I have not yet put a section on doctrinal beliefs or core principles for SeqHim. That will be changing soon. For those that don’t know me, my doctrinal beliefs line up with evangelical protestantism: sufficiency and innerancy of scripture, the virgin birth, sinlessness of Christ, atoning death of Christ, resurrection, sufficiency of grace alone through faith in Christ alone to save, the reality of heaven and hell, and Jesus return. I’ll expand on all of these in the future, but this gives you a sense of where we are. They do matter; and, they do shape everything we are doing.
What I want to exand upon a little more here is our core principles. I’ve come up with five principles that will shape/guide this ministry unless the Lord leads us to change them. I would love your feedback on them!!
Transformation is a Command of God
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2 (NASB)
Most (if not all) of the New Testament can be thought of as speaking to one of four major topics: a) what we were before Christ; b) what Christ has done for us; c) what we are after believing in Christ; and d) what our responsibility is after being redeemed.
This principle focused on this last topic: what do we do now that Christ as redeemed us and given us a new spirit? Do we go back to living the way we once did? No, of course not…we are called to live as we are. We are perfect and righteous in spirit, but our flesh needs to be conformed to this perfect spirit. This is what we mean by “transformation” and what Paul speaks of in Romans 12:2. All other responsibilities of being a Christian can be tied back to this one calling: loving one another; serving one another; worship; giving to the poor; etc. All of this increases in a genuine sense only as we transform. And so, if you can obey God’s command to transform, you will obey the rest by definition.
God Alone Transforms People, But We Have a Role to Play
Does that mean that we can somehow transform ourselves? No! Only the Holy Spirit can transform us. But, in his soverignty and for reasons I do not understand, He has chosen to use us in the process somewhat like a tool. We must cooperate in a sense with the working of the Holy Spirit within us. And, a Spirit-filled Christian wants to cooperate…it’s part of what we get when we are first regenerated. We long for and strive for and work for the day when we are “set free from this body of death”.
What then do we do? I believe there is a very simple model that we can remember, embrace, and act on day-by-day. It is that iterative growth model that I have mentioned before. If you missed that post, you can catch part one here and part two here.
God Expects us to Help One Another Transform
I can’t imagine being obedient to our calling to love one another if we did not help one another in this mission of transformation. What greater expression of love is there than to help someone embrace the gospel and grow in Christlikeness? Giving to the poor is critical, and we should all do it; but, what if we invested more than we do today in people to help them transform to the point where they are even greater givers than we are? Is that not how we exponentially grow (in number and in maturity) the Kingdom. One person helping three others become more like Christ, so they can help three others become more like Christ?
Preaching, Teaching, Small Groups, Bible Studies, Books, Podcasts, and all other forms of “mass” instruction have a significant role to play, but at the end of the day the real work is usually flesh on flesh. It’s person on person helping them practically apply what they are learning to their lives and interpret what the Holy Spirit may or may not being doing in their lives. It’s defeating the lies of the world that cause us to compartmentalize our lives into our “church life” and our “work life” and our “family life”. It’s being able to see “Bible teaching” in the lives of peeople we know the best and the people who know us the best. This is how we ultimately reach the ‘fringe’ and the ‘world’…we must encourage and complement the proclaimation of God’s word with the genuine living out of it and explicit honest interaction with others on it.
Modern Technology Can Be Used for Good, Evil, or neither
My background and career is in technology, so I see first hand how it can be used for good and evil. I also suggest that it can be used to have a neutral effect. And this is as true in the Church as it is in business.
With every technological advancement, people first figure out how to make money off if it; cultures then change as a result of broad adoption; and sometime later, the church eventually comes around to doing something with it to stay “culturally relevant”…whatever that means.
I’m not going to go into all of the nuances of this right now. That’s a series of posts for a later date. But, I will assert that…
- …technology should be embraced as a way to win treasure in heaven just as aggressivly as business embraces it as a way to win treasure on earth.
- …the church has a moral obligation to carefully assess when and how it is used, because it can easily become distracting to the mission of the Kingdom just as the ‘cool’ factor in business can distract from it’s mission of delivering value to shareholders.
Therefore, we will pursue technology aggressivley but only to the extent that it builds the Kingdom in a God-honoring manner.
The Wisdom of a Crowd can be Greater than the Wisdom of a Few
As with the other principles, this can easily be a series of posts on it’s own; but, I will try to concisely explain the intent of this principle. I, and many others, have noticed an accelerating movement for people to use the web to do things and not just consume things. There are many, many examples of this…software development (e.g. open source), finance (e.g. Kiva), publication (e.g. wikipedia, blogs, istockphoto), and social networking (e.g. facebook) are just the tip of the iceberg.
These initiatives, and many others, are successful because technology enables the untapped potential of the amateur crowd. This is a group of people who possess passions outside of their day jobs that are strong enough for them to devote extra time to working with others in their field. They include amateur bird watchers, scientists, software developers, engineers, philanthopists, and many others. And, the quality and speed of their production can exceed that of the “professionals”; e.g. compare Linux (open source) to Windows.
And guess what, this amateur crowd also includes faithful disciple-makers. SeqHim is here to give you, God’s called disciple-maker, a means of working with others to do something as significant as facebook, or Kiva, or wikipedia…only, the significance is for the Kingdom and not for the world. Can such a crowd be used for good or for evil as technology can? Do we have to be careful to protect the integrity of the Gospel and the Kingdom itself? Absolutely! But there is a way forward to gain the productivity of the crowd without sacrificing the integrity of the Gospel, and I will continue to expand on it future posts…praying that many of you will join in the fight and help shape this thing.
Do you want to join the mission? Send me a note (jreeves@seqhim.org); check out the get involved page; pray with us; comment on this post; keep coming back…we’re pressing on and accelerating by God’s grace!
I recently read an editorial on how “spiritual disciplines” should be considered sinful and from the devil…things that are mixed up in pagan rituals and of varying religion. The person that wrote this article railed heavily against those that teach the importance of spiritual disciplines. To be fair, this person’s point was that spiritual disciplines are not necessary components to spiritual formation. And, I agree with this person’s assertion there to the degree that it becomes only about the discipline or the fact that the discipline itself might make you Christ-like. However, I disagree with the assumptions made about those who teach the benefit of implementating spiritual disciplines into our lives. I mean, how can we become transformed to be more like Christ if we do not discipline ourselves to to allow transformation to occur? Yes, only the Holy Spirit truly transforms, but I agree with you, John, that God somehow – and for some reason – has enabled us to be a tool in this transformation. He does not force us, otherwise we would all be perfect in the flesh as Christ is. Yet, God woos us to yield to His transforming power, which allows the Spirit to transform. Okay, so before I get over my head in doctrinal dirt let me just say that I think some of these “spiritual disciplines”, (like prayer, solitude, bible study, tithing and generous giving, etc.) while they have no power to save us and in and of themselves do not transform us, can be beneficial tools used to discipline our flesh in such a way that we yield to the Spirit’s refinement.
Bob, is it helpful to think in terms of a sports analogy?
That is, learning the rules of the game, training between games, and then playing the game all help us transform ourselves into better game-players.
Likewise, learning God’s rules of life (hearing Him better through His Word), training between “life circumstances” (believing Him more by applying strategically determined and intentionally applied disciplines), and dealing with life circumstances and learning from them (obeying Him more by being disciplined by Him).
Is it helpful to observe that the disciplines play the same role as practice/training in sport? Sure, you can go play the game without training…you may even improve at it. But, will you ever excel without it? No way! I’ve developed too many bad habits in my golf swing to not appreciate the value and importance of training before just swinging away!