Colossian Blog

Just as the fall football season launches, we at The Colossian Forum will be hosting our first annual conference at the Haworth Conference Center in Holland, MI, September 20-22. Can a theologically rich conference compete with our national obsession? We believe It can, especially when its theme—Moving from Fear to Hope—addresses the mounting cynicism and despair within our shared public life, overflowing into our closest relationships and faith communities. Scripture speaks of “the hope we have within us” (I Peter 3:15), but at times hope’s pulse is faint amid cultural wrangling and confusion and difficult personal interactions.  So, let’s stir up the hope within us. We invite you to join us for two days as we engage together in the practices of our faith that fuel hope and enable us as Christians to live beautifully and faithfully together. Let’s rediscover a simpler, more profound, discipleship that recreates a Spirit-empowered community that acts like Jesus in the face of post-Christian complexity and conflict. Consider the following reasons to attend our Colossian Forum Conference in September. Grow a deeper understanding of “conflict as opportunity for spiritual growth and witness” Discover a fresh approach for engaging divisive issues within your church or faith community Learn practical skills from others following this new mode of discipleship Engage in joint worship that returns you to the heart of the gospel Renew your vision of hope—a vision built on Jesus Christ alone Take part in a two-hour Politics Forum, where Christian thought leaders will guide our reflections on current political divisions Perhaps the most compelling reason to attend is the conviction that, as believers, we must be of all things, “reconciling people.” Stanley Hauerwas says it so well:  “That conflict is part and parcel of Christian unity means that the unity of the church is not a unity based on agreements, but rather one that assumes disagreements should not lead to division but rather should be a testimony to the existence of a reconciling people.”* While September 20th seems a summer away, our early registration discount will disappear, June 30th.  Venue size limits attendance, so we encourage you to commit now before seasonal activities intervene. Register now for a discounted $125 fee for this two-day experience that includes four meals and an opening reception. Student discounts (50%)  and scholarships are available. Our speaker lineup—including workshop presenters—is not to be missed.  Dr. Richard Mouw, President Emeritus of Fuller Seminary will be both speaking from his personal commitment to pursue peace and the unity we have in Christ. Dr. Mouw emphasizes the “spirituality” that must undergird our efforts toward unity—spiritual traits such as empathy, curiosity, teachability, and humility. How we cultivate these traits through Christian practices is a significant focus of content provided by our gifted cadre of speakers:  Jenell Paris, Messiah College; Mwenda Ntarangwi, Nairobi, Kenya; Michael Gulker and Rob Barrett, The Colossian Forum.  Workshop presenters include Rebecca DeYoung, Calvin College; James Calvin Davis, Middlebury College;  Chris DeVos, The Colossian Forum; Joe Liechty, Goshen College; Trisha Taylor, Counselor; Parisa Parsa, Essential Partners.   Centered strategically within the conference is our Public Forum, Political Division: Moving Toward Hope held nearby at 14th Street Christian Reformed Church. For two hours, the public will join us for this timely conversation.                         You will enjoy Michigan in the fall. Haworth Conference Center is on the campus of Hope College and within a winning football pass to fantastic dining and shopping in Downtown Holland. If you need lodging, we’ve arranged special rates at three local hotels, including Haworth. We look forward to welcoming you in September! Questions? Please email or call  616-328-6016.  * Hauerwas, Approaching the End, p109, as quoted in Forbearance by James Calvin Davis, p17

