Blandy Lectures 2009
Sep 22, 2009
Southwest alums and professors discuss leadership
Blandy Lecturer Bishop Andy Doyle
Johnny '84 & Mary Cook -- Perry Award
Doug Earle '84 -- Perry Award
Lacy Largent '90 -- Perry Award
Daryl Hay '03 chair of alum steering committee
Molly Bennett - McDonald Award - & Dusty McDonald
Blandy audience thanks Molly Bennett
6-Pack alum friends return for another Blandy
Links to Bishop Doyle's lectures, text of Hal Perry Distinguished Alumni Awards and videos are at end of this webpage
The Nine Arts of Discipleship - Excerpts from Bishop Andy Doyle's second lecture
With any art there are components. There are techniques. Each technique is almost an art in and of itself. Each art of discipleship requires skills and gifts. So there is an art to this ministry we call discipleship, a technique, a method.
The first art to discipleship is relationship. Regardless of where we are located or the missionary field to which we are aiming we must leave our churches and institutions, get out into our communities and begin a relationship with our neighbors. We will never be able to do missionary discipleship in our world if we a) do not personally know the people in our communities, and b) stop expecting them to come to us. Jesus knew or got to know the people he ministered to along the way. He went out into Galilee and met them, found them and knew their lives.
We are going to have to love people. We are going to have to love meeting people. We are going to have to love knowing people. We are going to have to respond to people out of love. We cannot just let love be a word in our Christian vocabulary. We are going to have to incarnate love not in our churches, but out in the real world.
The second art to discipleship is service. We are going to have to begin by knowing what issues, troubles, challenges and tasks face the communities in which we find ourselves. I am not here speaking about politics. I am talking primarily about listening to our neighbors and their needs.
We have to get out in the world and help our world solve its problems. If our community needs a clinic we need to figure out how to get them a clinic. If our community needs a gathering space then we need to figure out how to get it a gathering space. If our community needs safety or needs children's programs or needs elder care or home visitors or crossing guards we need to be out there doing the work. Unabashedly proclaiming the Episcopal Church is here to help.
The third art to discipleship is that we ourselves must partner with people in long-term relationships. We are not going to be the church that comes in and leaves. We have to be invested in the long-term health and well being in our communities.
The fourth act to discipleship is that we need to be there to welcome people into our communities. We must offer to help them find their way. We need to connect them with other people who are good businesses to deal with. We need to serve them by helping to communicate and connect with a network of support for living in our communities. The scripture is clear we are to remember that we were once strangers in a strange land. We must take that remembrance and turn it into action on behalf of others.
The fifth art to discipleship is that we have to be willing to forgo the idea that we are doing this so they will come to our church. We must realize that our work is to serve and to help our world be a better place. We have to care for our neighbors and love our neighbors and know our neighbors. Not because they are someone we need but because God both commands us to and embraces them as his children. He is already out there working in the lives of people and we are not. So, we need to join God in this work of caring.
The sixth art of discipleship is that we have to be communicators. We have to increase our communication inside and outside our communities. We must begin to intentionally think about how to get our message out into the community around us. We have to let our people know what is going on and we must help our people connect with one another. We must empower each person to be a communicator and help them with the tools to network with their world.
We must realize the costly venture this will be and undergird our mission with stewardship, our seventh art to discipleship. We are going to have to do stewardship differently as describe above. We are going to have to discover the real dollar cost and do the work. Yes, we need to work on the Millenium Development Goals. However, we have those same goals in our own country. Texas as an example leads with the largest number of people who are uninsured in this country. We have huge areas of poverty with a lack of health care. We have issues around women's education and abuse in the home.
We must work to eradicate poverty because Jesus commanded us to care for our neighbor, he himself undermined the health system of his day, and he told us that the last will be first. This begins at home. There are people in our neighborhoods who are waiting for help. They pass our churches by everyday, but those churches do not touch their lives.
The eighth art to discipleship is our own personal formation. We must steep ourselves in scripture. We must engage it with others, which is our Anglican tradition. We must learn it and humble ourselves and our souls before scripture allowing it to form and mold our minds. We must.
The ninth art to discipleship is prayer.
Links
Videos
