“Knock, knock,” he said, as if I didn’t hear his fist make contact with the door.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I quickly said.

“I’m Paul. You must be Josh,” he replied. “Says so on the door!”

“Paul . . . hmmm . . . where are you from? Do you live here in town?”

“No, I don’t live in these parts. I’m from a town you’ve never heard of.”

“Try me.”

“Okay. I’m from Tarsus. It used to be a place of some influence,” he noted with a fair degree of pride. “Didn’t spend too much time there, though.”

“You’re right. Never heard of it. Well, except for in the New . . . Testament . . . nah . . . never mind, that’s crazy.” I laughed a silent laugh.

An awkward pause filled the moment. Paul wasn’t much to look at. He was short. His back hunched over a bit. He had an odd scar below his right eye, the kind you don’t notice until the light catches his face just right. He squinted a lot, as if he’d left his glasses somewhere and was now trying to fake it. I noticed Paul looking at my desk. I had a few Bibles spread out with articles, commentaries, and personal notes.

Paul’s eyes grew larger.

“Whatcha’ working on?” he asked with genuine interest.

“Oh, I’m working on a chapter for a series on generosity I’m teaching at Otter Creek Church.”

“Really? How long have you been there? You got guts.”
“Yep. I’m studying a pericope from Paul’s letter to Timothy concerning money and wealth. We have been studying the Gospel of Luke and now our turning our attention to generosity. After all, any real discussion in discipleship must include a discussion about our addiction for more.”

“Pericope? That’s a big word that means passage, right? How’s it coming?”

“Do you know something about this letter?” Immediately, I wondered why I asked. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that shared ignorance is still ignorance. And yet, strangely, I had a feeling this guy actually knew what he was talking about. Then he broke the brief silence.

“I know a bit, though others who’ve never met me or Timothy seem to know more. Never quite understood that, to be honest. That’s true of all kinds of subjects.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” I blurted. This was an opportunity I could not pass up.

“All right. Let me guess. You want to talk about what I meant in my teaching about women and their role in the local church? Please tell me you’re not stuck on my words about women being saved through childbearing?”

“No.”

“You’re curious to hear more thoughts on the role of elders and deacons?”

“That’s not it either. Not today, anyway.”

“Want to know more about the false teachers I combat in the letter? I really let them have it!”

He looked giddy.

“Actually, I was hoping you could elaborate a little more about your conviction that the love of money is ‘a root of all kinds of evil.’”

If you want to hear the whole thing, you can click HERE for the entire conversation (see The Art of Generosity).

Gospel. We live in a “tournament of narratives.” The question is not whether one will choose to live in a particular story but rather, which story will we privilege (Jesus of Gospels, Jesus of our Own Image, etc.)? Luke’s first four verses (all one sentence in Greek if my memory is correct) provide a compelling insight into this question. While the gospel is partly Jesus’ atoning death for sins, it is also larger than that for Jesus himself constantly defined the gospel as the announcement that in him, a new way of being human was now possible (through forgiveness and the spirit). A story big and deep enough for everyone to find a place, to find good lines. Fred Craddock makes this point in a sermon when he talks about Scott Momaday and his journey, capturing the heart of Luke 1:1-4.

A Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and poet, also a Professor of Literature with a Ph.D. from Stanford, and a Kiowa Indian. When Momaday was a small boy, his father waked him early one morning and said, “I want you to get up, go with me.” His father took him by the hand and led him to the house of an old Indian squaw and left him; said “I’ll get you this afternoon.” All day long the old squaw of the Kiowa tribe told stories to the boy, sang songs to the boy, described rituals to the boy, told the history of the Kiowa to the boy. How they began out of a hollow log in the Yellowstone River, of the migration southward, telling the story of wars with other tribes, the great blizzards, the buffalo hunt, the coming of the White Man, the pressure and the war and the moving south, Kansas, privation, starvation, diminished tribe, finally Fort Sill, reservation, confinement. About dark, his father came and said, “Son, its time to go.” Momaday later looked back on that experience and said, “I left her house a Kiowa.” Craddock tells that story and then asks the question, “When children leave our church buildings do they leave Christian? Because to be Christian is to be enrolled in the story and anyone who can’t remember any farther back than his or her own birth is an orphan.” Anyone who can’t remember any farther back than his or her own birth is an orphan. When our children leave our church buildings do they leave Christian? Is this where they learn who they are?

