Liberty Before Service

Acts 26:15-18

Acts 26:15-18 Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. 16 ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. 17 I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them 18 to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

I am fascinated by the process implied in certain elements of what we might describe as Paul’s missionary calling. Paul was struck blind on the road to Damascus and experienced an encounter with the risen Christ. In this amazing encounter, the blind man is told that he will be both a servant and witness of Jesus. He is actually appointed as a servant, and perhaps no greater servant can be found in the pages of the New Testament. This young man, who was busy climbing the ladders of privilege and prestige in the circles of the Pharisees was suddenly dashed to the ground, told to rise and appointed as a servant and witness of Jesus and the Gospel. There is something we can learn here about the calling to ministry in general and to cross-cultural ministry in particular: we are called to an attitude of servitude and this attitude can not be separated from the calling to witness.

In the process of missionary training, the hardest task put to the institution or the trainer is to help students acquire helpful attitudes for effective service, and shed destructive attitudes like ethnocentrism, subtle prejudices and any sense of superiority. If the sense of servitude accompanied our sense of commitment to a calling or ministry, we might make great strides towards dislodging some very destructive attitudes in the ministry. I’ve always worried that our concept of incarnational ministry must never be one of descending. We will never achieve a true incarnational ministry if we see ourselves as moving from a position of superiority to a place of lower position, status, development or cultural achievement.

We need to experience liberty before service. One important factor in working out our calling to cross-cultural service is the issue of liberation or deliverance from relationships that bind us. Jesus told the apostle that he would be rescued from his people and from the Gentiles (vs. 17). Was this merely a reference to what awaited him in Damascus? Is this a promise for protection, like Paul experienced on the Road to Jerusalem when his enemies plotted to take his life? Is this a reference to what he could anticipate awaiting trial before Caesar? I think not. Perhaps, I push a point too far, but there is an element in one’s calling that requires that we be set free from our relationships. We can cross cultures successfully until we break free from our own cultural chains. On the other hand, we also need to ensure that we are not bound to the people we serve.

There are two extremes in cultural adjustments. One extreme is the missionary who never really leaves home. His sojourn in the new culture is one of alienation with the occasional foray into the native culture from which he has separated and protected himself. The other extreme is the “gone native” approach where the individual vainly attempts to live a life alienated from his own previous culture. This person only sees the glories and benefits of the new adopted culture and despises her own culture rejecting her roots and values. Neither extreme is healthy. What we need is to live a life of liberty from both our culture of origin and the sojourn culture of adoption.

Once we have experienced this liberty and rescue from the two cultures that bind us, we can move on. Our eyes are opened – figuratively – but more importantly we are in a position to help open the eyes of others. How strange the apostle must have felt? Here he was struck blind, holding a conversation with a man he thought was dead, who was telling him that he would open the eyes of the gentiles. Amazing irony!

It is a dangerous thing to try to open someone else’s eyes if we are not in a position of cultural neutrality. We need to experience the first step of rescue from our own culture before we attempt to open the eyes of someone from another culture. Otherwise, we open their eyes to something other than the Lord and the pure Gospel of light. In a similar way, if we are bound by the culture to which we are called we might not be able to open the eyes of our hosts, or we might open their eyes to something other than the Gospel of light. In any case, our host culture must have their eyes open.

With eyes wide open, conversion can occur. The shift from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of Light is the goal, from the power of Satan to the power of God. They receive forgiveness of sins and are sanctified by faith in Jesus the Christ.

Affirm Both the Learning and the Learner

Luke 10:1-24

Educators understand the importance of affirmation in the lives of their subjects. When people are in the process of preparing themselves for kingdom ministries, they often face insecurities and uncertainties unlike any other profession. Am I really called into ministry? Is this the will of God for my life? Should I leave all behind and dedicate myself to the ministry of the Kingdom? Sometimes people are driven into ministry preparation to answer some of these questions. A word of praise or rebuke from an instructor could be the very words that God uses to confirm a students calling or to send him away questioning his worth in service of the Lord.

It is interesting that in this training chapter, Luke describes how the Lord interacted with the large group of disciples providing affirmation for the successful implementation of a very practical learning strategy. When the 72 disciples returned from their mission experience and after Jesus unpacked some of the emotion and concepts learned, he started making several evaluative statements about the overall process.

