Three Con­verg­ing Influences

Excerpt from Celebration of Discipline

It is a won­der to me how God uses squig­gles on paper to do his work in the hearts and minds of peo­ple. How are these squig­gles trans­formed into let­ters and words and sen­tences, and final­ly, mean­ing? Oh, we may con­grat­u­late our­selves on know­ing a lit­tle about the func­tion of neu­ro­trans­mit­ters in the brain or about how endor­phin pro­teins affect learn­ing and mem­o­ry reten­tion, but if we are hon­est, we know that think­ing itself is a mys­tery. Dox­ol­o­gy is the only appro­pri­ate response.

At this writ­ing, it has been two decades since the par­tic­u­lar set of squig­gles titled Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline was first pub­lished. After the first decade the pub­lish­er, no doubt puz­zled by its longevi­ty and pop­u­lar­i­ty, want­ed to cel­e­brate this mile­stone, and asked me to revise the orig­i­nal text — which I was glad to do. And now, after a sec­ond decade, the puz­zle con­tin­ues. Some­how (who can ever explain how?) peo­ple con­tin­ue to find help in their dai­ly walk with God through the pages of this book.

To cel­e­brate this twen­ti­eth anniver­sary the pub­lish­er has asked me to write an intro­duc­tion, and, again, I am glad to com­ply. And per­haps in ful­fill­ing their request it is appro­pri­ate to tell how the book, Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline, came into being.

Spir­i­tu­al Bankruptcy

Fresh out of sem­i­nary, I was ready to con­quer the world. My first appoint­ment was a small church in a thriv­ing region of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. ​“Here,” I mused, ​“is my chance to show the denom­i­na­tion­al lead­er­ship, nay, the whole world what I can do.” Believe me, visions of far more than sug­ar plums were danc­ing in my head. I was sobered a bit when the for­mer pas­tor, upon learn­ing of my appoint­ment, put his arm on my shoul­der and said, ​“Well, Fos­ter, it’s your turn to be in the desert!” But the ​“sober­ing” last­ed only a moment. ​“This church will become a shin­ing light set on a hill. The peo­ple will lit­er­al­ly flood in.” This I thought, and this I believed.

After three months or so I had giv­en that tiny con­gre­ga­tion every­thing I knew, and then some, and it had done them no good. I had noth­ing left to give. I was spir­i­tu­al­ly bank­rupt and I knew it. So much for a ​“shin­ing light on a hill.”

My prob­lem was more than hav­ing some­thing to say from Sun­day to Sun­day. My prob­lem was that what I did say had no pow­er to help peo­ple. I had no sub­stance, no depth. The peo­ple were starv­ing for a word from God, and I had noth­ing to give them. Nothing.

Three Con­verg­ing Influences

In the wis­dom of God, how­ev­er, three influ­ences were con­verg­ing in that lit­tle church that would change the direc­tion of my min­istry, indeed, of my whole life. Togeth­er they would pro­vide the depth and the sub­stance I need­ed per­son­al­ly and the depth and the sub­stance that, in time, would lead to the pen­ning of Cel­e­bra­tion. But that is run­ning ahead of my story.

The first thing to hap­pen was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by an influx of gen­uine­ly needy peo­ple into our small con­gre­ga­tion. They sim­ply flowed in like streams after a thun­der­storm. Oh, how they hun­gered for spir­i­tu­al sub­stance and, oh, how will­ing they were to do almost any­thing to find it. Now, these were the castoffs of today’s fast-track cul­ture — ​”the sat upon, spat upon, rat­ted on” — and so their need­i­ness was quite obvi­ous. Just as obvi­ous was my inabil­i­ty to give them sub­stan­tive pas­toral care.

This lack of any real spir­i­tu­al den­si­ty led me, almost instinc­tive­ly, to the Devo­tion­al Mas­ters of the Chris­t­ian faith — Augus­tine of Hip­po and Fran­cis of Assisi and Julian of Nor­wich and so many oth­ers. Some­how I sensed that these ancient writ­ers lived and breathed the spir­i­tu­al sub­stance these new friends in our lit­tle fel­low­ship were seek­ing so desperately.

To be sure, I had encoun­tered many of these writ­ers in aca­d­e­m­ic set­tings, but that was a detached, cere­bral kind of read­ing. Now, I read with dif­fer­ent eyes, for dai­ly I was work­ing with heart-break­ing, soul-crush­ing, gut-wrench­ing human need. These ​“saints,” as we some­times call them, knew God in a way that I clear­ly did not. They expe­ri­enced Jesus as the defin­ing real­i­ty of their lives. They pos­sessed a flam­ing vision of God that blind­ed them to all com­pet­ing loy­al­ties. They expe­ri­enced life built on the Rock.

It hard­ly mat­tered who I read in those days — Broth­er Lawrence’s The Prac­tice of the Pres­ence of God, Tere­sa of Avila’s Inte­ri­or Cas­tle, John Woolman’s Jour­nal, A. W. Tozer’s The Knowl­edge of the Holy—they knew God in ways far beyond any­thing I had ever expe­ri­enced. Or even want­ed to expe­ri­ence! But as I con­tin­ued to soak in the sto­ries of these women and men who were aflame with the fire of divine love, I began desir­ing this kind of life for myself. And desir­ing led to seek­ing and seek­ing led to find­ing. And what I found set­tled me, deep­ened me, thick­ened me.

