Ep 29: Cat’s in the Cradle

As we continue to explore the Five Key Elements of Spiritual Formation, we dig deep into the element of time.  How does time relate to evangelism?  How does evangelism relate to discipleship?  What does it mean to be “present in time” in the context of our four relationships so that we allow discipleship to occur?

TRANSCRIPTION

Time and Inner Formation

Cat’s in the Cradle

Soil and Roots is an organization, a podcast, and a community that explores spiritual formation, the journey we’re on to become more like Jesus.  To think like He thinks, relate like He relates, love like He loves.

However, as Dallas Willard noted, we live in an age characterized by the “Great Omission” – our beloved Christian communities often talk about making disciples, yet we seem to struggle to actually make them.

And we can sometimes feel this omission.  We sense we’re disconnected from God, others, and even ourselves.  We wonder if the promises in Scripture about perfect peace, rest, power, and a conversational relationship with God are real – at least on this side of things.

The Great Omission is further complicated by Three Primary Problems that often plague our hearts and our families: The Forgotten Kingdom, The Discipleship Dilemma, and the Formation Gap.  We explored the Discipleship Dilemma in Season 2, and we’ll tackle the Forgotten Kingdom in Season 4.  This season, Season 3, is all about the Formation Gap.

Our hearts are best formed to be more like Jesus when certain key elements are intentionally in place: Time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction.  Though many of us don’t experience all of those elements, we live in a gap.

Today, we’re continuing our exploration of the first Key Element of Formation: Time.

Housekeeping!

A few housekeeping items as we get into it today:

1. Don’t forget that most podcast episodes are transcribed on the website. Just head to soilandroots.org and click on the podcast tab to read or share the transcriptions.

2. In addition to the Bible, I generally use several sources on the podcast, such as books, websites, articles, or other podcasts, when I put these episodes together. You can find the sources there as footnotes.

But just because I include a citation doesn’t mean I’m endorsing the source, or that I think the entire body of work from that source is spot on.

I resonate with a lot of what I read or listen to, but not everything. And sometimes I’ll cite something I completely disagree with, though I hope I make that clear when I do.

When you listen to the podcast or read the articles, I invite you to do what one of our friends does: dig into the references and sources for more information. She’s double-checking to make sure I’m on the level.

My guess is you don’t agree with 100% of everything you hear on the podcast, and I think that’s good. And I hope you’re discussing the episodes with your family or friend group because that’s the purpose.

The point is, just because I cite something doesn’t mean that I endorse the author or their entire body of work.  However, in the case of C.S. Lewis, that’s pretty much true.

3. Last housekeeping note, and it’s on evangelism. This point will take us right into our exploration of time as a key element of spiritual formation.

I’ve talked a few times about converts and disciples, salvation and sanctification, and my concerns about a focus on evangelism without a corresponding focus on discipleship.  And I just want to clarify something.

I firmly believe we should evangelize.  We should be sharing the Gospel, sharing Jesus, and inviting people to follow Him.

My point is that, based on our study of how human hearts work, the most effective way for a person to become like someone else is to be immersed in a culture designed for that purpose. In other words, by being discipled.

A civilian becomes a soldier by being immersed in a culture designed to form soldiers. A freshman becomes a graduate by being immersed in a community designed to shape graduates. A newborn baby becomes a mature adult by being immersed in a community specifically designed to form adults, the family.  A man and woman become like each other by being immersed in a culture specifically designed to take two people and make them one.  Marriage.

A person becomes more like Jesus by being immersed in a community designed for that purpose.  It’s what the New Testament calls a church, but that’s not what some of us experience as a “church” today.

I’ve brought up conversion and discipleship a few times because I’m not so sure we should be segmenting them so sharply. In the evangelical world today, the point seems to be just to make sure someone prays a prayer or makes a decision, and then they’re often left to their own devices.

But what if evangelism presumed discipleship and discipleship presumed evangelism?

If we share “the Gospel” with the woman in the check-out line and then we walk out of the store, what then?

Have we fulfilled our disciple-making commission?

Are Conversion and Discipleship as Separate as We Think?

What do most of us assume happens next after we share the Gospel with a stranger, or there’s a stadium event, or an evangelistic outreach?  The evangelist “shares the Gospel” and then…what?

We hope they go to a church.  Or we invite them to church. Sometimes, local churches have a presence at evangelistic outreaches

Ah, but what have we been exploring?  The modern local church may not be a culture of spiritual formation.  It may not see itself as a community of discipleship, and even if it does, it may not function like one.  In other words, it may not be characterized by the Five Elements of Formation.

