Seminary PM4: There are certain classic spiritual disciplines for individuals.

The featured resource of the day is Richard Foster's classic, Celebration of Discipline. The Seminary in a Nutshell series so far:

Chapter 1: The Calling of a Minister

Chapter 2: The Person of a Minister
Introduction
Ministers have different personalities and strengths
We each experience God best in different ways.

1. Every believer is a child of God. God is abba, Father, for every Christian. Spiritual disciplines are not only for ministers. They are gifts for every child of God. They are "means of grace." They are instruments that God uses to deepen our walk with him and our strength to love our neighbor as ourselves. Some of them are inward. Some of them are outward. Some of them are corporate.

2. One of John Wesley's sermons was on "The Means of Grace." He defines means of grace as "outward signs, words, or actions, ordained of God, and appointed for this end, to be the ordinary channels whereby he might convey to men, preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace." Grace is God's undeserved favor, his goodness dispensed to us even though we do not merit it.

In this particular sermon, Wesley especially singles out prayer, searching the Scriptures, receiving the Lord's Supper. Certainly he also considered baptism (normally infant baptism) a means of grace as well. Other means of grace include Christian fellowship, fasting, visiting the sick, helping others, and many more ways by which God communicates grace to his people. For Wesley, communion was a particularly important means of grace, one that he believed should be experienced as often as possible. [1]

3. In his classic work, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster classifies spiritual disciplines into three categories: inward disciplines, outward disciplines, and corporate disciplines. He does not of course include communion and baptism, the two means of grace that Protestants in particular consider to be sacraments, or means of grace God has especially ordained for the church to administer.

Foster mentions four inward disciplines: meditation, prayer, fasting, and study. Wesley might have called these "works of vital piety."

The primary object of the Christian's meditation is the Scriptures, although God has also provided wisdom through countless others as well. When we read the Bible as Scripture, they become a means for God to change us, not an object of knowledge for us to master. Meditation, though, for Foster, involves filling the mind with thoughts about God.

Fasting is a way of focusing our attention on God, of freeing us from distraction and purifying our spirits. Prayer is both a way for God to meet and change us, as well as an opportunity God gives us to participate in his mission in the world. Study is a matter of worshiping God with our minds.

4. The four outward disciplines Foster mentions are simplicity, solitude, submission, and service. Wesley might have classified these as "works of mercy."

Living simply reminds us that material possessions are a distraction at best, destructive to our relationship with God at worst. Simplicity teaches us to rely on God. Solitude is easy for some of us, hard for others. Those of us who find solitude difficult need it all the more. Busy-ness is sometimes an excuse for us not to stop and listen to God's still, small voice.

Submission is also easy for some, difficult for others. Some of us like to take charge. But submission to those who are in authority is an earthly reminder of the fact that we are all under a heavenly authority. To confess Jesus as Lord is to confess him as the one who has absolute authority over us. Finally, God graces us with his presence as we serve others.

5. These spiritual disciplines are for all Christians, but God's ministers should be models of their practice. Ministers should model prayer and meditation on Scripture. Ministers should fast regularly and study. Ministers should take time for regular solitude, and should actively do acts of service.

"Personal devotions" are a time-honored way of accomplishing these disciplines. Each person finds a rhythm of time set aside to pray and search the Scriptures. Wesley himself fasted every week from the time after a Thursday evening meal until mid-afternoon on Friday. If ministers do not carve out a regular space for spiritual "feeding," they may find themselves turning into starving bakers--individuals who feed others the bread of life, but are starving from lack of spiritual nourishment themselves.

Next Week: Seminary Person of the Minister 5: There are classical spiritual disciplines for communities of faith.

[1] "The Duty of Constant Communion."

[2] Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978).

Seminary PM3: We each experience God best in different ways.

The Seminary in a Nutshell series so far:

Chapter 1: The Calling of a Minister

Chapter 2: The Person of a Minister
Introduction
Ministers have different personalities and strengths

1. Just as we have different personalities with different strengths and weaknesses, so also we encounter God most easily in different ways. This is a great insight both in relation to yourself and others.

There is a tendency sometimes to assume that spirituality looks the same no matter who you are. If you are spiritual, you have devotions every day early in the morning. Spiritual people like to go on retreats, or spiritual people find it easy to invite others to church. But just as we have different personalities with different strengths and weakness, we more naturally encounter God and express our devotion to God in different ways.

