As we continue our journey into deep discipleship, once in a while it’s good to take a pit stop! Soil and Roots bonus episodes are designed to slow down, marinate in what we’ve explored so far, and provide a few hints about what lies ahead. The first half of today’s episode summarizes the Great Omission, deep discipleship, and the power of ideas. The second half introduces a few of the new terms and concepts we’ll explore: the Six Core Ideas and the Five Key Elements of Formation. Enjoy the pit stop!
TRANSCRIPT
The Deep Discipleship Framework
Welcome to the Soil and Roots podcast: digging beneath the surface to uncover the hidden ideas that form us, the church, and the culture. Iโm Brian Fisher.
This is Episode 7: Take My Breath Away (Bonus)
Bonus!
Welcome to our first bonus episode! Soil and Roots is an organization dedicated to cultivating deep discipleship in community, and this podcast is a primary outreach of that effort.
The podcast is designed to gently lead us into a deeper and deeper understanding of Jesus and His story, ourselves, and our stories, and how our hearts are formed more and more by His ideas. The episodes are designed to be listened to in order.
Every so often, we slow down, catch our breath, and just review and marinate in what weโve explored so far. We take an occasional pit stop. Bonus episodes are great to come back to as you progress for a quick refresher.
These pit stops are helpful because weโre exploring discipleship, spiritual formation, our hearts, and even culture in ways that weโre probably not used to. Weโre using terms and words that may not be familiar. And, to put it bluntly, weโre looking at reality in a different light. And it takes a while for our hearts and minds to get used to all of this reframing.
Weโre in the middle of Season 1, and this 13-episode series is designed to help us get our feet wet in what we call โdeep discipleship.โ So today, letโs poke around what weโve explored so far, and then Iโll tee up one or two things that are on the horizon.
The Great Omission
The problem weโre working to solve is what Dallas Willard called โThe Great Omission,โ the lack of genuine disciple-making in the West. Willard saw it as a primary challenge for the church. I think its impact is even more comprehensive. The Great Omission is at the heart of the ongoing decay and challenges facing Western culture. The lack of disciple-making is causing widespread damage and carnage in all seven mountains, including the family and the church.
Of all the pastors and church leaders Iโve networked with over the years, I have yet to meet one who thinks discipleship is going great. No one has yet to say, โOur church is just crushing it with discipleship. Weโre producing more and more people who do the things Jesus did and love like He loves. In fact, our church members are regularly confused with Jesus and the early disciples.โ
One of the causes of the Great Omission is a lack of clarity about what a disciple really is. So, for our purposes, weโve clearly defined it.
A disciple is an apprentice of Jesus for the purpose of becoming more like Him.
Iโve asked dozens of people what their definition of discipleship is, and most people say a disciple is someone who โfollows Jesus.โ Though correct, that definition isnโt complete unless we define the purpose of following Jesus. We follow Him so that our character becomes more like His. Discipleship is character, heart, or spiritual formation.
We apprentice with Jesus so that we do what He does, we live like He lived, we love like He loves, we desire what He desires. Our ideas become formed into His ideas.
That purpose statement alone challenges our assumptions. Do we go to a church service expecting to leave knowing more about Jesus, or to leave the service being more like Jesus? Do we attend our weekly Bible studies to learn more about the Bible, or to become more like its author? Do we seek emotional worship environments so thatwe simply experience Jesus, or do those experiences form us to become more like Him?
Worship experiences, biblical doctrine, studying the Bible, worldview courses, apologetics, and church services are all fantastic things โ provided theyโre forming us in the very depths of who we are.
For a Christian, this question becomes critical: Do I think, act, relate, speak, listen, desire, give, and love more like Jesus now than I did five years ago? If not, why not?
Am I becoming more like Jesus, or am I an educated convert?
The Power of Ideas
Most people who have been around Christian culture for any length of time can buy into this way of framing discipleship as โspiritual formation.โ What is most likely new to us is where we headed next โ to the world of ideas.