A year ago, I wrote a prayer letter in response to a surprising outcome of Christians engaging conflict together in the presence of God as an act of worship. Over and over, leaders trained in The Colossian Way tell us that they’re not only discovering the ability to live faithfully amidst conflict, but also how just being together through conflict reveals a deep and abiding loneliness afflicting their lives.    In a spate of recent news articles triggered by a health report, loneliness is back in the spotlight (see e.g., USA Today, US News & World Report, and Comment). In the report, the physiological effect of loneliness is equated to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness is a disease ravaging our nation, churches, and families. Especially concerning is the reality that the primary victims of loneliness are those most awash in an endless stream of digital communication—our youth.  I was struck by these articles, in part, because just the week prior my wife and I confessed to some of our closest friends that one of our deepest spiritual hurts is indeed loneliness. This seems a strange affliction for two people who constantly feel overwhelmed by endless email, tweets, posts, texts, and phone calls. How can we be lonely amidst all this noise? Loneliness, disease, poverty, sickness. These are not words we associate with America or the American church, but they afflict us nonetheless. We feel vulnerable and silly even saying them out loud. Perhaps we’re not the only ones feeling alone—oddballs who need to get it together. According to Jamie Smith’s Comment editorial: “You are alone. Except there are hundreds of thousands of you. You’re not alone in being lonely—not that that makes you any less lonely. Loneliness—often a factor of social isolation—has become a societal epidemic in late capitalist societies. The Centre for Social Justice provides a succinct snapshot in the United Kingdom, for example:       As many as 800,000 people in England are chronically lonely and many more experience some degree of loneliness. 17 percent of older people interact with family, friends or neighbours less than once a week, while 11 percent do so less than once a month. It is linked to cardiovascular disease, dementia and depression and according to some researchers, its effect on mortality is similar to smoking and worse than obesity. One study revealed that it can increase the risk of an early death by as much as 30 percent. In addition to this there is a strong link between isolation and poverty: having two or more close friends reduces the likelihood of poverty by nearly 20 percent.” So, what’s the relationship between conflict (our fear of it and our incapacity to engage it well) and loneliness? My own experience and the experience of hundreds of Colossian Way participants has been that despite ubiquitous digital communication, we are cut off from communion with those we love because of our fear of getting conflict wrong. Ironically, we are most in need of fellowship and friendship at the very places we are most afraid. Hence, we suffer spiritually, emotionally, and even physically from a poverty of friendship. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Mother Teresa said years ago that, “The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.” When asked by an American reporter to name the poorest country she’d visited, Mother Teresa responded, “I have been to many countries and seen much poverty and suffering. Everywhere I go people tell me of their hardships and struggles, and ask for help, and I give what I can. But of all the countries I have been to, the poorest one I have been to is America.” Somewhat shocked, the reporter informed Mother Teresa that America was one of the richest countries and questioned how it could be the poorest. “Because”, she replied, “America suffers most from the poverty of loneliness.” Let’s face it, our engagement with conflict as an act of worship won’t fix the world any more than Mother Teresa’s cup of water for the dying. Yet, as captives of hope we believe these small acts testify to a reality bigger and more beautiful than we can imagine. Even though we only see “as through a glass darkly” these little eschatological foretastes of what will be enable us to participate more fully in the deepest truth of the world, in contrast to the endless news cycle of violence and conflict.  We can say this with confidence because we’ve seen the kingdom break forth already through our Lord’s death and resurrection, and in multiple iterations of that resurrection in our own lives of worship and witness. As we risk laying down our lives, or at least our arguments, we become a cup of water to a dying world—marking the inbreaking of the new world. And what better way to quench the thirst for relationship hidden at the core of our deepest conflicts.

