The Beautiful Disciplines (eBook)

Introduction

Silence. Restraint. Contemplation.

If we’re entirely honest, these are not words that often find their way into the vocabulary of your average young person. Or, indeed, your average older person. In today’s restless world, where devices in our pocket keep us entirely and unendingly connected, where microwave meals start to become frustrating once they pass the four-minute mark, where a prominent maxim for living is “Get rich or die tryin’”, we don’t have a lot of time for stillness. In a society that aims to shape people not into citizens but into consumers, where the true mark of a successful education is the production of a financially independent young spender, what place is there for a message of restraint? And, in an age in which Google has made us entry-level experts in everything, what need do we have for study?

On the one hand, then, you could be about to read one of the least relevant books ever written. Because this is a book about discipline, for the most part involving all the areas of the self that modern life suggests are redundant. In fact, it’s worse than that; this is a book about Spiritual Disciplines: meaning that we’re looking at those redundant areas through a lens – Christianity – that much of our “progressive” society has left behind. And in fact it gets even worse still. This is actually a book about using the ancient Christian Spiritual Disciplines with teenagers. It’s about introducing ideas such as fasting and solitude to the most connected, most marketed-to generation there has even been. As tough sells go, it seems akin to asking your granddad to take up skateboarding and start listening to hip hop.

Or is it?

Is it instead possible that there is something in the Spiritual

Disciplines for young people; that the ancient methods by which Christians have been drawing near to God for centuries might still have something profound to say to them? Is it even possible that by introducing them to concepts such as retreat, celebration and study, we might be able to unlock for them whole new areas of life and spirituality?

This book has been written out of a passionate belief that the Spiritual Disciplines are not just theoretically good for young people, but that they will be gasped in like oxygen when properly explained. As unlikely as it sounds, I believe that equipping young people with a practical understanding of a wide range of Disciplines will provide them with tangible ways of connecting with God, and enable them to grow significantly in their faith. I have seen young people fall in love with these ancient practices and, in so doing, fall more in love with God.

Brittle

The idea for this book came from countless conversations with youth workers and teenagers, out of which I drew one significant conclusion: modern Christian youth discipleship is producing brittle disciples. That is to say, the work we do with young people in their childhood and adolescence does not seem to ensure that those individuals retain an active faith into adulthood.

I write this as a volunteer youth worker who has helped to run groups and disciple teenagers for close to a decade. I am absolutely a part of the problem. In that role, I have seen some young people move on and grow in their faith: Sarah, who now works for a major evangelistic organization and is full of passion to pass on her faith to the next generation; Jamie, who completely turned his life around and went on a direct route from being an angry, out-of-control teenager to becoming a trainee youth worker himself. We all have our success stories.

We also all have other stories (names changed here): Gemma, who as an attractive and popular seventeen-year-old tried so hard to go against the flow, but one day decided to choose a lifestyle of nightclubs and older men, and never came back; Tom, who left for university as a worship leader and Bible teacher, and came back at half-term with a permanent hangover and a total lack of interest in church. Perhaps because God has revealed some of His heart to us, these stories grieve us the most. It’s those young people whom we lie awake thinking about, wondering whether we could have done more.

In one sense that’s the wrong question, and when I ask it at least, it betrays in me a sense that I am in control. For youth workers, it is so easy to begin to believe – sometimes without even realizing that we do – that it’s all about us. That the eternal destiny of these young people is entirely in our hands. “No-one comes to the Father except through me,” says Jesus in John 14:6, but often we add our own names into that equation. Like Oskar Schindler at the end of Schindler’s List, we beat ourselves up that “we could have saved one more…” Ultimately, we need to remember that salvation, and the long-term relationship between God and another individual, is not our responsibility. Just because Tom and Gemma have turned their backs on God and church, it doesn’t mean that God has given up on them.

As youth workers, then, our job is to join in with what God is already doing in the world: lending a hand where He is already active, where His plans are well under way. Our job, according to Jesus in Matthew 28, is to “go and make disciples”, but we don’t do this in a vacuum – we do it with God standing beside us. Discipleship can perhaps be defined as properly introducing someone to God. That doesn’t mean simply leading them to the door of faith, knocking on it and then running away, but explaining something of the person of God to them, and equipping them with the tools to meet with Him.

Is that what your discipleship looks like? If I’m honest, it isn’t always an accurate definition of mine. If I’m not careful, my version of youth discipleship can often mean I’m trying to turn young people into miniature versions of myself, not of Christ. And perhaps that’s unavoidable sometimes: it’s only right after all that we lead by example; it’s a very positive thing to share something of our lives with the young people we disciple. Yet if my investment in their faith development is limited to doing “stuff together” – reading, praying, projects on justice and evangelism – what happens when I am taken out of the equation?

There is a common problem in youth ministry to do with the “celebrity” youth pastor.1 It’s an uncomfortable truth to accept, but many youth ministries are built more around the charisma and personality of their leader than they are around a communal love of God. In almost all cases this isn’t intentional, but merely a natural side effect of having an engaging and likeable youth worker in the driving seat (and who wouldn’t want that?). The concern isn’t necessarily the charismatic leader, however, but whether, alongside the exciting, fun, up-front aspects of their work, they are also equipping their young people with the tools to develop a faith that endures beyond their input. Because, of course, the problem with personality-driven youth work doesn’t become apparent until the youth worker leaves (or, unfortunately, suffers a moral lapse). That’s when youth groups that have seen hundreds coming through their doors can suddenly melt into nothing. And if our youth work feeds the consumerist paradigm, why should we be in the least bit surprised? Youth-worker-centred youth work of any kind is like putting the bass player on lead vocals: ultimately, young people are going to stop listening to the music.

Just as truly great preaching leaves a congregation in awe of God rather than of the preacher, good Christian youth work creates disciples who are increasingly in touch with God – and not through the middleman of a youth worker. Our aim should be to encourage direct connections.

This book aims to resource you, the youth worker, to equip young people with the tools to build those direct connections with God. It hinges on the idea that the Spiritual Disciplines, which we’ll define in a moment, contain the power to strengthen and reinforce brittle young disciples, and so ensure that their faith endures the leaps, pitfalls and changes of season that lie on the path to adulthood. If that’s a bold claim, then it is made with this caveat: the Disciplines themselves are not magic formulae; each simply draws the individual or community practising it closer to God. It is He who does all the strengthening, reinforcing and deepening of relationship; it is He who changes hearts.

What are the Disciplines?

There is no hidden chapter in some dark corner of the Old Testament entitled “Hezekiah’s list of Spiritual Disciplines”. In fact, a definitive list of the Disciplines simply doesn’t exist. They are the activities of the spiritual life – not just the inner life, but a life lived in constant communion with God. In his 1953 book Thoughts in Solitude, Catholic writer Thomas Merton says, “The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.” The Disciplines are meant not just to be understood, but experienced.

Theologian Dallas Willard defines the Spiritual Disciplines as “what you do to modify your inner person… an activity in my power that enables me to accomplish what I can’t do by direct effort”.2 He seems to be suggesting that, by choosing to engage with God...