The Surprising God

For other posts in this series on the book Life Together , click a number:  1 ,  2 , 3 , 5 ,   6 ,  7 ,  8 ,  9 . In Life Together, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the importance to the church of the corporate use of spiritual disciplines. He begins by emphasizing the importance of praying the psalms together, noting New Testament exhortations for churches to "speak to yourselves in psalms" (Ephesians 5:19) and to "teach and admonish one another in psalms" (Colossians 3:16)" (see p44). Christ's prayers on our behalf Bonhoeffer's view is that through the psalms, God speaks (the psalms, like all of Scripture are "God's Word"). And so, Bonhoeffer appropriately asks this: "How can God's Word [in the psalms] be at the same time prayer to God?" (p44). His answer is that we should interpret the psalms as the prayers offered by the man Jesus (the living, incarnate Word of God) to his Heavenly Father on behalf of the Body of Christ (th...

Randy Bloom Addressing the often-overlooked link between theology and mission, this post quotes (with minor edits) from chapter one of GCI's "Church-Next Training Manual" by Randy Bloom, faculty member at Grace Communion Seminary and regional director for Grace Communion International. The Trinity: Loving Communion According to Scripture, there is one God who reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three distinct yet unified Persons sharing the same essence, nature, and will. Father, Son, and Spirit live in a perfect, mutually dependent relationship of love. An ancient theological term used to describe this loving communion is perichoresis. Perichoresis attempts to express the interpenetration and co-inherence of the three persons of the Trinity. Perichoresis refers to the eternal “movement of love between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” which is expressed in the outworking of God’s purpose to reconcile and renew the world. The perichoret...

For other posts in this series  on the book  Life Together ,  click a number: 1 , 2 ,  4 ,  5 ,   6 ,  7 ,  8 ,  9 . While writing this series on Bonhoeffer's book, Life Together, I've been reading Strange Glory, a life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh, who provides important historical context . He shows how Bonhoeffer wrestled to grasp the essential nature of the church in the face of what the Nazis were doing to co-opt the German-Lutheran Church into its evil schemes. Sadly, many bishops and pastors cooperated. Theirs was a badly misguided view of the essential nature of the church. Through his experiences in Nazi Germany and elsewhere (including exposure to the Black-African church in America), Bonhoeffer came to understand that the church is a spiritual , rather than a psychic  (human/experiential) reality. He learned that the church is "created...by the Holy Spirit," with its basis being "the clear, manifest Word ...

In earlier posts (click here  and here ) examining Aaron Root's book The Relational Pastor , we noted that a key attribute of effective pastors is empathy --the ability to join Jesus in his place-sharing "feeling with" others. Empathy is also essential for true Christian fellowship--the topic of our current series exploring Bonhoeffer's Life Together. Here is a video that helpfully defines empathy. Enjoy (and embrace!).

For other posts in this series on the book  Life Together , click a number: 1 , 3 ,  4 ,  5 ,   6 ,  7 ,  8 ,  9 . Last time in this series exploring  Life Together, we noted that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote during a time when the German Lutheran Confessing Church had to go underground in order to survive. Such times remind us of just how precious the Christian fellowship is that we, in easier times, tend to take for granted. Bonhoeffer comments: It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us... It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren (p20). The value of the church, is that it is "community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ... A Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ... A Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ" (p21). In Christian community, we come toget...

For other posts in this series  on the book  Life Together ,  click a number: 2 , 3 , 4 ,  5 ,   6 ,  7 ,  8 ,  9 . As members of the body of Christ (the church) we have a particular communion with Christ and one another that Dietrich Bonhoeffer helpfully explored in two books: His doctoral thesis  Sanctorum Communio ,  in which he engaged with social philosophy and sociology in interpreting the church as “Christ existing as church-community.” Karl Barth referred to this work, which Bonhoeffer completed at age 21, as "More instructive and stimulating and illuminating and genuinely edifying reading today than many of the more famous works which have since been written on the problem of the church."  His book  Life Together ,  in which he wrote about Christian community in light of the common life he and his students experienced in the underground seminary at Finkenwalde, Germany.   This post begins a se...

If you have about two hours, your time will be well spent watching this lecture from Dr. Gary Deddo (pictured at right) entitled "The Holy Spirit in the Trinity." Gary's lecture was given at a meeting of Grace Communion International mission developers, other denominational leaders and church pastors. Note: Dr. Deddo has turned this lecture into an essay that is published serially on the  GCI Weekly Update blog. For part 1 in that series, click here .

The Relational Pastor, part 15 (conclusion) For other posts in this series, click a number:  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 ,  7 ,  8 ,  9 ,  10 ,  11 ,  12 ,  13 , 14 . This post concludes our exploration of Andrew Root's book,  The Relational Pastor: Sharing in Christ by sharing ourselves . Last time we looked at our part in the ongoing place sharing ministry of Jesus, the ultimate place sharer. Because of who Jesus is (God and man in one person through the incarnation and hypostatic union) he is, in his own person, in relationship with us -- a union so deep that he can refer to his people (the church ) as his own body (the body of Christ). We see this in Acts 9 where Jesus confronts Saul (later renamed Paul) on the road to Damascus, accusing Saul of persecuting him  when, in actuality, Paul was persecuting Jesus' followers. Root comments: To persecute [the] church is to persecute Jesus himself. Ther...

