mbjones

I’ve been able to read more lately, which is quite nice. It seems that my old job tended to wear me out mentally and when I would get home, didn’t have the energy to do much requiring invested thought. I still read, mind you, just not as much as I am now.

The last book I read is entitled A Letter to Africa About Africa by Kasongo Munza. Munza was an ordained UMC pastor from the Congo and was director of a training center in Zambia when he passed away in 2005.

His book looks in depth at the prevailing African worldview, particularly that of subsaharan Africa, and analyzes how it (a) has led to the vast problems facing Africa and (b) how it matches up against Jesus’ view of the kingdom of God.

I didn’t quite know what to expect upon picking it up. Part of me worried that this was going to be another book focused on replacing the African worldview with an American Evangelical one. I’ll readily recognize that there is much in the African worldview that needs a critical eye, but a replacement of one broken worldview with another broken one isn’t an answer I wanted to read about (I’ve already seen enough proposals like this).

Thankfully this book was not that and because of this I found it quite helpful. It was a detailed analysis of the African worldview — something necessary to understand if you are going to even begin to attempt spiritual and community development type work. It also provided a framework for building a new worldview steeped in God’s kingdom — not based in throwing everything African out and not importing everything western in.

I think it worth writing in some detail about the African worldview so that people have an understanding of the good and the bad inherent in it. And that task I’m going to save for another day. But for now, if you would like to read a fascinating and small book on why Africa is the way it is, pick up A Letter to Africa About Africa. And if you ever plan on doing ministry here, make that a priority.

We always start Discovery Bible Studies with prayer time (or at least a time designated for prayer-like activities). For one thing, it helps focus peoples attentions around Jesus (if they are praying) and opens their hearts to the community (if they are just speaking thanksgivings and needs). Also, a big part of what a Discover Bible Study is designed to do is seamlessly transform from a simple study to a simple church as people find themselves following Jesus, and if you want the DNA of prayer built into the church community, it’s necessary to start with it from the very beginning (even if very little “prayer” is happening).

The obvious question is how do you build this DNA into the community from day 1, especially if you are dealing with a group of people that have no concept of Jesus and prayer and talking to God? Forcing prayer is one option. It’s an option I’ve tried in fact but it doesn’t really produce fruit that is lasting — people are shy and nervous and unsure about talking to someone or something that they don’t even know.

So what’s a good way to do this? Just as in studying the Bible it’s best to have simple steps so that it is easily reproduced. There are three that we do to create an atmosphere of prayer within the DBS.

1. Share what you are thankful for. We start by getting everyone into an attitude of thanksgiving. Even if life is as hard as it could possibly be, everyone generally has something that they can give thanks for — be it friends and family, the beautiful, life or some unexpected blessing. By sharing these we actively engage in putting our hearts in a mode of giving thanks and, when the group is praying, we have a pool of items to praise God for.

2. Share what your greatest need is. Whereas thanksgiving is probably the best place to start, intercession is also a needed component of prayer. Building in a reliance on God and recognition that He is the source of all that we are early on sets a very good precedent. It also gives God an opportunity to radically show up and show Himself as real (in line with 1 Corinthians 2:4) through answered prayer. For example, I had the honor of baptizing a husband and wife on Easter that we have been doing a DBS with for about 2 months. On our first meeting, the wife had us pray during this time for her baby who was covered some scaly skin disease that did not look pleasant at all; God showed up and instantly started healing the child (by the next day the scaly skin was normal again). And that opened them up to a more in depth conversation about Jesus that led to them making the decisions that they have made.

3. Ask if anyone present can meet any of the needs expressed. God often moves miraculously; often too He uses us to be the answer to other peoples prayers. And if community is a value, we should be actively seeking to meet those needs expressed. As an example, someone we met in a DBS expressed the need of not knowing how to manage money. Because of that, we volunteered to spend some extended time with him sharing tip and tricks to manage your money (basically a modified envelope method) which he found really empowering and helpful.

Even if everyone isn’t praying on the first DBS, you as participant or facilitator can. If no one can meet the needs expressed, you can offer to lift those people up. After the fact you can meet with people to pray for them. As people grow closer to God and want to pray you are there to teach them and help see them grow in this (as well as Bible study).

Hopefully this gives a quick rundown on prayer and how it is incorporated into DBSs.

