Christians on Campus

I've been around a lot of college and university campuses over the past 15 years - as an undergraduate student, seminarian, campus minister, and now as a doctoral student.

University life has always been exciting to me. The people there are bright and earnest, pursuing dreams and developing abilities. The exchange of ideas is stimulating. And the monotony of the work-a-day world never really seems to play a role in an environment where people are constantly testing new theories, developing arguments, and advancing scholarship in every area of human knowledge.

That's the academic side of things, anyway.

But what about the place of faith in a modern college or university setting?

This is a complicated issue, which is perhaps best understood by the difference between a "Religious Studies" curriculum and a "Seminary" or "Christian theological studies" curriculum. The former represents an attempt to justify the study of religion within a secular academic environment. The latter seeks to hold on to the traditional place of the theological curriculum within the university without apologizing for the unavoidably confessional aspects of its content.

A place like Duke University has both, of course. One is housed in the Religion Department of Trinity College (the undergraduate College of Arts & Sciences) and the Graduate School. And the other is housed in the Duke Divinity School (which, as you probably know. is a seminary of the United Methodist Church).

The complexity of how Christianity is perceived on university campuses is difficult to describe to people who haven't been around it. And beyond all these faculty and curriculum issues, it extends to the practice of faith.

The very environment of college can be hostile - implicitly or explicitly - to Christian men and women who want to grow in their faith as they grow in other areas of intellectual and social life. That's a shame, and I don't think it has to be that way. In fact, one of the ways I'm trying to help our seminary students at Duke to ground their discipleship as they prepare for ministry is through encouraging participation in Covenant Discipleship groups.

I write about this experience in the new issue of Covenant Discipleship Connection, which is available here. CD groups are small groups encouraging growth in discipleship through the practice of weekly mutual accountability. They've been an important part of my own discipleship for a decade now, and I think they are ideally suited to help college and university students who want to stay grounded as Christians as they explore new academic heights as students.

CD groups are just one avenue, of course. If you have ideas for how to help students focus on faith during their college, seminary, or grad school years, please share!

CD Connection

Steve Manskar has sent out the first edition of the Covenant Discipleship Connection newsletter this week. The Connection replaces the old Covenant Discipleship Quarterly, which was the main publication of the Office of Accountable Discipleship at the General Board of Discipleship. Whereas the CDQ was a print-based quarterly, the Connection will be distributed via e-mail and will be published monthly.

If you have an interest in small group accountability in your own discipleship or (if you are a pastor) in your ministry, I'd encourage you to sign up to receive the Connection. It's free and you can register for it here. You can also continue to access the old issues of the CDQ at the main Covenant Discipleship website.

Covenant Discipleship itself is a contemporary expression of the early Methodist class meeting, and it seeks to nurture faith through mutual witness, support, and accountability. I have written a column on Covenant Discipleship, which you can find here.

News for Probationary Clergy

If you read this blog, you probably know that I am a big believer in Covenant Discipleship. As a contemporary expression of the early Methodist class meeting, Covenant Discipleship offers the church a small group format where we can learn how to 'watch over one another in love' and pursue holiness of both heart & life.

The real force behind Covenant Discipleship now is Steve Manskar, who is the Director of Accountable Discipleship at the GBOD in Nashville. I mention that because Dr. Manskar, along with Dr. Paul Chilcote of Ashland Theological Seminary, will be leading a Wesleyan Pilgrimage Group made up of Probationary clergy in May of 2010. I mention that for two reasons: first, because if you are a probationary elder or deacon (or if you will be one by then), you should really think about going. From my own experiences in England, visiting Christ Church and Lincoln Colleges at Oxford, the Epworth rectory, the New Room in Bristol, and City Road Chapel in London (where Wesley is buried), I can tell you that 'being there' is quite an experience that can connect you to your heritage.

And the second reason to bring this up is because, as this announcement points out, the GBOD and GBHEM are trying to raise money to subsidize the trip for young clergy through a Wesley Pilgrimage Scholarship Fund. It's an expensive proposition, and if you have extra money, donating some could help your poorer brothers and sisters take a pilgrimage that would be formative for their ministry.

A framework for the means of grace

My current column series in the United Methodist Reporter has been looking at the means of grace in Christian practice. I began by laying out how, in a Wesleyan sense, we understand the means of grace. I then went on to look at both works of piety and works of mercy. Works of piety orient us toward the love of God and consist of those worship and devotional practices that help us learn to love God better. Works of mercy orient us toward the love of neighbor. When we engage in them through acts of compassion and justice, we learn how to love our fellow human beings better.

It is crucially important to understand the means of grace as formational practices. We can't learn what it means to live the Christian life simply by sitting alone in a room and privately reading our Bibles. We have to have Christian friends who can help us, pushing us to really live out our discipleship, encouraging us where we fall short, and reflecting God's grace in our lives. In that sense, even those acts of discipleship that we undertake as individuals ultimately find their fulfillment in community.