I shared with you the story of a pastor who, from the pulpit, announced that the church’s primary mission is evangelism. He’s not alone. I’ve heard this sentiment numerous times from church leaders. He then downplayed the Great Commission and said, “I know the Great Commission tells us to make disciples, but you can’t have disciples without converts.”

That’s a heavily assumptive statement.  And I think he has it backward.

Why didn’t Jesus, in the Great Commission, his last recorded words, tell us to go and make converts?  Instead of the Twelve Disciples, why didn’t He live with the Twelve Converts? If the primary mission of the church is to make converts, why isn’t that what Jesus said right before He cracked the sky?

Perhaps we’re making too great a distinction between conversion and discipleship.

Here’s how doing this podcast normally goes for me: I have a question I’m wrestling with, I go to Scripture, I do some research from other sources, and then I come up with some sort of conclusion or statement that I think is very profound.  And then, inevitably, the next week, I read something by someone who had come to the same conclusion years earlier, but with much clearer clarity.

Doing a podcast is essentially a constant process of being humbled.

So, I’m going to share some quotes from an article I came across this week that I wish I had found years ago. When I read it, I said to myself, “That’s exactly what I’m trying to say!”

He Said It Better

It’s some comments by Dallas Willard on evangelism, the Gospel, discipleship, and the church. He was a professor at USC, an author, and a pretty shrewd commentator on modern Christianity.

I quote Willard with some regularity because it seems like the struggles I’m having he had years ago and thought through very carefully.

About evangelism, he said, “Much of evangelism today is rooted in a misunderstanding of salvation. People have been told they are Christians because they have confessed they believe that Jesus died for their sins, but the total package is presented in such a way that it leaves the general life untouched…

The problem is that we have been obsessed with this idea that the real issue is “making the cut” to get to heaven. We have taken the discipleship out of conversion.”

About the Gospel, Willard said, “Faith in the living Christ raises us above merely being delivered from the consequences of sin. We need a doctrine not only of justification but of regeneration. We need a picture of our life in God that does not leave most of our life untouched. What has happened today is that we’ve reduced salvation to justification. We’ve reduced the saving work of Christ to his death on the cross. So what relevance has the resurrected Christ? None!”

On Discipleship, he said, “The leading assumption in the American church is that you can be a Christian but not a disciple. That has placed a tremendous burden on a mass of Christians who are not disciples.

We tell them to come to church, participate in our programs, and give money. But we see a church that knows nothing of commitment. We have settled for the marginal, and so we carry this awful burden of trying to motivate people to do what they don’t want to do…We need to clarify in our minds what discipleship is.”

He said, “A disciple is a person who has decided that the most important thing in their life is to learn how to do what Jesus said to do. A disciple is not someone who has things under control or knows a lot. Disciples are simply people who are constantly revising their affairs to carry through on their decision to follow Jesus.”

And on the church, Willard said, “The primary function of the church is not evangelism, but to be a place for the dwelling of God on the earth. This requires that people grow, receive God, and occupy their place with God. That would have a natural effect of evangelism. What we want is not just evangelism that makes converts. We want disciples…and if you are intent on making disciples and keep on that track, evangelism will take care of itself…”

That’s what I mean when I say we’d have far more converts if we were far more intentional about making disciples.  Willard just said it better.

Lastly, Willard said, “Right now, evangelism with big meetings is in a very hard place—not only in trying to keep it going, but because of its results. Three out of four people who make professions at crusades never show up in any church. That’s partly due to the fact that in our notions of evangelism today, being converted has nothing to do with community; it just has to do with your “personal relationship” with God.”[1]

And Willard made those comments sometime before 2001.

Woah. There’s a lot that’s packed in there that challenges many modern assumptions about what Christianity truly is.  I’ve footnoted his comments in the blog in case you want to read the full article.

What assumptions about time does Willard make in his comments?  If our purpose as followers of Jesus is to become more like Him (Col 3:12-15) so that we do what Jesus says to do, what role does time play?  Time doing what? Time with whom?

Formation, not just Instruction or Experience

As we dig deeper today, let’s again remind ourselves that formation is not solely about instruction or experience. It’s about becoming like someone else.  It’s about who we are, and who we are becoming.

Can we think the right things about Christianity and not become more like Jesus?  Yes.  Can we believe the right things about Jesus and still not be like Him?  Yes.

