What I Would Do Differently
SESSION 1: THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF STORY
There are two goals that I hope to accomplish in our time together. First, I hope that you see the role the Gospel of Matthew plays in forming us as disciples. As human beings we are deeply shaped by story, and as you will come to see, the Gospel of
Matthew tells us a larger story about God, the world, and ourselves. To use the language of Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen, the Gospel of Matthew gives us an
“understanding of our whole world and of our own place within it.”1 The second goal of this three session training is to equip you to utilize the small group curriculum that you will be piloting in your small group over the next couple of weeks: Treasures Old and New: The Story of the Bible in the Gospel of Matthew. Through this curriculum you will explore in greater detail what we will be discussing in this training.
This training is part of my Doctor of Ministry project, but it also serves as a pilot training for what I hope will become a regular part of our small group leadership training program which we are calling, “Thrive.” This training is part of a larger training process—each training addressing an aspect of our mission statement: “Building
relationships, seeing Jesus transform lives.”
In this first learning community, we will focus on three things:
1. The Transforming Power of Story
2. The Gospel of Matthew and Biblical Theology 3. Biblical Theology and Worldview Formation
1 Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 18.
The Transforming Power of Story
Group Activity – 5 min.
• Turn to the person next to you and introduce yourself by using something from your purse or wallet (e.g. driver’s license, library card, kids’ pictures, etc.).
Almost undoubtedly you chose to share a very brief story to introduce yourself to your neighbor. We are “story-shaped” beings. In fact, it is not possible to think of ourselves outside of some larger story.
Consider the last time you saw a movie or read a gripping book (for me, it was the Lord of the Rings trilogy). A good story has rich character development (you know the backstories that contribute to the larger story of the movie). All stories have a rising tension, a climax, and then a falling action and conclusion.2 A great story pulls you into the larger drama.
In every political election cycle, the rhetoric increases, friends and families are sometimes divided, people become entrenched in whatever political camp they associate with. A political party crafts their candidate’s proposed solution to the world’s problems in the form of story.
Stories play a role on an individual level in the day-to-day issues we face as well. If we lose a job, go through a tragedy, or go through life cycle events (e.g.
weddings, funerals), we tend to think of these experiences in light of some larger story.3 In other words, what all this communicates is that we live within a particular worldview—a particular outlook on life, a story that frames the way that we see reality.
This story is referred to as a “metanarrative” a large story that we believe that gives meaning and purpose to our lives.
2 Jonathan T. Pennington, Reading the Gospels Wisely: A Narrative and Theological Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 173.
3 Paul G. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 29.
Listen to what missiologist Paul Hiebert says about worldviews:
Worldviews are not foundational ideas, feelings, and values, but ‘worlds’ that are inhabited—what Peter Berger calls ‘sacred canopies’ that provide a cover of
protection for life under which making homes, shaping communities, and sustaining life can take place.4
You can also think of a worldview as a particular lens through which you view the world. It is the grid through which you interpret events. Let us illustrate this through an activity.
Group Activity
• Show picture of World Trade Center memorial. Ask participants to write down in a few sentences what story comes to mind.
• Provide the opportunity for participants to share their responses.
Each of you nuanced your description of this picture in a certain way. Some of you emphasized freedom. For others, the image evokes the horrific events of September 11, 2001. Even though you are looking at the same picture you are viewing the picture through a particular lens, through a particular story.
A worldview has been described as a “core belief.”5 It is “core” because it always informs our actions.6 Allow me to illustrate. Driving causes some of my ugly side to come out. Let’s say that someone recklessly cuts me off in traffic and my response is anything but a Christian response. We can peel the layers to the core issue of my response by asking the question every toddler is an expert at asking: WHY?
Peeling the Layers
• Why did I respond with unkind thoughts or words?
4 Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 28.
5 Klaus Dieter Issler, Living into the Life of Jesus: The Formation of Christian Character (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2012), 28.
6 Issler, Living into the Life of Jesus, 31–32.
• Because I don’t like it when people break the law and get away with it.
• Why don’t I like it when people break the law and get away with it?
• Because people should get what they deserve.
• Why should people get what they deserve?
• Because that is how life should work. If you obey the rules, you are rewarded; if you break the rules you are punished.
The one incident of getting cut off in traffic can reveal a fundamental core belief—a very transactional legalist approach to life. We can even dig a little deeper:
• Why do I view life in a very transactional, legalist way?
