Source: Anglican Perspective
May 16, 2013
In this week’s Anglican Perspective, Canon Ashey reflects on the life and teaching of Dallas Willard. You can read more on Dalls Willard and his life in a heartfelt article by Josh Ortberg in Christianity Today.
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Dear friends in Christ,
Dallas Willard went on to glory last week, May 8, at age 77 after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. For those of you who may not know him, Dr. Dallas Willard is an American philosopher, a certified authority on the works of philosopher Edward Husserl, former chair of the department of Philosophy at the University of Southern California and the author of many books on both philosophy and Christian Spiritual formation.
But if you asked him how he would describe himself, he would no doubt say “I am a child of God, seeking to live my life as Jesus would if he were in my shoes.” I know he would say that because that is what he told all of us who sat at his feet for two weeks in his course on “Spirituality and Ministry” in the Fuller Theological Seminary Doctor of Ministry program.
The Church in North America has lost a pioneer in the renewal of discipleship, and especially the renewal of disciplines and “habits of the heart” that are central to “the great tradition (catholic)” of Christian spiritual formation. Although he was not an Anglican he was warm and encouraging to our movement, sharing with Richard Foster many resources from Renovare ministries for the renewal of Spiritual Formation-what we call “discipleship”-in many of our Anglican congregations.
Personally, I have been shaped in my thinking by the crystal clear and intensely dense definitions he gave us that can and should shape the way we think about following Jesus:
What is a disciple? “A disciple is someone who lives their life as Jesus would if he were in their shoes.”
How simple, elegant, rich and visionary!
What is the Kingdom of God? “The Kingdom of God is the range of God’s effective will-where what God wants done is done.”
Not a country; not an institution; not something we will only experience in heaven-but rather that dimension of the “with God” life that followers of Jesus Christ from every one of our three Anglican streams (catholic, evangelical and charismatic) can embrace now!
What is the soul? “The soul is the hidden or ‘spiritual’ side of the person. [The soul] includes an individual’s thoughts and feelings, along with heart or will, with its intents and choices. It also includes an individual’s bodily life and social relations.”
Therefore pastoral ministry, aka “the cure of souls,” is a whole ministry that extends from the inner life outward to every aspect of a person’s life-body, thought life, choices– including every relationship.
What is worship? “Worship is the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining restoration of our whole beings to God. Nothing can inform, guide, and sustain pervasive and radiant goodness in a person other than the true vision of God and the worship that spontaneously arises from it. Then the power of the indwelling Christ flows from us to others.”
Dallas Willard wrote in The Renovation of the Heart that the same model for change that we find in any program for human transformation-from AA to Weight Watchers to Rosetta Stone-involves three essential elements: (1) A Vision for what life can and will be like if we achieve this transformation; (2) the Intention or will to pursue it and (3) the Means (in Christian Spiritual Formation/discipleship we describe them as “means of grace,” habits of the heart or “spiritual disciplines”) that we cultivate to achieve that vision.
Vision, intention and means are the same three elements that shape any program of discipleship we can and ought to have to help make fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ-Christians who have a vision ever before them of what it would mean for them, and for the church, to live their lives as Jesus would. What would it be like to live that “with God” life in Christ and under his kingdom where “what God wants done IS done?” Discipleship requires Christians who intentionally will such a life. This has huge implications for any program of discipleship for those damaged and broken by abuse, heartbreak, and addictions. Discipleship requires Christians have practical instruction and experience in those spiritual disciplines or means that are at the heart of our catholic and Anglican tradition of spiritual formation-things like solitude, silence, study, fasting, prayer and confession.
In his splendid tribute to Dallas Willard, Pastor and author John Ortberg recalls that when Willard’s mother died (he was only two years old) her last words to her husband were “keep eternity before the children.” Dallas Willard took that lesson to heart. He kept heaven before himself and us in ways that were far different from the stereotypes we have been accustomed to hear. As John Ortberg recalls:
“Our destiny,” [Dallas] used to say, “is to be part of a tremendously creative team effort, under unimaginably splendid leadership, on an inconceivably vast plane of activity, with ever more comprehensive cycles of productivity and enjoyment. This is what ‘eye hath not see, nor ear hath heard'”
The vision of heaven shapes the way we live our lives in Christ right now. It must, or else we will have no joy. One day in class, Dallas read us the account of a little Brahmin girl hopelessly ill and on the edge of death in Amy Carmichael’s missionary memoirs, Tender Mercies. He read to us how Amy Carmichael watched this little girl die, a follower of Jesus Christ, who at the moment of her death sat up with radiant face and hands clasped seeing someone whom Amy could not see. And then he paused and said through tears-this incredibly brilliant man-“And what must the fountain be like if the spray from the edge of the pool is like that?”
“People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own…Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 10:14-16)
May we too always keep eternity and that heavenly city before us, and each other, in everything we do. Surely we will find Dallas Willard there to welcome us when we enter that time zone.
With love in Christ,
Phil+
Recommended Reading from Dallas Willard: The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives (San Francisco: Harper, 1988); The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: Harper, 1998); The Renovation of the Heart: Putting on The Character of Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2002)
