The last time I posted on a ubfriends related site had to have been over 4 months ago. Things have been totally crazy since then, as I have been working full time and going to graduate school full time while planning for my marriage. A lot has happened since then. I plan on today talking about my time in Chicago for Samuel Lee’s Memorial (read: worship) ceremony, and talking later about my marriage and weddings.
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Here is a secret that came up in an email conversation this week. The problem is this: How do you survive at a group like ubf? How do you leave a group like ubf? How do you recover from a group like ubf? Good questions. I decided to share this tidbit as a short article, so everyone can benefit.
1 Timothy 5:7-8, “7 Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. 8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (ESV)
In this series we are investigating the different components of a successful missionary endeavor. In the development of a mission, there are not just missionaries. There are other missional entities, which partner in unison, to allow the body of Christ to thrive. God desires for all of them to work together. The important thing is to recognize these parts of the body and nurture working relationships with them as we live as missionaries.
I propose that the most fruitful path to embark on, as missionaries, is nurturing solid relationships with 10 missional entities (There used to be six, but I have extended them to ten.), all of which are part of the body of Christ, and finally with the Bible and Jesus himself. They must nurture relationships with…
Here are the things I am so very thankful for this year…in no particular order. As one of my favorite bands, Tesla, wrote once:
It’s not whatcha got, it’s a-what you give.
It ain’t the life you choose, it’s the life you live.
It’s only what you give, only what you give, only what you give,
It’s not whatcha got, a-but the life you live.
It’s the life you live.
—What you give
Or as the ancient Aesop wrote sometime during his life around 600 BC: Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.
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For what am I thankful? Presently I am in Malaysia, the land of my birth, where my older brother and I will celebrate my mother’s 98th birthday this weekend! Thank God that her mind is still sharp and she is ambulatory. My homeland does not celebrate Thanksgiving Day. But here are a few random thanksgiving reflections:
“It feels like we just got divorced!” That is how one woman described her feelings after leaving the group. Indeed, I was more married to UBFism than to my wife. Leaving, then, is filled with feelings of detachment, as if you were just cut off from the mother ship and are floating in space. It is possible to find redemption, however. Here are three things a former member needs to be prepared for: apology letters, hidden triggers and former member connections.
Any student who attends a ubf event can see right away that the group is all about Bible study. Let’s examine that study more closely. Today’s article focuses on the new Bible that students are presented with. That Bible study with a ubf shepherd has little to do with the entire Bible and there is not much study going on, in the academic sense. The group likes to call their method the inductive study method. I call the ubf Bible study method repetitive reductionism. I was not surprised then to read in the new 2015 chapter guidelines how a leader must study a set of about 12 books of the Bible, and focus on those books more than the rest of the Bible. This is at the heart of the unbalanced and incomplete nature of UBFism and the theology of sacrifice found at ubf chapters around the world.