A Tribute to Dallas Willard: "God doesn't mumble"

In the wake of Dallas Willard's passing into the fullness of the Kingdom of God he proclaimed as available now, I offer this tribute, highlighting one of the many lessons I learned from him. 

As twenty-somethings are wont to do, I was contemplating my future.  I had recently discerned that it was time for me to leave my role as a small groups pastor to head back to school and pursue a PhD.  In recent weeks I’d been extended offers from two of my top schools, and the time was fast-approaching when I would have to made a decision.  Thus, when the opportunity arose to be Dallas Willard’s ride back to San Jose Airport, I seized it.  (Sometimes service is pure selfishness.)  Heading down 101, I related to Dallas as best I could the pertinent details of the decision I faced.  To me, the choice seemed rather complex, what with all the moving pieces: different financial packages, career implications, geography and relational opportunities.  Dallas asked a few gentle questions, and then, without showing the least indication of having absorbed any of the anxiety which must have been exuding from me, he said, “Well, simply pray, and say: “Lord, I do not believe that you mumble, so if you’d like to direct me, you need to do so before Friday.  Otherwise, I will presume your blessing to make my own choice.”

I took his advice and am now three years into a PhD program at Boston University that I’m proud to have chosen with God’s blessing.  The beauty and wisdom of Dallas’ simple reminder that God doesn’t mumble goes a long way to taking the pressure off of us in the discernment process.  Trusting God in times of choice isn’t always a matter of obediently following the clear direction God gives; sometimes it looks like having the faith that God is a competent communicator, able to get across a message, even to the resistant.  How much more to those, eager and willing to obey?  And then there are the times when faith looks like accepting that the warm, pregnant silence of God is an expression of trust in us.

As Dallas reminded us in Hearing God, God isn’t primarily interested in recruiting a mindless crowd who needs specific direction at every turn.  God is not looking for people to endlessly command; God desires to form persons and a people who can bring to bear all their own redeemed creativity and will into the realization of the the Reign of God on earth in the particular choices and contexts they face. Prayer, Dallas loved to say, is “training for reigning” (may he RIP -- reign in peace).  In times of discernment, God’s relation to us may be less like that of a Drill Sargent at bootcamp and more like a soccer coach eager to see what good we will do as we improvise on the field with the skills for playing the game he has taught us.

This was originally posted on the Conversations Journal blog.  

Here are some other posts deeply endebted to Dallas Willard

How to Live in the Kingdom of God
A Philosophy of Spiritual Growth
A Theology of Spiritual Formation 
Why (and How) Spiritual Disciplines Work
Dallas Willard: Interview with John Ortberg at Catalyst Conference

Is Missional Good for Us? or Is Missional Life Abundant Life?

I’ve been a Christian as long as I can remember, but one of the important moments in my faith life was when I was in ninth grade… I had always been a good kid, but that year it came to my attention that being a Christian wasn’t like being white or Korean, it wasn’t something that you were just born with, but something more like being a soccer player—something that you actually do. And the first things I realized about what it meant to be a Christian was to have a relationship with God which you were supposed to do through reading the bible and praying. So for the first time I started reading the bible on my own.  And I read it quite a bit.  In fact, being the good kid who does what he should, I read the whole Bible cover-to=cover in 9 months.  But about 1 month in, I realized something.  I realized that if I kept reading the Bible, I’d just keep discovering more things that I should do, more things that I would be accountable for.  And it would become a never-ending list of things I should be doing.  But I was stuck now in a Catch-22.  Now that I knew I should read the Bible, there was no way out.  And I decided to submit to this.  This put me on a journey. 

It’s funny because this was a really important moment on my journey with Jesus—it was the beginning of my discipleship, really, and yet from where I stand now, I can see that resigning yourself to a bunch of obligations isn’t what following Jesus is all about.

And yet persistent guilt about what we should be doing is one of the things that plagues a lot of Christians.  Ever had thoughts like these?  I should be praying more.  Or maybe: I should be reading the bible more.  I should be giving more.  I should be spending more time with my family.  I should be taking Sabbath.  I should stop that dirty little habit. Oh yeah, and I should be missional. 

Identity and Practice in New Churches: My Dissertation Proposal in Brief

I'm officially ABD (all but dissertation) which means I'm being asked regularly what my dissertation is on.  Here's a shortened version of the "statement of the problem" from my prospectus. 

