Be Not Frogs, but Become "Retoold Lizards"

Quotation from p. 169 in Ministry in the image of God : the trinitarian shape of Christian service / by Seamands, Stephen A., 1949-  

In 1989, at the Lausanne II Congress on World Evangelization in Manila, Lee Yih, a businessman from Hong Kong, contrasted how frogs and lizards acquire food. “The frog just sits and waits and lets the food come to him. As soon as an insect gets close enough, all a frog has to do is stick out its tongue and get it. If a lizard behaved in the same way, it would soon starve. It can’t afford to sit and wait. It has to go out into the world where the food can be found and hunt.” Yih went on to suggest that many full-time Christian workers are like frogs. They go off to Bible school or seminary, get a degree, become a pastor or join a staff at a church, and they expect that somehow the people around them will know that they are in the business of meeting spiritual needs. Soon their froglike habit of waiting for others to come to them becomes deeply ingrained. 

Several years ago, guest lecturer Donna Hailson challenged the students at our seminary not to allow this to happen to them: “We can’t just sit in our cozy little God boxes waiting for the world to beat a path to our doors,” she insisted. “To reach the world, the Church has to break out of walls, go out of doors and lead people to the path—the narrow path that leads to life.” Given the increasingly post-Christian environment of North America, she challenged those whose training and experience have taught them to be ministerial frogs to become “retooled lizards.”

‘Melted Ice Cream’ Grace

OBSERVATION FROM A SEMINARY STUDENT

(By Dr. Bill Bouknight - 2012, Confessing Movement Newsletter)

Recently I had the privilege of speaking at a United Methodist seminary. My subject was: “Five Truths about Evangelism that I wish I had learned in Seminary.” Those five truths are the following:

• All people can be divided into two categories: lost and found, and some of the lost are in every congregation.

• The Word of God is the only real authority we have.

• Until a person faces his sin, he/she cannot really comprehend or receive the grace of God.

• The Gospel always has a cross at its center.

• A Bible-based, Spirit-filled sermon has enormous, mysterious power.

A few days later I received a letter from a seminary student who was in that audience. Here are a few of his comments:

“I regret to say that today was the first time in my seminary experience that words like ‘sin,’ ‘Hell,’ and ‘the lost’ have been employed. As a consequence, I think we have celebrated grace that a favorite pastor of mine termed ‘melted ice cream.’

In short, today was the first time since I have been at seminary that the Gospel of Christ was acknowledged unapologetically, and for that I am most grateful.”

I am curious if other seminary students at United Methodist seminaries are having similar experiences. Are you being taught the cross-centered Gospel or some other version? John Wesley listed the following as essential doctrines of the Christian faith: original sin, the atonement of Christ, justification by faith, the Holy Spirit, the new birth, Christian assurance, and holiness. Are you being taught those doctrines? Please email your reaction to me at bgbouknight@aol.com I promise to keep your names confidential.

To Join the Dance You Must Get Close

"The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us; or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in the dance. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire; if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry."

C.S. Lewis

as quoted in Ministry in the image of God : the trinitarian shape of Christian service / by Seamands, Stephen A., 1949-

God's Indwelling

"The whole of our consciousness is meant to be interpenetrated with the consciousness of His indwelling life and mind and will and love, even as the air in summer is transfused with sunshine." 

J. SIDLOW BAXTER

quoted in Ministry in the image of God : the trinitarian shape of Christian service / by Seamands, Stephen A., 1949-

Iron in the Fire, Fire in the Iron

Sadu Sundar Singh of India often used the example of the iron a blacksmith places in a red-hot coal fire. Soon the iron turns red and begins to glow like the coals, so you can truly say that the iron is in the fire and the fire is in the iron. Yet we know that the iron is not the fire and the fire is not the iron. When the iron is glowing, the blacksmith can bend it into any shape he desires, but it still remains iron. Likewise, he emphasized, “we still retain our personality when we allow ourselves to be penetrated by Christ.”

Sadu Sundar Singh, quoted in Nick Harrison, ed., His Victorious Indwelling  (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), p. 108. Citation from Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God