Apr 12, 2010
Life-Changing Books: A Celebration of Discipline
This week I’m posting on a series of books that proved particularly life-changing for myself. They are ordered according to the chronology of my own experiences with them, and I am focusing in particular on the ones that still come to mind in my day-to-day life. I’ll begin with A Celebration of Discipline.
I ran into Richard Foster’s classic A Celebration of Discipline while in college. I dabbled with it a little bit while I was dating my soon-to-be wife and mentioned to her that I thought I could benefit from a little more discipline in my life.
Heck. OK, I was totally smitten by her and really needed some help keeping it together during our long-distance relationship. Fresh out of my teen years I craved discipline, a deeper spirituality, and fellowship with God. She bought me Foster’s book for my birthday.
I eagerly dove into Foster’s book and discovered a God I could delight in while denying myself. Foster showed me a way to pursue Christ without straying into performance Christianity or legalism.
At a time in my life when I soon left my friends from college, struggled to adjust to life back at home, and set the course for the rest of my life through seminary and beyond, I took great comfort in the practices of Christianity as described by Foster. Those years of my life were certainly turbulent and very emotional, but Foster provided a series of anchors.
Many Christians today know more about business gurus and other secular trends than Christian tradition, and that makes me terribly sad. In addition, many churches want to learn from the best of the business world, organizing their churches according to the top wisdom of this world.
While I see the logic in that, I’d much rather belong to a church that’s a bit more disorganized and a lot more plugged in to the disciplines that have stood the test of time for good reason rather than whatever tops the bestseller list for a few weeks before being sent to the bargain bin or the pulping factory. Richard Foster is one author who can help the church today cultivate the inner life with God’s Holy Spirit that we need.
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Amazing…tears sprang to my eyes when I read this article. I’ve noticed that churches do fashion themselves around business principles instead of God’s principles a lot of the time. Church is not a business and the philosophy and missions should be quite different. Thank you. I will check out this book.
Thanks Dee for your kind words. There is a lot of wisdom to be gained from within the church and its own history. Foster’s presentation of practices that have stood the test of time will be a blessing to you.