Year's end writing inventory

My Year in Writing
2006-2007 School Year

Some of my Tuesday Column readers don’t know that it is my practice writing... most past students know that. To me, writing is like playing the piano—one gets better by practice. When you read my columns here (or on one of my other blogs) ..when people read my Tuesday Column or blogs they are peeking into my practice room. I make mistakes, write and revise even after they are posted. I’m often simply “doing runs” to keep my writing fingers nimble. All this is practice is for my serious “concert performance” –writing for books and curriculum.

I’ve just wrapped up another year of writing (September through August). I’ve completed my own inventory of the year’s writing and publishing and it is here I do an annual inventory mostly to keep myself motivated, like looking back at the grass you’ve already cut to know you’re getting something done. I know some budding writers read this column so I’m also being accountable to you. So, in case you are still reading this, here are some of the “concerts” I’ve written or published this year:
(the original inventory has books pictured --it is located here

1. Walking the Trail of Death
Published summer ‘07. During the spring I finished up my journal of last summer’s walk from Indiana to Kansas. It is a recounting of the story of the original journey of the "removal" of the Potawatomi Indians from Indiana to Kansas while blending in my own story as a white man’s re-tracing every foot of the 660 mile journey—I was the first white man to do so since 1838. Studying the original journals and letters as I walked, and often sleeping at their actual campsites I pondered larger issues of injustice, sin, restitution, and penance. I didn’t think this book was good enough to publish the regular route so I self-published it through LULU.com and it is available there if you want to know what I did last summer—click the picture to see the Lulu page.


2. Knowing God
This neat booklet came out this year. My publisher has a cool series for churches to hand out to people—sort of “evangelistic tracts” but done with real class—something you’d be proud to give a friend, not those cheap newsprint tracts that holler at unbelievers with a turn-or-burn style. Writing an easy-going friendly pocket booklet that would nudge an unbeliever toward God without beating them over the head was a cool challenge. I had a manuscript from 21 years ago that was still sitting in “inventory” so I got it out and reworked it for this booklet. My friend Chris Bounds was not real happy with it (it was too Quaker-ish for him) but no matter, I was happy with it, the publisher was happy, and the churches who are buying them in quantity seem happy so here it is—“what is written is written.”

3. Listening to God through Romans
This was a typical “writing assignment” someone gets who is faithful to do what the Publisher asks, does it fairly well, and delivers the manuscript on time. The project is part of a new series of Bible studies designed along the lectio divina format and I enjoyed writing it. Romans came out last summer and missed my last year’s inventory list. Of course, I’m not a Bible expert, let alone a Romans expert. What I did was go to lunch with Ken Schenck (who is both a Bible expert and a Romans expert) for several weeks and pulled his trigger and let him talk for an hour while I scribbled furiously. Then I went and wrote that week’s assignment and scheduled another lunch before writing the next one. So blame Schenck for anything you don’t like in there and thank me for whatever you agree with ;-) Lectio Divina is a sort of fad in Bible study recently so if you are into Bible studies you might like this. It came out this year.

4. D-Series: Baptism and Communion
This was a fun write… part of a new discipleship series coming out by my publisher. About 7500 words… four “lessons.” I like curriculum writing. They tell you exactly what to write (e.g. “a 5-7 word title followed by 125-150 word introduction” or “50-175 word “to think about” paragraph” etc.) This sort of writing is “writing on demand.” You sit down and follow the directions… your “creativity” comes is in the way you write things, not in the design or format—that’s already done and you are expected to rigidly follow the format. This will be published in this coming year.

5. Light From the Word
Another write-on-demand assignment—a week’s worth of devotionals, all very short. The hard part of this kind of writing is writing so few words (only about 200-250 a day) and packing in something to “haunt” the reader all day (who often reads this in the morning during…well, in the morning). I enjoy this sort of writing and “my week” in Light from the Word will appear this coming December 13-19. (It will also appear online here)

6. Chapter—Classic Holiness Writings
Jeremy Summers and some other emerging ministers are putting together a book like Foster’s, only of classic holiness writings. I had William Law in this book and selected a section from Law’s A serious Call to a devout and Holy Life and wrote a short introduction to it. This was an easy assignment but it will be a neat book (Wesleyan Publishing House—this coming year). I forget the name of the book, but I’ll mention it when it comes out.

