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50,000 Unpaid Missionaries??

June 27, 2011 by Mark Woodward

Paradigm shifts are always resisted! I want to address today some of the resisting comments that have been posted about Re-Thinking Mission Work!

I said that our system is broken because we require our missionaries to first be good fund-raisers. Some argued that the skill set for fund raising is similar to that of a good missionary, so it is a legitimate filter.  If they can’t raise money, how could they be a good missionary?

No doubt, good people skills are a prerequisite for both raising funds and missions. Other broad skills like perseverance and the ability to communicate would certainly fit both tasks, so this argument is not farfetched. However, here’s a short list of skills necessary for a good missionary that are not necessary to be a good fund-raiser:

  • Prayerful
  • A thoughtful student of the Word
  • An effective teacher of the Word
  •  A vision-caster
  • A team builder
  • Cross-culturally sensitive
  • A lover of language—often, the ability to learn a new language.
  • A lover of people, not just a manipulator of people
  • Extreme faith and trust in an all-powerful God

I said that we need greater access to better pre-mission training for more people!  Several suggested that our Christian colleges offer plenty of good preparation.

They are right about the quality of training that our Christian universities offer. It is excellent! But access is the real issue.  The general mission preparation is designed for 18-21 year old, full-time students working toward a bachelor’s degree.

  • What about the 90% of young people in churches of Christ who do not attend a Christian college?
  • What about the young professionals who are called to the mission after graduation?
  • What about families—Dad, Mom, and kids—who are called to the mission?
  • What about those who can commit only two years? Is it reasonable to ask them to prepare four years for two of service?
  • What about early retirees and mature Christians?  How will they be trained?

I know about summer seminars, but how many short courses would it take to prepare a novice missionary?

I am happy to report that the idea of required apprenticeships resonated with many of you! It is an idea that I will try to flesh out more in a future posting!

Several readers pointed out the benefits of supporting national workers instead of Americans.  I’m a firm believer that American missionaries should all be temporary and that training nationals to reach their own people—and to send their own missionaries—should be given high priority.  I am strongly opposed—with rare exceptions—to putting national evangelists on American church support.  The problems created by supporting nationals are immense!  Sending money is not a substitute for Going!

I have not called for any kind of centralized organization, but some of you who commented did! Several suggested that the historic stand against missionary societies was never well grounded.  I believe that we can achieve our goal of better mission work done by more missionaries without a centralized bureaucracy—but not with cooperation.  I doubt that we Americans can create a centralized organization that would not succumb to wielding big financial, political, or personal bludgeons, so that’s not the direction I would like to see us go, even if we could get beyond the doctrinal issues.

Look around! The Mormons have over fifty thousand unpaid, full-time missionaries!  All of their missionaries go through several weeks of training at one of the seventeen Mission Training Centers, located throughout the world! Mormonism—which began in the U.S. about the same time as the American Restoration Movement– continues to be a growing world-wide movement with over 14 million members!

What other models for supporting and overseeing mission work are you aware of? Can the current model among churches of Christ  be improved by learning from other religious groups?

Posted in Re-Thinking Mission Work | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

A Missionary Letter!

June 25, 2011 by Mark Woodward

In response to my series on Re-Thinking Mission Work, I have heard from a number of current missionaries who felt like I was touching on their story somehow.  This last week, I received an especially moving letter from a couple whose story is just so familiar that I asked them if I could reproduce it while protecting their privacy.

With their permission, I want to share this letter with you, not to condone every decision, every comment, or every emotion, but so that you can get a glimpse into the frustration that our current system creates and what it does to many of the people who try to work their way through it to the mission field.  You won’t enjoy this letter, but try to put yourself in the position of this couple and see what you think!

