Month: January 2010

Categories
Ministry

The Reproducibility Principle Reconsidered

This post may be more relevant to those who are involved in cross-cultural Christian ministry, but I think it can also apply to those who are seeking to reach those of their own culture with the gospel.

The principle of “reproducibility,” as it is usually presented, states that in missions, we should evangelize, disciple believers, and plant churches in such a way that the methods and practices we are using to do the work can be easily reproduced by those within the culture we are trying to reach.

Usually the focus falls on the methods and practices that we employ in ministry.  For example…

A mission is trying to reach a people group that is primarily poor, unskilled laborers, so they decide to build a first-class hospital where the people can come to get medical care that is not normally available to them.  The patients experience the love of Christ through the Christian doctors and nurses, hear the gospel proclaimed and become believers.  Discipleship classes are hosted at the hospital’s excellent facilities and hundreds if not thousands of people’s lives are touched every year.

Hospitals are a wonderful means of spreading the gospel and have been used by the Lord with great results through the years.  But this is not a reproducible method. In other words, the poor, unskilled laborers reached through the hospital are not able to take this same method and use it to reach others. They have no medical expertise.  They have no resources to build excellent facilities.  It is a good method, but it is not reproducible.

An example of a reproducible method, on the other hand, might be Evangelism Explosion.  I was trained in E.E. as a young pastor and was very impressed at the potential this method had to unleash an ever-increasing number of evangelists.  an E.E. trainer takes two others under his wing and teaches them a short, memorized presentation of the gospel that they can use to share with others.  Once they are trained, each of them can then train two others, who in turn then each train two others… and on it goes with a multiplication effect that essentially is limitless.  It doesn’t cost anything, it is simple, and within the North American culture it was designed for, it is very reproducible.

These are examples of the reproduciblity principle as it is normally understood by missiologists.  But here is the important “reconsideration” of reproducibility that I am proposing:

The power of reproducibility lies not in the ministry methods or practices used, but in the divine life that is at work in God’s people as the kingdom of God grows.

We cross-cultural workers who are seeking a reproducing movement that is constantly producing new believers and new churches must never forget this.  While it is certainly not wrong to apply the reproducibility principle to methods and practices, we must realize that methods and practices and strategies and tools in and of themselves are not capable of containing and generating divine life.

It is God’s divine life that reproduces itself in the lives of people and is spreading to fill the whole world with his glory.  This is why Paul so often refers to the Church as the Body of Christ that is growing and pulsing with Jesus’ divine life

Ephesians 4:15-16

“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

In Colossians 2:19 we are told to hold fast to…

“…the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.”

Could it be that in our attempt to discover and perfect reproducible methods we sometimes cut ourselves off from the power of this divine life that God has provided to give us fruit in our evangelistic, discipleship and church planting efforts?  By trying to find just the right reproducible method, we unintentionally blind ourselves to the need to seek the  life that is in Jesus himself and that is able to generate incredible growth and fruit as it flows through whatever method or practice God in his wisdom and sovereignty chooses to bless.

I realize that the reproducibility principle as it is applied to methods and practices does not exclude a dependance on the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through believers who are filled with him and living in the power of his life, but I think we need to remind ourselves that God is under no obligation to bless whatever methods and practices seem most reproducible to us.  He may very well choose to bypass them and to work in a way that is counter-intuitive to us just to show the greatness of the power of his life as it flows in his body.

1 Corinthians 1:27

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;

I have observed God’s power and divine life flowing through methods and practices that were very far from being “reproducible”, and I have also observed many excellent and reproducible methods and practices that just were not producing fruit.  The lesson to be learned is NOT that it is wrong to ask God to show us methods and practices that are able to be used by the people we are trying to reach, but to think that these in and of themselves are sufficient to bring about the multiplication that we desire to see.

As divine life is passed from those Christian doctors and nurses to the patients whose lives they touch, reproduction takes place and the Kingdom of God grows.  God can use a very un-reproducible method to grow his church.

On the other hand, if E.E. is seen as being “the answer” to reaching people with the gospel and is taught simply as words to be spoken and passed on to others, a very reproducible method will have no power at all to make any eternal difference in the life of a single person.

  • So is it wrong to get excited about promising new methods or practices?  Absolutely not!  They may very well be God’s good gifts to us to enable us to do his work in the power of the Holy Spirit.
  • Is it wrong to evaluate methods and practices on the basis of their capacity to be reproduced by the people we are trying to reach?  Absolutely not!  The desire to use reproducible methods springs from a desire that the power of God be glorified.  When God chooses to use a world-class hospital, it can be tempting to say that it was the hospital that brought about the conversions, but when God uses simple, reproducible practices, it is usually more apparent that it is his power that produced the fruit.
  • Is it wrong to use non-reproducible methods?  Not if we receive specific instructions from “the Head” to do so.  I would not stand in the way of any Christian worker or organization who is following what they believe to the clear leading of the Holy Spirit.  The trick is to make sure that we are hearing from him and not depending on fleshly resources to do spiritual work.

