A blog by Adam W. Christman

Category: New Testament

  • Spiritual Disciplines: Intense Study

    “Many Christians remain in bondage to fears and anxieties simply because they do not avail themselves of the Discipline of study,” Richard Foster.1

    Do you remember what Jesus said will set us free? Was it good feelings? Maybe, ecstatic experiences? Could it be attending church services? John 8:32 has the answer, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (emphasis added).

    Our knowing the truth will set us free. This is one of Jesus’ promises to us. The truth will not swoop in like a superhero while we float on the wreckage of life. The truth sits at our elbow, ready and accessible at any moment. We need simply turn and look.

    Last week, I defined both the spiritual disciplines and, at the same time, any good faith attempt to follow Jesus well, with the statement “following Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself.” If you missed that post, you can click here for a broad introduction to this subject.

    Since we want to follow Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself, we want to look at the behaviors, etc., that we can discover in the eyewitness accounts known as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

    Luke 2:52 is a famous passage relevant to this subject. It is simultaneously encouraging, enlightening, and confusing. In it, the Gospel writer reports that Jesus grew “in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” I want you to imagine a baby and how little they know. Imagine a toddler and how little they know. Imagine a grade school kid, a middle school kid, and a high school student, and how little they know. When God the Son put on flesh, he agreed to the whole experience.2 Jesus was at his conception, is currently, and always will be 100% God and 100% man. He accepted the reality of going through that long growing phase from baby in the womb through all of adolescence to adulthood. Jesus did not come out of the womb preaching the Gospel. He did not teach through parables before he was potty trained. It is not a sinful deficiency. It is a matter of biological capacity. He grew in wisdom. He really went through the plasticity and growth of the human brain just like the rest of us. And yet, when we get a glimpse of him at age 12, he knows the Scriptures so well he’s teaching teachers at the temple. And then when we see him as an adult in the bulk of the Gospel narratives, he knows the Scriptures at a mind-blowing level, both in breadth and in depth. How did he get from here to there? HE STUDIED.

    One spiritual discipline is the intense study and meditation on God’s Word and God’s ways.

    We study because he studied. We study hard because he studied hard. And we study because we want to know HIM better. Paul communicated the aim of the Christian life in Philippians 3:10, “My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death” (emphasis added). Big brother Paul wanted to know Christ, truly, and increasingly. We want the same, too. There is no one like Jesus Christ. No one more powerful or peaceful. No one more gracious or gentle. No one so honest or honorable. Nobody has suffered more than Jesus did, nor has anyone been more successful than him.3 We do not study the Scriptures just to be like him. We study them to know him. Jesus said in John 5:39, “You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me.”

    Let me quote Richard Foster again. “Study is a specific kind of experience in which through careful attention to reality the mind is enabled to move in a certain direction. Remember, the mind will always take on an order conforming to the order upon which it concentrates.” If that is true (and it is), let us concentrate upon the Scriptures to know Jesus better and to become more like him.

    Let’s also talk about how Jesus treated the Scriptures. We see these actions attested to in the Gospel accounts of his life and actions.

    -Jesus treated the Scriptures as historical, not fictional. He refers to the actions that occurred in the Jonah, Moses, and creation (Adam & Eve) stories. He does so in Matthew 12:38-42, Matthew 19:1-12, and Mark 10:6-7 (respectively; though He also refers to the creation/Adam & Eve as history in Matthew 19).

    -Jesus treated the Scriptures as authoritative, not suggestive. Another way we could phrase it is that he saw the Scriptures as decisive and binding. In Matthew 5:17-18, he taught, “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things are accomplished.” Jesus fulfilling the Law is another big subject worthy of its own posts and books. But still we must notice Jesus’ respect for them as authoritative. Just this week, I preached on Matthew 15:1-20, in which Jesus judges the behavior and teachings of the Pharisees as a breaking of God’s commands (specifically, one of the Ten Commandments). Related to this view of the Scripture is that Christians do not believe anything that is in conflict with the Scriptures. If, for example, every person in the culture around us says, “It is good and right to hate the people that we hate,” the Christian stands up and says, “No. Jesus told us to love our neighbors and everyone is my neighbor.”