In his book, Anatomy of the Soul, Curt Thompson writes, “Our Christian faith seems to be mostly a cognitive assent to a series of rational beliefs that don’t seem to help us resolve our family conflicts, our struggles with sexuality, our sense of isolation, or our ongoing burden of shame and guilt.”[2]

Thompson’s right – many of us have a set of beliefs about Jesus, God, and reality, yet they don’t seem to translate to transforming, redeeming, and restoring our hearts and the hearts of those around us.  Do we even have a vision for that sort of formation?

Mentally agreeing to something can happen in an instant.  Becoming like another person?  Well, that takes time.

My, How Time Has Changed

Author Kelly Kapic talks about time in his book, You’re Only Human.  The book calls out and even celebrates human limitations. That’s a bit surprising.

He proposes that our limitations – our “finitude” to use a big word – are actually gifts from God. And for those of us who are achievers, performers, hard workers, and people constantly worrying about not doing enough, the book is counterintuitive, refreshing, and slightly disconcerting.

Kapic writes extensively about one of our biggest God-given limitations: time. And he notes our current, unconscious ideas of time are relatively new.

“Although mechanical public clocks began showing up in the West around the thirteenth century, only the largest cities had them; for most people, ‘hours and minutes’ were irrelevant.”[3]

The invention of various timepieces, including home clocks and watches, dramatically changed our experience with time, and these inventions are only 4 or 5 centuries old.

And time then became closely linked with money, productivity, and efficiency. We unconsciously accept without qualification Ben Franklin’s quote, “Time is money.”

Does this mean we actually work more?

Kapic goes on, “…many studies that require people to use time logs…demonstrate that on average people are not working longer hours today than they were fifty years ago. But the more interconnected we are between our jobs, homes, and leisure, the more accelerated our lives feel. When we feel that increase of demand, when we struggle to have time for concentration, calm, laughter, and listening, then we – that is our bodies – start to panic.”

He continues, “Since we feel that we are never off the clock, we compensate by inserting breaks into the day, little bits of distraction that help us feel less stressed out and less anxious…We also avoid moments of silence or ‘not doing anything’ most often by picking up our phones.”[4]

Slaves to Time

Our high-tech, efficiency-driven, unconscious assumptions about time impact us in myriad ways, and we typically aren’t aware of them. As Kapic notes, one of the dangerous downstream impacts of our being beholden to this modern concept of time is the struggle to be “present.”

When we think about time as a key element of spiritual formation, are we “present” in time?

Be honest: how many times in the past week have you been in a conversation with your spouse, child, friend, or co-worker and your watch, phone, or computer vibrated or dinged?  And you’re relationally disconnected from the conversation to deal with whatever supposedly urgent message you just received?

At least in my world, this type of interaction is now normal. In fact, I’m surprised when someone I’m speaking with isn’t also watching TV or a video, checking their phones, sending a text, or reading a DM.

Someone recently asked to spend an hour or so with me, and, just for giggles, I began counting how many times he disconnected from me to deal with his phone.  I estimated he took one call for 20 minutes, checked his phone 11 times, responded to emails 3 times, and texted 7 times. All within an hour or so.

How relationally connected do you think he was during the time we spent together? I quickly realized that when he asked me an intentional question, he had no intention of listening to my response.

It seems rare today to connect with someone who isn’t doing something else. Driving, walking, working, watching, emailing, texting.  It’s become uncommon to engage with someone who has the time or, I guess, the desire to just sit down and do nothing but engage in authentic conversation without voluntarily being interrupted.

We feel this constant tension to do more with our time, to get more done.  What do we give up?  Meaningful, intentional, loving, authentic relationships are absolutely necessary for discipleship.

We have become slaves to time and its technological minions. We are slaves to efficiency, multi-tasking, and productivity.  I’m guilty of it.  But what am I truly telling someone supposedly close to me when I interrupt them, take a call, respond to a text or email, call them while doing something else, or otherwise attempt to “multi-task” while engaging with them?

I’m telling them they aren’t as important to me as time, work, efficiency, productivity, and whatever else I’ve elevated over them.  And I’m certainly showing them that I have no desire to pursue them, to pursue their hearts, to engage them at a deeper level.

If we want to become like Jesus, is this the way Jesus treats time? Is this the way He treats people? Is Jesus constantly disconnecting relationally, constantly attending to other things, constantly checking out of His relationship with us to deal with something else?

Or is He constantly pursuing us, constantly inviting us, constantly showing us that we are so important to Him, that He’ll drop everything to be with us? Even if it isn’t efficient, profitable, or convenient?

How about us?  When we’re with someone, are we with someone?  When we’re engaging in person, on the phone, or on Zoom, are we fully and completely present?  Because being formed requires time with people who pursue us, and who are with us when they’re with us.