We experience spiritual formation as the ideas in our hearts transform from dark to light. I donโt recall hearing anything about ideas in Sunday school or my Bible study.
Weโre digging way beneath the surface here into how a human heart is formed, and how we operate and function in the world.
An idea is a fundamental assumption, concept, or principle in which our hearts are rooted, but of which weโre generally unaware. An idea is not so much an intellectual conclusion as it is an experienced reality.
If we find ourselves perpetually anxious about something, and our brains keep telling us that we shouldnโt be anxious, thereโs no real reason to be anxious, the Bible tells us we shouldnโt be anxious, we are experiencing a disconnect between our idea and our belief. Our brains know we shouldnโt be anxious, but our hearts are experiencing a different reality. It has a different idea.
Perhaps youโve struggled to emotionally connect with God as your Father. You know Heโs your Father, but you rarely feel like Heโs your Father. You appreciate Him, You acknowledge Him, and You worship Him. But you find it difficult to relate to Him. You donโt experience Him as a loving, caring, kind, gentle Father.
Your theology is fine. Though your challenge may not be theological. It may be your story, your story formed by ideas.
If you grew up in a home where your primary caregivers had a deep desire to know you, to be with you, and to know you simply because you were you, you may have little trouble experiencing God as your Father.
However, if your caregivers exploited you to perform for them, provided for you but were emotionally distant, or were so wrapped up in their own problems that they didnโt have time for you, your heart was formed in a set of ideas, a set of experienced realities, that may make it difficult for you to relate to God now.
This is why understanding our past is so vital for our spiritual formation in the future.
These ideas are a bit mysterious and, because we live in a society so focused on whatโs visible and rational, they come across as a bit odd. However, if we can get into the habit of identifying them in culture, in our communities, in our churches, and in our hearts, and if we embrace how ideas are formed and transformed, it really is amazing. I sound like a used-car salesman, but it may well change your life.
Jesus and Ideas
Why? Because if we want to become more like Jesus, we begin to understand that Jesus lived and operated in the realm of ideas and desires. He was constantly confronting and reframing ideas in the culture and ideas in human hearts.
If we read Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount (Jesusโ most famous sermon), we find that He is systematically uncovering cultural, political, and social ideas (assumptions and principles) and replacing them with His ideas.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus rarely answered questions directly? Because He had an uncanny ability to discern the ideas and desires of the heart of the questioner, and He routinely skipped the small talk, the surface questions, to dig into the actual bedrock of someoneโs heart: The rich young ruler, the woman at the well, and many of His interactions with the Pharisees.
Jesus was constantly picking apart religious rituals, legalisms, political ideals, social assumptions, and personal prejudices in order to uncover the roots of peopleโs hearts. Once we get our arms around these ideas and go back to read the Gospels and Actsโฆ woah.
Jesus didnโt just uncover and teach ideas. He lived them. And He invited others to experience them. One way to look at the cross and resurrection is the most cosmic transformation of ideas in the history of the universe. Those events have upended and transformed more personal and cultural ideas than anything else since the beginning of time. Thinking about it should take our breath away.
Deep Discipleship
Weโve described this journey into the ideas and desires in our hearts as โdeep discipleship.โ At Soil and Roots, we talk about โdigging beneath the surface.โ A friend of mine refers to it as being โawake,โ or โattuned.โ Weโre attuned to Godโs heart, and weโre attuned to our own. Weโre โawakeโ to the ideas driving culture, and weโre โawakeโ to the ideas powering ourselves and those around us.
Last episode, we described deep discipleship as Stages 4, 5, and 6 of the โcritical journey,โ along with the Wall โ those inevitable times in our lives when things start to fall apart.
In fact, many, if not most, people donโt ever become aware of ideas in their hearts, or the hearts around them, or in the church and culture. We may have a vague sense of being disconnected from God, from others, and from ourselves, and we feel there should be more to the Christian life, but weโre too busy with the innumerable distractions available to us today, including those at church.