• Because this is how I view authority figures, you break the rules and there are consequences—there is no grace.
• Where does this view of authority figures come from?
• Possibly from authority figures in my childhood.
• A wrongheaded view of God: our relationship with God is transactional, it is about works not grace.
Now hear me clearly, this is not what I believe in my mind. But more often than not, it is what I believe in my heart. It is what bubbles to the surface, and it is something that God is slowly changing in me. However, at this moment, it is my actual worldview and it informs my thoughts and behavior.
Illustration
• Squeeze a water bottle until the water gushes forth. Life’s circumstances can reveal the contents of our heart—our core beliefs.
Dallas Willard in his book, The Divine Conspiracy, speaks about the difference between stated and actual beliefs. Regarding “genuine beliefs,” Willard says,
We often speak of people not living up to their faith. But the cases in which we say this are not really cases of people behaving otherwise than they believe. They are cases in which genuine beliefs are made obvious by what people do. We always live up to our beliefs—or down to them, as the case may be. Nothing else is possible. It
is the nature of belief.7
In other words, what Willard is saying is that our actions always flow from what we actually believe. Is this not what Jesus himself said? “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matt 7:16 NIV).
Group Activity
• I want you to take a moment to go through the same exercise that I just did. Take a recent event where you responded out of the core of who you are—it doesn’t have to be negative. I want you to ask the why question until you can’t ask it anymore. Why did you respond in the way that you did?
This is the level where transformation takes place. In order to be transformed, we want to be transformed by the biblical story. We want what Klaus Issler calls “inner heart formation.”8 We want those deepest beliefs—our core beliefs to be transformed.9 I am not talking about cognitive beliefs (of course we want those to be changed too), but I am talking about those deepest beliefs, the beliefs that gush to the surface when we least expect.
Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen remind us that a larger story is not only responsible for smaller day-to-day decisions; it is also something that is
communicated at a larger cultural level. Oftentimes it is these larger cultural stories that have a great influence on what we truly believe.10 If we are not careful, we may not even be aware of the stories that we are believing. Timothy Keller says that these larger stories (i.e. worldviews) answer three fundamental questions:
“How are things supposed to be?”
7 Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York:
HarperOne, 1997), 307.
8 Issler, Living into the Life of Jesus, 35.
9 Issler, Living into the Life of Jesus, 28.
10 Bartholomew and Goheen, The Drama of Scripture, 19–20.
“What is the main problem with things as they are?”
“What is the solution and how can it be realized?”11
Everyone asks these three questions whether they realize it or not. In order to be an effective witness in the world, it is important that we know some of the
predominant worldviews in our culture and how they answer these fundamental questions.
Group Activity
• Discuss at your tables: what are the most dominant cultural stories around us today?
How would these cultural stories answer these three questions?
Watch
https://thebibleproject.com/explore/how-to-read-the-bible/
The Biblical Story
Lesslie Newbigin, the famous missionary to India, recounted a conversation he had with one of his Hindu friends. His friend recognized that the Bible was—at a
fundamental level—different than any other religious book. He called the Bible a
“universal history.”12 Newbigin says that the Bible, “sets before us a vision of cosmic history from the creation of the world to its consummation…The Bible is universal history.”13 What is this “universal history” that the Bible communicates? What is the story that should shape our core beliefs?
Another way of thinking through the biblical story is through the lens of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. Each of these chapters can be read with two
11 Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work (New York:
Penguin Books, 2014), 160.
12 Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989), 89, Logos Bible Software.
13 Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 89.
particular focuses. Christopher Wright says that, “The proper way for disciples of the crucified and risen Jesus to read their Scriptures, is messianically and missionally.”14 In other words what he is saying is that we need to read the Bible with one eye toward how all of the Scripture points to Jesus (Luke 24:44-49). Through the other eye we need to see that the entire Scripture is about God’s mission to restore humanity. The entire Bible is about God’s grace and “mission” to restore fallen humanity and a groaning world. It is about God restoring his reign, or to use the words of Jesus—the “gospel of the kingdom”
(Matt 4:23 ESV).
We could summarize all that we have discussed so far with the following three statements:
• Everyone believes some larger story (i.e. metanarrative of the world).
• Metanarrative informs our core beliefs (those beliefs that inform our actions).
• Our core beliefs should be shaped by a biblical metanarrative.
14 Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 30.
SESSION 2: THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW AND