7. Chapter 3: the Church Jesus Builds
Wesleyan educators (VIA Kerry Kind, head of education for Wesleyans) and the Wesleyan Publishing House do one book a year written by Wesleyan educators to help and support pastors. Joe Coleson edits them (Nazarene Theological seminary). The first book focused on preaching. This second one was on ecclesiology and it came out this year. I did chapter 3 in this book—The Church is Holy. This is a neat book…and after the disastrous tragedy of Barna’s Revolution, a good ecclesiology cannot come too soon. It is now available, though I wrote my chapter last summer.

8. Chapter: new Holiness book
Part of the same series as above—this one comes out June ’08 in time for General Conference and the related colloquium on holiness at that time. Done by Wesleyan educators, I wrote the chapter this summer on Receiving holiness in this book.

9. Chapter: new Worship book.
A group of evangelical Worship educators are putting together this book that will be published by Abingdon this October under the title The Message in the Music(Amazon page). This book is edited by Robert H. Woods & Brian D. Walrath (Spring Arbor). It takes the most popular songs used in worship today (from CCLI license data) and asks what these teach. I wrote chapter 3 in this book— I’m Desperate for You: Male Perception of Romantic Lyrics in Contemporary Worship Music. With a qualitative study of young adult males, I studied how contemporary “love songs to Jesus” come across to young adult males. My chapter follows a wonderful chapter (I wish I had written it!) by Jenell Williams Paris on how worship songs tend to follow the model of God as the “leading man” and humans as the “leading lady,” all consummated by God scooping up the worshipper and “riding off together into the sunset.” When I read Janell’s chapter I gave up and tried to get out of this assignment…she said everything I wanted to say. However, Robert Woods suggested I test the effect on young adult males so I did the qualitative study. This book will rock the worship world when it arrives.

10. New book: Common Ground—where all Christians agree
My major writing this year has focused on this new book. I spent most every week writing on this new book (about 12 hours per week) and turned in draft 16 in August. It focuses on the unified doctrines that all Christians at all times and in places agree on—the Apostle’s Creed. Last year I read and researched all year and I did the writing this year. While it won’t come out for another year the writing is done. Now the editor does his work and the publisher decides what to call it and designs the cover etc. I’ll have to go over the edits and galleys through this coming year but the hardest work is done on this one now. It should be out by next summer. I’m really happy with it. It may be the most important book I’ve written (which doesn’t automatically transfer to making it the best selling, of course). I’ll keep you posted on its progress.


Well, I think that wraps up another year of writing. Of course it is not may “day job.” I do writing on the side… mostly from time I save from not watching TV, raising children or having any hobbies and free time through the school year. That is why I don’t write the Tuesday Column in the summers. I need summers to waste going backpacking, watching movies and fiddling around in my garage and garden. Summer is about to close and playtime is over… thus this inventory of the last years writing and publishing… now its time to get back to work.
--Keith Drury
August, 2007

Paul & Brooke Kind Wedding Sermon

Lasting love

Paul and Brooke, from the beginning of scripture God has had plenty to say about the union of a man and woman in marriage. Marriage was established by God and God blesses marriage. Later on in this ceremony as your minister I will bless your marriage… Your parents have already blessed it and the entire body of friends and relatives have traveled here today to bless your marriage. Most of all in this ceremony today though, we will ask GOD to bless your union of love. It is love that will keep you together.

Back in 1975 when I was only married a half dozen years or so the number one hit song was by the Captain and Tennille “Love will keep us together.” They were right—it is love that will keeps your marriage together. But, what kind of love? That is my first question--what sort of love will keep you together?

It is not just chemistry-love. Recent science has shown there really is a chemical reaction in people “in love.” The chemical is adrenaline. It gives a jolt, a high, and makes the heart speed up and flutter. However. those same studies show that after about a year and a half the adrenaline quits spiking—what then? This kind of infatuation we call “Romantic love” or “puppy love” Lasting love is more than this chemical reaction producing attraction or desire. Passion passes—at least this initial kind of passion. Love is more than passionate feelings. So, what kind of love will keep you together all your lives.