Luke 10:21-24

An effective learning experience with successful unpacking of the learning activities brings great satisfaction to the learner centered instructor. In the case of the master teacher, we are told that Jesus was filled with happiness. “Jesus full of joy,” stands alone in the New Testament as a statement of positive emotion. This expression follows a positive learning experience and brings our attention back to the primary mission of the three and fraction years Jesus spent walking the paths of the Ancient Near East.

This happiness provoked a series of praises to God the Father for things hidden from the apparent wise and studied men of the religious status quo, but were revealed to those who were simple and, uneducated yet receptive men. Later in verse 24 we read that many other people desired to see and understand these things but they were reserved for the ones whom the Lord determined to reveal them.

These words of praise to the Father are really affirmations of the learning process and the students who demonstrate the acquisition of the desired skills and qualities. In this sense the Lord makes his statements of praise to the Father more direct affirmations of the disciples because in verse 23 he says, “blessed are the eyes that see what you see.” If I heard such words from Jesus, I believe I would conclude that He had recognized the value of the lessons I had learned and affirmed my gifts and abilities to serve in the Kingdom.

The Master Plan for Ministry Skill Acquisition

Luke 10:1-24

Nonformal education is concerned with competence and leads to certification of skills. In Christian ministry skills are not certified, but gifts are recognized, affirmed, and developed. This is not an intentional process because it does not lead to certification, but it is important to understand that ministry skills and gift development require a process similar to that used in nonformal education. Typically skills are acquired through a process which includes steps like 1) receive specific instructions relating to the skill, 2) observe the instructor demonstrate the skill, 3) attempt to practice the skill, 4) conclude the lesson with an evaluative debriefing and reflection.

It is interesting that when we look at Luke 10:1-24 we find these steps in the training of the 72 disciples. The 72 were selected to be sent out ahead of Jesus to the towns where he intended to visit. During the initial instructions he told them how they should behave, and what attitudes they needed to convey. They were to be like sheep among wolves. They were to eat whatever they were given. Bless a hospitable home with peace, etc., (vss.3-8). They were also given instructions for the ministry they were required to fulfill. They were to preach the Kingdom of God and heal the sick (vs. 9). Jesus anticipated that they would face hardships and persecution and warned the 72 what to expect.

Later the 72 returned filled with the typical enthusiasm evident in the lives of people who serve the Lord. They must have had very fruitful experiences and one of the impressions that the experience left on them was that the demons submitted to them in the name of Jesus. In their eager minds, this was the peak of effectiveness. These expressions were part of the evaluative debriefing session. Jesus responded to their keen observations by taking the time to rearrange their priorities. He told them, “however, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven (vs. 20).”

The rest of Jesus’ expressions are affirmations. These will appear in the next posting.

The Importance of Clarifying Training Assumptions

Precision in training outcomes requires that training assumptions be clarified.

While facilitating a modified DACUM process to determine training outcomes I crashed against the muddy wall of assumptions. All participants in a process of curriculum development approach the task of curriculum development with assumptions. Assumptions are unexamined beliefs. These are the expectations we bring to a process without previous intentional clarification. For example, will these objectified statements of desired results be addressed by traditional delivery systems? Will they lead to courses that are taught in a classroom? Do we know who the students are? What are they supposed to be able to do as a result of the training? Who will do the instruction?

An international group representing a coalition of national associations was set with the task of determining outcomes to train association leaders. When describing training outcomes relating to managing and implementing a variety of funding models the facilitation was easy and progress was pleasing to all. When we moved on to discuss partnerships everything bogged down. Progress was impeded by diverse opinion. We took twice as long to write a dozen outcomes and we concluded with a sense of ill ease. Were we on the same page? Did we really know what we were doing?

Later I realized how the problem was that we had not achieved consensus about what a partnership was. There was suspicion from international colleagues who saw partnerships as a Western concept. Some admitted there was no equivalent word in their own language to communicate the idea of partnership. Since there was no foundational agreement about what a partnership was we could not agree on what the outcomes would be to which we would direct our training. So simple, but so critical.

Clarifying assumptions in the curriculum development process lays a foundation upon which everything else is built. How can you train someone to develop and manage partnerships if you are not sure what a partnership is? I realized this applies to every area. Consensus on the desired outcomes is derived first from consensus on the assumptions.

No matter how messy or seemingly unproductive the process of clarifying assumptions seems, it is absolutely necessary and required. Now the question to answer is, how can we clarify assumptions without creating the mess and chaos during a consensus building process?