Normally, we donโt dive into the deep end of discipleship until weโre faced with some kind of โwallโ โ a theological challenge, an illness, an accident, a crisis, a betrayal, a divorce, burnout, a breakdown of some sort. Sometimes we just wake up and realize weโve been doing church for years, but it doesnโt seem to have any meaningful impact on us or the world around us. โWhy are we here again?โ We just check the box and go back to being numb.
And most churches are only aware of or concerned about Stages 1, 2, and 3. So weโre producing people who are aware of God, are learning about Him, and are serving Him. But if the process of becoming more like Jesus involves the depths of the Wall and stages 4, 5, and 6, and we donโt even know those exist, that might provide some explanation for why so many of us get stuck in the shallow waters of spiritual formation.
I Have an Idea
As we wade into deeper waters, weโve begun exploring a few common ideas to see whether what our hearts embrace actually aligns with biblical reality.
Weโve explored an idea of the Gospel. Did Jesus come only to save me from sins and will one day whisk me away to a disconnected โhomeโ in the clouds, or is the Gospel far more comprehensive than just the state of our souls? Perhaps heโs up to something much bigger, and something much more connected.
This relates to another idea: Expectation. Are we expecting to escape a bad body and a bad earth and take as many people as possible with us, or should we expect something else? Should we expect only rescue and relief, or do restoration, redemption, and re-creation play a part in our expectations? This one idea has a profound influence on just about everything we do.
Weโve discussed that many people embrace confusing ideas of anthropology โ what it means to be human. We are primarily creatures of desire; we are lovers. We are embodied souls. We are integrated beings living in an integrated world. As much as we try, we canโt engage our body, mind, or spirit without all three being affected. Though we try very hard to disintegrate ourselves and others, thatโs never a good idea.
There are dozens and dozens of categories of ideas. Our hearts are filled with hundreds of them about all sorts of things: origin, time, unity, money, expectation, truth, fairness, freedom, beauty.
The Six Core Ideas
Thereโs a quick review. Now letโs tee up a few things weโll be exploring as we move ahead.
There are some categories of ideas that we will revisit on Soil and Roots. Itโs because some ideas run deeper than others. They are fundamental.
New Term Alert! We call these vital categories the Six Core Ideas, and they are: Identity, Value, Anthropology, Power, Purpose, and Love.
-Ideas of Identity: Who am I?
-Ideas of Value: What am I worth?
-Ideas of Anthropology: What am I?
-Ideas of Power: What authority do I have?
-Ideas of Purpose: Why am I here?
-Ideas of Love: What or whom do I desire?
These critical, foundational ideas about ourselves and the world around us are primarily formed in our earliest years through our relationship with our primary caregivers, typically called our โfamily of origin.โ We cannot overstate how powerful the first few years of our lives are for our initial and ongoing spiritual formation.
Just like the bones and muscles of a little baby are soft and malleable in her first years of life, her heart is soft and malleable at that age. Just as our bodies undergo tremendous growth and change in the first few years of life, our hearts do as well.
This is why most of the seven mountains of culture are so aggressive about reaching and influencing young children. And this is why understanding our past is so important for how weโre formed in the future.
If our first few years are so important to our spiritual formation, itโs appropriate to ask how these core ideas were formed in our spirits.
Is it primarily through verbal instruction? Is a little toddlerโs heart primarily formed by her parents giving her verbal or written information? Probably not. A baby doesnโt understand verbal instructions for the first few months of her life and doesnโt have the capacity for rational, cohesive thinking for a few years.
So, how are her initial ideas of identity, value, anthropology, power, purpose, and love formed?
The Five Key Elements
Another New Term Alert! Itโs through what we call the Five Key Elements of Formation: time, habit, intimacy, community, and instruction.
Time: How much time does a baby or toddler spend with her primary caregivers? In a healthy situation, she spends a great deal of time with them. She is experiencing the gift of presence; her parents are with her. It goes back to the concept of โwithnessโ weโve already explored.