2. A great resource in this regard is Gary Thomas' Sacred Pathways. He identifies nine different "pathways" through which different personalities primarily experience God. Some of them, of course, look familiar. For example, the "contemplative is the person who likes to retreat, fast, meditate, and pray. Because they look so familiar, we might mistakenly think that they love God more than the naturalist, the person who most easily experiences God in nature. They might seem more spiritual than the activists who show their love for God by working for the cause of good and right.

But if the love of God is the fundamental criterion of spirituality, then the same amount of love will express itself in varying ways. The traditionalist might express that love by participating in time-honored liturgies, while intellectuals might express it by pursuing truth about God. The "sensate" might experience God through art, creation, and the senses, while the caregiver shows his or her love for God by helping others.

Thomas' eight pathways are as follows:

• naturalist - experiences God outside in the creation
• sensate - experiences God through sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell
• traditionalist - experiences God through liturgy and symbol
• ascetic - experiences God in simplicity and solitude
• activist - experiences God by working for good causes and justice
• caregiver - experiences God by helping others
• enthusiast - experiences God through signs and wonders
• contemplative - experiences God through reflection and contemplation
• intellectual - experiences God in the pursuit of truth

3. It is important to recognize that having a dominant path of spirituality does not excuse us from the core elements of Christian faith. Just because we experience God more easily outdoors does not excuse us from gathering together for corporate worship. Just because we experience God best with our senses does not mean we are excused from reflection, and just because we are predisposed to dramatic encounters with God does not mean that we need never be silent.

If God lurks in all these pathways, then we should visit them all over time. We must love our neighbor outwardly and be witnesses to the good news even if we would be delighted to spend the rest of our lives at a monastery. Recognizing the different pathways should not excuse us from a well-rounded life of worship.

What it does, however, is help us to appreciate others who are different from us. Satan would so easily get us to condescend over others who are not like us. "They do not spend as much time in prayer retreat as I do, so they must not be as spiritual as I am." Perhaps in fact their service to others is a prayer to God more potent than your time alone.

4. Thomas would also have us know that there are predominant weaknesses that go along with these strengths. Those strengths that focus on us as individuals might push us away from others when the Christian life is a life we live together. We are ever prone to self-deception. Those with more demonstrable activities or experiences may be prone to think themselves superior to those who favor quietness or solitude.

Those who experience God and nature can come almost to worship nature rather than God. All the paths can lead us to idolize the instrument rather than the God the instrument is meant to bring us toward. The liturgy can take precedence over the One we are worshiping. We can use the Bible to try to master God rather than let ourselves by mastered by God through the text.

5. But the fundamental insights remain. Christians should probably take walks on all the sacred pathways, especially those that have historically stood at the center of Christian spirituality. But we are all different, and we should not be proud. We should not judge. We should not boast because we have a different spiritual personality than others. Finally, we should be careful not to let our spiritual personality deteriorate into idolatry or excess.

Next Week: Person of the Minister 4: There are certain classic spiritual disciplines for individuals.

Sacred Pathways 1

Because Spanish language resources for theological education are not as plenteous as the English, Wesley Seminary--with a lot of help--is facilitating the translating, contextualizing, and writing of materials for our MDIV curriculum in Spanish.  For our Spiritual Formation course called Change and Transformation, I am initially summarizing some of the material our English MDIV students read for the Spanish cohort.

Here is my summary of the first five chapters of Gary Thomas' Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul’s Path to God (Zondervan).
__________
Some truths are fairly obvious once someone points them out to you, and yet sometimes hard to see on our own. One of these is the fact that we are all different people. We have different personalities based in part because we have a different genetic make-up and in part because we have grown up under different circumstances.

Our failure to recognize these differences lies at the heart of all sorts of relational problems we have because we assume that everyone else thinks or should think the same way we do. These differences are not simply a matter of different cultures or even sub-cultures—and many are not even fully aware of these very obvious differences. They apply to the difference between me and my spouse, between me and my children, between me and other people in my church or work.

It should be fairly obvious that if God relates to each of us as specific individuals, then he will relate to us all a little differently. Certainly we as human beings share certain things in common. We all need food, water, shelter, love, and many other things. But we are also all different from one another.

It seems that we humans often have a tendency to assume that the way we interact with God is the way to interact with God. Those who find it easy to get up at 4am to pray for an hour may wonder how spiritual someone else is whose prayer time is less regimented. The person who devotes hours each week helping the needy may equally wonder about the spirituality of the person who does not. The same goes for the tireless evangelist who wonders why we are not spending as much time as she talking to non-believers.

In short, we observe a tendency among Christian leaders to see their primary way of relating to God as the way, with a “one size fits all” mentality. The brilliance of Gary Thomas’ book, Sacred Pathways, is not necessarily the specific paths he mentions, but the fact that he recognizes that we all approach God differently. His first chapter, “Loving God,” expresses the same basic point we have just made. We have one God, but God has many different relationships (p. 18).