Is Time Our Tool or Our Master?

Remember, God has placed us in four relationships: with Him, with others, with ourselves, and with creation and culture.  Our hearts are formed, one way or the other, as we spend time in all of those relationships.  If our social order now assumes that those relationships must be constantly subjected to modern-day clocks and all they demand (profitability, efficiency, productivity, multi-tasking), we’re going to struggle to be formed into the Kingdom of Light.

Why?  Because our hearts know nothing of efficiency, productivity, multi-tasking, and schedules.  Our hearts desperately want to know and be known by people who seek our goodness – who seek what’s best for us. Who are safe, and secure, and who have a legitimate desire to know us, even the darkest parts of us.

There are many reasons why loneliness and despair are increasing in the culture, even though technology has supposedly connected us like never before.  One reason is this: we can’t pursue and know others in safe, trusted relationships when we are slaves to time and its tech minions. Can’t be done.

Is time our master or our tool?

When we look at our four relationships in the context of time, is God present with us in time?  The answer is yes.  Are we present with Him? Does he have our undivided attention when we’re relating to Him?

Are others in our lives present with us when they’re with us? Are we truly present with them?

Are we present with ourselves?  Meaning, that when we’re alone, are we present enough to relate to ourselves with grace, candor, transparency, and kindness? Or do we do whatever we can to avoid quiet moments with ourselves?  Ouch.

Are we present as we relate to creation and culture?  Creation is God’s second book.  Are we reading it?  Are we ingesting it? Are we taking the time to explore God’s character and goodness in creation and culture?

Ok, second point on time.

Monologues or Dialogues?

I’ve pointed out that I think modern Christianity unconsciously assumes that the Sunday morning sermon is the chief agent and weekly pinnacle of our spiritual formation.  That’s highly unlikely, and it flies in the face of all we’ve studied about anthropology. We aren’t primarily formed as human beings through weekly monologues.

However, celebrity pastors become famous for their sermons.  If you’ve ever been on a pastoral search committee, a primary factor in choosing a new pastor is his historical or trial sermons as a candidate for the role. Not necessarily whether the candidate thinks, acts, loves, and desires like Jesus, but whether he can deliver a good lecture.

How many of us have left church and said something like, “That was a good sermon,” or “That sermon really spoke to me?”  We typically grade the pastor, if you will, based on the quality and delivery of his sermon.

Ok, fair enough.  What did your pastor preach on two weeks ago?  A month ago?  Six weeks ago?

If you’re like most people, you may discuss the sermon for a few moments after church with your spouse or family, and then by Monday morning, you’re on to other things and have forgotten all about it.

Yet, the modern church is built around the quality and content of these weekly monologues.

And we supposedly become more like Jesus just by sitting and listening to it.   If that is, we’re truly present for the time it takes to listen to the sermon.

Is the sermon really the chief driver of our spiritual formation? We all acknowledge the importance of teaching and preaching the Bible, and our generation has access to literally millions of sermons from the finest teachers ever to grace the planet.

I just wonder if the weekly sermon would be more formative if we explored the time we spend with it and the nature of its delivery.

Years ago, Clyde Reid wrote a difficult piece on how modern church activities are centered around evading God.  “His law of ‘religious evasion’ states, “We structure our churches and maintain them so as to shield us from God and to protect us from genuine religious experiences.”’

He notes, ‘The adult members of churches today rarely raise serious religious questions for fear of revealing their doubts or being seen as strange. There is an implicit conspiracy of silence on religious matters in the churches. This conspiracy covers up the fact that the churches do not change lives or influence conduct to any appreciable degree.”[5]

Ouch.

It sounds like I’m picking on sermons, and to some degree I am.  I think we drastically overemphasize their importance and drastically minimize the relational, comprehensive, far more difficult, and formative journey of discipleship.

This Might Be Radical

But let’s go ahead and take a look at the weekly sermon in the context of time.

When you study the Gospels and Acts, what you normally see are not monologues, but dialogues.  Yes, there are certainly sermons.  The Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plains.  In Acts 2, Acts 17, and several other places, Jesus, Peter, and Paul delivered public addresses as it were.

In the case of Jesus, however, we often find the disciples getting together with Jesus after the fact and asking Him clarifying questions.  “What did you mean by that parable?”  “What did you mean by this lesson?”

And much of Jesus’ recorded interactions are just that – interactions.  Healing people, blessing people, dialoguing with people.  He is in constant one-on-one or group interaction. In two-way communication.