Thus, I wanted to finish off the column series by offering a practical way to live into the means of grace in the context of community. The absolute best way I have seen that done is through the particular type of small group called Covenant Discipleship, which is an updated form of the early Methodist class meeting. I look at Covenant Discipleship groups as a means of grace in my latest Reporter column. For any person deeply attracted by the prospect of engaging the means of grace daily, but who is not quite sure how to do that, a Covenant Discipleship group offers a great way. It provides the framework necessary to live out discipleship to Jesus daily. And if you are a little numb to the small group craze that has swept the church in the past few years, don't be fooled. CD groups are different than most any other small group model I've seen.

In the past few decades, there have been a handful of pastors and scholars who have examined the purpose and function of Wesley's class meeting in the hopes of reinvigorating Methodist discipleship. The development of Covenant Discipleship is a direct result of their efforts. The primary person behind this work has been Dr. David Lowes Watson. Currently, Dr. Steve Manskar at the General Board of Discipleship is the leading force behind promoting Covenant Discipleship groups in the life of the church. The Office of Accountable Discipleship, which he heads, provides leadership and resources for starting and maintaining CD groups in local churches. If you'd like to find out more, visit the website here.

The four columns in the Reporter series can be found here:

1) "Finding faith through the means of grace"

2) "Transformed through holy habits"

3) "Loving your neighbor a real 'means of grace'"

4) "Covenant Discipleship helps us wait on God"

Channels of grace

My current column in the United Methodist Reporter is on spiritual disciplines as means of grace. This is the first column in a planned four-part series, which will examine the theology of spiritual disciplines from a Wesleyan perspective. A little personal background:

One of the most effective means of growing in grace that I have ever experienced is participation in a Covenant Discipleship Group. I was a member of a CD Group (or some similar type of accountability group) every year from my first year in divinity school until last year. Having that regular relationship of accountability with brothers and sisters in Christ is crucial in battling sin and growing towards Christian maturity. Once you get used to it, it is a real spiritual lifeline.

Then my wife and I moved to Durham so I could go back to graduate school, and I had to leave my CD Group in Searcy, Arkansas, behind. The first year we were here, I met with a friend each week to discuss issues in our faith and pray together. Those weekly meeting were crucial touchstones for my faith as I dove headlong back into the books. But it wasn't the same as a CD Group.

But that's changed in the past couple of months. A number of students at Duke Divinity School are interested in incorporating a Wesleyan spiritual discipline into their lives, and the result has been the formation of two CD Groups - a group of five men and a group of five women. I am helping to resource these groups, in addition to participating as a member myself. And I can't tell you how great it is to be back involved in Covenant Discipleship. I have encountered no better way to receive the grace that sanctifies.

Covenant Discipleship and growing in the faith

Out of all the aspects of our Wesleyan heritage that have fallen by the wayside over the years, I think that serious attention to sanctification through holiness of heart & life may be the biggest loss. Thankfully, it's not a total loss.

Covenant Discipleship is a movement in the church that seeks to address that core need. It is simple, very un-programmatic, and focused on the Wesleyan concept of social holiness. That is, Wesley believed that all holiness (the conformity of one's heart, mind, and soul to Christ) had to be done in the company of others who could help to "watch over one another in love." For Wesley, that meant making the bands and class meetings a fundamental part of the Methodism of his day. And it is those Wesleyan forms of small group discipleship that Covenant Discipleship seeks to emulate.

The basic idea is that you gather in a group of 4 to 7 people and give an account of your discipleship over the past week. You go every week, as an absolute priority. And you agee to abide by a covenant document that the whole group writes together, and which includes a number of "acts of discipleship" oriented around works of devotion, worship, compassion, and justice. There is no need to buy the latest, hot new small group study. There is no need to frantically search for ways to make CD Groups "relevant" to "younger people." You don't even need Powerpoint. All you need is a willingness on the part of the group members to really engage in the work of their own sanctification.

CD is especially interesting to me, because I think it represents a willingness by one of our general boards and agencies (the GBOD) to commit to a form of ministry that is really seeking to embody a Wesleyan approach to discipleship. But at the same time, CD Groups are essentially a grass-roots movement in the church. There is no heavy-handed attempt to impose them from the top-down. They seem to spring up wherever a small group of people in a local church is willing to take its commitment to discipleship to the next level.

Steve Manskar at the GBOD is the Director of Accountable Discipleship. Check out his online resources, and I'm sure he'd enjoy hearing from anyone who is interested in finding more out about Covenant Discipleship.

As I reported previously in this post, Steve asked me sometime back to become a regular contributor to the Covenant Discipleship Quarterly. My column for the Spring 2007 - "The Pursuit of Happiness" - is online now. I'll highlight future columns as they appear. And FYI, the CDQ is a free publication that Steve would be happy to send you if you drop him a line.