INTELLECTUAL. Some people connect to God through the mind. They want critical, well-informed, nuanced, but straightforward communication. They won’t settle for cheap/weak stereo-types (no matter how funny) but appreciate a “deep wisdom” based upon the complex questions that under-gird our world.

RELATIONAL. Many people are “heart” Christians. That is, they connect to God/spirituality through the lens of friendships, marriage, and family systems. These folks point out that God is a relational God, and we are called into community. When they hear a message or read something, they want to know/experience how this connects to their immediate relationships.

MYSTIC. A growing group, this sub-set values mystery, creativity, art, and paradox. They tend to gravitate towards meditation, chanting, readings, and silence.

JUSTICE. These are “hands” Christians. Their primary connecting point to God/Christian faith is building homes for Habitat, caring for the poor, spending life with the marginalized.

With any “typology” . . . there are holes and over-simplifications to be found. But, these make sense to me as I think about upcoming teachings/conferences/writing projects. Because I believe Jesus was fully human and fully God, I believe he shows us what it means to be human for our time and place. A human who showed the world what intellectual genius looks like on the ground (philosophers are still wrestling with his social ethic); what it means to live in deep friendship; what it means to endure the mystery of good and evil and the many paradoxes of being human; and what it means to pray for God’s way to be manifested on earth as it is in heaven (justice: repairing the world).

Two questions.

1. What “type” do you most identify with?

2. What “other” type does your wife/significant other/best friend belong to?

1. REFLECTION. I used to do this last but now I do this first. In the first movement of the creative process, I listen to what God is doing in my life, how different humans around me have provided a glimpse of the divine. I am learning to trust the instincts, voices, and stories inside. This part usually requires a lot of yellow legal pad. I write quotes, stories, Scripture references . . . it just needs to get out.

2. STUDY. After I’ve purged myself of all of my memories and ideas, I get my hands on as many resources (books, DVD’s, articles, journal entries, and blogs) as possible. I literally immerse myself in what dead and living friends have written on the particular project I happen to be working on. For instance, I recently preached about preaching at the Nashville ZOE Conference. I took that prep time as an opportunity to read some of the classic sermons from Lischer’s The Company of Preachers.

3. MEDITATE. It’s critical that following self-reflection and disciplined study, I need to create space for all of this material to solidify. Usually, I go for a long walk, cut the grass, watch baseball, take a nap (though Lucas makes that almost impossible), or I put my running shoes on and take off. Some of the most important connections we make in life happen at a deep level. That is, some of the moments of revelation come when we are not thinking about anything profound in particular. We’re taught to call this the sub conscience. After we’ve reflected and studied, the mind, soul, and heart need time to get into a cadence of coherence.

4. CREATE. The hardest part for sure. The part many procrastinate until the last possible hour. This is the moment where the skin is placed on top of the skeleton, walls are placed over the frame. Up to this point, all I have are a bunch of stories, insights and sound-bytes. First, I put at the top of the page: “This teaching/sermon/essay/chapter is about ___________.” This will be my compass. Second,I always write an outline with transition sentences (the hardest thing to do in writing). After a break, I put the outline next to my computer and I type, one letter at a time the words I think I’ve been given.

Sometimes the words come with little effort. Most times, I have to fight through cell phone calls, e-mail notifications, SportsCenter cravings, the voice inside all of us that says, “But you are forgetting to ____.”

This is what I do, day after day, week after week. And I absolutely love it.