“…it is precisely in the midst of a Holy Saturday experience that the decision to follow Christ becomes truly authentic.  A faith that can only exist in the light of victory and certainty is one which really affirms the self while pretending to affirm Christ, for it only follows Jesus in the belief that Jesus has conquered death.  Yet a faith that can look at the horror of the cross and still say ‘yes’ is one that says ‘no’ to the self in saying ‘yes’ to Christ.  If one loses one’s life only because one believes that this is the way to find it, then one gives up nothing; to truly lose one’s life, one must lay down that life without regard to whether or not one finds it.  Only a genuine faith can embrace doubt, for such a faith does not act because of a self interested reason (such as fear of hell or desire for heaven) but acts simply because it must.  A real follower of Jesus would commit to Him before the crucifixion, between the crucifixion and the resurrection, and after the resurrection.”

Peter Rollins, How (Not) To Speak of God

In my last Discovery Bible Study (DBS) post I talked about the role of the facilitating and how they lead not in the traditional sense but in inspiring and encouraging everyone to participate. In this post I want to begin to get into the meat of the DBS program.

We’ll do this by looking at the steps for Bible study first. There are other elements to the meeting besides just Bible study but this is what I’m going to focus on this post. The DBS is designed to be a very simple (and therefore reproducible) method that anyone can follow regardless of schooling and background. It’s designed in such a way that you don’t actually need a physical Bible. It would work just as well with an audio copy. It’s also not dependent on a trained scholar of some type. A group could be made up wholly of pre-Christians and still get very deep into the WORD of God. And this is what I personally like so much about it — it takes people quite deep into the Bible. A superficial overview this most certainly isn’t. Substance isn’t at any level sacrificed for simplicity (and I think the substance in these studies is often much more challenging than the substance I’ve experienced in churches in the states). There are 5 simple steps that we follow when we do this with people in the townships:

1. Reading the WORD.

The very first thing we do is read the Bible out loud. Often we read it more than once so that it everyone clearly hears. Sometimes we have everyone read it out loud. Reading out loud helps the words to sink into the reader and repetition makes it easier to remember for the hearers as well. And, when you take the other 4 steps into account, people often have read or heard the passage out loud 6 or 7 times. This makes it much more likely to produce lasting memory.

2. Everyone retells the passage in their own words.

The first step gets people to digest the WORD of God and this step insures comprehension. If someone can retell the passage clearly in their own words, you can bet they have at least a basic understanding of it. This is something to have everyone in the group do — it’s another opportunity to rehear the word and meaning is fleshed out as everyone verbalizes it in their own words (although a retelling and not a meaning is what we are go for here — meaning will be discussed as a group in a later step). If you are able to put it into your own words you are also more likely to remember it and, for accountability purposes when you ask people to tell someone about the passage, they can do it anywhere they are at regardless of if they have a Bible on hand. In “closed” situations where Bibles are scarce this is also very important for people as it helps equip them to be able to recreate the Bible on their own.

3. As the passage is being retold, asks the group if people are missing anything.

This step is done hand in hand with #2 as people retell. Putting the retellings to the test of the group insures accuracy and that people are drawing a right understanding. It also gives another opportunity for the WORD to be heard as people go back to the text to explain what others might be missing.

4. Break the passage into chunks and look at the specific meaning.

This is the step that dives us into the meaning. The facilitator breaks whatever passage is read into small chunks and the group discusses the meaning of each. The chunk could be a verse, a phrase, a sentence or a paragraph — essentially anything that’s smaller than the passage itself and gives you ample room to talk about all the different meanings within the text. Generally a phrase or a sentence works best but you might have to do more than that depending on time. For a group getting started, they might not know where to begin with discussing meaning so a few questions that I have found helpful are:

• What does this phrase tell us about God?
• What does this phrase tell us about man?
• What is God asking us to do or obey in this phrase?

There could be many other leading questions as well that gets the group to dive in and discuss.

Here it is very important for the facilitator to keep people on task. It is in this step of the process that you want to make sure that not one person is dominating the discussion or completely checking out of it. Also it is very, very important to keep people in the passage at hand, allowing no outside wandering. For non-Christians cross referencing and other such things aren’t something they know about so this generally isn’t an issue but when you deal with people that have some exposure to Christian culture they might try to wander all over the place introducing all sorts of confusion. It’s important to let the text at hand speak for itself. If anyone at anytime tries to say something thats not in the passage read, ask them where in the passage it is and if they can’t show you remind everyone that the focus is just the passage read. As Bible studies become churches, they can begin to compare and do broader comparative studies as they become equipped to deal with such things.