After Peter’s famous sermon in Acts 2, the crowd asks him what they should do to be saved. They engage with him – they ask him a question.  3,000 people follow Jesus, and then Acts 2:42-47 goes on to tell us the types of things they did together: teaching, breaking of bread, fellowship, prayer.

It was Paul’s habit to go into a synagogue or a public meeting place to reason, debate, engage in dialogue, and persuade.  He was continually interacting with both individuals and groups.

Simple question: do you learn better by monologue or dialogue? Do you retain information? Does something settle into your heart more if you simply hear it, or if you experience it through a conversation and relationship? Do you retain something better if you’re allowed to ask questions, express doubts, and present a counterpoint?

Modern Christianity has lost most of the New Testament’s clear understanding of how we’re formed as we receive information.

Have you ever been part of a service where the pastor delivered his sermon, and then the congregation had twenty or thirty minutes to ask questions, express concerns, or seek clarification…in the service?

Or maybe the sermon is a monologue, but every week the church hosts lunch, and the congregation comes and dialogues with the pastor over what he preached, so that the congregation has every opportunity to mull over, debate, discuss, and ingest what was taught.

Most likely at your church, if the sermon is discussed at all, it’s usually through provided sermon notes in a mid-week Bible study or small group. And the pastor doesn’t normally attend.

By the way, I’ve been part of more than one church that did this, but with explicit instructions – we all had to agree with what the pastor said.

Come again?

What’s the underlying message? The pastor is the voice; you heard the message, do what the message says.  No doubts, dissents, or questions allowed.

Seems like Jesus, Peter, and Paul allowed it, welcomed it, wanted it, and engaged with it quite often and quite freely.

Look, I know plenty of pastors who take calls and emails or have meals with individuals during the week to talk about and answer questions about the sermon.  I think this happens all the time, and it’s great.

But since the modern church places such high importance on the delivery of the Sunday sermon, why not try converting it from a monologue to a dialogue within the structure of the service itself or right after, with the pastor, who welcomes and encourages doubt, disagreement, and clarification with the entire congregation so that everyone can benefit?

Doesn’t that idea sound weird to us?  Why?  Because of the modern traditions of institutional churches, not because of the Biblical model of spending time engaging the Word.

I’ll go one step further.  Have you ever heard a pastor say in a sermon or message that we should read the Bible and spend less time reading books about the Bible? In other words, we should spend more time in the Biblical text and less time in extra-Biblical explanations of the text.

Uh – what’s the definition of a sermon? Unless your pastor just stands up and reads the Bible for thirty minutes, the definition of a sermon is an extra-Biblical explanation of the text.

Should we be reading our Bibles?  Yes.  Is there anything wrong with reading books about the Bible? No.  What’s the difference between listening to an extra-Biblical sermon on Scripture and reading an extra-Biblical book on Scripture?

Should we be “in the Word?”  Of course. But stop feeling guilty for reading other Christian books.  In Acts 8, the Ethiopian eunuch is sitting reading Scripture (he’s in the Word), and he doesn’t understand it.  He could have sat there reading it over and over, but God sent Phillip to him to do what?  To explain the text to him.

My point is this – we might consider reprioritizing our time so that we spend more time, not less, engaging with the Word in dialogue.  With the freedom to express doubts, disagreements, concerns, and questions.

Reading your Bible alone is good, no question.  But be honest, don’t we normally have a deeper experience, a richer, more formative time when we discuss, debate, and explore the Word with other people, providing those people welcome doubts, disagreements, concerns, and questions?

I think this was normative in Israel’s history and in the New Testament church.

And by the way, it’s normative today in almost every healthy community of formation.  My guess is your favorite teacher or professor wasn’t the person who sat up there and lectured for ninety minutes each class.  It was probably a teacher who invited you, provoked you, and pursued you to engage with the material, to experience it, to question it, to work with it.

They probably used stories and illustrations; they asked leading questions.  They intentionally tried to poke you to get you to think.  Maybe they used props or nature or hyperbole to engage your imagination, to bring your whole person into the material so that you wouldn’t just hear it, but that you would experience it.

In other words, maybe your favorite teacher was a whole lot like Jesus.

[1] https://dwillard.org/articles/rethinking-evangelism

[2] Thompson, C. (2010). Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices that can Transform Your Life and Relationships. (p. 15). Tyndale Momentum.

[3] Kapic, K. (2022). You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News. (p. 123). Brazos Press.

[4] Kapic, K. (2022). You’re Only Human. (p. 128). Brazos Press.

[5] Willard, D. (1998.) The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (p. 223). Williams Collins.