Dear Mark,

I hope you really meant it when you wrote that you wanted to know more about our experiences, because here goes. Our first full-time missions experience was in the Czech Republic. Our sponsoring church at that time was the  X Church of Christ in Texas. We had been members there for 2 years and were on a team prepared by [Missions organization]. My wife and I have teaching degrees from [Christian college]. The team we joined spent about 4 months at [missions organization] preparing together. The [sponsoring] church made a 5 year agreement with us and provided half of our support. The rest came from various other individuals and churches. We worked in the Czech Republic for 5 years and helped to establish a small congregation that still meets today without the presence of missionaries. During that time, the [sponsoring] church never once sent anyone to visit us and at the end of the 5 years they were done.

We reluctantly came home and resumed teaching . . . . We cried through every worship service for 6 months, but the Christians at the Church of Christ were really great and very understanding. We moved the next year to [city] so that I could resume my secular career and so that our children could attend a christian school.

After 2 years, we felt called to return to missions. We had become aware of the need for the gospel in Slovenia during our last year in [Czech Republic]. We spent a year preparing at [Christian college] and looking for teammates. This time, the church in [small city] made a 3 year agreement to sponsor us. They had been one of our contributors while we were in [Czech Republic]. We had become close to one of the missions committee members during that time. When we returned, he told us that when we were ready to go back (because he knew we would) to contact him and so we did. [This church] had never been a sponsoring church before, but they wanted to give it a try. They provided half our support. We never found teammates, but went to Slovenia anyway.

During our 2nd year in Slovenia, the dollar tanked against the euro and we began to struggle. We went into debt so that we could continue to do the work there. During the 3rd year, we began working with a small group of Christians from a former International Church of Christ. This was, of course, after [the decentralization took place]. They were eager to have someone to help strengthen them after all that had happened. We also meet ICOC Christians from Croatia, Hungary, and Bosnia during this time. [Our friend] was the only person from [our sponsoring church] to come and visit us during the 3 years we were there. He and his wife came for one night while they were visiting their son who was doing a study abroad program in Europe.

At the end of 3 years, there was a new missions committee head at the [Sponsoring] Church who decided it was fiscally irresponsible to continue being a sponsoring church. We were preparing to come home again when an opportunity to become self supporting missionaries came up. We took jobs with [international schools] and moved to Bosnia. We knew that there were Christians here and were eager to help them. We worked there for a year and a half and decided to return to Texas to resume our teaching careers and build up some retirement.

After 3 years back, we met a young couple looking for teammates to go to the Czech Republic. We felt like God was once again presenting us with an opportunity to serve the Czech people, so we once again began looking for a sponsoring congregation.

During the past year, we have been turned down for the following reasons:

  • we are too small to take on a responsibility like that– our current congregation;
  • we just had to take on more support for the missionaries we already have, and we prefer to support missions that our members can go to on mission trips;
  • we feel that our congregation will get more excited about a mission to Africa;
  • we feel it is more fiscally responsible to support the X Bible Institute (more bang for the buck).

It’s the last one that hurts us the most. If you look on their website, you’ll see that they have 3 missions listed: Christian Service Center- benevolence, not missions; a work in [foreign city] which we were told they are phasing out; and the X Bible Institute- preacher training, not evangelism or church planting. Not only that, but when I was there, they announced that in addition to the 4 ministers they already have, they are hiring 2 more, a communications minister and a family life minister.

I was so hurt that I wrote an email to [our contact person] and asked him to forward it to the elders but have received no reply. My family has been associated with this church for more than 30 years. They used to be known as a sending church. So, here we sit in a hotel room [in a small US city], waiting to be interviewed and try out for a preaching job.

So sorry, people of the Czech Republic. Be warmed and filled, the churches in the US would like to do more, but you are not high on their list of priorities. Can you tell that we are discouraged and frustrated? Some have said that it must not be God’s will that we go. Maybe, but what if God calls these churches into account one day for not reaching the Czech people. They may say to Him, “when did you tell us to go to the Czech people?” and He will say, “I sent you [this couple], but you ignored them.” It is our hope and prayer that someone will pay attention to you [people of Czech Republic] so that others that go after us will have more success and the gospel will reach even those places in the world that are difficult and unexciting.

