A couple weeks ago, my wife (Erin) and I just finished remodeling the sun-porch that is connected to our garage. When we bought our house, the entire room was painted in the same, dull barn-red color as the outside of the garage, and the wall of screen-windows was boarded over with giant sheets of plywood. (I assume the plywood was hung to keep out the Michigan winter cold…but I am still struggling to come up with a good explanation for the choice of color. Maybe it was all they had to work with? Who knows.)
We planned a little celebration BBQ cookout to thank some of the people who had supported us financially during my 10-month ministry internship at Kensington Church, and so this was the motivating force for us to finally get this project done. We stripped down the plywood, replaced the damaged old screens, and picked out a nice, bright, neutral off-white color to lighten up the dark, dreary barnhouse effect created by the old red. After changing into some “good” (read: grubby) painting clothes, we cranked up the radio and set to work “transforming the space,” as they might say on one of those house-flipping shows on HGTV. Not that I ever watch that channel… (Busted.)
Painting a wall is great way to end up spending some solid time in reflective thought. And about halfway into the first coat of new paint, I got boomtowned pretty good. A big focus on staff here at Kensington recently has been on discipleship, which is a really fancy church word for the growing process in our relationship with Jesus and how much he is changing us into a replica of himself.
Discipleship with Jesus hinges on 2 really important questions: What is God saying to me, and what am I going to do about it? There is a cool little tool/discipleship philosophy called “3DM” that we’ve been using in groups to guide our conversations about this and help us learn to be more intentional makers of disciples like Jesus tells us at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. There are lots of great visuals that 3DM uses to help us navigate the intimidating waters of disciple-ing ourselves and others in the way of Christ, but it occurred to me that even though the visuals themselves are new, the principles and ideas that they serve to illustrate are timeless truths as old as creation itself. And really, when it comes down to it, no matter how flashy and current the packaging is on discipleship, the process itself is the same as it ever was.
As I painted that sun-porch wall with my wife one sunny summer afternoon, these thoughts invaded my brainspace. My mind began making a connection between the tried-and-true Principles of Painting and the timeless truths of Divine Discipleship. You see, people have been painting for thousands of years…and disciples of Jesus have been made for thousands of years. (About 2,000 years and counting.) And even though the tools used for painting have changed and grown and developed over that time, the essence of how you go about actually DOING it hasn’t really changed at all. I don’t care if you’re using a brush, a power sprayer, or your FINGERS for cryin’ out loud, you are still going to end up changing into some grubby work clothes to get started and getting on your hands and knees to make sure every crack and corner has been properly plastered with a plentiful portion of paint. (If you’re reading this out loud for some reason, feel free to wipe the spit off of your screen now.)
The tools and the colors and even the walls might change, but as the great philosophers Led Zeppelin so wonderfully sang, “the song remains the same.” So it goes in discipleship with Jesus. No matter what book or small group guide or weekend seminar you use to help you grow to be more like Christ, how well you do at it is still going to boil down to the same things it always has:
Am I spending consistent time reading the words of God and the actions of Jesus in the Bible?
Am I carving out regular time in my day to pray? And not only spill my guts to my God, but also take the time to listen to what He might say back to me?
Am I following The Greatest Commandment to love God passionately and love others personally? Where am I intentionally serving the needs of others?
Do I worship God, and thank Him for who He is and what He has done for me? I don’t just mean sing along to some Chris Tomlin songs with the worship band during Sunday service…I mean, REALLY worship God in a way that means something to me? (But don’t get me wrong…singing Chris Tomlin songs is DEFINITELY a top-notch way to worship when the words we sing are meaningful.)
These are the questions I need to ask myself over and over again if I want to live like Jesus, the way I’ve claimed to want to. The packaging we put on these things might change, but in the end the process is the same as it ever was.
We got done painting our sun-porch, and we stepped back to see what we had done. And we saw that it was good. I realized that what makes that room beautiful to me is what makes truth a beautiful thing: a new way of looking at it can make all the difference. And I am thankful for this 3DM process for putting a fresh coat of paint on my relationship with Jesus and helping me see how I can go about the tried-and-true process of discipleship in brand new way.
The BoomTown Blog 