    -Jesus treated the Scriptures as rules and support for real world living. Philosophy courses all over the collegiate world read and discuss the Sermon on the Mount (or used to). Though the Sermon on the Mount declares the Kingdom of Heaven, it is largely a lot of ethical teaching, i.e., real world living. And Jesus communicated those teachings as clarifying what God had always meant. After centuries of distortion (intentional and unintentional), Jesus sets the record straight to realign the ethics of God’s people with what he had always intended. He continues to do so in other places and times. Matthew 23, for example, shows Jesus addressing the issue of showing mercy to people and tithes. He says in Mt. 23:23, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law–justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These things should have been done without neglecting the others” (emphasis added). Notice, dear reader, that Jesus does not discard the law regarding tithing. Rather, he showed that justice, mercy, and faithfulness are THE MORE IMPORTANT matters. The more important matters of what? They are the more important matters OF THE LAW! There is rich tapestry to the reality of ethical living in the Scriptures. Jesus points to the law again and again for these practices.

    -Jesus treated the coming Scriptures, which you and I call the New Testament, as further revelation on his behalf. More specifically, he believed the Apostles would speak on his behalf. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you,” John 16:12-15. He knew the Holy Spirit would work in and through certain authors to prepare, compile, write, and edit those books that became the New Testament. And he treated those writings-yet-to-come as glorifying himself and communicating God’s message.

    “This is all well and good, Adam, but how do we study?”

    Great question! Thank you for asking.

    –Read it. Regularly, systematically, carefully. Read it regularly by spending at least a few minutes reading it every day. “Intense study” takes more than a few minutes, but you have to start somewhere. When I say “systematically,” I mean pick a book of the Bible and start at chapter 1, verse 1. Don’t start a new book until you finish that one. If you are new to the Scriptures, I cannot state more strongly that you should start with the Gospel of John. If you need a print Bible and can’t afford it, contact me and I will get you one. But many free websites exist with translations you can use like the English Standard Version, the Christian Standard Bible, the New American Standard Bible, and more. Finally, when I say read it carefully, I mean we need to read it for what it is. Every book has one or more genre, cultural contexts, and other factors to ultimately account for. This part of reading the Bible is the hardest and will require that we help one another do it well. And let me encourage you with another piece of advice. If you’re just starting out, simply read it and trust it by faith. You will learn more in time. Don’t worry about becoming an “expert” first.

    Let me add, you must truly read it for yourself. I am aware of AI apps that will summarize any book you want. Not only are these apps untrustworthy from the start, it robs you of the point of reading. The point of reading the book is to best grapple with an argument, if nonfiction, or to best grapple with the themes and questions raised by the narrative, if fiction. With the Bible, reading it for yourself becomes even more important! You are reading this unique book written by God himself in order to know the truth so that you might be set free! How will you know the truth if you use AI summaries that are completely unreliable? You won’t. And the more atheistic or other unbelieving programmers and tech companies run things, the less reliable summaries will be of the Bible itself, as well as helpful Christian books like Mere Christianity. Would you have AI summarize a love note from your spouse? Would you have AI summarize what it is like to witness the birth of a child? Would you have AI summarize the weight and meaning of your presence as you sit or stand in honor of a loved one in their final moments? As Augustine heard in the garden that day, “Take up, and read.”

    –Learn about genre. Gospel, history (e.g., Acts), epistles, apocalyptic, prophetic, Law, poetry. Each one has features and flavor that are unique and will impact The Author’s meaning.

    –Learn some cultural context stuff. Sounds technical, huh. Some of these things may not seem important, but they will add flavor. Let me give you an example of a Bible study I just led. In John 8:12, Jesus identifies himself as “the light of the world.” You can read that passage and that whole Gospel and understand that statement perfectly well. No problem. And yet! If you knew about the Feast of Tabernacles they were observing at that point in the year, and if you knew about the lamps they would light in the temple as a part of that festival, and if you knew that they celebrate that feast and they light those lamps as a celebration and reminder of God’s great gracious act of leading them in the exodus from Egypt as a pillar of fire (which is, of course, a light source…), there is a richness and depth you would miss without that knowledge. Let me put it this way. You don’t want to eat boiled chicken and steamed broccoli for every meal, do you? Don’t you want more flavor, more zest? Don’t you want to experience the full richness of what you can experience, like a well-seasoned BBQ chicken thigh, or a steak cooked with butter and seasonings in a cast iron skillet? Graduate from only “the milk” to also “the meat” over time.