At the beginning of the 21st century in the U.S., despite historically low confidence in organized religion and the rise of the “Nones,” new churches and new forms of church are springing up across the country. Many of these assert the centrality of missional identity and practices of Christian witness, but the effects of such missional priorities on the faithfulness and spiritual vitality of these churches are uncertain. As a project in “practical ecclesiology” this study of new churches will utilize both sociological and theological methods to explore the dynamics between ecclesial identity—a church’s corporate self-image and implicit ecclesiology—and practices of mission, community and spirituality. My thesis is that some of the resources needed by Western Christianity in 21st century are being developed by the newest cohort of churches, but that uncritical adoption of their practices and perspectives in pursuit of effectiveness is theologically (and practically) perilous.

The project will develop in three moves. First, using survey and qualitative work in Seattle churches founded after 9/11/2001, it will offer an interpretive typology of the ways in which corporate identity and practice are related in ecclesial life, thus making a contribution to congregational studies research, which has given limited attention to new churches. Second, departing from the productionistic logic prevalent in church planting literature, this project will contribute to this field by offering robust theological assessment of the types and practices of new churches, drawing upon scholarship in Christian witness, Luke-Acts, missional ecclesiology, Christian spiritual formation and missional spirituality. Third, and finally, this project will draw from the ecclesial practices and the theological literatures to make constructive and practical proposals for church leaders seeking to lead the Western church into missional faithfulness and spiritual vitality in the 21st century.

John Wesley's Doctrine of Salvation (and Perfection)

I.   Introduction
“At the same time, justified and sinner.”  This is Luther’s appraisal of the Christian condition. Wesley, who owed much to Luther for his doctrine of justification by faith, stressed that the Christian must be not only justified, but sanctified. In the following post I show how Wesley defines salvation as the entire process which begins at conversion and is completed after death.  I will address each of Wesley’s phases of salvation in the Christian life, taking particular note of his much mis-understood doctrine of Christian perfection.

II.  Salvation Defined
For Wesley salvation does not consist of merely “going to heaven” because it is not an after-death experience but “a present thing”(The Scripture Way of Salvation, 44).  While Wesley calls salvation a “present thing,” he does not mean that “all this salvation is given at once”(A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, 380).  Rather, he means it is presently occurring, for salvation is

Schleiermacher: On Religion

I.  Introduction
In a time when religion had nearly been discarded by German intellectuals following Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher presented it in a new light which reinvigorated interest and made him the founding father of liberal Protestantism.  How he accomplished this was in large part a matter of his skill for neologizing.  In this post I map consider how Schleiermacher defines religion, which he also calls piety, as well as what relationship there is, in his view, between Christianity and religion.

II.  Schleiermacher’s Religion
We will begin our inquiry into Schleiermacher’s religion by first understanding what he wanted to clarify was not the essence of religion.  Schleiermacher challenges the widespread belief that religion was a combination of doctrines and actions, or knowing and doing.

The Rise of the "Nones": Change is a comin'

The so-called "Rise of the Nones" as been all over the news lately, thanks to new research released by the Pew Forum on Religion, which found that the number of US adults who claim no religious affiliation has almost reached 1 in 5, the highest in American history. 

Even more striking is the clear age correlation to the trend; younger generations have increasingly higher unaffiliated rates.  That means that as the next decade or so at least progresses this number is sure to move from 1 in 5 toward 1 in 3, the current ratio for those between 18-29. Other key findings from the study include the historic new reality that Protestants make up less than half of Americans for the first time since the nation's founding and globally "Nones" now make up the third largest religious affiliation behind Christianity and Islam.

Religious leaders have reacted in diverse ways to this news, ranging from: hand-wringing to hallelujahs!  However you interpret it, one thing is clear...change is a comin'.  The question I believe Christians must face is how to faithfully and humbly follow the way of Jesus in our new post-Christendom, post-Christian context.  

Practical Theology: A Definition and Bibliography

"What are you studying?"
"Practical Theology." 
(Smile) "Is there really such a thing? Ha! But seriously, what is practical theology?"

That's usually how the conversation goes.  Here's my long doctoral exam answer to that question:

Practical theology is theological description, interpretation and construction undertaken by Christians-in-community that attends to concrete contemporary situations and practices by welcoming relevant human disciplines into the Christian tradition’s critical reflection in order to discern the presence, praxis and, most importantly, the call of God, so that Christ’s church in the world can respond faithfully in discipleship and mission to the glory of God and for the good of the world.

Or in other words, it's Christians paying disciplined attention to situations and to God so that they can discern how God is calling them, and decide upon a next faithful step. 

Here's the bibliography I used for my doctoral exam on the discipline of practical theology:

Thoughts on Consumerism and Christianity from William Cavanaugh

William Cavanaugh is a Practical Theologian and author of Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire.  He offers some good thoughts to remember during the seasonal shopping craze.

