August 26, 2007 - Simba the Apprentice

Pentecost 13
August 26, 2007
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
W. Gregory Pope

SIMBA THE APPRENTICE: (
Intentional Spiritual Formation:
Being and Making Disciples)

Matthew 28:16-20; Galatians 5:22-23

In the movie “Meet the Parents” there is a scene when a girl brings home her fiancé, played by Ben Stiller, to meet her parents. He also meets her brother, played by Owen Wilson, who says he is a carpenter because that’s what Jesus was, and our goal is to be like Jesus.

Is that what being a disciple, a follower of Jesus, is all about? Does it mean we should all become carpenters? Or does following Jesus mean something more?

We are thinking together these days about five congregational practices vital to our life together.

We began three weeks ago with the practice of Radical Hospitality, offering the gracious invitation and welcome of Christ. This Wednesday evening we will engage in a congregational conversation about how we can best practice Radical Hospitality in this place. We strive to be a place of hospitality not in order to survive as an institution or to develop a stronger financial base. It’s not about launching a membership drive for a civic organization or inviting people to join a club in order to enhance revenue through dues. We practice hospitality because the fundamental purpose for which the church exists is to draw people into relationship with God through Jesus Christ and to see how this changes lives.

And so we seek to provide life-transforming encounters with the presence of God through Meaningful Worship, which was the subject of our conversation two weeks ago. Worship is the essential gathering of the people of God as a place where God shapes souls and changes hearts and transforms lives.

But growing in Christ requires and depends on more than what happens during a weekly period of worship. This leads us to a third practice, the topic of our conversation today: Intentional Spiritual Formation.


Brian McLaren says that the mission of the church is “to be and make disciples of Jesus Christ in authentic community for the good of the world.”1

The congregational practice of Intentional Spiritual Formation has to do with being purposeful about disciple-making. Learning the way of Jesus and growing in Christ-likeness does not come easily or automatically. We have to be intentional about our own spiritual formation and make sure there are opportunities here for others to grow spiritually. Bill Johnson, whose 25th anniversary we celebrated last week - wasn’t that a great day? - he has led us well toward this goal. And we will continue to search for new ways to become more deeply nurtured in the way of Jesus.

Spiritual Formation is the work of God’s Spirit within us. As we mature in Christ, God cultivates in us the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the qualities to which the Christian aspires; these are the qualities God’s Spirit forms in us as we deepen our relationship with God. The end toward which we strive is having the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus.

The history of the church has taught us that Spiritual Formation happens best in community. McLaren calls us to be and make disciples in authentic community, where life is shared on a deep level. It is true that spiritual growth requires solitude. Jesus often went up into the mountains alone to pray and be with God. But we learn the practice of faith best with others. It was in community that Jesus taught his disciples. Learning in community gives disciples a network of support, encouragement, direction, and accountability as we seek to grow in Christ.

Our calling is to join together in authentic community and to be intentional about being and making disciples of Jesus Christ. No matter what else we do in this place, if we do not make disciples we have failed. If our worship does not make us better disciples of Jesus, then our worship is in vain. If every building is renovated and beautiful, but those buildings are not used to make us better disciples, then we build the house in vain. If we have a thousand people in worship and offerings of three million dollars a year, but fail to make disciples, all we would have are impressive numbers. Being disciples and making disciples - that is the church’s reason for being.

What is a disciple? Dallas Willard speaks of being a disciple in terms of being an apprentice to Jesus. Our view of what an apprentice is may have been distorted by Donald Trump’s television “reality” show, where people ferociously compete against one another for a position of wealth and power. Sometimes you join together with others in competition against another group, but you are always in competition with those in your group. And all the time you live in fear of Trump the slave-driving master. This is a perfect example of the kind of story our culture wants us to live in. However, being an apprentice to Jesus is not about wealth, power, or competition.