The answer is in the Bible, but first, let's consider some lines from “The Fiddler on the Roof” on the same subject. I’m sure you recall the story of the philosophical Russian milkman Tevya. Times were changing and that affected Tevya’s Jewish family traditions. Rather than using the traditional matchmaker’s arrangements, young people were now getting married out of love, including Tevya’s own daughters. It was a new idea—marrying out of love. The notion challenges Tevya and causes him to reflect on his own marriage.

One day Tevya asks his wife, “Golda, do you love me?”
Golda replies: “Do I what?”
T: “Do you love me?”
G: “Do I love you? With our daughters getting married and this trouble in the town, you’re upset, you’re worn out, go inside, go lie down, maybe its indigestion.”
T: “Oh, No Golda, “I’m asking you a question. Do you love me?”
G: “You’re a fool.”
T: “I know, but do you love me?”
G: “Do I love you? Well . . For twenty-five years I washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked your cow. After twenty-five years why talk about love right now?”
T: “Golda, the first time I met you it was on our wedding day. I was scared.”
G: “I was shy.”
T:“I was nervous.”
G: “So was I.”
T: “But my father and mother said we’d learn to love each other and now I’m asking, Golda, ‘Do you love me?’”
G: “I’m your wife.”
T: “I know, but do you love me?”
G: “Do I love him? For twenty five years I lived with him, fought with him, starved with him, twenty-five years my bed is his, If that’s not love, what is?”
T: “Then you love me.”
G: “I suppose I do.”
T: “And I suppose I love you too. It doesn’t change a thing, but even so, after twenty-five years it’s nice to know.”
__________________
Golda’s kind of love is often dismissed by today’s feeling oriented, adrenaline-addicted world. We think she needs a lesson in loving. But Golda was actually closer to the Bible’s view of love than we think. IN the Bible loving is action. It is put this way in 1 Corinthians 13…

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-6)

The Bible agrees with Golda’s view: love is more than a feeling—it is action. Love is a commitment to act lovingly. Love might begin with feelings of attraction and pulsating bursts of adrenaline but it continues by commitment and loving actions. Lasting love involves making meals, washing the dishes, repairing the car and taking out the garbage. It has periods of passion but it also sometimes has periods of routine. Marital love of the lasting variety is a commitment to love another person in this way for life. The way you will put that in the vows you wrote to say in a moment is, “wherever our journey takes us; in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow; in sickness and in health; as long as we both shall live.”

Too many believe romantic love automatically brings the lasting kind of love the Bible speaks of. It opens the doorway to it, but does not make it happen automatically. Lasting love requires work. And it works only as you work it. Real love takes effort.

Paul and Brooke, we pray that you will work at being patient and kind, not being envious or rude or arrogant. We pray you will daily work to not insist on your own way, to not to be irritable or resentful. Some days you will have to work harder than others, but we pray you will make this Job #1 for the rest of your lives.
This kind of love—lasting love—will keep you together in the future. Your commitment today is not just about your past or present feelings. It is a commitment to action in the future—a commitment to work at really loving and to keep doing those kinds of things wherever your journey takes you. That is my first point: today you are committing to working at loving --really loving, the lasting kind of love that will keep you together...and keep working at it throughout all your entire lives.

My second point is to remind you where you will get this kind of love. There is only one way to have a marriage made in heaven. That is to draw on God’s power for loving. God is the Source of lasting love. Your love for each other—real love—is but a reflection of God’s great love for each of you. The writer of I John said it this way: My dear friends, let us love one another,because the source of love is God.This is what love really is: not that we have loved God,but that God loved us first.

Your love is not self-created—not real love. Real lasting love comes from God who first loved us—with real love, of the lasting variety. The vows you exchange today are not just between the two of you, or even between you, the state, and this gathered group. You have made God a witness and your view are made in the presence of the God who will enble you to keep on loving.

All of us here today want you to be more in love in ten and 20 and 40 years from now than you are today The Captain and Tennille still are together in their 60’s… and they are still singing love songs to each other (though I don’t expect people under to 40 to know this). We here expect Godly love—the lasting kind—to be even more true of you, Paul and Brooke in the future as your love grows. We know you are committed not only to each other but to God the Source of lasting love. This is the kind of loving marriage God blesses. Your lifelong commitment tis what we come here today to bless along with God.

Paul and Brooke… we all love you. And our prayer for you today and throughout your marriage is found in Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 3: 12
"May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you."

