Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

Lifeshapes

Balanced Life: One More Thought

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I mentioned before that the Lifeshapes triangle is all about living a balanced relational life of UP (God), IN (Body of Christ), and OUT (those who don’t know Jesus or are marginalized/oppressed), and that it is a simple visual tool to remember something that seems to be intuitive across the landscape of churches.

Yesterday I met with someone who again confirmed this kind of thinking in yet another metaphor/image.

He talked about a discipleship tool they use called the “barstool of balance,” and mentioned that our lives (and churches) need to built on four equal-length legs, or the barstool is going to wobble, and may fall over. The four legs were:

  • Spirit
  • Word
  • Community
  • Justice

Or UP (Spirit / Word), IN (Community), and OUT (Justice).

I appreciated his delineation between Spirit and Word, though, because it seems to me that many charismatic churches assume they’re doing “UP” well if they have some visible manifestations of the Spirit’s presence and power, but they are in desperate need of deep Scriptural teaching.

By the same token there are plenty of evangelical churches that assume they’re doing “UP” well when they have great biblical teaching, but are “practical deists” when it comes to the things of the Spirit.

This guy I met with said that we have thus created a false dichotomy where people think they have to choose between irrelevance (become a crazy charismatic) and emaciation (become a boring evangelical).

Thoughts?

Three Spheres of Relationship

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We are learning a lot about discipleship at Christ Church lately. We have been using some tools developed by Mike Breen and others over the past 20 years when he was leading St. Thomas’ Church in Sheffield, England.

They’re called “Lifeshapes,” and initially they seem kind of silly. I was skeptical at first, but as we’ve engaged with them, we’ve found that they aren’t a program we’re running, but a language we’re learning. We have a common language to talk about discipleship together, and people are really growing in their relationship with Jesus. (For more on the big picture of what we’re doing right now, check out these three posts in the Mid-Sized Communities series: Making Disciples / Culture of Discipleship / Our Plan)

One of the things I like about these tools is that they don’t present anything new. Instead they are basically simple ways of conceptualizing and remembering the things Jesus taught and modeled.

For example, one of the “shapes” is the Triangle, which points to our need for robust relationships in three spheres: with God (UP), with others in the Body of Christ (IN), and with those who don’t know Jesus (OUT). This is rooted in Jesus’ own practice and teaching.

This is nothing new, right? You could probably find similar ideas in most church taglines. “Love God, Love Others, Love the World,” or some variation on that theme. It’s intuitive.

Scott McKnight blogged about a new book by M. Scott Boren called Missional Small Groups that points out three features of healthy missional groups:

  • Missional communion — practices of presence (UP)
  • Missional relating — practices of agape (IN)
  • Missional engagement — practices of engaging the community (OUT)

Hugh Halter and Matt Smay say that the “Tangible Kingdom” happens when three spheres overlap: Communion (UP), Community (IN), and Mission (OUT).

Similarly, Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, along with many Reformed church plants are talking about the need for Gospel (UP), Community (IN), and Mission (OUT) in order to be a Total Church.

Or, simply a triangle labeled UP, IN, and OUT. And we learn to think about our lives, our communities, our churches through that lens.

Again, I like the tools because they don’t pretend to be the latest, greatest program to take your church to the “next level.” They simply give articulation to the kinds of practices that disciples of Jesus have done for centuries.