    –Look for and see how the Scripture connects to itself. In other words, let the Bible tell you about itself! When you are confused, be kind to yourself because you won’t understand everything on the first read. Also keep in mind that Scripture interprets Scripture. Look for prophecies pronounced, then fulfilled. Look for promises made and promises kept. Learn about and look for foreshadowing, aka typology. Some you will have to work harder for, but others are made very plain by the revelation of Jesus’ own words, or the words of the Apostles, like in the book of Hebrews tells us about Jesus being in the priesthood according to Melchizedek. That is a confusing passage at first, second, maybe even at the twentieth read. But keep looking. Don’t let go!

    –Keep navigating by the north star of Scripture that all the Scriptures speak of Jesus. You will get confused and you will have questions. Both of those things are perfectly fine. God is big enough to handle that and he has more than enough love for you to be patient with you through those times. At the same time, look for Jesus in every book of the Bible. As a long, long-time reader of the Bible, I can tell you: He’s there.

    Suggestions for reading more on this spiritual discipline:

    • The Story Retold: A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament, by G.K. Beale and Benjamin L. Gladd.
    • Grasping God’s Word, by J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays. Available in hardcover and digital.
    • How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, by Morimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren.
    • Exegetical Fallacies, by D.A. Carson.
    • Holman Bible Atlas: A Complete Guide to the Expansive Geography of Biblical History, edited by Thomas V. Brisco.
    • Dictionary of New Testament Background, edited by Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter Jr., The IVP Bible Dictionary Series. (There are others in this series relating to the Old Testament, or specifically the Gospels, for example.)

    1. All Richard Foster quotes come from his book Celebration of Discipline. It’s a short book and I cannot recommend it enough. ↩︎
    2. Side note deserving of its own blog (and many books have been written on it). The incarnation did not occur as God subtracting his divinity in order to become human. He added humanity to his deity. Philippians 2:5-11 is very helpful here, and is not the only place in Scripture that helps us understand this issue. ↩︎
    3. Matt. 16:18. ↩︎

  • An Introduction to Spiritual Disciplines

    You can become more like Jesus in your daily living.

    I don’t mean you can become divine. Rather, I mean you can fulfill God’s empowering call from Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” But we don’t seek or need a directionless transformation. We need the best direction to head towards. God also said this in Romans 8:29a, “For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…”

    To look like Jesus in our actions, priorities, and choices, and to sound like Jesus in our words and tone of voice, is a tall order. He is perfect and we are not! BUT! Christians do experience change from the old self to the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). At the same time, Christians do not make good progress merely by accident or via passive accumulation of godly habits. No, our growth in godliness benefits and abounds as we purposefully and actively seek to become more like our Lord Jesus Christ.

    Since our growth to become more Christlike requires our active and purposeful efforts, we utilize the spiritual disciplines.

    The spiritual disciplines can be defined as “those behaviors that augment our spiritual growth and enable us to grow to spiritual maturity.”1 I would also phrase them as following Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself. In the rest of this post, I will cover an introduction to the spiritual disciplines, arguing for what they are at a broad level and why we need them. The end of this post will feature a suggested bibliography for further reading on the subject. Future posts will cover specific practices in detail.

    Humanity’s greatest problem has always been and continues to be a spiritual one. Sin entered the world through the choices of human beings. We perpetuate those choices, ourselves, at an early age. Sin’s infection shows itself through things like depression, addiction, anxiety, personal emptiness, consumerism, sex, violence, cultic obsession, and suicide, among other expressions.

    We must take seriously the need for human transformation. We also need to realize and utilize realistic methods of human transformation.

    Some think faith should make us different all by itself, as long as we don’t have to do anything to make it happen. It’s called the Fruit of the Spirit, so the Holy Spirit does all the work, right? Well, as with anything having to do with the lives of human beings, God chooses to work with you and through you. You ever watch Power Rangers? They have this little object called a Morpher. They hold it out after doing a little choreography, say a little something, and poof, they’re transformed into their Power Ranger gear and are ready to call down the Zords so they can save the day. God doesn’t work like that. Nor does he wave a magic wand over you like Cinderella’s fairy godmother. His hand is extended out to you. Take His hand, follow Him, and together you will change your life.