I hope this letter is a small window into the experience of trying to become, to be, and to remain a missionary in our current system. MW

Posted in Re-Thinking Mission Work | 6 Comments »

Hard Questions for Small Churches

June 23, 2011 by Mark Woodward

Let’s Start Talking approaches churches on almost a daily basis, asking for a few minutes at one of their assemblies to present to that church’s members opportunities  to be involved in short-term missions.  We do not ask for money, we do not ask for any long-term commitments, nor do we ask for anything that would detract from that church’s current mission efforts.   We do not need the sermon time. Class time, time before or after a service, even Wednesday night would be wonderful!

Why is it so hard to get an opportunity to tell the Body of Christ about specific requests from mission churches who are asking for help in telling the story of Jesus to their neighbors?

One of the most common reasons we hear when churches say that now is not a good time is that their mission work/mission committee is not functioning or is in disarray and they don’t know what they are doing, so let them get their act together and they will get back to LST.  I can’t remember when we have ever been called back at a later date by a church that had pulled themselves together.

In the previous post, we talked about questions that a strong church with a good mission program—at least in their own eyes—might ask in order to be sure they were not deceiving themselves, being satisfied with a mediocre mission effort when they desire and are capable of a great mission effort.

Now I’d like to talk with those church leaders/members in smaller churches, with either no real mission program or one in disarray as described above!  Let’s ask some hard questions and see where the answers lead us!

1.       Why is your church small?  Myriad reasons come to mind as to why a church might be small, some perfectly healthy and other reasons very unhealthy.  Some healthier reasons might include being a new church plant, being in an unchurched area where growth is slow. Unhealthy reasons might include because you are the only right ones, or you like to do things one way—your way.  I do challenge you to list ten reasons why your congregation is small—then evaluate those reasons for health.

2.      How are you trying to grow?  And holding Sunday services does not count.

3.       To what part of the Great Commission are you devoting your available resources?  Sherrylee and I met with a church recently in a resort area that often has no more than five members present, yet they rent a church building for Sundays and pray mostly for Christian tourists to attend. After the service the 4-5 members all went out to eat together, without inviting any of us guests to go with them.  Does this picture feel wrong to you?

4.       What could you do that would increase your “strength”? Could you merge with another church? I was in a small Texas town of about 1500 people recently that had four churches of Christ listed in the phone book. I believe we went to the largest with a membership of about 150. I wonder how long it has been since anyone made overtures about merging with any of the other congregations?   My only solace was that the Baptist had 17 churches in the same phonebook.  Human frailty is not denominational.

5.       What opportunities do you have because you are small that a large church might not have? What if the whole church supported that one young person or the just-retired couple to prepare for missions!  You don’t have anyone?—then why don’t you adopt a new Christian who has a strong desire to serve abroad, but no church home.  Find them through one of the Christian university mission departments.

I’ve worshipped in many small churches all over the world.  Small is not the same as weak.  The fact that eighty percent of American churches of Christ have fewer than a hundred members is often quoted as an excuse, but I keep hearing the words of the Messenger to the little church in Asia Minor, which he described as having just a “little strength.”  To this church he says, “I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut!” (Revelation 3:8)

Rethinking your mission efforts may start—for large or for small churches—with rethinking who you are and why you exist at all.  I do believe that when you know why it is worth all the time and effort to be church together, you will have a much better perspective for pursuing the mission of every church!

 

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You Must Kill All Your Darlings

June 21, 2011 by Mark Woodward

In my series on Rethinking Mission Work , I tried to take a few steps back and ask, “Are we as a fellowship really doing missions the best we can?”.  Based purely on my personal experiences with many churches and on anecdotal evidences, what I see is

  • General dissatisfaction among congregations with their experiences in supporting foreign missions.
  • Broad dissatisfaction among American missionaries with their experiences with supporting churches.
  • Trend toward replacing evangelistic work with humanitarian aid as the definition of mission work.
  • Greater emphasis on local evangelism as opposed to foreign evangelism.