Keith Drury
August 10, 2007

Family update

A bit of family news from my family this summer:

DAVID
Dave is now executive pastor at College Wesleyan in Marion. They are living in a rental while they build a new house. We'll get to see Dave and Kathy (and their kids--Max, Karina and Lauren) more now.

JOHN
John and Mandy are pregnant with a little boy, due just before Christmas. Both of them are now in the PhD program at Princeton--he is in theology she is in youth ministry.

SHARON
Sharon loves he new "dream job" teaching in the doctoral program in leadership at IWU...and to boot she has most of July and August off... which is why we're heading our next week for a hundred miles of hiking on the Colorado Trail before school starts again.

Bourne made me sick

The Bourne Ultimatum made me sick—literally. It was a great movie I think--but the hand-held herky-jerky camera style and the constant out-of-focus panning of the camera r(especially during the action shots--which are 95% of the movie) was actually nauseating to me—I almost used the popcorn bag as an air sickness bag. I sat too far up front for this movie. I finally had to start closing my eyes periodically to get reoriented (which made me realize there was virtually no dialogue to listen to).

If you go to Bourne show up early and get seats in the back row if you have any tendencies at all to get carsick. Or maybe take a Dramamine before you show up.

If they do a Bourne IV I hope they drop the Buffy-style camera work… I want to watch Bourne be disoriented, not get disoriented myself!

After the movie I started the book which I got for my birthday from my son, John... and the book is superb. Indeed, the plot of the whole series is great--I discover "who I am'" from looking to the past... "identity is found in memory." What a great truth for the "holiness movement" who has apparently gone through a similar experience as Bourne. Great book. I bet I would have loved the movie more if I had sat in the back seat.

Wind River Mountains

(CLICK ANY PICTURE FOR LARGER VIEW)

I just returned last night from a week of backpacking in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, on the Continental Divide Trail. What a grand hike it was. I walked with two great hiking companions: Burt Webb is a biology prof here at IWU and has hiked with me almost every summer somewhere or another for a week—he is the guy who often just shows up and joins me for a week somewhere along the trail so we are long time hiking friends. Also along this time was Mason, Burt’s son who is in High School. Mason had pity on my old age and carried 6 pounds of my weight for me which made the trek much easier for me (and also made him wait less time for me to catch up at the tops of high mountains passes!).

We started at the Big Sandy Trailhead at the Southern end of the Winds and spent almost all of our time above the timberline, which in the Wind River Mountains is often below 10,000 feet. The Winds give that High Sierra feeling without having to go much above 11,000’ so we had no elevation sickness this time.

We followed various trails (mostly the Highline Trail and the Freemont Trail) which the CDT is proposed to follow some day when the CDT actually becomes the CDT. The only evidence of the CDT we actually found was a tiny CDT carved into one of the signs by a thru-hiker though. The Continental Divide Trail is still a concept in many places—a trail-to-become. But with Mason’s good map-reading and trail-finding skills we only got “lost” a few times. On one of these “lost” episodes we “simply followed a creek” to where we were supposed to be—which meant scaling a 40’ high wall which brought back memories of my 1960’s rock-climbing days—but Burt scrambled up declaring it was a “piece of cake’ so I dutifully followed (it was only a 5.6 or 5.7 cliff BUT it dropped directly into a raging river rapids at the bottom which made it seem worse.) Burt was right—and we got back on the trail again.

We saw a bunch of wildlife including moose but no actual bears, (though we saw their tracks and hung our food each night). The biggest joy for me was hiking above timberline so much—I love high mountains. Of course, since the snowmelt was right at its end the Mosquitoes were right at their zenith.

After the Winds we entered a section of more conventional CDT running up toward Yellowstone. I was less excited about this section of CDT—it was more like much of the CDT I’ve already experienced—which is “Where’s the Trail?” hiking—we traversed miles and miles of open sagebrush with nary a sign or path (can YOU find the path in after clicking this picture?). That’s bugs me about the CDT…somehow I prefer hiking a trail that is an actual trail not merely a “route.”

When we got to the big re-supply city in the area (Dubois, Wyoming population 991) on Tuesday we ate a huge breakfast then thumbed for a few hours before a guy let us ride in the back of his pickup over the mountains three hours to the Jackson Hole airport where we rented a car for a day (and the 300 mile round trip) back to our car at the south end of the Winds. Hitching all the way back to our car was not likely since we had parked it at a dead end dirt road several hours up in remote mountain. We got the car and Burt and Mason followed me back to the airport to drop off the one-day rental then drive the 1500 miles back to Indiana with happy memories of the Wind River Mountains.