    I want to take a brief moment to comment on the Kingdom of God. It is relevant to this issue. The Kingdom of God is an ongoing spiritual presence. If your faith is in Christ, you are already in the Kingdom of God. You are already forgiven (Eph. 4:32), redeemed (Eph. 1:7), born again (1 Pet. 1:23), as well as a part of the family of God (Eph. 1:5) and a citizen in the Kingdom of Heaven (Phil. 3:20), among other descriptions. God’s presence is with you! Jesus said in the Great Commission, Mt. 28:20, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Where God is, His Kingdom is. If He is with you, then He stands alongside you, ready to empower you and encourage you as you take at least one step every day in your faith journey.

    Now that we know He is with us, we can talk about what His presence and power does for us. We must not take this gracious opportunity lightly or flippantly. Through the spiritual disciplines, you will meet with and dwell with the Triune God! That’s an amazing thing! Further, God designed human beings and how we are best to live. Jesus did it perfectly. He mastered it. Just as an apprentice worker benefits from spending time with a master craftsman, we strongly desire to spend time with Jesus to learn from Him. Spending time with Jesus changes things.

    G.K. Chesterton was a writer in the 19th-20th centuries.2 He once wrote, “Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it has been found difficult and left untried.” Even as difficult as Christianity is, we love Jesus. And because we love Jesus, we set our will to resolve to be like Him whom we love.

    Jesus said many beautiful things, but I want to highlight one in particular at this point. In Matthew 11:29-30, He said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (emphasis added).

    Isn’t it so interesting that Jesus invites us to learn from Him? We all take up a yoke or burden in life. For some of us, the yoke is parental expectations. For others, it is societal expectations. Maybe it is a career goal, or a life goal like living in a certain city, or a certain style of home. Maybe the yoke is to be “free,” but eventually we find our so-called “freedom” is a shackle to meaningless or mindless consumption of Netflix, sex, or drugs. We all take up a yoke or burden. Why not trade the difficult and heavy yokes of this world for the only one that is easy and light? Joyfully, Christians make that trade. We often mess up and try to pick up the old, heavy burden. But when we repent from sin, we let it drop to the ground again, choosing to continue down the path with our loving Lord.

    Not only are you taking up a yoke in your life, one way or another, you will also learn from somebody, somewhere. If we have learned anything from the age of social media, we have learned how powerful and how easy it is for one person to influence another. A meme goes viral and suddenly middle school kids quote it ad infinitum. A young man who is really good at editing silly YouTube videos gets a new haircut and now you can’t walk through a store or mall without seeing it dozens of times. Or we see a middle-aged adult share a “life hack” or whatever that is supposed to be some health secret. (Remember the “raw water” trend that popped up for a few years around 2015-2019?) More serious examples include isolated individuals who watch social media for an incredibly unhealthy number of hours, weeks, months, or years, and decide to hurt themselves or others with some action (surgical, sociological, political, or violent) they have convinced themselves to take. My point is, you are going to learn from somebody anyway. And what you put your mind on, you become. Preachers often use the phrase, “You become what you behold,” and that is true.

    Since you are going to learn from somebody anyway, why not learn from Jesus? Why not learn from the best human being in the history of humanity? The call to learn is right there in Matthew 11:29. He wants to teach you. Will you not learn from Him?

    We can learn from Jesus by following Jesus in the overall style of life he chose for himself. He told us this in John 10:10, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

    Let’s learn from Jesus. Let’s see what HE did so we can see what to emulate.

    In the coming weeks, we will talk about individual spiritual disciplines as practices we can utilize to realistically participate in God’s plan for our transformation. The spiritual disciplines include reading the Bible and prayer, as you might expect, but they also include times of (healthy) solitude, living simply, living sacrificially, service to others, confession of sin, celebrating what God has done in your life and the lives of those around you, and worship.