5. The obedience step.

Step 5 is really important. It’s in this step that we let the WORD of God sink from our heads into our hearts. When we don’t just hear it but actively choose to obey it — that’s when it changes us. And so, we ask everyone to be silent and think of all that we talked about throughout the DBS. We ask them to think specifically about one thing that God is highlighting to them that they can be faithful in obeying. We generally give them a minute or two to think about this and then everyone shares that one thing with everyone else. If everyone shares, there is accountability — they can check up on you throughout the next week or at the next meeting. Responses can be varied and that’s ok. What is important is that people are hearing from God through the Word and putting it into practice in their lives. One of our teachers told us of a Bible study he was in where the passage was Genesis 1. One guy mentioned how convicted he was that his horses where God creation and that he was exercising poor stewardship by beating them while other people could mention completely different things.

Choosing Passages

It may not be apparent from these steps but this is a long process. A selection of 10 verses could easily take you an hour or more to get through. As such, it’s generally best to select passages that are 10 verses or less. They should contextually go together (ie, you shouldn’t rip verses out of their context). If you need to go through a longer passage, it can span a week or more and that’s ok.

For groups of non-Christians (or people whose spiritual state we are unsure of) we tend to sequentially go through what we like to call God’s story: Creation, Rebellion, Sacrifice, Return, Commission. We also have a longer list of passages that takes them through the Old and New Testament that culminates in presenting a decision to chase after Jesus (it takes 20ish weeks to get through though — something that’s beyond our scope currently). As groups are baptized and become churches there can be a little more freedom in choosing passages and letting them discover church life and the Christian life as the dive in but we have lists that will take them through this as well.

One of the nice things about this process is that people can do it on their own. It’s actually a quite challenging Bible study tool and one that’d I recommend everyone give a try sometime. Obviously there will be differences if you are doing it by yourself (writing a retelling instead of verbalizing it for example) but its worth it.

I’ll have more on DBS’s soon.

Here are just a few pictures from our time in Masi today. They are
mostly of people we are doing Discovery Bible Studies with, and some
to show the area we are working in. Let me know if you have any
questions about any of them!

These are some pictures of our outing today to Khayelitsha. We went
to be help out as needed with the Justice[Acts] presentation (and
primarily as a first exploratory/dreaming visit to the area). It was
a good time, and some things were confirmed. For instance, like all
of the townships there are many people in dire straights as far as
poverty and the like is concerned. One thing that sets Khayelitsha
apart (and perhaps begins to explain why it tugs at us) is the seeming
lack of any rudimentary sense of community that we so often take for
granted. Juli met a woman in attendance at the seminar who lived on
the opposite side of Khayelitsha (it's a pretty big place,
approximately 6 square miles). She had invited friends but they
refused to come as they thought the crime was too high in the area of
the presentation; it's not but crime, separation, isolation, darkness,
injustice, insecurity and fear is what so many of these people live in
day in and day out. Juli and I truly believe that the kingdom of God
can change this and hope to bring it here some day. I'm believing
that one day the majority of residents here will be trading in their
fear for a hope that never quits.

"We have never preached violence, except the violence of love,
which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must
each do to ourselves, to overcome our selfishness and such cruel
inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence
of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love,
of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into
sickles for work. November 27, 1977

Archbishop Oscar Romero

I’ve written at quite some lengths about the small Bible studies we are starting and encouraging in our outreach time but have yet to spend much time actually describing what that looks like. I keep promising it and so this will be the first (of likely many) post to tackle that subject.

I’ll preference this by saying this method is called “Discovery Bible Study” for a reason: it’s designed to be simple enough for anyone to lead and deep enough that it draws non-believers into obedience to God. It’s actually simple enough that even a nonbeliever can lead it (and in CPM situations this is more often than not the case).

And it’s the role of the leader that I think deserves first mention.

The Facilitator

In truth — facilitator is a much better term then leader. They aren’t leading in any traditional sense; rather their role begins and ends with providing direction in keeping the conversation going. There are three things in particular that are worth mentioning.

1. The facilitator is not there to preach or teach in any way, shape or form. They just facilitate conversation. Pushing their opinion to the exclusion of other opinions or dominating the discussion is definitely out of the question. Participation is definitely acceptable (and encouraged!) but their voice counts the same as all the others.