The Thru-hikers on the CDT consider the Winds the highlight of the CDT (like the PCT hikers consider the High Sierras the highlight of that trail). So I have cherry-picked the CDT now—the Colorado section and the Winds are the brightest “Cherries” on the CDT tree (which has plenty of barren branches).

I had three goals for this hike. 1)To enjoy Burt and Mason’s company—hiking with people you like makes a hike good (accomplished: Burt is always a pleasant companion and Mason is an unusually likable and mature teenager and he took all these pictures too). 2) Finish the Wind River range, considered one of the “ten best hikes in America (Accomplished and I agree-they are equivalent to the High Sierras, in some ways better) 3)Decide if I want to consider hiking the whole CDT (Accomplished: I do not want to do the CDT except the cherry-picking areas like the Winds and Colorado. I’ve decided to cherry-pick the best hiking sections of trails until I’m 70.

Next week Sharon and I are going to Hawaii for the rest of the month. Then in August we’re both going to join Phil Woodbury and Kerry Kind for a week on the CDT in Colorado (Salida to Creede) then back to school.

Next year I will probably return and do the Wind River Mountains over again, this time with Sharon and we’ll walk slower. Now I’m feeling that we did too many 20+ mile days this time—Sharon and I will do 10-12 mile days next summer I think, and take time to drink in more of the views, and cook delicious meals—I “ate shakes” this time and didn’t cook. We’ll enjoy cooking again I think, though we’ll have to do that away from camp due to the bears.

I’ve got the “triple crown” off my back now. I do not plan to add the CDT to the AT and PCT. Rather, I’ll return to the “best hikes in America” list and finish that off. I still want to do the “cross the Great Divide” in the Canadian Rockies near Banff. And there is that section of the Superior Trail I need to get under my belt too. As far as the Appalachian Trail I already did a re-hike of all of New Hampshire with Phil, Josh Jackson and Justin Johnson a few years ago though I need to return and do the Kathdin section with Sharon some time soon. I’d like to return to the High Sierras and do the John Muir section of the PCT again, along with doing the Cascades again in snow (Canada south thru Northern Washington state—the section I did with Mark and Rudy). And there are some trails in South America to do, and Sharon has been wanting to do the West Highland Way in Scotland—so I might do that again with her this time.

A new factor for me is Sharon’s now job teaching in the Doctoral program where she gets July and August off each year. She is not a long distance hiker (though she did one hike of 1000 miles with me on the AT). Now, she prefers a week at a time—and I find that at the same time I am now preferring that length hike too—just a hundred miles or so at a whack. So I’m gonna’ make a new list and pick all the cherries I can until I’m 70. What then? Well, there’s always canoeing and kayaking—you can do that until you’re 90!

Great Hike Burt & Mason--thanks for being such good hiking companions!

Back from Turkey

I'm Back from Turkey now where I wandered Paul's missionary journeys and the sites of the first seven councils of the church with my two sins, Dave and John. Our bags never arrived so we did the trip with our carry-on stuff and no sleeping bags. After 3000 Kilometers on a rental car (with $10 gal gas) we returned to Istanbul and flew home to America labeling this father-sons trip our best ever. (We go every other year on some sort of father-sons trip) .

Right now I'm doing rewrite on the Apostle's Creed book--I'm on draft 7 today and plan to get a few more drafts in before next week when I leave for two weeks in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains with But and Mason Webb. While I'm gone a dozen "manuscript readers" (Lay person, Bible scholars, young person etc) will read draft 10.

When I return form the Wind River mountains we head out the next day for Hawaii and our 30th anniversary celebration.

The first week of August I complete the last 5 drafts of the Creed book and send it in, then head out to Paul Kind and Brook's wedding on our way to the end-of-summer faculty backpacking trip on the Colorado trail then back in time for Faculty retreat.

I'm leaving for Turkey

After attending the Wesleyan conference in Indy this weekend I'll be in Turkey with my two sons for the next 10 days... following the path of St Paul and visiting the sites of the ancient Christian church. We take these father-son trips every other year.