Thinking is hard enough, but re-thinking borders on the impossible.  I know this because I taught Freshman Composition at Oklahoma Christian for twenty-four years.  Once a student  forces himself to sit down, to gather some ideas from somewhere on some topic, to write at least five paragraphs that in his/her mind relate to  a single topic, and then to check it for spelling—once a student has done that much work, she is finished! That’s it! What more could be required??  That first draft is perfection!

Virtually all great writers know that the first draft is trash, maybe even the tenth! Envisioning is certainly the first step in the process, but re-visioning may be the most important!

William Faulkner said about revision, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”   To add to our difficulty in re-thinking is our tendency to make “our darlings” into “our doctrines”   We put the stamp of biblical perfection on our assignment and turn it in!!  And we expect to get excellent marks in recognition of work well done!

As I read and re-read some of your comments during the series, both on my blog site and on other sites where the series was re-posted in some form,  I was continually reminded of how difficult it is to re-vision, i.e., to re-see something so familiar to us.

Some commented that their experience at their congregation was just great and that their congregation was doing a wonderful job!

In reply, let me say that describing general conditions always leaves one open to refutation by the Exception! Of course there are congregations doing a great job and great mission committees who have schooled themselves and love their missionaries.

I will say, however, based on my classroom experience that the writer is not necessarily the best judge of whether the writing is good.  Heeding the proverb to “Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips,” (27:2), I would suggest a first step in rethinking is to have an outside evaluation—especially at those churches that have our best mission programs.

If I were coming to help your church look at its mission program, here are some of the questions I would want to ask:

  1. Why do you want to be involved at all in foreign missions?
  2. Where do foreign missions rank in your congregational priorities?
  3. Do you care more about whom you send or where you send them?
  4. What is “non-negotiable” or “untouchable” in your mission program?
  5. What is determining the full capacity of your mission efforts? Available workers? Available funds? Available time?
  6. Does your capacity match your goal?  And is there any room for God to expand any of your capacities?
  7. How do you determine if you are meeting your goals?
  8. How many people in the congregation are involved in the mission efforts in any way, including intentional prayer, private support, short-term missions to your mission sites? Are you happy with the percentage of involvement?
  9. How many are involved in missions outside of the congregation’s program? Are you happy/concerned about this? Is it a reflection on the church’s program in any way?
  10. Do you ask for honest feedback from those you send, and are you humble enough to receive fair criticism from them without it threatening their support?
  11. How long have your current mission strategies/policies been in place?  Do you have a planned periodical review of all policies?
  12. If you could wave a magic wand and change one piece of your mission program, what would you change? What keeps you from making this change without a magic wand?

 

Next, I’d like to look at how to start re-thinking at churches who already know they have some serious issues in their mission program. 

Posted in Christian Missions, Re-Thinking Mission Work | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

In Summer, the Song Sings Itself

June 20, 2011 by Mark Woodward

In the last two weeks, the Dallas Mavericks have won the NBA Championship,  school  vacation has started for all of our grandkids, summer movies have started coming each week—we saw Super 8 and thought it was great fun—and with the help of a robot, I had surgery and have recovered enough to have enjoyed Father’s Day yesterday with all of our Texas family!

Many, many thanks to Craig Altrock, who graciously provided some wonderful thoughts on and from Psalm 119. Craig and his family will be returning from Rwanda soon, where they have been involved in a Let’s Start Talking Project.

And thanks for allowing me a short break.  I want to get back to “Re-Thinking Missions” and reply to some of the responses that I have come from those of you engaged in this conversation.  I also want to do some writing about Leadership, especially church leadership.  Then, I look forward to sharing with you everything from movie reviews to the results from Grandkids Camp (July 1).

