Environments & Experiences - Discipleship 125

One of the many things that fascinates me about the life of Jesus is His ability to stitch together learning environments and relational experiences. Reading through the stories contained in the Bible about the disciples, their struggles, triumphs, successes and failures, it is clear that these both the environment and experience are key components of discipleship.

My family and I visited some friends over the weekend. It was great to catch up and swap stories. Later in the evening as the bed-time routine was in full swing in our house, my daughter Saydie stunned me with a comment she made about her experience our friends home. I simply asked her if she had any questions she wanted to ask me about today, or if she wanted to tell me anything. This was her paraphrased response: "Dad, I don't like who I am when I'm at their house." We unpacked this comment a little further with each other (about as far as any 3 year old is able to!!) and discovered that Saydie didn't appreciate neither her experience or the environment that was created in our friends home. She felt like some of her behaviour wasn't appropriate and attributed it to this different environment where she wasn't able to decipher appropriate boundaries. Yes, she did use other words to describe her experience, the preceding sentence was run through the "big-boy" filter!! :)

This made me think about the importance of both the environment and experience that are created for the purpose of discipleship. In relation to my daughter, does her environment and experience allow her to pursue things like authenticity and safety (among other values), or does it restrict her from being who she is?

When we create programs, strategies and plans for ministry, are we taking into account what sort of environments and experiences we are subjecting people to? Are we allowing the people whom we desire to minister to be a part of the formation process of both the environment and the experience?

My prayer for my kids, myself and my church is that we wouldn't be tempted to say "I don't like who I am when I'm in their house."

Who's the Target? - Discipleship 124

I remember one of the first spiritual mentors that I ever had. We spent a lot of time together diving into scripture and creating a mutual relational bond. At the outset of our discipling relationship, my mentor made a comment to me that never really sat well, and still doesn't today. "Stick with me Jason and I will turn you into a better version of me." I never really understood what he meant until later on in life. As I began to make choices that were different than his suggested path or direction, friction arose in our relationship. It was during these contentious moments that I rediscovered the biblical truth of who the target is in the mission of discipleship.

The target is and has always been Jesus in the process of discipleship. We are called to help move people towards Jesus, not to have them become 2.0 versions of us. As a pastor and a parent, I find this to be one of the most challenging parts of my role. It's easy to have my children or other youth play the copy-cat game..."do what I do." There is some power in this particular learning discipline, but if the conversation and the discipleship stays at this level, I may unintentionally disciple youth and even my own kids to be like me instead of being like Jesus.

You know what made Nike so powerful in the 90s? There campaign slogan of be like Mike. Anyone who knew anything about basketball knew that Michael Jordan was one of the most gifted, awe-inspiring players of his generation. Parents would shell out hundreds of dollars for shoes that would help their kids falsely nurture the thought of becoming the next big thing in the minds of children. I know my Nike shoes didn't help me get to the NBA!!

Nike knew who their target was and how they could inspire their audience to embrace their vision of the basketball shoe. My question to all of us is do we know who our target is in the task of discipleship? Are we inspiring people to become like Jesus, or are we shaping them to be like us?

I hope my kids see that Jesus is the best example of a person to model one's life after. I'd hate for them to wake up one day and simply be me version 2.0.

Learning Styles - Discipleship 123

Check out this video. Great thoughts on how we can teach & facilitate learning with you, parents & families in our emerging digital culture.

Watch the full episode. See more Digital Media - New Learners Of The 21st Century.

Compassion - Discipleship 122

Reading the bible, believing it as truth and doing what it says has radically shaped my life.


There is one verse in particular that has helped to reshape my value system and inspired me to live generously here on this earth. James 1:27 says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."


What I see and hear when I read this portion of scripture is the word compassion. Compassion is a word that literally means "with suffering." When one human being has compassion on another human being, he or she is willing to identify his or her self with the plight of another person. In essence, the compassionate individual is willing to carry the burden or suffering of someone else.


Read James 1:27 again with this new definition of compassion swirling around in your heart and mind. Someone who is actively pursuing God is a person who is willing to act compassionately (to show mercy) to his fellow man. There are two significant people groups identified by this verse: orphans and widows. The definition of an orphan is a person or thing that is without protective affiliation. The definition of a widow is a woman left alone (most often used to describe a woman who has lost her husband or life-partner due to death or even what dictionary.com describes as a hobby - like a golf widow...meaning the husband or significant other spends all of his time working on his hobby and not working on his relationships).