Last time we backpacked in the high Sierras in the snow and made (an unsuccessful) attempt on Mt. Whitney--snows too deep. Before that we went to Scotland and we also went to Austria for some mountainclimbing. The first time we went we canoed the Swaunee river in Georgia-Flordia.

ON all these trips we realized that biggest feature was the drive-time. Dave and Jon are bright guys and the conversations in the car were the best memories..which is good since we're crosscrossing Turkey this time--600 miles from Istanbal to Antioch and then wandering around to the rest of the sites between... Perga, Antioch-Pisidia, Derbe. Lystra, along with the more frequently visited sites like Ephesus and the seven chruches of Asia...

For now I'm putting my Apostle's Creed book to rest... I'll get back to rewrite when I return mid-month.

I love summers!

Changing World Changers

While doing some manual labor all week I’ve been thinking about words and how they are often containers into which we can pour new meaning.

Take “world changers” for instance. Ten years ago or so when Indiana Wesleyan University launched the new World Changer emphasis the meaning of the term was clear. Every faculty and student was expected to read Briner’s book—Roaring Lambs which has terrible ecclesiology but interesting ideas on the role Christians in the world. Briner represented the best of the boomer thinking—Christians didn’t have to be second class at anything but we can be just as successful in business, just as good a coach, just as rich and just as famous as anyone else in the world.

So IWU brought in examples of world-changers to speak in chapel: famous actors who had made it in Hollywood, writers who had made the New York Times bestselling list, rich businessmen, renowned surgeons or prominent politicians. These were “world changer models.” Missionaries, social workers, elementary teachers and nurses were not invited. We even started a hall of fame inducting famous world-changers and placed their bronze head in the library to remind students of what they were to try to become. The message so popular with boomer parents was: Be successful like these people.

We started the UNV 180-world changers course where we tried to convince freshmen students to go for the gold and change the world. While we never said so directly but the implication was clear: make it big time in the world. We were saying you should grab the gold ring of worldly success so some day you too might have a triumphal return to IWU as a true world-changer. For more than ten years this is what “World-changer” has meant.

But words do not have fixed meanings. The people of God have an uncanny way of pouring new meaning into old words. When you alums return to IWU in the future be prepared for this shift in what “world-changer” means. It may not mean what it meant when you were here. We now have a new generation of students and parents (and evangelicals) and this is changing world changers.

So, how is “world-changer” changing? It is coming to mean “making a difference where you live—one by one.” A world changer is coming to mean a person who works as a nurse serving others out of love even if you never get famous for it or write a best-selling book. A world changer is coming to mean a teacher who purposely chooses to go to a third-rate inner city school to make a difference in the lives of poverty stricken students. It is increasingly coming to mean doing something to address AIDS in Africa, stop sexual slavery, starting feeding programs for the poor, and developing the personal discipline of recycling and reducing one’s energy footprint. It has less to do with becoming rich or famous and more to do with serving and loving. You can be a world-changer now by serving as a youth pastor in South Dakota or by running a homeless shelter in Atlanta. The success content of the term is being gradually displaced with a new moral content.

Nowhere is this so clear as in the new book the UNV180 students now read calling for Christian action on behalf of the poor and needy (more on that book in September). I expect sooner or later we will induct someone into the WC hall of fame like this—some non-famous servant who loves and serves quietly.

Of course REL alums all recognize this is all about theology. Not just Briner’s poor ecclesiology, but good solid pneumatology. The church is guided by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is constantly prompting change and correction among the people of God. And, sometimes He does this by prompting us to pour new and better meaning into old words. That’s what seems to be happening right now with the term “World-changer.” My hunch is most of my former students thought this is what it should have meant all along.

Spiritual Formation course for M.Div

I've been thinking this morning of what a spiritual formation course would look like for the new M.Div program IWU is considering offering in the future.

WHAT WOULD SUCH A COURSE LOOK LIE?

The first issue is to face what the SF course is about—become a “better monk” personally by doing more fasting and praying, or is the course going to reflect more recent developments in spiritual formation where the focus is on the spiritual formation of the body of Christ—that is Paul’s original use of the term -- groaning as in childbirth until Christ if formed in you (plural you).