Zechariah 4:6

Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.

Categories
Ephesians

Ephesians 3:14-21 Knowing a love that surpasses knowledge

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Here is a brief recap of my study thus far of this prayer for the Ephesian believers:
Like some people who like to read the last chapter to see if the book is going to be good, I started near the end of the request-portion of Paul’s prayer to see where he was heading. The end result of Paul’s prayer, should God in his grace grant it (and he will because he inspired it!) is that we are “filled with all the fullness of God.” This phrase points to the completion of God’s work in us as he forms in us his very image and we become like him in all his moral perfection and beauty. Wow!

But how will he get us there? Paul prays first that we will experience the love of Jesus for us as the Holy Spirit reveals to us in our inner being that we are loved by him. This experience of Jesus’ love has a rooting and grounding effect in our lives. But here is where things start to really rev up!

There is more to a plant than the root and there is more to a building than the foundation. Having experienced Christ’s love through the indwelling Holy Spirit, there is still infinitely more yet to be experienced. The root is going to blossom into a full-grown plant someday and the building will one day be complete.

Here is where some of the teaching on the fullness of the Holy Spirit often leads people astray. Some believers put so much emphasis on the initial experience of being filled with the Spirit and the experience of Christ’s love for them in that moment, that they forget that it is only the beginning! It is only the root! Paul goes on to pray…

“…that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge…”

Paul knows that to reach our goal of being filled with all the fullness of God, we need to have a constantly renewed experience of the love of God. In the words of C.S. Lewis in his final book of the Chronicles of Narnia…. “Further up and further in!”

Commentators do not all agree on what the four dimensions mentioned in v. 18 refer to, but I think the best interpretation takes them as referring to the love of Christ mentioned in v. 19. After all, what is the “breadth” of God’s love? What is its length? What is its height and its depth? Can it be measured at all? How does one measure the love of the Father in sending his Son to take the penalty of death that we as a rebellious race deserved for our sins? None of us has grasped the dimensions of God’s love that was displayed toward us at Calvary. As v. 19 says, it “surpasses knowledge”

We can’t fully grasp God’s love because we have never seen the depths of our sin. We may believe that Jesus died for bad people, or even for really bad people or even really, really wicked people, but we have no idea what is in our hearts apart from the grace of God. This has been a long-term search for me personally. I want God to show me the depths of my sin so that I can more fully appreciate what Jesus did for me.

We can’t fully grasp God’s love because we can’t fully see the infinite glory of God. We have no idea whom we have scorned in turning away from God to follow our own ways. If we knew, truly knew, the God we reject every time we sin, we would fall on our faces and call for the mountains to fall on us. And we would see so much more clearly the condescension of his love in saving us through the sacrifice of his Son.

Let me backtrack a bit and talk about two important words in the text that support my premise that what Paul is asking God for in this prayer is that we might experience God’s love for us in Christ. In v. 18, he prays that we may be able to “comprehend” the love of God. And in v. 19, he prays that we may “know” the love of Christ. The word translated “comprehend” is a strengthened form of the verb “to grasp” and means to “fully understand” The word translated “know” can mean simply “to understand” but it often is used to denote a knowledge by experience–a knowledge of things as they really are.

Paul certainly is not just praying that we will have an intellectual and theological understanding of the love of God. Word studies aside, the context cries for an understanding of these verbs as relating to an experiential knowledge of the love of God. Besides, how else (other than experience) can one know something that “surpasses knowledge”? Paul desires that we will have an ongoing, deepening, broadening, lengthening experience of a reality that we will never exhaust–the love of Christ.

I have a theory regarding the words “with all the saints” that I would like to throw out for your consideration, and if anyone is still reading by this point, perhaps you could leave me a comment with your take on this interpretation (I haven’t found it in any commentary).

Could it be that Paul prays that the Ephesians will be able to comprehend “with all the saints” because he knows that it is only in heaven that all the saints will have this experience that he writes about in verses 18-19? In other words, only in heaven will this prayer be answered fully, and it will be answered for “all the saints.” We will all be filled up to all the fullness of God as we experience the love of Christ flowing to us with the same intensity with which it flows among the members of the Trinity, and that for all eternity.

It is a glorious thought, and I could write a lot more about this glorious prayer, but I have other responsibilities beyond writing for a blog!

So let me conclude this four-part study of this wonderful prayer with this comment: Pray this prayer for yourself and for the believers you fellowship with and for all of us as God’s children. Pray that God would grant us all the faith to believe that by His Spirt indwelling us we can have fellowship with Jesus that is even more intimate than the apostles experienced when they were walking with Jesus in the flesh. Believe that God wants to bless you with this kind of closeness and intimacy with Jesus, and no matter what your experience or lack of experience has been in the past… he is “able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us…”

Categories
Bible Study Theology

Ephesians 3:14-21 Rooted and grounded in love

This is the third day of looking at Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian believers…

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

As I continue in this study, it is going to become more and more necessary that you read the preceding posts to follow what I am saying, but since I have no way of knowing whether you will actually do that, let me try to summarize what I have said thus far.