It is this very biblical principle that inspired my wife and I to adopt a child into our family. And it is this same biblical principle that is inviting me to reshape my thoughts around compassion and widows. The question I have been asking myself as of late is this: Are single moms a part of the biblical example of widows in our society today?


I've been a youth pastor for 10 years and have been invited to shepherd many youth from a variety of different backgrounds over this period of time. I have learned many things, and I've also discovered that I still have much to learn when it comes to caring for people and helping to disciple them in the way of Jesus Christ. One trend that has become something we cannot ignore any longer, is that the erosion of the biblical definition of the family is accelerating at an alarming rate. When I first entered into youth ministry, the number of youth who came from a broken home situation was significantly lower than what statistics tell us what is true of our society today. More and more children are growing up in a complex family situation (divorce, blended family, single parent, same-sex parents, etc.). There are a variety of causes for these living circumstances, but no matter what the cause of the situation, the end result is the same...distress of some kind. 


As humans we love to try and identify a reason or root cause for the issue that we are observing. When it comes to youth growing up in a complex family situation, we at times try to use rationality to explain away the issue. We may make statements like, "their parents are messed up" or "his mom had a wild past in her younger days" in an attempt to categorize our observation. While these statements may or may not be true, when we allow rationality to consume our thought process and inform our activity, we lose sight of the ability we as humans have to act compassionately. Compassion invites us to think beyond the circumstance and to see the person as a person...someone who is worthy of love, respect, joy and hope. I sometimes wonder if being polluted by the world actually means losing our ability to see one another compassionately?


If we truly desire to disciple others in the way of Jesus Christ, we must be willing to view others in a compassionate light. What is true of our world today is that there are many orphans and widows in distress. Be it a single parent, an orphaned child or and elderly person who has lost their soul mate...the opportunities for us to respond with compassion are limitless. May God's truth inspire you to begin or continue to act compassionately each day.

Is it Mobile & Reproductive? - Discipleship 122

What I'm learning most right now about the discipleship of people and youth is based on two questions:

1. Is it mobile?
2. Is it reproductive?

The wave of the information age has done a lot of great things in our world. Technological advances like the internet, cell phones & handheld devices (pda's, ipods, psp's, ds's, etc.) have made our entertainment much more mobile and reproductive. The challenge for the church and for youth ministry specifically is to view these cultural values or norms as assets in the mission of discipleship and the battle for relevance of the Christian faith in today's emerging youth culture.

If we know that a growing number of youth and adults are using technology to enhance their educational experience and personal growth or development (entertainment, connectedness, etc.), why then wouldn't we consider how to use these same tools to develop people spiritually?

Ministry and more specifically discipleship, that is mobile and reproductive is biblical...Jesus modeled it to us. Very early on Jesus challenged His first followers, the disciples, to limit the number of things they brought with them on their journey while learning to embrace a more nomadic routine to life. During their travels from ministry setting to ministry setting, Jesus embraced and demonstrated a mobile, interactive and reproductive discipleship strategy. He used shared experiences as launching points for spiritual conversations; He took time to reshape and question cultural practices that were no longer relevant to the Christian context, and He invited people to join Him on the journey.

When you think about your current ministry context, is it mobile and reproductive? Are your programmatic elements for ministry bound by a pre-determined location, or are they able to be adaptable to a different context and setting? If it's mobile and on mission...it will become reproductive.

Contextualize This!! - Discipleship 121

I love to dream. I spend a lot of time developing strategies, understanding systems, looking for patterns and examining behavior. My mission of observation has often led me to some interesting places. One such place is this emerging idea of contextualized discipleship - developing life long, devoted followers of Christ.

Some things we did as kids, we don't stop doing as adults. Remember the game copy-cat? You would simply mimic the behavior or words of someone else for the soul purpose of annoying them. I can remember engaging in such activity as a child with one of my older cousins being my muse. For babies, being a copy-cat is healthy to learn things such as speech, crawling, walking and other interactive behaviors. For toddlers, grade-school children and older adults...being a copy-cat is less appealing and beneficial.

