My Three is Enough Group is a “two is enough” group right now. Our colleague no longer works in our building, so we are reaching out to others to join us.

This week our group started reading Dallas Willard’s Hearing God. I’ve often said that I think this is one of Dallas’ best books. Here’s why: Dallas shapes an imagination for what it means to be. Going beyond merely being able to hear God tell us what to do, Dallas shows us how to be in a conversational relationship with God as his cooperative friends.

This is important because I believe human beings live from our imaginations. Not imaginations like delusions of grandeur, but from within that deep part of ourselves wherein we consider who we are, where we are going and how we might get there. Those questions, while they involve facts—financial, life-stage, etc—produce an imagination that transcends the facts and provide impetuous for actually moving forward. I had an imagination for playing professional baseball long before I knew a lot of facts about it. And—it was my imagination that made me work harder at it than anyone I knew. I was never the strongest or fastest person on our team—but no one worked harder than I did. Why? My imagination was consumed with playing major league baseball. Read more…

This past Thursday thru Saturday, teaching an intensive course on Leadership in the Emerging Culture at Wheaton College Graduate School, I was acting in my role of “Dr. Todd the Adjunct Professor” of evangelism, spiritual formation and leadership. I always say that teaching is a favorite hobby of mine. I think this is so because I love the intersection of leaders-in-training and important ideas. I love being around bright, motivated people—usually people younger than I. I love teaching because the old axiom is true: no one learns more than the teacher.

I try to make sure that the truism about the connection between teaching and learning spreads to my students. I do this by making space in my courses for students to become expert on a topic and then to teach me and their classmates what they have learned. We did this in an especially fun way at Wheaton. Our classroom was in the Bill Graham Center—the building which houses the Billy Graham Museum.

The first room in the museum is a rotunda featuring ten key historic leaders who were instrumental in spreading the Gospel. They were: The Apostle Paul, Justin Martyr, Gregory the Great, St. Francis, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, Blaise Pascal, Jonathan Edwards, Pandita Ramabai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandita_Ramabai) and Oswald Chambers. It just so happened that I had ten students in this graduate class—one for each featured person. Because our theme for the course was “Anchored to the Rock…Geared to the Times” (the historic motto for Youth For Christ and thus the early Graham Crusades with YFC), midday on Friday I sent my students to the library or to their search engines to do a quick inquiry on one of these luminaries, asking: What did they do in their times that was innovative for the sake of the Gospel?

For the last part of our day we went down to the rotunda and stood around in front of the beautiful banners as the ten students gave their report. With each story, our hypothesis came to life: all attempts at evangelism and discipleship are contextual. There is no such thing as a de-contextualized evangelism or spiritual formation.

This morning as write this blog entry I think back on this lovely time because in a humble and small way I hope Three Is Enough Groups can fit this pattern of contextualized ministry for our times. I know it is far from comprehensive, and I hope to write more on it in the future, but check out the page on the right called “Sociological Rationale”. There I give a quick snapshot of how TiE Groups might be a great way to contextualize kingdom and Spirit ministry in the actual affairs of our real lives.

I also hope the connection between teaching and learning can spread to this site. As you start or participate in TiE Groups, I hope that on this site you, the real practitioner experts, will tell us what you are learning.

Peace,

Todd

This is certainly higher praise than I have anticipated for Three Is Enough Groups. My longtime friend, Genny McIntyre, left this as a comment for me:

Hi Todd,

Great to hear the audio of your presentation! This is the most practical, “real” tool I’ve seen in more than 26 years of striving to live out my faith in a meaningful way the workplace. Thank you for allowing God to lead you in this new direction–and for this wonderful blog.

I am thrilled about Genny’s comments because, while I’ve not thought to say it, I’ve wanted TiE to be real and meaningful. I’ve said in lots of settings that discipleship and mission (serving others) cannot be something we add to an already over busy life. We have to make our actual existing life real and meaningful as the soil for following Jesus and serving others.

Today I was thumbing through Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy looking for a reference. I came upon a section titled “The Glory of My Job” (p. 285). Dallas writes that what we do for a living—and that can be anything—is the clearest way possible to focus upon apprenticeship to Jesus and service to others. Check out the pages following 285 for a wonderful discussion that captures work as the place we learn from Jesus.

Though it is in Dallas’ words, here is a main reason I’ve started TiE:

“…if we restrict our discipleship to special religious times, the majority of our waking hours will be isolated from the manifest presence of the kingdom in our lives”.

For most of us the vast amount of our waking hours revolves around work. TiE Groups is one way to make them both real and meaningful.

Peace

Controversy Hits Three Is Enough!

Hullabaloo! I thought Mark Mittelberg was my friend. He and I have worked together for a couple years and I have long admired his contribution to the task of evangelism. Thus, I was not prepared for his obvious attempt to sabotage, disrupt, and incapacitate my new ministry initiative: Three Is Enough. Mark is now saying that “Three is Too Many”—the nerve, the gall of him!

This is the link Mark sent to me and a few friends—totally bursting my bubble:

Tongue in cheek,

Todd

PS: I’d love to know your take on this controversy–but everyone play nice and be polite to Mark!