Are Christians for or against the free market? Should we not think of ourselves as consumers? Are we for or against globalization? How to we live in a world of scare resources? William Cavanaugh brings us a theological view and practice of everyday economic life with the use of Christian resources. He argues that we should not take the free market, consumer culture, globalization, and scarcity as givens, but change the terms of debate in each case. His consideration of the free market is not a question of for or against, but when exactly a market is truly free. He discusses consumption in light of the Eucharist (a favorite topic--see his book, Torture and Eucharist) through which God forms us to consume and be consumed rightly. He charges the church to know how to be both global and local, rather than one or the other. He reminds us that life in Christ is life abundant, not an existence of scarcity. Being Consumed examines pathologies of desire in contemporary free market economies, and displays a positive vision of how the dynamics of desire in Christ can both form and be formed by alternative economic practices.

Charles Finney's on Revivals of Religion: Summary

This post offers a biographical sketch of Second Great Awakening revivalist Charles Finney and summary of his most important book.

Charles Grandison Finney was born in Connecticut on Aug. 29, 1792 and died Aug. 16, 1875 in Ohio.  After a brief stint teaching, Finney studied and practiced law.  In 1821 he underwent a religious conversion and dropped his law practice to become an evangelist and was licensed by the Presbyterians. Finney was most active as a revivalist between 1825-35 and was known for his innovations including having women pray in public meetings of mixed gender, development of the "anxious seat" (a place where those considering becoming Christians could come to receive prayer), extemporaneous preaching and public censure of individuals by name in sermons and prayers. His revivals achieved spectacular success in large cities, and in 1832 he began an almost continuous revival in New York City as minister of the Second Free Presbyterian Church. His disaffection with Presbyterian theology and discipline, however,

PhD Programs in Practical Theology: A List

Since I couldn't find a good list of schools with PhD programs in Practical Theology (US) anywhere on the web, I made my own:

Boston University School of Theology
A PhD in Practical Theology with concentrations in homiletics, liturgical studies, mission, evangelism, mission and evangelism, pastoral theology, spirituality, church and society, congregational studies and religious education.

Emory University
A PhD concentration in Religious Practices and Practical Theology with opportunities to specialize in religious education, pastoral care, homiletics, liturgics, and congregational leadership.  

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
PhD's in Pastoral Theology and Personality and Culture, Christian Education and Congregational Studies and Liturguical Studies, among others.

Princeton Theological Seminary
PhD in Practical Theology with concentrations in Christian Education, Pastoral Theology, or Homiletics.

Vanderbilt University
Program in Theology and Practice with Fellowships for any area of study: Ethics and Society, Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, Historical Studies, History and Critical Theories of Religion, Homiletics and Liturgics, New Testament and Early Christianity, Religion, Psychology, and Culture, and Theological Studies

Luther Seminary
A PhD in Theology with Concentrations in Pastoral Care and Counseling and Congregational Mission and Leadership.

Fuller Theological Seminary
A PhD in Theology with a Concentration in Practical Theology with 4 tracks: (1) The Personality, Theology, and Culture, (2) Evangelism, Discipleship, and Spirituality, (3) The Community, Vocation, and Leadership, and (4) Marriage and Family, Theology, and Practice.

Claremont Lincoln University
A PhD in Practical Theology with two areas of concentration: Education and Formation and  Spiritual Care and Counseling.


St. Thomas University
A PhD in Practical Theology.

Comment to let me know:

Which ones am I missing?
How would you rank these programs?

Theologies of Church Planting: Comparing Malphurs and Murray

Two frequently recommended texts in the burgeoning church planting literature are Aubrey Malphurs’ Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century:  A Comprehensive Guide for New Churches and Those Desiring Renewal and Stuart Murray’s Church Planting: Laying Foundations.  This essay seeks to engage with the theological proposals evident in these two books by identifying the foundational theological ideas and assumptions in each, contrasting them, and offering fresh critical reflection.  

The Next Christians: Krista Tippet with Gabe Lyons and Jim Daly

In this fascinating video, Krista Tippet, host of NPR's Fresh Air, interviews Gabe Lyons and Jim Daly.  Lyons is co-author of UnChristian, author of The Next Christians and founder of Q, a TED-like gathering for Christian culture-makers.  Daly is President and CEO of Focus on the Family.  Together they discuss the diverse Evangelical approaches to public engagement in politics and culture.  It's a fascinating, and at points hope-giving look at one potential future of evangelicalism.  I will say I was a bit let down that there wasn't more (evident) disagreement between the guests.  

You may want to skip the first 6 minutes of set-up. 


The Next Christians ~ In the Room with Gabe Lyons, Jim Daly, and Krista Tippett from On Being on Vimeo.