Introduction to Mobilized Weakness

In 1997, over several month period, I went through somewhat of a renewal of spirit. It began with several weeks of frustration about what to focus on in my then upcoming leadership training class. I had previously taught the same group a variety of ministry skills and methodologies, which  I believe were helpful. I sensed that something else was needed,  but I couldn’t put my finger on what.  Still confused, I began reading Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity. In this survey of the contemporary Christian scene,  Alister McGrath calls upon the modern church  to recover what he calls a “devotional ethos”:

Although evangelicalism has a solid core of doctrines, it is not characterized purely by a set of doctrines. The movement also possess a distinctive ethos, an approach to Christian thinking and living that centers on a number of guiding principles rather than just doctrinal formulations. It is not dead orthodoxy, but a living faith.

Evangelicalism has always refused to treat “knowledge of God” as something abstract; instead it recognizes it to be something strongly experiential and personal, capable of transforming both the heart and the mind.[1]

These comments struck me as extremely relevant, having personally spent many years resisting the spirit of the age, but not always embracing God’s Spirit. In my passion for the study of apologetics I have sometimes drifted from the personal side of my relationship with Christ. I will think about the evidence for God’s truth without personally engaging with him. This same tendency seemed to be emerging in my leadership class students. Between quarters, I had given them an assignment to write a paper detailing their personal strengths and weaknesses. As I reviewed their  self-evaluations, I observed several things that disturbed me and suggested that our church may be  off-course.  People seemed to be substituting their ministry work for a relationship with God. After awhile, they would get  overwhelmed and defeated, and some eventually developed an aversion to ministry—especially taking responsibility to help with personal discipleship. In many of their papers there seemed  to be unbiblically low expectations about spiritual growth  and an overall lack of hope. In short, there were faith problems—an overemphasis on the human role in sanctification and service. God’s role was underplayed. Furthermore, many of the students seemed to value task skills (like counseling and teaching) more than  godly character and spirituality. They  had a commendable desire to be equipped as workers, but they lacked a supernatural, vertical (godward) element in their approach to Christian ministry.

In one of his Christian Principles training classes, Gary DeLashmutt said something that sums up very clearly what I think the Lord had been showing me over a several month period, “To be Christ-centered means we are personally devoted to Jesus Christ as our first priority, even more than to doctrine and practice.  Nothing, not even these things, must usurp knowing him better, loving him more, becoming more like him in character, and following him more closely.” This book is a attempt to bring in that vital element into a highly trained and motivated group that has at times not denied, but underemphasized the vertical dimension that is cultivated through prayer. The stakes are high, as John Bunyan wrote, “Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.” Though it won’t be easy, and never complete in this life, may we strive toward the former. The following articles are written to help us strive.

Mark Bair

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