“Do you know the Bible?” asks the billboard I passed in southern Ohio yesterday.
I thought, not a bad question, but probably the wrong one.
In Lean methodology, there is a practice called “5 Whys”. If you ask why about a situation five times, by the fourth or fifth time your thinking is getting deeper and you’ll get to the right question.
If you wish to help someone change their life, perhaps a better message would be, “Do you know God?”
The Bible is a great guide to living a better life. But we need to go deeper to the root cause (as they say in Lean Thinking).
If we are beginners, then we need a guide, a friend. Not to be hit over the head with requirements, memorization. It’s about someone helping us to know what to do when we get up and get moving in the morning. What to do when we go out and meet people. How to sit quietly in the day and let God speak in the stillness.
I’m all for learning and study, but more important is spiritual relationship.
[Update: Got home from a couple of vacation days and caught up on three days of news. I saw that the executive pastor and entire board of elders at Willow Creek resigned. Hybels, meanwhile, according to The New York Times, is still living in denial. A leader can build up. But when a leader is not self-aware of sins and weaknesses, that leader can bring down many. Take a lesson, leaders. Cure yourself before you cure others.]
Faith Venture 
August 10, 2018 at 9:58 am |
Sorry about the fall of Bill Hybels. I know you admired him and wrote about him often in your blog. In the mega churches, people start worshipping the leader and lose their ethos. It happens again and again.
August 10, 2018 at 10:07 am |
Goes to show we can’t always see what’s on the inside. Sometimes good works come despite the source. Sounds like Hybels was never all that nice on a personal level. He was a great teacher, but people went there because of many other reasons. I can’t believe that it took so many years for all this to break out into the open.