The Swedes have a proverb that says, “A life without love is like a year without summer!”   That’s pretty good, except I lived in northern Europe enough to know that they do have years without summer.

So let’s end with the poet William Carlos Williams saying, “In summer, the song sings itself!”

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One One Nine: Word-less?

June 16, 2011 by Mark Woodward

Enjoy this final guest post by Craig Altrock. My thanks to him for encouraging and inspiring us!

This is my last post in this series on Psalm 119.  The temptation is to keep writing, to keep producing more words about the Word.  But therein lays a fundamental impulse Psalm 119 pushes against underestimating the nature and significance of words.

 

I was struck early on in my 119 day journey through this psalm by the writer’s preoccupation with God’s word.  It’s not just that he felt Scripture was important.  No, when he thought of Scripture it made his mouth water and his tongue pant.  And while I wish my own response to God were so visceral, it does raise the issue of why one would be so passionate for ink and paper.

 

With that in mind it strikes me that words are frequently and easily cheapened today:

  • Words exist everywhere!  Think of how many words you will come across today.  They flood your computer screen, they scream at you from your mobile device, they leer at you from the billboards, and they pull at you from your child’s school work.
  • Words are so often used with such little thought.  Ideally words are meant to capture ideas, to contain truth, and to give voice to emotion.  But draping the proper words over these realities can be a delicate and wearisome activity.  Because we lack the discipline to find the right word, we cast on our ideas the first word that comes to mind, like a worn out jacket from our closet. Subsequently our speech and writing is devalued because we’ve lost the restraint needed to hold our tongue or pen until the right words can be crafted. 

 

As we cheapen words it becomes too easy to disassociate what we say from who we are:

  • It doesn’t bother us to lie because the word (lie) didn’t’ mean that much to us anyway; it was just a word.  What we say doesn’t reflect who we are (so we think!).
  • We don’t express appreciation to another because we incorrectly assume our words are simply words. What we say doesn’t reflect who we are (so we think!).
  • We make promises we can’t keep because the promise was made with lips, not our full intention.  What we say doesn’t reflect who we are (so we think!).

 

But psalm 119 calls us back to the recognition that words are so intricately linked to the heart which gave them impulse and the lips from which they slipped that we can no sooner separate the two than we could the sun from its light.  The psalmist loved God’s word because he loved God.  The writer rightly believed that when God speaks He is sharing part of himself-truth, character, and heart.

 

I think it is for this reason the psalmist sought desperately for God’s word.  To know God’s word is to know God.  To speak Scripture out loud is to let the very character of God pass over your tongue.  To meditate on a verse is to invite God himself into the chair of the heart.   As the incarnation teaches us so many years later, to receive a Word from God was to receive God himself.

 

Let us not be guilty of worshiping a book.  However, by the same token let us also not be charged with treating Scripture as just a book.  May God’s word be for us like Lewis’ dusty wardrobe was for the Pevensie children –– a doorway to a realm where not only hope and wonder exist, but one where the Great Lion himself awaits our company.

 

“I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love…”

Psalm 119:48

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One One Nine: Word-Oriented Practices

June 14, 2011 by Mark Woodward

Be encouraged with this guest post from Craig Altrock, senior director of projects at Let’s Start Talking Ministry. 

What practices do you engage in regularly that connect you with God’s word?  This question floated to the surface as I explored Psalm 119 for 119 days.  On the one hand it’s true that a simple practice or discipline means nothing.  Pharisees consumed God’s word but somehow seemed to escape the nourishment it was meant to bring.  On the other hand, sometimes it is a discipline which fuels heart-felt passion for God.  I believe one of the reasons the psalmist had such a fire for God is that he engaged God’s word through a number of creative practices.