If we personalize spiritual formation it may be more popular to Americans already absorbed with themselves and it becomes like the spiritual gifts tests—another way to think about me and my preferences and my modes of personal spirituality. But if we consider that the pastor’s profession is to form Christ in the community of Christ then we have another matter. Should we do both—yes, but what many pastors lack is the knowledge and skills to form Christ in persons and people.

If a dentist was as random about her work as pastors are their SF work the dentist would give me a sermon on Chemistry when I went to him with a toothache. There are proven methods of spiritual formation of a group (and they are almost always group experiences in the body of Christ, not just privatized "devotions" or fasting or other private disciplines.) This second kind of SF is what pastors need better equipping for. The reason why we have churches full of shallow and immature Christian is the “dentist” does not know how to do the dentistry but knows mostly how to explain chemsitry based on their Bible courses. They need to know the proven means of using the Bible to bring about life change.

Many pastors assume “to know is to do.” So they lead bible studies (or proclaim in preaching) the Bible assuming that once it is clear what god wants the people will live it. They don’t, of course. If we were a Calvinist school ths would work too-for we would teach and proclaim and wait for God to do the transformation of whomever He has pre-slected to enliven. But we are Weslayen. Transformation occasinally happens through understanding but more often through proven methods of Bible study and preaching.

So “curriculum people” like Norm Wilson and me might see a course like this including things like this:

1. History & theology of the Bible as a Spiritual Formation tool. (History of the Bible’s use as a tool for spiritual formation including various methods used in the past; Theological underpinnings using the Bible as a SF tool including the role of the Holy Spirit, the body of Christ along with individual revelation; current approaches to transformation using the Bible text.)

2. How people change. (How do people change in response to the Bible? What are the sociological, spiritual, pedagogical, theological and psychological “change factors” that are ingredients besides the actual text of the Bible that must be considered in using the Bible as a tool for prompting life change? Exploring various theories of how God changes persons [and a people] by meeting them in the Word. Examining my own methods of SF in my leadership of the church and discovering areas where I need to develop.)

3. Bible outcomes. (Discovering the multi-level outcomes in the Bible—primary and secondary, corporate and individual—for describing a godly person and a people for God… cognitively, affectively, behaviorally—what are we trying to “make” when we make disciples? Developing, sorting and prioritizing the Bible’s expected corporate and individual outcomes then mapping outcomes to the generalized needs of today’s church and also the specific needs of my own local church, producing a schedule or curriculum or plan for preaching and teaching—a “curriculum” of sorts for the spiritual formation using the Bible.)

4. Personal spiritual formation. (Rather than addressing this first as if corporate SF springs from personal life [as Americans assume] put it last since personal spiritual formation more often springs from the corporate experience as above; focus on habits and attitudes especially those of a local shepherd.)

..at least those are my [summertime] breakfast thoughts....

Book & Bulbs

This week I’ve been doing two things:

1. WRITING ON THE CREED BOOK. I am taking a break right now half way through the next to last chapters---after today I should only have one more chapter to finish my first draft. I send these drafts to Chris Bounds so he can set me straight where I’ve missed something or gotten my doctrine wrong. Chris specialized in orthodoxy—so I should be safe in what I’m saying. (However, the book will spark controversy nonetheless since many “Sunday school Christians” depart from orthodoxy at points like the full divinity and humanity of Jesus, the equality of Jesus with the Father and Holy Spirit, and the resurrection of the body. I am writing on the resurrection and ascension of Christ today—half done now at 2PM.

2. I’VE BEEN REPLACING INCANDESCENT BULBS IN MY HOUSE thanks to Adam Thada’s “witnessing” to me. We actually did this in the early 1990s—maybe about 12 years ago but over time we switched out those bulbs for incandescent bulbs for various reasons. They didn’t fit in lamps under the hoops, they were too large to put in enclosed globes in this older house (we bought them for a new house in Indy), and they were so dull we could not read by them. However the newer bulbs are great. They are small enough to fit almost anywhere. They are brighter—even some the equivalent of 100 or 150 watt incandescent bulbs—yet using far fewer watts. And the best news is they are cheaper. The dull-big-bulbs we bought in the early 1990s cost us about $20 per bulb (they all still work) but these newer bulbs cost only a few bucks each—and given their almost-eternal life the cost per year is actually lower. I am only part way finished, having to replace the rheostat switches with flip switches here and there, but I’m happy. IN some cases we have MORE light for LESS wattage. Thanks Adam for the witness.