2. The facilitator is there to insure that participants stick to the passage at hand. The idea with Discovery Bible Study is that participants are generally nonbelievers and have little to know exposure to Jesus so this is generally not an issue. It starts them out recognize the authority of scripture and it’s importance. Where it becomes problematic is when you get Christians in that group (or people with nominal knowledge of the Bible). They “hyperlink” and bring in verse and such outside of the scope of the passage at hand. Sometimes they might relate but it often only succeeds in confusing someone who is just beginning to discover Jesus. Another goal with sticking to the passage at hand is that you teach good Bible study habits. From the beginning they learn the importance of studying complete passages and not (as all too often happens) ripping verses out of their context to (often) say something that the Bible actually doesn’t. And if this is done right, from the very first study you build into the group the DNA of obedience to God and His Word.

3. A good facilitator also keeps his eye out for over-talkers and under-talkers. Just as you don’t want any one person dominating the discussion, you also don’t want any voice being left out (or drowned out). The facilitator, when he sees this happening, can politely (yet abruptly) silence the conversation (*”That’s really a great thought. Juli what do you think.”) In the same way he can gently nudge those that aren’t talking to speak up and share their heart. A good bit of the meat of Bible study comes in the group interaction; if you don’t have this, it’s less likely that people will be impacted as they should be.

Church Planter As Facilitator?

Ideally, the church planter (US!) should not be the facilitator. The process (described in coming notes) is designed in such a way that the facilitator can learn along side everyone else. Being a nonbeliever (or not) doesn’t disqualify from this role as the group is not yet a church. Not only that, you want people from within the context you are ministering to feel empowered to do this themselves. Ultimately, they are the ones that will reach their culture better than we ever could. It’s good to get them started in such a way that they are empowered to do that from the get go.

In some circumstances, it might be for the church planter to facilitate. When that happens our role isn’t any different than above. Not only that, we have to pay special attention to the mandate NOT to preach or teach. As I said, it’s called discovery because people are discovering Jesus. It’s not about us preaching or teaching our opinions at them. This is particularly hard to do and is a reason for the church planter not to facilitate. Instead, though, we can ask lots of questions and get them thinking about scripture critically.

If we facilitate, we also have to deal with the hand off. We can’t lead forever; at some point local leadership must take over if the group is to survive. If this is done from the start, it never actually becomes a big issue.

Honestly though this is something we are still trying to work out. The rhythm I am finding myself in is facilitating the first meeting and then getting our key man (or woman) — whoever introduced us to the group — to facilitate from then on; my role then is to simply show up, help when necessary and encourage and mentor burgeoning leadership.

Look for part two soon, hopefully as early as tomorrow. It’ll go into further detail of the structure.

I posted earlier today a mind-map of a few verses from Deuteronomy but before that my last CPx specific post was on the great commission, as seen in Matthew’s Gospel.

From it, we learned that our mandate is to go forth, making disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the trinity and teaching them to obey all of God’s commandments. This brings up an important topic of conversation: that of transformation.

Social justice is a hot topic right now. There are folks in the states disparaging the idea at every opportunity that they can. Their are others that make Jesus and the Bible solely about it (a social gospel that removes the sting of evil and the need of a savior). Both are quite wrong — Justice (I’m stepping back now because I think the “social” piece is an unnecessary adjective) is quite important to the heart of God — we see that in God’s design of His society, in the words He speaks through the prophets, and in the action and ministry of Jesus but it’s not the main thing. If we take Jesus’ Words seriously we see that discipling nations is the main thing.

And it’s quite profound to look at discipleship and it’s possible results. At its initiation, repentance is sought out. This is an active re-orienting of one’s life around the ethic of the Kingdom of God by renouncing and walking away from work sown in the kingdom of the world. This, specifically through the conviction and work of the Holy Spirit now present in their life, leads to a regeneration of the inner man (which should produce change in the outer man) and a character that looks much more like Jesus and less like the world. This reformation leads to the renewal of hearts and minds — they are shaped specifically by God — and the end result is a transformation that has changed everything.

This is the idea at least. Through all of this, though, we must act justly, as Jesus did — we heal the sick, we comfort the broken hearted, we clothe the naked, we proclaim and seek release for the captive, we announce jubilee, and teach those around us to do the same — and ultimately place our hope in the transformative power of the Gospel to completely change communities. We see it happen throughout Acts (The end of Acts 2 speaks powerfully to me regarding this) and we see glimpses of it happening in the communities we work in. We should never underestimate the power of the Gospel to radically transform communities united for it. And perhaps its a bonus but as Micah says, hearts radically transformed by God will be oriented around justice and mercy.