthcoming book, Your Church Is Too Small (April, Zondervan), I was fearful about how people would actually respond to my thesis. I realized that some would see what I was saying and become excited about it. Others, perhaps initially a majority among my peers, would respond with all the reasons why my thesis would/could never work. I faced a crossroads in my life. I could choose to imagine a better day for the church or stick with the same-old, same-old. I chose the creative road that I am writing about in this series on discipleship and pressed on. I wrote, I prayed and I imagined a response. I began to see this response form in my mind more powerfully as I moved along. Now my thesis will soon be put to a literal test. Do I have enough imagination and faith to envision a new day, a new response, a new paradigm that will actually work to change the lives of Christian leaders and churches? I do and I can now tell you that this response was born and developed in a creative heart that has become more and more childlike over the past decade. I am persuaded that this is at the heart of what Jesus is saying about radical discipleship in the Gospels.

 




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