Why is it then that in the world of church, and specifically youth ministry, we love to copy what others are doing? If someone generates any type of momentum, we immediately adapt their "strategy" as our own in hopes of reaching our goals and targets for what a healthy ministry might look like. If we're honest, we at times do this very thing in our families...ever heard of keeping up with the Jones'??

Where does this desire to replicate systems and behavior come from? I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but I know that when I feel pressure to perform or some other form of insecurity as a leader, I can tend to grasp at straws and look for other "success stories" to begin replicating in my own ministry context.

What I am learning about contextualized discipleship is that there are a few common threads that can be adapted from other ministry settings...like the early church from the book of Acts. Theses threads, however, are more boundaries than strategies for success. And to be honest, I really believe that boundaries are the only system or strategy that we can actually develop for discipleship.

The early church existed for fellowship (relationship), teaching (learning), breaking of bread (generosity & eating), and prayer (no contemporary word for this one). I believe these are the boundaries or elements for contextualized discipleship. Where the freedom lies is in the implementation of these elements.

Imagine if you were a missionary to an indigenous people group in the middle of a jungle somewhere. How would you engage this group of people with the transforming power of the gospel? Would you go "hut to hut" and drop off a steps to peace with God booklet? Would you host a whacky games night where you drank coke through a used sock? Probably not. But would you instead observe the culture, learn the uniquenesses and begin to interact with this group of people by understanding their context or setting?

Just like individual tribes of people have their own uniquenesses, generations, age-groups and even segments of people within the same municipal or rural setting have their own uniqueness. The key for contextualized discipleship is to understand your ministry setting. What are the needs of the people you have been called to serve? What are the cultural practices? What are their expectations? Knowing these things does not mean you have to lead based on these answers, but these answers will help to inform and shape how you implement or contextualize discipleship in your current ministry setting.

Be creative, be unique. Use your skills as a leader to contextualize discipleship for your current ministry setting. The last thing our world needs is another copy-cat!!

Strategy - Discipleship 120

One of my favorite Christmas gifts of all-time is the board game Strageo. I can remember the year that my cousin Lance and I both received this game for Christmas. We spent the next 7-10 days playing this game non-stop!! It combined all the elements that we loved...strategy, deception, conquest and competition.

Sometimes I wonder if this is our approach to discipleship. Do we see people as projects or spiritual conquests, and are we in competition with each other to see who can do the most for the sake of the Kingdom? I often wonder how misaligned our motivation to invest in others may be at times.

As a logical, creative thinker...I gotta tell you that I love to strategy. I love creating a system and plan for not only organization, but also development. Man some of the things I have put together over the years look so good on paper!! The problem seems to be when I see the strategy as the end goal rather than the people whom the strategy is supposed to serve.

I think that at times our desire for results is what keeps us from actually realizing our goals whether it be in our personal lives or in our ministry driven lives. Please don't misunderstand me, I believe there is value in keeping the end or the desired outcome in mind. But when this goal becomes our focus and we lose sight of what present reality is, this is where we strategy becomes a hindrance to discipleship.

I've been asked by people many times, well what about Jesus discipleship strategy? To be honest, depending on who you talk to, some people would say He didn't have a strategy, while others would say that he absolutely did. I think Jesus had the God-given ability to keep his desired outcome in mind while being able to develop a unique strategy for each of his disciples. There were times when Jesus used a more hands on discipleship strategy approach (miracles) and other times when He threw the strategy and tradition out the window to simply engage people (the Samaritan woman). I think the lesson to learn about strategy is that there needs to be a balanced approach to its' use in the process of spiritual transformation or discipleship. We can have an overarching plan on how we want to spiritually develop people, but we must recognize that each person will require a unique strategy for development individually. Yes, they may still fit the overall plan or strategy at large, but how we tangibly engage them relationally and disciple them spiritually will remain unique. My kids are a great example of this. My daughter requires instruction in a different way than my son, but my goal for both of them remains the same...I want them to become radical, world-changing followers of Jesus Christ.

The next time you are sitting down to plot out strategy on how to develop people or how to engage your friends, remember that although strategy is a key cog in the wheel of spiritual transformation, it is not the end all be all. There are times when our strategy for ministry needs to be more mobile and reproducible than clean, neat and tidy!!