Struggling with a teaching
Alan Hirsch’s book The Forgotten Ways is absolutely kicking me around, it is a beautiful thing. He says this about teaching:
Following the consumerist agenda, the church itself has become both consumable and a service provider, a vendor of religious goods and services. But this “service-provision” approach is the very thing that Jesus didn’t do. He spoke in confusing riddles (parables) that evoked a spiritual search in the hearers. Nowhere does he give three-point devotional sermons that cover all the bases. His audience had to do all the hard work of filling in the blanks. In other words, they were not left passive but were activated in their spirits.
Wow. The first time I read that statement it threw me for a loop and made me ask some tough questions. Does my teaching activate people to seek after Jesus long after they have left our time together? Does my teaching cause people to struggle through their faith? If faith is such a complex and often difficult thing, shouldn’t our teaching mirror that to help people grapple with complex issues of the faith?
Having now thought through this for several days I am more convinced than ever that maybe the best teaching is the kind that sends people home disturbed from their typical hum-drum spirituality. Maybe the best teaching shoots holes into the little box that we tend to put around our big God. Maybe the best teaching sends me, and everyone else out the door with some struggling left to do.
I think our spiritual journey is a beautifully messy walk taken together. Maybe our teaching should be a little more messy as well…
Any thoughts?
January 28th, 2008 at 8:03 am
wow. this is thought-provoking stuff. i feel like our teachings should provide answers but also questions. enough to point them in the right direction and create in them a hunger to find out more, as well as the tools they can use to dig for themselves.
i really want to see how this might apply to what we do here in africa…
January 28th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I think you are spot on. I am wrestling with the same things.
How about adding me and mychurchpromos.com to the links and blogroll….
holla…
January 28th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
adam, i love the quote above and i think it is right on. our modern church culture has adopted a mentality to make it easy for people to follow christ when in reality, it seems like christ did the opposite. it was like, he called people to follow him in cloaked parables, and then the calling involved complete death to their former way of life. that is NOT being taught commonly today.
but i like your conclusion though about the need for teaching to disturb us out of our fixed paradigms – incidentally i think this is why britt is such an effective teacher on kingdom topics (don’t let that go to your head britt if you read this!).
i am personally having to learn to not make apologies for speaking difficult truths – it’s hard for me because my personality is to try hard to be encouraging and sensitive to people. but eventually, i am learning that when it comes to the things of the Kingdom, some concepts can’t be expressed without stepping on others’ paradigms…
keep up the posts on this book – it’s good stuff.
January 29th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Hell yeah! Awesome – Americanity or Christianism is what we have here in the US, where people will leave a church over a better puppet show down the street. Keep it up, bra’!
Kevin
January 29th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Important to point out, though, is that Jesus did not specifically teach to confuse. He was only speaking what God told Him to say, AND NOTHING MORE. That’s where we get into trouble. We say something, people get confused or bothered, and we try to backtrack, explain more (like they’ll understand it better an hour later), or something else that only makes it worse. If we’ve said what God told us to say, there is no apology or extra explanation necessary.
Those with ears to hear will hear it, or at least hear enough to approach in humility and can finally really be taught.
Peace.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:09 pm
[...] ask them to take great and difficult steps on their own along the way. We want people to have to struggle through the difficult teaching of Jesus so that they can own it and live it. I’m more convinced than ever that this is the [...]