Dallas Willard defines an apprentice as:

someone who has decided to be with another person, under appropriate conditions, in order to be capable of doing what that person does or to become what that person is.2 (REPEAT)


We do not learn Jesus as an object of study but rather as a personal presence in our lives. To become an apprentice of Jesus is to decide to be with him in order to better do what Jesus does and be who Jesus is. A disciple is a learner, an apprentice of Jesus. To be a disciple is to commit your life to following in the way of Jesus. Instead of wealth, power, and competition, we learn the way generosity, humility, servanthood, and community.

It is the task of the church to be a community of Christian formation. We are to help each other follow in the way of Jesus. Through Christian Spiritual Formation we seek to be formed into people who embody the life and teachings of Christ: loving enemies, helping the needy, being an advocate for the poor, offering grace to the wounded, living generously, growing spiritually.

We invite people into the life Jesus lived - the lessons he taught, the people he touched, the healing he offered, the forgiveness he gave, the love he showed, and the sacrifice he made - as the only life worth living.3 We’re not just talking about making nice people, but about God remaking people into a new creation.

As a community of Christian formation, we teach the foundational truths and basic stories of our faith handed down over 3000 years - the Ten Commandments and the Exodus, the Sermon on the Mount and the life of Jesus. We teach each other how to read the Bible seriously. We teach our children what is right and take delight in them. And we use not only words and books, but sacrament and song and the example of our very lives. We make sure we are all grounded in the basics of our faith.

Next month I am beginning a 25-week class for that very purpose for those fairly new to faith and those who never felt like they received a good foundation for the Christian life. We need to be grounded in the basics.

We also need to learn to think critically about the faith, asking questions, making faith our own. We do all of this for the purpose of developing a relationship with God that forms us into the likeness of Christ so that we might make a difference in our world. That’s what it means to be a community of Christian formation. It is not easy. It is not cheap.

David Buttrick, professor of preaching at Vanderbilt Divinity School, told the story of a small town in Michigan the week following 9/11. People across the town began to notice sheets of purple paper appearing in the stores. These purple leaflets were in the gas stations, the restaurants, the taverns, the cleaners, everywhere. On the purple sheets, beginning at the top and going all the way to the bottom, was a list of phrases:

Blessed are the peacemakers
Love your enemies
Do not retaliate
If you forgive, your heavenly Father will forgive you


They are, of course, the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Buttrick said as he sat there in Suzi’s Restaurant with the purple piece of paper in his hand reading the words, a man seated next to him looked over and said, “I don’t know what them words are, but they don’t sound right to me.”

And he is right. In our world the words of Jesus are strange. They don’t sound right to our ears. Even in the church where we have traded in costly discipleship for comfortable membership his words sound odd. We live by another story and other values.

The rock band, Nickelback, recently released a song called “Rockstar” which through hyperbole describes the foolishness of our culture’s goals. Listen to a sample of the lyrics:

I want a brand new house on an episode of Cribs
And a bathroom I can play baseball in.
And a king size tub big enough for ten plus me.

I need a credit card that’s got no limit
And a big black jet with a bedroom in it.

I want a new tour bus full of old guitars
My own star on Hollywood Boulevard
Somewhere between Cher and James Dead is fine for me.

I think I’m gonna dress my[self] in the latest fashion
Get a front door key to the Playboy mansion
Gonna date a centerfold that loves to blow my money for me.

I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I’d even cut my hair and change my name

Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We’ll all stay skinny ‘cause we just won’t eat
And we’ll hang out in the coolest bars
In the VIP with the movie stars

Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar4

Brian McLaren addresses this cultural story in his forthcoming book Everything Must Change. He talks about a “covert curriculum” our culture teaches that is at great odds with the curriculum of Christian spiritual formation, and how if we want to be change agents in the world we must uncover the curriculum and teach a new one.