 

I noted these disciplines in a prior post, but I’ll list them again so we have them in front of us for this conversation.  Here are the practices the psalmist mentions concerning his engagement with Scripture:

  1. A regular ASSESSMENT of his own life in relation to the way of God.
  2. A VERBAL RESPONSE involving PRAISING God for his word, SINGING to God about his word, or actually RECITING out-loud God’s word.
  3. MEDITATION on God’s word.
  4. ASKING God to be the primary teacher of His word.
  5. REMINDING God about his word and asking him to act in accordance with it.
  6. PRACTICING the Daily Offices (conducting any and all of these other disciplines at set times of the day and night – even at midnight!).

 

Each of these topics is worthy of separate posts, but here are my thoughts about two of them.

 

The psalmist who writes Psalm 119 is verbally engaged with God’s word.   For example, while there may be a number of songs in his repertoire, he specifically mentions singing God’s own word; not singing about God’s word, but actually using God’s own word for lyrics (119:54, 172).  However, his recitations don’t stop with a song.  He intentionally and verbally speaks God’s word –“With my lips I recount all the words that come from your lips” (119:10).

 

In the days since I finished my 119 day experiment I’ve watched to see how often I, my Bible class, or even my church family actually spoke God’s word out-loud.  I didn’t keep any records of this informal survey but I was astounded at how infrequently Scripture floated off our tongues and across our lips.  We read it.  We heard it.  We even wrote it.  But speaking Scripture–that rarely happened.

 

A second practice woven through this psalm is what many call the Daily Office.  For those of us who think “liturgy” sounds like a Hungarian dessert, this simply means praying at set times of the day (and often with the same set of prayers).  At one point the psalmist mentions praising God seven times a day (119:164), which evidently even involved waking at midnight (119:62).  I actually tried this for a while.  I set my phone to signal me at set times of the day so I would pray (to be honest, that midnight appointment slipped of my schedule pretty quickly!).

 

Can reciting Scripture out loud become dry?  Certainly.  Can praying at set times feel forced? Sure.  However, you have to wonder if it’s just a coincidence that the person who practiced these kinds of disciplines also confessed “I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands” (119:131).

A group of us at my church organized a public reading of Scripture on Good Friday this year.  For almost an hour and a half a number of us shared in the out-loud reading of Matthew’s account of the Passion Week.  We worried people would get bored.  We fretted that we’d lose focus.  However, the #1 comment we heard afterwards was, “That was powerful.”

 

I wonder what kinds of thoughts and feelings you might experience if you picked one of these two disciplines and experimented with them this week.  Set your phone’s alarm to go off at 9 a.m., 3 p.m., and 6 p.m. At those hours this week stop and pray.  Or, pick a text like the Sermon on the Mount, find a quite place, and read a little of it out loud each day.  Post your reactions so we can learn together!

 

“I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word”

Psalm 119:147

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One One Nine: Scripture as Path and Door

June 10, 2011 by Mark Woodward

This is the third in a series of guest posts by my friend and co-worker Craig Altrock. Craig and his wife Leslee have been active with LST  for 20 years now! 

 We are driven to act in accordance with the heartbeat of Scripture only in as much as we are led to THINK the right way about Scripture.  This became convincingly clear to me as I huddled around Psalm 119 for 119 days recently.   Like the luminous outline of a city at night, the importance of right thinking frames the psalm.  And, like the soil nourishing a plant, it is a way of thinking about Scripture that energizes this psalmist’s great love for God.

 

As I noted in my last post, here are six beliefs about Scripture which fuel the psalmist’s passion for it:

  1. It is a PATH toward joyful living, not a roadblock to your desires.
  2. It is a LIGHT to illuminate your way.
  3. It is a DOOR to freedom, not a sentence of imprisonment.
  4. It is a COMPANION that guides us toward heart-felt passion for God.
  5. It is a REFLECTION of God’s character.
  6. It is NOURISHMENT to sustain the journey.

 

While it’s tempting to spend a post on each one of these, I’ll pick just two.

