Bonhoeffer’s final Christmas letter to fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer, December 19, 1944

Written while held in a Nazi concentration camp:

I have had the experience over and over again that the quieter it is around me, the clearer do I feel the connection to you.  It is as though in solitude the soul develops senses which we hardly know in everyday life.  Therefore I have not felt lonely or abandoned for one moment.  You, the parents, all of you, the friends and students of mine at the front, all are constantly present to me . . . Therefore you must not think me unhappy.  What is happiness and unhappiness?  It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on that which happens inside a person. 

From God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Problem: Jeff's Story - quoted from Robert Marshall's dissertation

Jeff, a neighbor, responded to the invitation to attend church with a resounding, “Not only NO, but…” His wife, Pat, interrupted his outburst by loudly clearing her throat. Jeff continued in a calmer voice. “I attended that church for nearly three years. I liked the worship services. I could understand the pastor. His sermons challenged me. Often he’d say, at the end of the service, ‘Many of you will walk out those doors of amnesia at the back of the church. I call them doors of amnesia because many of you will forget just about everything that I have said this morning. Your lives will not be any more conformed to Jesus’ teaching this coming week than they were last week.’” Jeff continued, “I emailed him one time about that statement. I complimented him on his boldness and asked why he didn’t do something about those ‘amnesia doors’? His assistant emailed back and recommended we join a Life Group.” 

“We tried belonging. We really tried. We needed something. We were transplants. Family and friends, the church we both grew up in, were all back East. We were lonely. And honestly, our marriage was gruesome. But most of the groups we wanted to join were closed to newcomers or focused on subjects we were not interested in. In our desperation, we did get involved with one group for a while. What a waste of time! Truthfully, Pat and I got really good at ‘faking it,’ you know, being dishonest. Even though we were fighting all the time, at our group meetings we acted like things were sunny. To me, it felt like that’s what our group expected of its members. No one there seemed to have any problems. I sure was not going to be the only one with a problem. Yes, they all talked about honesty and accountability and transparency, but I never saw it. Anyway, we never felt like we fit into either that group or the church.” 

“You know what helped the most? My VFW. I felt welcomed. I felt like I belonged. They didn’t judge me because I was from another part of the country or that our marriage was falling apart. They were honest with me and expected the same. My VFW buddies would not let me wear my ‘saint’ disguise. If not for them, Pat and I would be divorced. Do you know how comforting it is when someone asks how you are doing and you don’t have to mentally evaluate your response through some church language filter? Isn’t it sad! You go to church and lie so others think you’ve got your act together. Do you remember the story of the flea that eventually limited his jumping height because of the glass lid on the container he was in? After hitting his head so often he quit jumping so high. That church and the small group made me feel like that flea. No, I don’t want anything to do with that church or any church.”

from dissertation "Spiritual Renovation through Accountability: A Contemporary Look at John Wesley's Class Meeting and his Admonition to Watch over one Another in Love" by Robert Marshall, George Fox University

Real Confession

There is a big difference between saying, “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” and saying, “I’m sorry I hurt you. I realize now that it was my insecurity that produced such bad behavior. I have really prayed about this, and I believe God is showing me how I can avoid doing that again. Will you forgive me?” Confession at this level is so countercultural for so many reasons that it is hard to know how to begin to talk about it; however, to stop short of confession is to stop short of the deepest levels of transformation.

Barton, R.Ruth. Sacred Rhythms : Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. IVP Books, 2006.

Power of the Appointment Book

“Early in my ministry I discovered the power of the appointment book for setting apart time for our family. If a church committee proposed meeting on a given night, or if someone called asking if they could see me at a certain time, I would say, 'Let me check my appointment book.' After doing so, if I simply said, 'I’m sorry, we can’t meet then; I already have an appointment,' they accepted it without question. It was as if what was in my appointment book was sacrosanct, something they dared not question or intrude upon. Having learned about the power of the appointment book (for you it may be a Palm Pilot), I began to use it to my advantage by writing down regular appointments with my family in it. This simple practice helped me protect my time with the family and make it a priority.”

quotation from p.51 Ministry in the image of God : the trinitarian shape of Christian service / by Seamands, Stephen A., 1949-

You Are Only Truly You in Relationship to Others

"But make no mistake. Moving churches in the West toward a trinitarian model of church life will involve a major paradigm shift away from our pervasive individualistic ways of thinking. Many Christians have bought into the cultural notion that religion is an individual, private matter and assume they can believe without belonging. We have to say to them, 'When you believed in Christ, whether you were aware of it or not, you entered into the fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and  the fellowship of every other Christian who is a part of that triune fellowship. Now you belong to everyone else who belongs. Your faith may be individual, but it’s not personal except in relationship. In fact, you are only truly you in relationship to others.' When we insist they are connected and call them to concrete relationships and practices that reflect their connectedness, we should expect resistance. Though people long for community, many are unwilling to count the cost necessary for it."

quotation from p.39-40 Ministry in the image of God : the trinitarian shape of Christian service / by Seamands, Stephen A., 1949-

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-

Who Did God Love before Creation?

"All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that “God is love.” But they seem not to notice that the words “God is love” have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love. [Christians] believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else."

C.S. Lewis

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

Authentic Christianity in the Wesleyan Understanding

“Authentic Christianity, in the Wesleyan understanding, is a Christianity of radical transformation.  It has nothing to do with straightening out one’s life, cleaning up damaging addictions, or taking the moral high ground.  These will likely be some of the consequences of that transformation, but they are not the source of it.  Christ alone is that source. When people come to him in repentance and faith they enter a new relationship with God and a new life in Christ.”

 -Daniel L. Burnett, In the Shadow of Aldersgate: An Introduction to the Heritage and Faith of the Wesleyan Tradition, 2006  (quote found in Michael Pasquarello III’s John Wesley a Preaching Life, p. xiii)

Getting into fights

They were married, but since the argument they had a few days earlier, they hadn't been talking to each other. Instead, they were giving each other written notes. One evening he gave her a paper where it said: "Wake me up tomorrow morning at 6 am." The next morning he woke up and saw that it was 9 o'clock. Naturally he got very angry, but as he turned around he found a note on his pillow saying: "Wake up, it's 6 o'clock!"

Life Lesson

What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things.