The Relational Pastor, part 14 For other posts in this series, click on a number:  1 , 2 ,  8 ,  9 ,  10 ,  11 ,  12 , 13 , 15 . Last time in our exploration of  The Relational Pastor , we looked at Andrew Root's definition of salvation as a relationship with God in union with Jesus the "place sharer." This time Root unpacks the concept of place sharing as it applies to Jesus, to his followers as they place share with Jesus and to pastors who are called to be "curators" of spaces and places that facilitate place sharing. Jesus as place sharer As Root states, "place sharing is the very state of Jesus' being" (p161). As the ultimate place sharer, Jesus shares the "place" (life) of every human. Root borrows this idea from Dietrich Bonhoeffer who spoke of Jesus as fundamentally a Stellvertreter and the state of Jesus' being as Stellvertretung  (p161). Making reference to the thought of both Bonhoeffer and T.F. Torrance, Root el...

The Relational Pastor, part 13 For other posts in this series, click on a number:  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 ,  7 ,  8 ,  9 ,  10 ,  11 ,  12 , 14 ,  15 . Last time in this series in Andrew Root's book,  The Relational Pastor , we saw that Christian ministry is fundamentally about joining Jesus in sharing the lives of other persons. "But," some might object, "isn't our job as pastors to get people saved?" Root answers by pointing out that rather than a  transaction (based on a forensic model of the atonement), salvation should be understood as an enduring relationship with God, for "in union with God we are saved" (p148). This Trinitarian incarnational, relational view of salvation holds Christology and soteriology (the theology of salvation) closely together. It acknowledges that Jesus, in his divine-human person, is our salvation. Jesus is the atonement. Thus our calling as Christian minis...

We take a short break here in our ongoing series on The Relational Pastor to consider a different, though certainly related topic. Given that all are included in Christ through his incarnation, life, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension, how are we to understand what happens when a person turns to God in faith (the moment often referred to as "regeneration" or being "born again")? And what about evangelism: How are we to present the gospel in a truly Christ-centered way, including inviting a person to a response of faith? Thomas F. Torrance Regeneration  As with evangelism (see below), the key to a thoroughly biblical, Christ-centered understanding of regeneration is to focus one's attention first not on personal (subjective) experience, but on the objective (albeit mysterious) reality of Jesus Christ as the permanent union of God and humanity in one divine-human person. This key is helpfully addressed by Thomas F. Torrance in his book  The Med...

The Relational Pastor, part 12 For other posts in this series, click on a number:  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 ,  7 ,  8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 13 ,  14 ,  15 . Last time in this series exploring Andrew Root's book,  The Relational Pastor , we looked at the stunning truth that Jesus, by virtue of the hypostatic union,  is God and man united inseparably in one person. Now Root considers the implications, noting that because ministry is about participation with Jesus in his ministry, truly Christian ministry is both  personal and spiritual . Ministry is personal Root asserts that "personhood" is the "location" where "God most fully reveals Godself" (p139). The point of this assertion is not to suggest that God is limited to a location (he is omnipresent), but that, because of the Incarnation (John 1:14), God is encountered most fully in Jesus--the Son of God who became (and remains) human person so that we might know...

The Relational Pastor, part 11 For other posts in this series, click on a number:  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 ,  7 ,  8 , 9 , 10 , 12 ,  13 ,  14 ,  15 . Last time in this series exploring The Relational Pastor , we looked at how Andrew Root exhorts us to move beyond ministry models to flexible, responsive sharing in the actual continuing ministry of Jesus. Now Root unpacks the nature of that sharing by examining the nature of Jesus himself, understanding that as ministers we are called... ...to encounter Jesus as the incarnate person Jesus is, to share in God's life by sharing in Jesus' person. And I think what the incarnation does is give me the gift of sharing in God's life by sharing in the personhood of others. I think that the incarnation, the revealing of God's person in Jesus, makes personhood the very structure within which we encounter God. So to claim the incarnation for ministry is to claim that we share in God's ...

The Relational Pastor, part 10 For other posts in this series, click on a number:  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 ,  7 ,  8 , 9 , 11 ,  12 ,  13 ,  14 ,  15 . This is the tenth post in a series that explores Andrew Root's book, The Relational Pastor . Last time we looked at moving beyond ministry models to sharing in the reality of Jesus' continuing personal ministry. This time we'll note how Root views this sharing as a gift from God: Ministry is the gift given to us by God to share in God's life, to participate in God's action as we share in the person of others. Ministry is the gift of being a person, to dwell in doubt, fear and need, inviting others to indwell us as we indwell them. Ministry is God's gift to us, the gift of leading others in sharing in the life of God (p125).  It's easy to lose sight of the reality by getting caught up in the "stuff" of ministry. And so we need the "40,000-foot overview" that ...