Habit: What habits are her caregivers instilling in her, even at a very young age? What rituals or traditions or repetitive behaviors? Sleeping, eating, playing, being held, just looking into the eyes of her mother or father. In healthy situations, babies and toddlers are introduced to many great habits and life-giving interactions between themselves.
Intimacy: Touch, vocal tone, emotional closeness, presence. A baby in a loving home constantly and willingly experiences intimacy. Physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. Her caregivers are constantly giving themselves to the child. They are sharing themselves with their child.
Community: In a healthy setting, the child is constantly in relationship with the same group of predictable people. Her caregivers and her siblings. Perhaps extended family or close friends. From her earliest moments, the child is in a community of other people who can be relied upon to be there. The same people, day after day, who are reliably providing her with time, habits, and intimacy.
Instruction: A baby starts receiving instruction from her parents after just a few short months. Her mind is engaged early on.
Time, habit, intimacy, community, instruction. These are the five basic elements of a childโs spiritual formation. Her ideas about herself and her world (identity, value, anthropology, power, purpose, and love) are formed primarily through relationships and experiences.
These six core ideas form her heart, shaped by these five elements. Her six core ideas will stay with her for the rest of her life unless circumstances change them, for better or worse.
Jesus and the Five Elements
So how does our spiritual formation occur as we age? If time, habit, intimacy, community, and instruction are the basis for a childโs spiritual formation, what are the basic elements for our spiritual formation as adults?
Time, habit, intimacy, community, and instruction. The same 5 elements.
Letโs take a look at how Jesus modeled discipleship.
Time: How much time did Jesus spend with His close friends? Well, He lived with them. For three years, they ate, slept, talked, and traveled together. They seemed to be together most of the time. Even after Pentecost, as disciples began to multiply, there is a strong sense that Christians lived, ate, and worked together.
Acts 2 talks about the earliest Christians devoting themselves to the teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. They learned together, ate together, prayed together, and lived together. Understanding that most people in that area never ventured more than 10 miles from their birthplace, we see a very different picture of the life of a disciple in that era, simply from the time they spent with one another. Even on their first few journeys, the traveling missionaries would typically spend months and years in one location, living with their apprentices and students. Eating, working, talking, serving, just doing life together.
Habit: What habits did Jesus model for His friends and disciples? Certainly, teaching and prayer. Sleep. Food. Itโs striking just how often meals come up in the Bible.
What else? Here, we need to go a bit deeper into the Gospels. Letโs look carefully at how Jesus interacted with people.
As we mentioned earlier, He seems disinterested in small talk or patronizing questions. Instead, He is incredibly quick at getting to the heart of the person He is interacting with. He is primarily interested in uncovering their ideas and desires and pointing them towards Himself.
Jesus is deeply, irresistibly concerned with the hearts of those around him. Thatโs what He wants to talk about. He uncovers their pride, their arrogance, their legalism. He gently unveils their brokenness, their wounds, their fractures.
Though He deals with the arrogant differently from the humble, His intention seems to be to invite them all beneath the surface โ to explore their roots and soil โ even when it hurts. And He meets them there.
This is one of His habits. He invited those around Him to drop their pretense and to experience Jesus as the fulfillment of their heartsโ true desires.
Another habit? Restoration. Jesus is constantly healing physically, spiritually, and culturally. When He healed the woman who had been bleeding for many years, He didnโt just heal her body. She was no longer ceremonially unclean. She was restored to her community.
Jesus embraced children. In that time, children were throwaways, afterthoughts. But He hugged them and blessed them, and He made the startling statement that adults couldnโt enter the Kingdom unless they were like these little children!
Jesus restored. Not only to physical health, but to restoration in all four of our relationships: God, self, others, and creation and culture. That was one of His habits.
Intimacy: How did Jesus model intimacy with His disciples? Jesus was very careful to whom He gave His heart. He didnโt treat everyone the same. He was most vulnerable with His inner circle of three friends, but He gave himself pretty freely to the twelve disciples.
