The Next Step

Some guy walked passed me at the department store one day.  He had on a T-shirt which was making some statement about evolution.  The shirt said something about “the ascent of man” and profiles of ancient hominids becoming full-fledged homosapiens.

Now it is possible that this shirt was more comedic than serious.  I couldn’t see either end of the ascent as the man was wearing a jacket which obscured them both.  There was also the name of some school under the profiles.  It could be that either the last or the first profile was something ridiculous (a professor from said school or something; I don’t know) which would have turned the whole thing into a joke.

Serious or not, though, I reacted to it.  As soon as I saw this shirt, I imagined things I could say to this man to debunk evolution.  I started thinking of how I could fight this man, in other worlds, fight him and his evolutionary presuppositions and all he has built on them.

But as soon as I realized I was doing that, I additionally realized I shouldn’t be doing that.  I realized that wasn’t the way of Jesus, whom I call my Lord and on whom I base my behavior.  I realized that Jesus didn’t fight with people, didn’t attack and throw down their worldviews, as much as He moved people into the next step in their walk with God.

The idea of “moving people” like this comes to me via something called “The Engel Scale”.  I don’t know who Engel was, but I learned of this scale during some disciple-making training a couple years ago.  The scale shows that people are not just “all God” or “no God” but are instead at differing levels of closeness to or distance from God.  The scale further shows that success in disciple-making is not necessarily a matter of -10 to +10 but could instead be a matter of moving someone from -7 to -6 or +1 to +2.

This sounds correct to me.  It also seems a lot like what I see Jesus doing in the Gospels.  If you look at His encounters with tax collectors and religious leaders, with Nicodemus and the woman at the well and the rich young ruler, what you see is not Jesus so much engaging in large scale worldview battles as much as figuring out where they were and helping them to move one step closer to where they needed to be.

That being the case, Jesus probably wouldn’t have argued evolution with the guy I passed in the department store.  Jesus probably would have sidestepped evolution to find out where the guy really was and what the guy really needed to move closer to God.  And then He would have given it to him.  Jesus, in other words, would have been far more like a scalpel whereas I (and so many like me) are too much like an ax.

I certainly would like to be more like Jesus in this area, would like to do more of what He did or do things more like He did.  I’m not sure how to do that.  But I believe it is the right and better thing to do.  I believe trying to move people to the next right step, giving them what they need despite themselves rather than beating them in an intellectual contest, is far more right and better than what I typically do.

Being Friendly

I am about to start a new discipleship group.  My church leadership and I believe The Faith is best spread by making disciples in small groups.  Some of our nearby congregations believe this as well, so this is what we do: we meet with others in small groups to discuss how to hear from/walk with God.

I told my mentor about this, and he said something surprising to me.  He suggested I be more friendly to the guys I invited into my group.  Actually, he suggested that I start the group not as a disciple-maker but as a friend.

And I understood a little of what he was getting at there.  He once shared this little picture with me:

This little picture illustrates the three levels of intimacy that a disciple-maker can have with the people who interact with him/her.  Some will be friends; they will serve (or share is a word he sometimes uses), but they won’t do much more.  Followers go deeper; they submit.  Family goes even deeper still; they surrender.

There’s a lot that could be said about that, but the big point for me is that I needed to start at friendship.  My mentor told me that I am very serious and ready to get down to business, but that I needed to back off that a little, that I needed to befriend people before discipling them.

Again, this was surprising to me, not just because I am eager to get to the disciple-making level but because I think I’m a fairly-friendly guy.  I am a Celt, after all (by descent, anyway), and a common Celtic saying is:

I think I really do regard people in that way.  I am open to most anyone that wants to be open to me.

Still, my mentor said this and I think there is some truth in it.  While reading Matthew 9 recently, I noticed that Jesus is having dinner with some “sinners and tax collectors”:

What I realized while I read this is that many of these tax collectors and sinners must have kept Jesus on the “friend” level.  They “friend-zoned” Jesus, in other words.

But Jesus still interacted with them.   He must have wanted more.  He must have wanted to disciple them.  That’s one of His primary objectives, after all.  But He still interacted with those who friendzoned Him.  He was willing to be friend to those who stopped at that level.

I’m not sure what this looks like for me.  I’m not even sure I’m capable of doing.  I will always be the serious, down to business guy, I think.  But I am sure it is a part of disciple-making.  Maybe that’s the best way to think about it.  Being a friend isn’t all there is to disciple-making; it certainly isn’t the goal.  But it is part of it, and I have to be as open to it as Jesus was.