Tag: summer reading project

The Summer Reading Project: Listen

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through B.L.E.S.S. by Dave and Jon Fer­gu­son, I’ll post my thoughts here. They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2021. The sched­ule is online.

There are a bunch of cool graph­ics like this at https://www.bless-book.org/

This week is the L in B.L.E.S.S. — Lis­ten.

The chap­ter was good but unex­cep­tion­al. Lis­ten before you speak. Seek first to under­stand before you seek to be under­stood. God gave you two ears and one mouth — use them accord­ing­ly.

These are prin­ci­ples that we’ve all heard before. As in so many areas, the chal­lenge is less in the know­ing than in the doing. If we all lived accord­ing to what we knew, we’d be a lot buffer. Almost every­one knows how to live health­i­er than they are — they don’t need more infor­ma­tion, they just need to con­vert their knowl­edge into action.

Like­wise with lis­ten­ing — just do it. One way to force your­self to lis­ten is to ask ques­tions.

At Stan­ford the most com­mon ques­tions peo­ple ask are “What are you study­ing?” and “Where are you from?”

I like the sug­ges­tions that the broth­ers Fer­gu­son offer for addi­tion­al ques­tions:

  • His­to­ry: “Tell me your sto­ry.” “What’s dif­fer­ent between here and where you grew up?”
  • Heart: “What’s your favorite _____?” (food, team, place to trav­el)
  • Habits: “What are you into?” “What do you like to do with your free time?” “When you don’t have class­es any­more what do you look for­ward to doing?”
  • Hurts: “How are you doing with _____?”

So go forth with ques­tions, and lis­ten to the answers!

The Summer Reading Project: Begin With Prayer

Chap­ter 3 of B.L.E.S.S. is the B — Begin with prayer.

I liked this chap­ter a lot — it was full of prac­ti­cal tips and inspir­ing sto­ries.

One nugget I espe­cial­ly appre­ci­at­ed:

I reached into my com­put­er bag and pulled out my jour­nal and Bible. After spend­ing some time read­ing and reflect­ing, my rou­tine was to first write the word “B.L.E.S.S.” and then list the peo­ple for whom I would sim­ply pray for a few min­utes.

Next, I drew a straight black line across the bot­tom of the page in my jour­nal, paused, and then lis­tened for God. This is how I’ve learned to pray every day. Draw­ing that hor­i­zon­tal line became a rit­u­al that tran­si­tioned my mind from talk­ing to God to lis­ten­ing to Him. Often when I lis­ten, noth­ing comes to mind–but if some­thing or some­one does I write it down.

Dave Fer­gu­son, B.L.E.S.S. pages 35–36

I love how sim­ple that habit is — just draw a line and lis­ten!

a sim­ple neigh­bor map — draw a tic-tac-toe grid, put your­self in the cen­ter, and write your neigh­bors’ names in the squares around you

Towards the end of the chap­ter, there is a sim­ple tool called the “Who Is My Neigh­bor?” map. Just draw a tic-tac-toe grid and put your­self at the cen­ter. Now iden­ti­fy the eight peo­ple who are clos­est to you in some con­text and write their names in the oth­er squares (you could do it for your dorm, for your lab­mates, or for your team­mates). Voila — you now have a prayer list.

So far I’m lov­ing this book. It is Bib­li­cal, prac­ti­cal, and easy to read!

Bonus: the chap­ter also con­tained this banger quote:

Do not have your con­cert first, and then tune your instru­ment after­wards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into har­mo­ny with Him.

Hud­son Tay­lor

👀 — that’s good!

Kicking Off the 2021 Summer Reading Project: B.L.E.S.S.

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through B.L.E.S.S. by Dave and Jon Fer­gu­son, I’ll post my thoughts here. They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2021. The sched­ule is online.

Dave Fer­gu­son and Jon Fer­gu­son are broth­ers who plant­ed Com­mu­ni­ty Chris­t­ian Church in Chica­go. It’s grown large (the church was draw­ing 6,500 atten­dees before COVID) and they’ve writ­ten sev­er­al books to help their con­gre­gants serve Christ more effec­tive­ly. This sum­mer we’re going to take a look at their book about evan­ge­lism: B.L.E.S.S.

B.L.E.S.S. is an acros­tic built out of the five prac­tices the book advo­cates: Begin with prayer, Listen, Eat, Serve, and Story.

This week, we’re look­ing at chap­ters 1 and 2. Dave describes his strug­gles try­ing to share his faith (although the book is co-authored, they wrote it in Dav­e’s voice to make it less con­fus­ing), shares encour­ag­ing data about how open peo­ple are to talk­ing about God, and at the begin­ning of chap­ter two drops this gem about an email he received:

…Two teams of missionaries…went to Thai­land. While both teams went with sim­i­lar goals, they car­ried two dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent strate­gies.

The “Con­vert­ers” group went with the sole inten­tion of con­vert­ing peo­ple and evan­ge­liz­ing. Their goal was to “save souls.”

The “Blessers” group explained their inten­tion like this: “We are here to bless who­ev­er God sends our way.”

The study fol­lowed both the “Con­vert­ers” and the “Blessers” for two years. At the end of that time, the researchers dis­cov­ered two key find­ings:

First, the pres­ence of the “Blessers” in the com­mu­ni­ty result­ed in tremen­dous amounts of “social good.” It appeared, accord­ing to the study, that this group con­tributed to the bet­ter­ment of soci­ety, com­mu­ni­ty life, and the cre­ation of social cap­i­tal. The pres­ence of the “Con­vert­ers,” how­ev­er, seemed to make no dif­fer­ence.

The sec­ond discovery–and this was very surprising–was that the “Blessers” saw forty-eight con­ver­sions while the “Con­vert­ers” saw only one! The “Blessers” group saw almost fifty times as many con­ver­sions through being a bless­ing than the group that was only try­ing to con­vert the peo­ple around it.

B.L.E.S.S pages 17–18

I’ve nev­er seen that study and can’t com­ment on its rig­or, but it intu­itive­ly makes sense to me. A sim­i­lar line of think­ing led to the way I close our on-cam­pus ser­vices each week. If you’re part of Chi Alpha, you’ve heard me say the fol­low­ing dozens of times:

“As you leave, remem­ber you’re not just leav­ing a meet­ing. You’re leav­ing as part of a com­mu­ni­ty, if you want to be. We’re Chi Alpha, a com­mu­ni­ty of stu­dents earnest­ly fol­low­ing Jesus in the pow­er of the Spir­it. Our name reminds us of our mis­sion: Chi Alpha stands for Christ’s Ambas­sadors because we rep­re­sent a King and we do what ambas­sadors do. We make friends on our sov­er­eign’s behalf and we advance His inter­ests wher­ev­er we find our­selves. And since our King is in the bless­ing busi­ness, that makes it our busi­ness too. Go forth tonight with an eager expec­ta­tion to see how God will use you to bless oth­ers. Go forth with faith in your heart, hope upon your coun­te­nance, and love upon your lips.”

Those aren’t just idle words I say, they express some of my deep­est con­vic­tions about min­istry. And so my hope is that read­ing this book togeth­er will help us become even more effec­tive at being agents of bless­ing.

Bless­ing peo­ple is always good. When we bless peo­ple at a min­i­mum they receive our love, and at max­i­mum they receive both our love and God’s. In oth­er words, the worst case sce­nario is that they are blessed, and the best case sce­nario is that they are both blessed and also trans­formed by God’s grace. There’s no bad out­come — it’s either good or it’s great!