This post originally appeared on the ACSI blog (Association of Christian Schools International). Thanks to ACSI for the chance to share our passion for faith and science learning! Since the beginning of The Colossian Forum (TCF), we’ve used the conflict between faith and science as an opportunity for virtue formation in the midst of often-heated debate. In Christian schools, this debate takes on added emotional intensity because biblical reliability, historical reality, and human value seem to be in question. It is easier to avoid these pressured conversations altogether or charge into them, guns blazing. Much is at stake when believers engage science in either of these unproductive ways. That is why TCF, along with the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, launched the Faith and Science Teaching (FAST) Project, which focuses on the productive relationships found at the intersection of faith and science rather than on the polarization that often occurs in Christian schools and faith communities. Faith and Science Teaching (FAST) According to project co-lead and director of Kuyers Institute, David Smith: “Teaching FASTly means allowing both faith and science to remain in play, each with its own integrity, neither canceling out the other” (CEJ, 5). Such an approach expands the conversation, allowing other interesting and fruitful questions to be explored, such as: What are the character qualities needed to be a good scientist, a good colleague, and a good learner? What virtues are involved in doing careful lab work, in measuring and writing accurately, in observing well, and in thinking rigorously? Are any of these related to Christian virtues? If so, how do we grow in them? What about collaboration? Since professional science is usually practiced in teams, what virtues are needed for collaboration and how might we teach them? How much time is given in school to considering ethical issues that arise from scientific practices? How about the impact of science and technology on society? How do applied science and technology fit into faith-framed visions of human flourishing and love of neighbor? Is there anything about how science is taught that leads students to beauty, wonder, and gratitude, rather than just task completion, deadlines, and grades? What kind of relationship between the Bible and science do we implicitly model in the classroom? Funded by the John Templeton Foundation, the FAST Project produced a website that offers free faith and science teaching resources, to equip high school teachers to broaden the faith-science conversations beyond Genesis. It guides teachers in the many ways to look at how faith and science intersect. Considering the Intersections of Faith and Science Most often we relate to the intersections of faith and science according to the truth claims each makes about the world and whether the claims conflict or are in harmony. When these claims align, we celebrate the wonders of God’s creative work and our human capacity to explore and understand it. When they don’t seemingly align, Christians often begin from the conviction that since God is the Creator, faith and science cannot, ultimately, conflict. Therefore, any current disputes between the two must be due to human error and sin. This approach encourages a tendency to think that faith and science only interact when they make conflicting claims. It also offers us little remedy for the error or sin that is causing disharmony and provides little help for relating to non-Christians who reject Christianity because it seems to conflict with science. Relating faith and science based on their truth claims is of obvious importance, but there is a larger context that must be considered if we are to do justice to either faith or science, for both are more than sets of propositions about the world. As Christians, our primary calling is to love God and our neighbors (Matthew 22:36-40), and science is one of the many arenas in which we have the opportunity to live this out. Thinking FASTly means relating faith and science not only according to their truth claims, but also as a way of practicing the virtues called for in these “greatest commandments.” The concept of virtue is a rich area to explore. We often think of virtues as moral traits, like humility, patience, or courage. But the term virtue, in its broadest sense, refers more generally to capacities or abilities acquired through repeated practice to accomplish a particular goal. Considering virtue forces us to also think about practices and our motivations. Read the full post on the ACSI blog.

Here’s one of those surprising pieces that might be skipped because of the headline: The CNN town hall on gun control was a failure. And that's good for our democracy. This is less about the gun control debate and more about celebrating a conversation in which there are no “winners.” In fact, the writer thinks that these types of conversations might be better for our culture. The writer is advocating for conversations marked by “null results” because they have value outside of declaring winners and losers. Instead, she says, “they quietly build up the base on which progress depends.” This understanding is key to the work of The Colossian Forum as we help people stay in difficult conversations and be personally (and powerfully!) transformed in them. Read the whole article on the CNN town hall on gun control. Thanks to Lou Huesmann, a partner in The Colossian Way, for alerting us to this article and crafting this intro.