 

The Path— Scripture for this psalmist is not simply an instruction manual on how one is made right with God, as though that act were somehow unconnected to the rest of the way we live.  For many people Scripture is the place we turn when we have “spiritual” questions. It’s the shelf on which we find the ingredients for knowing God better.  It’s the pantry where we keep all things related to “my spiritual life.”

 

But, when you conjure up images connected to the word path you get a different idea altogether.  When you are bombarded with daily advice on how you should live, Scripture silences those voices and provides the one true way of living. Scripture isn’t just a rest stop, it’s the road!  It isn’t just a road sign, it’s the entire map! Scripture is meant to guide us into healthy, joyful, fruitful ways of engaging each other and God – the road-surface of life!

 

The Door— This image isn’t actually used in Psalm 119, but it comes closest to what I think is one of the most significant ways of thinking in the psalm –freedom.  It is to the detriment of countless numbers of would-be disciples that they have somehow come to understand Scripture as something which confines us.  For too many, the pages of Scripture morph all too quickly into the bars of a cell.  Their belief is that all the fun is “out there” so why would I want to get trapped in the confines of God’s law?

 

But not so the psalmist.  I love 119:32, 45;  “I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free…I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts.”

 

Freedom is not something we discover the farther we remove ourselves from Scripture.  Instead it is an experience we uncover as more and more of our life comes into alignment with God’s way.

 

Well, there’s so much more to say.  However, better than my trying to capture the right words to communicate these critical thoughts is YOU planting these seeds in your mind and letting the Spirit nourish them through prayer and meditation.

 

Which image speaks most powerfully to you?  Which one seems harder to connect with?  Pick one this week to mediate on and let us know what God does in you through that exercise.

 

“The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.”

Psalm 119:130

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One One Nine: An Elevated Passion for God’s Word

June 8, 2011 by Mark Woodward

This is the second in a series of four guest posts by my friend and co-worker Craig Altrock. He and his family are currently in Rwanda on an LST mission trip. 

 

From October of last year until April of this year, I spent 119 days journeying through one psalm – Psalm 119.  Now, if you count up the number of days in those months you’ll get much more than 119 days.  I didn’t say I spent 119 days in a row!  However, it was my goal to spend a day for every verse in the Psalm.  And, over the course of those 7 months I met that goal.

 

One thing that becomes crystal clear if you stay in Psalm 119 long enough is that this writer has, to put it mildly, a passion for God’s word.  He delights in God’s word, he is consumed with longing for it, and he puts his hope in it.  Scripture is what he thinks about, it gets him up at night, and it’s what he sings about.  In fact, if we were honest, this writer is probably one of those guys that would make us feel slightly awkward if we invited him over for dinner.  His passion for God’s law is so all-consuming that our own concern for the Bible might dim in the light of his enthusiasm.

 

Where does this heightened passion for God and His word originate?  In short, the psalmist thought about God’s word in ways we might not normally think, and he practiced Word-centered disciplines that might not be normal for us.  I’ll simply list these here in this post, and then dig a little more deeply into them in future postings.

 

[Before you read the following you might stop and consider how you would answer these two questions:

  • “What words or images guide your own understanding of what Scripture is and how it functions?”
  • “What disciplines do I practice regularly that connect me to God’s word?”

I think in many cases you will find the answers the psalmist gives to these questions differ from our own in both intensity and form.]

 

Beliefs about Scripture that fuel this psalmist’s passion for it:

  1. It is a PATH toward joyful living, not a roadblock to your desires.
  2. It is a LIGHT to illuminate your way.
  3. It is a DOOR to freedom, not a sentence of imprisonment.
  4. It is a COMPANION that guides us toward heart-felt passion for God.
  5. It is a REFLECTION of God’s character.
  6. It is NOURISHMENT to sustain the journey.

 

This is what the psalmist believes about God’s word.  Scripture for him is not a static recounting of historical events.  Nor is it simply a collection of moral standards.  It is something much, much more.