Somehow it seems obvious that God will relate to an introvert a little differently than he relates to an extrovert. He will relate differently to a person oriented around their senses and the external world than a person who is more intuitive and inwardly oriented. You have taken the Myers-Briggs personality test and should recognize these as some of the different personality types people have. God will relate differently to a thinker than a feeler. God will relate differently to a person who likes to leave things open-ended than to a person who likes to come to definite conclusions.

To be sure, we should expect God to help us to grow. Could it be that God both causes and allows things to come into our lives to make us more balanced? Just because we are not prone to certain things because of our personalities does not mean that we would not glorify God by moving beyond our comfort zone. Nevertheless, God is a God who takes on flesh (John 1:14). He comes to us because we cannot reach up to him. He is a God who meets us where we are and then takes us from there.

Chapters 2-5 of Sacred Pathways discuss five types of individual Thomas has identified as different in the way they most easily relate to God. They are:

Chapter 2—Naturalists: Loving God Out of Doors (pp. 35-50)
The first type of person Thomas discusses are those who seem to meet God most easily when they are outside, surrounded by nature. When they see God’s handiwork, they strongly resonate with the fact that “los cielos proclaman la Gloria de Dios” (Salmo 19:1). He also discusses some of the temptations these “naturalists” need to avoid.

Naturalists can mistakenly think that they do not need other believers or to gather in Christian assembly (cf. Heb. 10:25). They can substitute their impressions for genuine revelation. They can even elevate nature almost to a divine status. However, these extremes do not negate the fact that some people most easily experience God when outside, surrounded by the creation, communing with him in their own Garden of Eden.

Chapter 3—Sensates: Loving God with the Senses (pp. 51-68)
Thomas thinks of Ezekiel when he thinks of a “sensate,” a person who experiences God best with the stimulation of touch, smell, taste, and so forth (pp. 52-53). Ezekiel feels the winds. He sees flashing lightning. He hears the sounds of wings. He eats a scroll.

It is probably obvious that the sensate shares some similarities with the naturalist above. One of the main differences is that you can smell and taste things both indoors and outdoors. What does a church smell like? How does beauty affect you? Although we will discuss the “traditionalist” next, there is probably a reason why God instituted sacraments like baptism and communion, which involve sensations and tastes.

Do you feel closest to God in a service that makes your senses come alive? Would drawing or art help you pray to God? Then you may be a sensate. Thomas warns the sensate not to “worship worship” (p. 66), where you mistake the experiences or beauty for the one you are worshipping.

Chapter 4—Traditionalists: Loving God through Ritual and Symbol (pp. 69-93)
Many Protestants, especially in Latin America, have reacted strongly against “empty ritualism.” We might thus start with some of the warnings Thomas gives to the traditionalist—a kind of mechanical repetition of rituals without really encountering God. Other “temptations” he addresses are those who neglect reaching out to others in their preoccupation with traditions or those who judge others because they don’t do things the “right” way. But it is also significant that Thomas does not limit traditionalism to what we might think of as “high church” or Roman Catholic worship. All churches have traditions, and most churches resist changing them.

We should not assume that this group of people cannot genuinely meet God because they prize following time honored traditions. John Wesley not only took communion every week, but suggested you should take it as often has you had opportunity. You would be hard pressed to argue that communion was ever an empty ritual for Wesley. How could we seriously object to a church that read a passage from the Psalms, from the rest of the Old Testament, from the Gospels, and from the rest of the New Testament every Sunday?

So the traditionalist should not judge the person whom God does not meet in these ways. But we also should not assume that the traditionalist cannot genuinely meet God in their practice of tradition.

Chapter 5—Ascetics: Loving God in Solitude and Simplicity (pp. 95-113)
The final type of “sacred pathway” we want to look at this week is the ascetic, the person whom God most easily meets through self-denial. Again, some of those with this personality have a tendency to look down on those who do not fast as often as they do. But we also should value those who feel closest to God when they are alone and nothing is around to distract them. These are those who like to go on retreat or practice periods of silence.

Thomas describes several types of actions that ascetics highly value. “Watching in the night” is a practice of being quiet when everyone else is asleep. They resonate with the verse that says, “!Quédense quietos y sepan que yo soy Dios” (Salmo 46:10). They fast. They live simply. They grow incredibly through hardship and value working. Their temptation is to seek pain for its own sake or to overemphasize personal piety.

Next week I might post summaries of chapters 6-11.