1)  The end result of the progression that the prayer walks through is our being “filled with all the fullness of God” (v. 19)  God is in a process of forming in us his very image.  Someday, when his work is complete, we will bear his moral likeness.

2)  The first step necessary to take us to that destination is an experience of the manifest presence of Jesus in our lives through the indwelling Holy Spirit.  Through the Holy Spirit we can be with Jesus!

Now, let’s pick up at the end of verse 17.  Here we have another participial clause that serves as a link between Paul’s petition in vs. 16-17a and the next petition in v. 18.  When we experience Jesus’ presence in our lives through the indwelling Holy Spirit, the result is that we are “rooted and grounded in love” Once we have been rooted and grounded, we can then begin a process of going deeper and deeper in our experience of the love of God until we are “filled up to all the fullness of God.”

What does it mean to be “rooted and grounded in love”?

Paul brings in the concept of Christ’s love almost as an aside, but it quickly becomes the centerpiece of his prayer.  Notice how he moves from the idea of “Christ dwelling in our hearts” to the state of “being rooted and grounded in love.”  Is there a connection here?

It is almost as if Paul assumes that it is obvious that the experience we have of Christ through the indwelling Holy Spirit is an experience of his love.

Going back to my illustration yesterday of the child being adopted, you can see this more clearly.  When I, in Los Angeles, adopt the child in New York, that child knows he is loved.  Why else would I adopt him and promise him that we will live together and that I will provide for his every need?  He can know, to a certain extent, that I love him.  But when I actually arrive in New York and see him for the first time and take him in my arms and give him a great big Daddy bear-hug and tell him that I will always be with him, that is an experience of my love for him that he will never forget–the beginning of many happy years together, even though we most certainly will face difficult times in our relationship.

It is one thing to hear that Jesus loves you.  It is quite another thing to experience that love first-hand!  This is what Paul desires for his brothers and sisters in Ephesus–an experience of God’s love through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

I’m convinced that this is the need of many believers as well.  They have never been rooted and grounded in the Father’s love for them.  They know it intellectually, but their experience of that love is limited to just seeing his love displayed in circumstances or in the “common grace” ways that all mankind is loved by God.  The love that Paul is asking for here is of a different sort.  To say that we know God loves us because he feeds us and clothes us would be like the adopting father in my illustration above sending checks to the adopted son in New York.  Sure, it is a way of showing love, but it is not a relationship.

In Romans 5:5 Paul says,

“…and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

Through the Holy Spirit we experience firsthand the love of God in our hearts.  I find it hard to put this into words because it is like trying to express the love that we experience in any relationship.  When I tell you that I love my wife, I certainly mean that I feel love for her, but it is so much more than that. In the same way, through the Holy Spirit we know not just in our heads but with our hearts that God is with us and that he loves us.  This is what it means to be “rooted and grounded in love.”

I’ll never forget something I heard Pastor John Piper say about Romans 5:5.  He said (this is not a direct quote) if you wonder if you have really experienced the love of God being poured out within your heart by the Holy Spirit, then ask God to do it to you!  Say, “Lord, do Romans 5:5 to me!”  You need to know by experience that God loves you.  You need to be convinced of it.  When you know by experience that God loves you you are rooted and grounded in his love.

“Rooted and grounded in love” is a mixed metaphor.  Paul mixes an agricultural metaphor with a construction metaphor.   When you are certain of God’s love for you then you are “rooted” like a plant.  You can begin to grow and flourish and bear fruit.  When you are certain of God’s love for you, it is like the foundation of a building.  The word translated “grounded” is used for the foundation of a house.  You are “established” on the foundation of God’s love and the building can then be constructed.

But how do we avoid a frantic, subjective search of our own hearts to see if we really are “rooted and grounded” in God’s love for us?  We all know how fickle our hearts are.  No matter what experience of Christ’s love we have experienced in the past, the moments will come when we doubt everything and are tempted to despair that he has ever really loved us or that he will continue to love us, especially when we’ve really blown it!  Perhaps even as you are reading this, you are thinking… “Have I really experienced this?  Can I be sure that Jesus loves me?

This is why Paul is praying! He knows that the knowledge and experience of God’s love for us is the only way we will ever reach the goal of being “filled up with all the fullness of God.” So we need the constant strengthening of the Holy Spirit, who reveals the presence and love of Jesus to us.  Without this “root”–this “foundation” of God’s love, we will never be filled with the fullness of God.

I’m not sure exegetically how closely we can tie the “strengthening with power through his Spirit” of v. 16 with the “through faith” of v. 17, but we desparately need to be strengthened in our faith by the Holy Spirit if we are going to be assured of Christ’s love for us when doubts assail us.  We can’t forget that it is “by faith” that Christ dwells in our hearts.  When our faith is weak, we must cry out for the strengthening of the Spirit to believe the message of the gospel that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

More tomorrow!