 

However, thoughts about God’s word are not the only thing heightening the psalmist’s passion for Scripture.  He’s taken to doing something things about it as well.

 

Disciplines the psalmist practices in relation to Scripture that ignite his zeal for it.

  1. A regular ASSESSMENT of his own life in relation to the way of God.
  2. A VERBAL RESPONSE involving PRAISING God for his word, SINGING to God about his word, or actually RECITING out-loud God’s word.
  3. MEDITATION on God’s word.
  4. ASKING God to be the primary teacher of His word.
  5. REMINDING God about his word and asking him to act in accordance with it.
  6. PRACTICING the Daily Offices (conducting any and all of these other disciplines at set times of the day and night – even at midnight!).

 

What do you think about God’s word?  What images and metaphors guide your thinking?  Would anything change for you this week if you adopted a few of the images above and mediated on their implication for your walk with God?

 

Similarly, what disciplines are you practicing that are word-oriented?  Would anything change for you if you adopted one or two of the practices above for a week?

 

My bet is that, like me, if you shift your focus and perhaps even some of your practice to mirror that of the psalmist, your own passion for God and his word might find renewed vigor.  I pray that it is so! In my next post we’ll dive a bit deeper into some of these thoughts and practices.

 

“Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart.”

Psalm 119:2

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One One Nine: 119 Days in Psalm 119

June 6, 2011 by Mark Woodward

This is the first of four guests posts by my friend and co-worker Craig Altrock.  He’s a man of God, and I know you will be blessed by his series on Psalm 119.  I will be back after his series finishes.

I recently completed a 119 day journey through Psalm 119.  I say that not so much to wow you, but simply to say that I finished what was for me a pretty serious commitment.

If you’re like me, spending 119 days on anything is significant.  Our schedules run so full these days that most of us are fighting just to scratch out a few moments of quiet every few days of the week.  I didn’t do a lot of thought on the front end of this exercise, and it definitely wasn’t the product of long and extensive planning.  I just felt prompted to camp out in this psalm for a season, so I did.

It might not surprise you that I came away with a few observations after this journey.  So, as a guest contributor to this blog I thought it might be helpful, to at least some of you, for me to share some of these musings prompted by Psalm 119.  I’ll stay pretty general with this post and then get more specific in future ones.

Two insights I gained from camping out on one piece of Scripture for an extended season:

  1. There are levels of spiritual understanding and experience you only gain from consuming God’s word slowly and deliberately.  For many of us, Scripture reading is something akin to a visit to the drive through window of a fast food restaurant.  We may do it regularly, but we accomplish it as quickly as possible– chew, swallow, slurp, done.   But to truly stop and savor the word– this is an altogether different experience.  The psalmist says, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth” (119:103).  As with fine food, there are certain flavors, textures, and nuances that we only experience when we slow down enough to actually taste the word we are consuming.  This moves us past the reading of Scripture strictly for information and into the realm of reading for formation.
  1. Soaking in one piece of Scripture teaches us the value of engaging God’s word in creative ways.  One of the plain hard truths about camping out this long on one psalm is that if you don’t get creative with your approach, you might get bored!  There are only so many times you can read the same piece of Scripture.  So, while I did in fact read through the 176 verses of this psalm many, many times, I was eventually pushed to read it in other ways.  For example, while I’ve not done much before in terms of Scripture memorization, I found great joy in memorizing pieces of this psalm.  While I’ve not used Scripture to form the words of my prayers much in the past, I discovered new vitality in allowing pieces of this psalm to voice my response to God.  Though I don’t journal as much as I’d like, I uncovered wonderful insights from writing my own version of this psalm, one stanza at a time.

Well, you may not want to commit to 119 days on one piece of Scripture, but I bet you could take one week and pledge to read the same passage every day that week.  If you do that this week, I’d love to hear what YOU learn!

“Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord”

Psalm 119:1

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