The sec­ond influ­ence came from an indi­vid­ual in that tiny con­gre­ga­tion, Dr. Dal­las Willard. A philoso­pher by pro­fes­sion, Dal­las was well versed in the clas­sics, and, at the same time, had an uncan­ny per­cep­tion into the con­tem­po­rary scene. He taught our fledg­ling lit­tle group: stud­ies in Romans and Acts and the Ser­mon on the Mount and the Spir­i­tu­al Dis­ci­plines and more. But regard­less of the spe­cif­ic top­ic he con­stant­ly drew us into the big pic­ture. It was life-based teach­ing which always respect­ed the clas­si­cal sources and always sought to give them con­tem­po­rary expres­sion. Those teach­ings gave sources and always sought to give them con­tem­po­rary expres­sion. Those teach­ings gave me the Weltan­schau­ung, the world­view, upon which I could syn­the­size all my aca­d­e­m­ic and bib­li­cal training.

But it wasn’t just the teach­ing, or at least it wasn’t teach­ing as we usu­al­ly think of teach­ing. It was a heart-to-heart com­mu­ni­ca­tion that went on between this world-class philoso­pher and that lit­tle rag­tag band of Christ’s dis­ci­ples. Dal­las taught us right in the midst of our strug­gles, our hurts, our fears. He had descend­ed with the mind into the heart and taught out of that deep center.

Today, many years lat­er, I still rev­el in the impact of those teaching/​living/​praying ses­sions. It was, of course, teach­ing-in-com­mu­ni­ty. We were in each other’s homes; laugh­ing togeth­er, weep­ing togeth­er, learn­ing togeth­er, pray­ing togeth­er. Some of the best teach­ing times grew out of the dynam­ic of those home set­tings where we might go late into the night — pos­ing ques­tions, debat­ing issues, apply­ing gospel truth to life’s cir­cum­stances. Dal­las would move among us, teach­ing, always teach­ing. A spir­i­tu­al charism of teach­ing, I think. Teach­ing with wis­dom. Teach­ing with pas­sion. Teach­ing with heart. And always we expe­ri­enced a sense of the numinous.

The third influ­ence came ini­tial­ly from a Luther­an pas­tor, William Luther Vaswig. (With a name like ​“William Luther Vaswig” how could he pas­tor any­thing but a Luther­an church?) Bill’s church, large and influ­en­tial, over­shad­owed our tiny Quak­er fel­low­ship. But what drew me to Bill had noth­ing to do with ​“large” or ​“influ­en­tial” or even ​“Luther­an.” No, what I saw was some­one thirst­ing for the things of God. So I sought him out. ​“Bill,” I said, ​“you know more about prayer than I do. Would you teach me every­thing you know?”

Now, the way Bill taught me about prayer was by pray­ing. Live­ly, hon­est, heart­felt, soul-search­ing, hilar­i­ous pray­ing. As we did this, over time we began expe­ri­enc­ing that ​“sweet sink­ing into Deity” Madame Guy­on speaks of. It, very hon­est­ly, had much the same ​“feel” and ​“smell” as the expe­ri­ences I had been read­ing about in the Devo­tion­al Mas­ters. This move­ment into prayer was actu­al­ly a two-pronged influ­ence. My pray­ing expe­ri­ences with Bill were aug­ment­ed by those of a won­der­ful­ly deter­mined woman, Beth Shapiro, who was the head of the elders for our lit­tle fel­low­ship. Beth was a nurse at a large hos­pi­tal, and after work­ing the night shift, she would come over to our small church build­ing in the ear­ly morn­ing and we, Beth and I would spend an hour or two, pray­ing for peo­ple. All kinds of peo­ple. Peo­ple in our fel­low­ship and peo­ple out­side our fel­low­ship. Whomev­er and whomev­er, Beth would want to pray for them.

Then we would often dis­cuss issues of the­ol­o­gy, of faith, of life. And what­ev­er we talked about Beth test­ed out at the hos­pi­tal. If we dis­cussed the Bible’s teach­ing on ​“the lay­ing on of hands,” at work Beth would put her hands through the holes of an incu­ba­tor and place them on a pre­ma­ture infant, pray­ing silent­ly and lov­ing­ly, and watch that lit­tle one increase in health and well-being. These were the kinds of things Beth would do, not just now and again, but repeat­ed­ly. Through Beth I learned the neces­si­ty of bring­ing spir­i­tu­al real­i­ties into the press of raw humanity.

Now, these three influ­ences con­verged in those days of my young pas­tor­ing, and the result was a qui­et rev­o­lu­tion, inside and out. And in our fel­low­ship of needy seek­ers we were exper­i­ment­ing with every­thing we were learn­ing. Those were heady days, for we sensed we were on to some­thing of enor­mous sig­nif­i­cance. We were ham­mer­ing out on the hard anvil of dai­ly life all that appeared years lat­er in Cel­e­bra­tion of Dis­ci­pline. But, these influ­ences, by them­selves, did not move me into actu­al writ­ing. More was need­ed.… (The rest of the intro­duc­tion dis­cuss­es Three Empow­er­ing Cat­a­lysts and Three Divine Providences.)

What then, I ask you, is this book real­ly? Noth­ing but squig­gles on paper. But through the grace of God it has been used, lo these twen­ty years, as an instru­ment for human trans­for­ma­tion. For this I thank God. And what of its future? That I glad­ly leave in the hands of Divine Prov­i­dence. Soli Deo Glo­ria.