    “Ours is an undisciplined age. The old disciplines are breaking down . . . Above all the discipline of divine grace is derided as legalism or is entirely unknown to a generation that is largely illiterate in the Scriptures. We need the rugged strength of Christian character that can only come from discipline.”-V. Raymond Edman

    This series of posts about the spiritual disciplines has concluded. Here are direct links to the rest of the posts:

    For further reading:3

    • Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
    • Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life
    • Mason King, Spiritual Disciplines: How to Become a Healthy Christian
    • Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
    • Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives4
    1. “What are the spiritual disciplines?” GotQuestions.org, https://www.gotquestions.org/spiritual-disciplines.html, accessed August 19, 2025. That website is a great resource. ↩︎
    2. Best known for his book Orthodoxy, which is easily available online, Amazon Kindle, in paperback, etc. ↩︎
    3. Notice I am not posting links. These are simple recommendations. I won’t be making money off of affiliate marketing with this post. Although if you’re reading this and are interested in asking me to review your book…….. 🙂 ↩︎
    4. If you only have the budget or time to read one of these, pick Foster or Willard. ↩︎

  • On the Need for Discipleship, Part 1

    There are no Christians who are not disciples. To be a Christian means to be a disciple.

    “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” — Matthew 28:19-20 (CSB; emphasis added)

    A disciple is a follower of Jesus Christ who is in the active, intentional process of learning to think, feel, and act like a Christian. (Reminder: the term “Christian” means “follower of Christ”.)

    What we’re talking about in this post is that we have basic needs with regards to discipleship. This is big picture stuff to introduce to you our needs as Christians. We need to pay the cost of discipleship daily. We also need to live in light of the reality of our connection!

    We need to follow Jesus as His disciples. He calls us to do exactly that. And it really does meaning something!

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor up through World War II. In his act of Christian rebellion against the Third Reich in Nazi Germany, he was arrested by the authorities and ultimately martyred by the Nazis. He wrote this lengthy quote in The Cost of Discipleship:

    “Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

    Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘you were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

    Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘you were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.

    The apostle Peter received two calls from Jesus to follow him. His first call was at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, to give up his vocation and travel (which required departing from his family for long periods of time). That call is not cheap or easy.

    Peter was called a second time after Jesus’ resurrection, on the morning that Jesus fed the disciples fish. John 21 records that morning’s events. In that account, Jesus cooked the fish the disciples had caught, He restored Peter, and concluded His remarks in John 21:22 with “follow me.” Peter’s obedience to the call would result in giving all, again. Jesus said this in John 21:18-19, “‘Truly I tell you, when you were younger, you would tie your belt and walk wherever you wanted. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will tie you and carry you where you don’t want to go.’ He said this to indicate by what kind of death Peter would glorify God. After saying this, he told him, ‘Follow me‘” (emphasis added). Peter’s call would result in his death.1

    Jesus’ whole-life call is not limited to Peter, but extends to all believers! Mark 8:34-38,

    Calling the crowd along with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me and the gospel will save it. For what does it benefit someone to gain the whole world and yet lose his life? What can anyone give in exchange for his life? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

    “Take up your cross” is a BIG call. Trusting Jesus is nothing as limited as a Sunday morning worship time, nor is it as simple and easy as registering for a political party. It is a call for all His followers to give all of themselves to all of Who He is and what He does. Jesus calls you to give 100% of yourself to Him; your time, your talents, your treasure.

    It is a call for all His followers to give all of themselves to all of Who He is and what He does.

    Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC said, “Christians are people who have real faith in Christ, and who show it by resting their hopes, fears, and lives entirely upon him.”

    Dever also remarks:

    “The Christian life is the discipled life and the discipling life. Yes, Christianity involves taking the road less traveled and hearing a different drummer. But not in the way that Frost and Thoreau meant. Christianity is not for loners or individualists. It is for a people traveling together down the narrow path that leads to life. You must follow and you must lead. You must be loved and you must love. And we love others best by helping them to follow Jesus down the pathway of life. … Christianity is personal, yes, always!—but not private. You need to be involved in the lives of others, and you need them in yours. God is the only one who doesn’t need to be taught!” (Emphasis added.)

    God’s plan for your involvement in the lives of others, and for others’ lives to be involved in yours, is the local church. If you are a Christian, you need to be in a local gathering of the body of Christ, aka the church. (I don’t necessarily mean a brick-and-mortar church building, though those are certainly helpful resources we can use to bless and benefit our faith community and our geographical communities, too.)

    Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching” (emphasis added). Notice the phrasing of continuous action? “Not neglecting.” In other words, “let us continually choose to gather together” for encouragement and provoking one another to greater heights of love and broader impacts of good works.

    Let’s back up to Genesis 2:18 for a moment. That verse says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him.’” While this verse is primarily about marriage, it also points to a truth found all over Scripture and science: human beings are communal creatures. We weren’t meant to live life isolated in our bedrooms or living rooms, relegated to doomscrolling or watching endless screens of Netflix shows or movies. We also weren’t meant to live for ourselves, perhaps doing many activities and “to heck with everybody else”! We were meant for real connection to one another in our basic humanity (Gen 2:18). As Christians, our bonds to one another in Christ give more and eternal reasons to be connected one to another.

    Some biblical pictures of who Christians are will help us think about discipleship.

    -Co-workers with God. 1 Cor 3:9, “For we are God’s coworkers. You are God’s field, God’s building.” He has brought us into the work of His Kingdom!

    -Stewards. 2 Tim 2:2, “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” I’m reminded of the Parable of the Talents from Matthew 25. We have been given something to use in God’s mission to seek and to save the lost. I won’t go over the spiritual gifts of 1 Corinthians 12, et al, here. But they aren’t simply skills we have developed or deserve praise for. God gives us everything we have and we steward all of it to His glory and for His mission.

    -Soldiers. 2 Tim 2:3-4, “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in the concerns of civilian life; he seeks to please the commanding officer.” There is a cost. But there is also a great goal of seeing men & women saved, and the finish line is being in Jesus’ presence for eternity. Soldiers look out for fellow soldiers.

    -Athletes. 2 Tim 2:5, “Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” Athletes train, strive, and agonize over mastery of their focused area. An athlete aims for excellence. The best athletes experience and utilize humility, learning, and repetition. Ultimately, the athlete does all that so he can put himself out there and give his best, leaving it all out on the field, holding nothing back.

    -Farmers. 2 Tim 2:6, “The hardworking farmer ought to be the first to get a share of the crops.” Farmers are patient workers who rely on God to give the growth. We do the work of plowing, planting, watering, cultivating, pruning, and ultimately harvesting. The best farmers, the happiest farmers, the most productive farmers all have something in common. They work together!

    –Body. Rom 12:4-5. 1 Cor 12:12f. With Christ as the head (Eph 1:22-23), we–His body–follow. We share a common and unbreakable bond through salvation and through the Holy Spirit.

    In today’s post, we covered the need and the reality of connection, as well as the cost of following Jesus. In next week’s post, we will get into influence and discipleship more specifically.

    1. Church history tells us Peter’s martyrdom was in Rome, hung on a cross. He requested of his executioners that they hang his cross upside-down since he was unworthy to die as Jesus died. This account of the specific detail regarding an upside-down cross is from a questionable source, but multiple early writers attest to Peter’s martyrdom, including his martyrdom in Rome “with a passion like that of the Lord” (Tertullian). See Clement of Rome’s Letter to the Corinthians, Dionysius of Corinth’s writings, Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. ↩︎

  • Saints Gone Before podcast and the Protestant Reformation

    2017 is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. (That’s if we’re basing it on 1517, the traditionally-understood official start of the Reformation. There’s a case to be made that it started earlier, but that’s neither here nor there for the purposes of this post.)

    My last post here announced a new podcast from myself and Jonathan McCormick. It is called “Saints Gone Before,” and is available on a variety of podcast apps. You can find it on Podbean, Google Play, iTunes, Blubrry, Player FM, and any podcast app that aggregates from those (like Podcast Addict). It is an audiobook style podcast where we read Christian texts from across the history of the church. We release a new episode every Monday. The most recent episodes began our presentation of Reformation-era texts. The latest is our first text from Martin Luther, the best-known of the Protestant Reformers.

    If you have any interest in that period in history, I hope you’ll give these episodes a listen. You can either subscribe like you would with any other podcast, or you can find the full list laid out on this page of my website.

  • New podcast announcement!