He shared His heart, His plans, His future, and His pain. Though they fell asleep on Him, a few of His disciples witnessed His extraordinary emotional suffering before the cross. His three closest friends saw His transfiguration. Within His tight community, He was surprisingly transparent and open-hearted. With the Pharisees? Not so much. The point is, He modeled a striking vulnerability to His closest friends.
Community: As mentioned, the twelve disciples and the band of men and women who traveled with them were Jesusโ closest community. They did life together. Discipleship happened relationally in a committed group of friends. After Pentecost, we see a similar pattern, intentional communities springing up in tight-knit groups of families and close friends.
Instruction: This is what we typically think of as discipleship, and Jesus certainly instructed. He instructed the masses differently from His close friends. His instructions turned the world upside-down.
So, if our core ideas are initially formed through these Five Elements when weโre very young, and Jesus modeled how ideas are transformed in the hearts of adults with the same Five Elements, perhaps we should look at our current reality to see if and how these five elements are found in our own lives. What role do time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction play in the progressive formation of our ideas today?
Churches and the Five Elements
How about our churches? Are you and I being spiritually formed in the current environment of the American church? Do our churches cultivate an environment where time, habit, intimacy, and community thrive intentionally, in cooperation with instruction?
Our family goes to a nice church. Itโs growing quickly in the number of people attending services, and leadership seems excited about that. Itโs a typical church in that it holds a weekly service, has a small-group ministry, and offers a few programs for people who are grieving or struggling with addiction. There is a great youth group and a thriving group of young adults. They faithfully preach the Word.
But, to put it bluntly, I donโt expect to be discipled there. And I donโt think the church expects to make disciples. A pastor is called to be a shepherd, but Iโve met the senior pastor only once, and I doubt he knows my name. Not his fault, there are far too many people in the congregation for him to get to know and personally shepherd. I assume thatโs the way he wants it.
Like most growing, larger churches, the idea of discipleship is basically outsourced to small groups. Thereโs a fair amount of irony in that when we think about it.
I suspect my experience is like that of many people, whether we go to large or small churches.
What about those who donโt go to church at all?
If society has reduced the role of the church to worship music, a compelling sermon, volunteerism, and fellowship with friends, the truth is that many people donโt need the church as it currently presents itself. They can listen to worship music on their phones, watch their favorite preacher on their iPad whenever they want, volunteer with their favorite cause, and hang out with their friends at their convenience.
Church leaders are quick to call out people who stop going to church and are quick to quote Hebrews 10:23-25, but perhaps we should look more inward than outward. Perhaps people, because we are spiritual creatures with desires, are longing for connection, are longing to be known, are longing for discipleship. And perhaps weโre discovering, in general, that is not what the Western church is cultivating.
Are churches and denominations to blame? Perhaps in part, but before we take shots at institutions, we should look at ourselves and the culture weโve created. Christian institutions, whether right or wrong, are somewhat beholden to what we give them. Many church leaders agree that discipleship is much more than education, but simply do what they can given the frenetic, somewhat self-centered nature of the average American life. After all, we celebrate the American dream and rugged individualism, even though that individualism is essentially opposed to biblical discipleship.
I hope this little pitstop was helpful, and I hope youโre looking forward to exploring the Six Core Ideas and the Five Elements of Formation as much as I am. We have a wonderful journey ahead of us. Weโll spend a few more episodes getting grounded in the idea of discipleship as the transformation of ideas, and then we’ll start answering a very important question: if the ideas in our hearts are mostly hidden, how can we find them?
Episode 8 is really fascinating, as we break down this concept of an idea into its parts โ weโll explore the anatomy of an idea.
Thanks for listening! If youโd like more information on Soil and Roots, check out the website at www.soilandroots.org. You can sign up for our emails there and, if you feel led, donate to the work for Soil and Roots. Feel free to drop us an email at fish@soilandroots.org. Weโll see you next time.
