2023 Evangel Gathering - Friendship and Flourishing for Missions

38 • 2023 E vangel G athering • S acred R oots T hriving in M inistry : F riendship and F lourishing for M issions

B. Definition #2: Spiritual classics help us make friends with wise Christian leaders from other centuries and other cultures.

1. Friendships with people who love Jesus from other cultures and centuries is a primary way to identify cultural blind spots and grow closer to Jesus. 2. Professor Dana Roberts provides dozens of examples of how friendships transformed Christian leaders and their ministry strategies in Faithful Friendships: Embracing Diversity in Christian Community. 6 3. Bernhard Christensen’s definition of a spiritual classic emphasizes the transforming relationship that can take place between a reader and the historical Christian leader to whom they are apprenticed. His four characteristics of a spiritual classics climax with a description of friendship.

a. They are not just about doctrine, but also about a person’s life with God.

b. They have stood the test of time.

c. They are ecumenical, appealing across Christian traditions.

d. They are books to be read more than once, over and over. “They are not passing acquaintances but abiding companions on the way of life.” 7

6 Dana L. Robert, Faithful Friendships: Embracing Diversity in Christian Community (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019); See also the stories discussed in Chapter 2 of Uche Anizor, Rob Price, and Hank Voss, Evangelical Theology , Doing Theology Series (London: T&T Clark, 2021). 7 See Bernhard M Christensen, The Inward Pilgrimage: An Introduction to Christian Spiritual Classics, Rev. ed (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1996), 11. Christensen also includes a fifth characteristic, “they deal with prayer.”This characteristic is certainly true for many spiritual classics, but there are others where this is not a main focus of the work (e.g. Pilgrim’s Progress ).