    Jonathan and I enjoyed making An Oral History of the Church so much, and we saw a significant gap in available podcasts, so we decided to launch a second one. It’s called “Saints Gone Before,” and is available on its own page (click here) or via iTunes, Google Play, Player FM, Blubrry, Podbean, and any other podcast feed that pulls from any of those sources (like Podcast Addict).

    Saints Gone Before is a weekly audiobook-style podcast in 10-20 minute episodes where we read Christian texts from across the history of the church. Some readings will be sermons, others will be letters, or hymns, or prayers, or books. It’s all the primary sources, without any of the commentary. New episodes debut every Monday morning.

    Bibliographic data is also included in case you’re interested in reading the text yourself. Some folks like to simply read it for themselves; others enjoy following along as the speaker reads it out loud.

    If you would like us to feature a particular text on the podcast, you can leave a comment on this post, hit us up on our Facebook page, or e-mail us at churchhistorypodcast (at) gmail (dot) com! We might just include it in our schedule.

  • New Volume of An Oral History of the Church!

    If you followed along with Jonathan and I over the last 7 or 8 months, you know that we launched a podcast that performed a study of the campus sale/relocation of Gateway Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention (nee Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary). That study finished at the end of September.

    But now, a new study rises! (Insert sufficiently dramatic music) Volume 2 of An Oral History of the Church is in pursuit of the question, “What is history?” We look at all things historiography – how history is considered, how it is written, and how it is ultimately applied to ethics (both political and personal).

    Episode 1 is available here by direct download or here on YouTube. Please subscribe so you can make sure to get easy access to every episode. You can grab it via iTunes, most other podcast apps, and of course our YouTube channel.

  • Episode 13 of An Oral History of the Church, Volume 1

    We’re back with a brand new addition, an interview with GGBTS alumnus Marc Jantomaso! Marc is a church planter whose story demonstrates the kind of grounded, hard-working ministry you can see exhibited in seminary student after seminary student. We think you’ll enjoy his story.

    The audio on this episode is a bit different. We recorded Marc by phone, and we also recorded our bookend commentary by phone, so you’ll notice a difference this time around.

    Permalink (mp3): http://oralhistoryofthechurch.libsyn.com/vol-1-ep-13-marc-jantomaso

    YouTube (with pictures!): https://youtu.be/45yHNEvKp0Y

    The next episode is with Dr. Brice Butler, two-time alumnus of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and senior pastor of Tiburon Baptist Church, a congregation local to the Mill Valley campus recently sold by the seminary. That episode comes out on Friday, August 26th. You’ll want to subscribe on iTunes, or another podcast app, or on YouTube so you don’t miss the final set of episodes in this study!

  • An Oral History of the Church – Now with video tours

    Jonathan and I are back with a brand new addition (and not just Vanilla Ice lyrics references)! We decided to add to the quality of the oral history with a bit of visual history, as well. Specifically, we’re releasing video tours of the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary’s Mill Valley campus just prior to the campus relocation occurring this summer. This first video is a short tour of the PhD/DMin/ThM study office carrels, located on the mezzanine level of the library building at 201 Seminary Drive, Mill Valley, California.

  • Episode 4 of An Oral History of the Church

    Jonathan and Adam sit down with Dr. Lisa Hoff, Associate Professor of Intercultural Studies at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. In this episode, Dr. Hoff shares what it was like to come to GGBTS three times, as a student, as a staff member, and then as faculty. Dr. Hoff shares with us a unique perspective as someone who inherited an institutional culture that cares about its students, and which she models today.

    The direct download link is here.

    Or you can listen on YouTube.

  • A Visual Primer Bibliography on Church Discipline

    A Visual Primer Bibliography on Church Discipline

    The following is a list, in no particular order, of 12 helpful books that discuss church discipline or elements of it. This list is for layperson and minister alike, with some focusing primarily on the theoretical/biblical study of the issue, while others focus primarily on the practical, and some include a helpful dose of both.

    If you can only read one of these books, read Ken Sande’s “The Peacemaker.” If you can read two of them, add Jonathan Leeman’s “Church Discipline” (it’s very short; it’s more of a handbook). If you can read more than that, but don’t know where to go next, hit me up in the comments and we can talk about which one might be best for you and your needs.

    Several of these are available in Spanish, as well.