As we reflect on Jesus’ death and resurrection, my thoughts go to his disciples and their wild hopes to reign with the Messiah—hopes grievously dashed on Good Friday. The disciples were as ideologically diverse and divided as we are today, and they wanted power and victory to support their own priorities and agendas. Jesus, in obedience to God and through the power of the Holy Spirit, does something utterly new. He pours out his life for love. Forty days later, those same disciples gather together—hiding, afraid, and probably still divided—and something new happens to them, too. The Holy Spirit comes upon them and empowers them to proclaim and embody the good news. They become united to the cause of Christ. Today, at this particular cultural moment, so many of us are afraid that everything is coming apart. So many of us are arguing to protect what we have, what we believe, and what we love. We all believe, and argue, that ours is the right way and that Jesus is on our side. But Scripture shows us that the life that Jesus offers us is deeper than that. He doesn’t argue ideology or promote one political platform over another. He presents his own politics, and it’s the politics of the Trinity. Rather than power against power, this “politics” is characterized by an eternal and delightful self-giving love. Jesus does not just tell the truth about God’s love—he embodies it. His goal is not to win arguments protecting the truth—rather, he lays down his life so that the world might know and love God. Through self-giving love he demonstrates that he is from God and that he and God are one. He invites us into the eternal and delightful love of the Trinity. The love of the Trinity cannot be stopped by hateful division, fearful darkness—not even death. What if we were to live together that way? What if we were to love each other—love those who disagree with us—that way? What might happen? What new thing might break forth? What good news could we share? I can think of a thousand rebuttals to every one of these questions. Over the past seven years at The Colossian Forum, I’ve heard them all. I’ve thought them all myself. Like Peter, I follow Jesus to the courtyard, but then I turn away. I don’t want to follow where he is going. It seems insane. What good can it do? And I deny. But Jesus doesn’t give up on me. He lets my denial crucify him once again. But my betrayal doesn’t stop the love between Father, Son, and Spirit. I am still invited into the life of the Trinity. Jesus reflects “the politics of the Trinity” when he turns to me and asks, do you love me? Feed my sheep. Do you love your neighbor? Feed my sheep. There are so many lost, fearful sheep right now! So many people are afraid that everything is coming apart. So many of us are fighting to protect what we have, what we believe, and what we love. On Good Friday Jesus demonstrates that he doesn’t need to be defended. The church doesn’t need to be defended. Church doctrine doesn’t need to be defended. We don’t have to be afraid that the truth of the gospel will be lost by those who get it wrong. Rather, we are called to obey, follow Jesus, and lay down our lives and love both our friends and enemies. It’s a hard message—one that’s easy to walk away from through denial or distraction. Ultimately, it’s a message of the self-giving, delightful love of the Trinity—the politics of a new kingdom. My prayer is that together we will begin to embrace and embody this hard but joyful and life-giving message.

A church crisis strains the whole congregation. There are no techniques for quickly easing those strains. The Colossian Forum takes a long view on these painful situations, focusing not on the quick fix but the opportunity for renewed discipleship. Step 1: There is always a path of faithfulness The first thing to remember is that there is always a path of faithfulness before you. While you work on the problem facing you, continually ask, “What might faithfulness to God look like right now?” No matter how messed up and hopeless things seem, God has given you everything you need to be faithful to him. Seek that out. The Sunday school basics are especially true in a crisis. Step 2: Look for how to be faithful to one another Take a deep breath and see if there is a space in the chaos for rebuilding broken relationships. Seek out those with whom you disagree. Pursue the virtues that build unity: humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, and love (Ephesians 4:2). Crises are usually filled with the deeds of the flesh—impurity, enmity, strife, jealousy, rage, and divisions—rather than the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:19-23). Now’s the time for adopting Christ’s pattern of valuing others more than oneself (Philippians 2:1-11). Step 3: Look to the future Crises shine a spotlight on our brokenness. As uncomfortable as it is to see our dark side, we are reminded of God’s commitment to transform us more into the likeness of Christ. As your church is tarnished by half-truths, gossip, and power plays, be willing to let God see how ugly and destructive fleshly instincts are. Learning this anew won’t by itself re-form your character, but it can re-energize the journey of discipleship. As the pressure of this crisis eases over time, don’t just sigh in relief and return to life as usual. The next crisis looms. Use the lull between crises to take up the spiritual disciplines that God has provided to become the kinds of people who can engage the next one better. A church crisis can be disheartening, but it can also bring us face-to-face with God’s call to be transformed. By God’s grace, today’s mess might lead to a better handling of tomorrow’s mess. Not just by learning new crisis management techniques, but by renewing a commitment to the basic Christian practices: worship, prayer, Bible study, giving, self-denial, and so on. These are not mere busy work. They are the Spirit’s ways of building up a church that is ready to testify to God’s saving power. As you stumble through today’s crisis, your testimony may focus on God’s forgiveness and healing in the midst of failure. But have hope that God will, little by little, have you soon testifying to how he has enabled you to love one another more truly and deeply, especially when tested under pressure.