Like many American male youths, I was
taught that grown men don’t cry. If that’s true, then I’m a royal failure.
Several things make me weep. I weep when I see other human beings grieving
because of tragedy (my eyes brim with tears whenever I’m at a funeral). I weep
when my heart is broken. I weep when I watch romantic films, especially at the
end. (I cried for a solid week after I saw The Titanic. Call me a
“sentimental fool,” if you like.) And I weep whenever I see a Biblical story
portrayed on film, including animated ones.
I also break into tears when I sense the
Lord’s presence. This often happens when I hear the pure simplicity of a simple
group of Christians singing to their Lord from their hearts. I used to be
embarrassed about shedding tears during such times (I also know how to hide it
quite well). I guess I’m still learning to accept it. (I’ve learned that tears
are a precious gift. They open up our hearts, wash away resentful feelings, and
soften our wills.)
At the age of seventeen, I moved to Tampa
and enrolled in college. During my university years, I tasted something of the
experience of the Body of Christ. I met a small group of Christians who had the
same hungry heart for the Lord as I had. We spent a great deal of time
together.
Dorm-room prayer meetings were a common
occurrence. Sometimes, we would pour out our hearts to the Lord all night. We
shared our struggles, our victories, our discoveries, and our endless
questions. Many a meeting we would sing till our throats were horse.
And sometimes I would weep.
At the time, I didn’t know what we were
experiencing. But looking back, it was an organic experience of church life in
techno-color.
A few years later, we discovered that each
of us had played the same disenchanting tape of traditional church experience.
So we formed an on-campus organization where we attempted to fill in what was
missing.
Under the banner of a campus-approved
Christian organization, we held a weekly Bible discussion group that drew
people from a slew of distinct theological traditions.
For some, these open discussions turned
into an exercise in abstract Biblicism and arcane academic reflection. For
others, they were no more than a religious free-for-all where others got roped
into endless (and mostly fruitless) debates over a variety of theological
minutia.
To my mind, they represented a profitable
learning experience. They taught me the immense benefit of having an
“interpretive community” to provide a rich and nuanced understanding of the
Biblical text.
Some people have the idea that only Bible
scholars and theological sophisticates are qualified to rightly understand the
Bible. I certainly believe that Biblical scholarship and theological sophistication
are important components for interpreting the Scripture, but they aren’t the
only components. I learned back then that a diverse group of Christians who
possessed the Spirit of God is another important component. As my friend Hal
Miller once said, “Just as war is too destructive to be left to the generals,
so the Bible is too rich to be left to the scholars.” It requires an
interpretive community.
The Bible discussion group taught me the
tremendous need for “judging all things” by Scripture. It also helped me to
value the insights of other Christians, most of whom stood outside of the safe
parameters of my own theological comfort zone. (Seeing through our own biases
is not a strong suit for most of us. So it does us well when we are stretched
in this regard.) The group also showed me the utter fruitlessness of swapping
“proof texts” in order to win an argument.
But perhaps most important, the discussion
group gave me a taste of the spiritual dynamics of mutual ministry and open
gatherings. They also urged me to try and master the rudiments of politeness
and tact—something that doesn’t get enough air-time in modern religious
circles.
Through our mutual study of Scripture, I
discovered the problem of confusing bookish knowledge with being grasped by the
Word of life. And I came to see the specific tragedy of substituting the
vitality of God’s voice in Scripture with certain rhetorical forms of
argumentation and pulpiteering.
In effect, it was through my experience
with on-campus ministry that the Lord began to reveal to me something of the
oneness of His Body, the principle of mutual ministry, and the importance of
studying/expounding Christ through the Scriptures in a group setting. In
looking back, I can readily see that the Holy Spirit was planting the seeds of
Body life into my heart.
Some years later, I made the surprising
discovery that the times when I was growing the most as a Christian was when I
was outside traditional church services. The strides I made in the Lord
all seemed to take place in home meetings, dorm-room meetings, park meetings,
restaurant meetings, coffee shops, on-campus meetings—all of them occurring
outside church buildings. And oddly enough, all of those meetings were void of
the presence of a professional clergyman.
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