He says the common lesson plan that underlies forty thousand commercials tells us we can eat desirable foods and not get fat, or if we do get fat, we can surgically remove the unwanted tissue. And it doesn’t matter where our food comes from. We can drive a new car every year or two and not go into debt. We can titillate our sexual appetite and not hurt ourselves or our families. And the common script that underlies our most popular movies and video games shows us that the way to defeat bad guys is through violence that will always bring a happy ending with no negative consequences. Because the next time we play the video game, the children and grandchildren of our last game’s casualties aren’t waiting to inflict revenge.

And then McLaren offers a series of questions about this covert curriculum:

What is the covert curriculum in our culture regarding aging and death? What are we taught about gray hair, wrinkled skin, changing body shape, and failing health - except that these facts of life are embarrassing and to be feared or covered up in some way? What use does this denial of death and aging serve? Could it be that if we were to think more deeply about our mortality, we would see how silly and ridiculous so many of our culture’s obsessions really are?

Who profits from making us fear aging, death, celibacy, fidelity, marriage, parenthood, or wearing last year’s hot brand name?

What are we being taught each day, covertly, about prosperity? About security? About what human beings are worth and what human life is for?

The church, McLaren says, must be a community of people who begin to wake up to this covert curriculum in which we swim every day, a curriculum that is killing us, and we must band together to talk about it, and help one another not be sucked in by it.

We must develop intentional practices of spiritual formation so that we and our children for generations to come will be able to learn, live, and grow as part of the solution, as agents of healing, as revolutionaries seeking to dismantle and subvert this suicidal system, instead of serving it and preserving it.

McLaren writes: “It would be an exciting thing to be a part of: a community that forms disciples who work for the liberation and healing of the world, based on Jesus’ good news of the kingdom of God. Groups like this wouldn’t need buildings, pipe organs, rock bands, layers of institutional structure, video projectors, parking lots, and so on . . . although having these things wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, and could possibly be useful. What they would need would be simple: a passion to understand Jesus and his message and a commitment to live out that understanding in a world in which everything must change.”5


We create that kind of community through the regular practice of worship that gives us an interpretive lens through which to view the world, helping us see events, relationships, and issues through God’s eyes. In a world where people are immersed in a context of fierce individualism, acquisitive consumerism, intense nationalism, political partisanship, hopeless negativism, and naive optimism, worship helps people perceive themselves, their world, their relationships, and their responsibilities in ways shaped by the kingdom of God.6 And we engage in the other spiritual practices of prayer and solitude and contemplation and service that continue to nurture a new way of living in the world.

My family and I were given a generous gift a few weeks ago to attend the marvelous production of Lion King at the Kentucky Center. There is a scene in which the adolescent Simba who has been running from himself, his guilt, and his responsbility is chased down by the truth about himself. His Father appears to him and says, “Simba, you are more than you have become.” Aren’t we all?

Church is a place where we learn to receive the love of God and discover God’s acceptance of us just as we are. It is also the place where when we’ve sold ourselves short and given up on ourselves, hiding, escaping, living a lesser life, we gather to hear the truth that we are more than we have become. And we see and hear a vision of who God created us to be, a vision of who we have the power to become. The purpose of Intentional Spiritual Formation is to become all God created us to be and to live by a story that God is writing rather than the story coerced upon us by the destructive values of this world.

Are you ready to live in a different story than the nightmare of competition, consumerism, and destruction this world is writing? Are you ready to live in God’s story of a new creation? Are you ready to end your apprenticeship to the power brokers of this culture and enter fully and completely into an apprenticeship with Jesus? The choice belongs to each of us. The task belongs to all of us.
____________

1. Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, Zondervan, 2004, 107
2. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy
3. Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Abingdon, 2007, 20
4. Nickelback, “Rockstar”
5. Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2007, 299-303. This book is due to be published in October of 2007. I am grateful to Emily (Mulloy) Prather, an editor at Thomas Nelson, for allowing me to read an advanced copy. This book is a must read!
6. Schnase, 39