#191 | How Do We Disciple In A Multicultural World? Pt. 1 | Ajith Fernando

We are inalienably a communal people. God made us like that. It's not good for people to be alone.

And so I am convinced even the west, which is out on a limb away from traditional morality, traditional structures of life, of community, I feel sooner or later they are going to see the need to come back and the church needs to be doing its work so that when they look at the church, they see these people have what we are missing. And so I think we have to be proactive. Conversation is delightful if you are willing to give the time for.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for welcome to Apollo Slaughtered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host. And today on our show, we're having another one of our deep conversations.

Discipleship. Now that is a loaded word. The Western church has talked a lot about discipleship for as long as I can remember.

But somehow, and we need to be honest, I mean, let's be honest, okay, we're not very good at actually doing it. I mean, we have our programs, we have things for people to memorize, we have all of the resources, material, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But we're not very actually good at inviting people into our lives to see how we really live on a day to day basis. That's why I think many of our churches are struggling. And if you talk to even some of the megachurches, they say, well, discipleship is the problem.

And I keep wondering what's going on, what's happening? I mean, we're trying to fight the battle. I know you are. You wouldn't be listening to this show if you didn't.

What if we're actually fighting this battle with one hand tied behind our backs? I mean, what if we are neglecting to access resources because we don't even recognize that we have them?

I know you're confused, but allow me just a moment.

You know, last week we talked to two Asian Americans about the realities of living as a second generation immigrant, of living in two cultures at least at once, and how that affects their experience of the world, especially their faith.

It was a very important and dare I say, enlightening conversation that I believe is helpful for those of us who don't and won't experience those realities.

This week though, we are going a step further, talking with Ajith Fernando about discipleship and what Westerners can learn from a Long time Eastern ministry veteran, Ajith is from the island nation of Sri Lanka, which is the large island laying off the southern tip of India. He has served for decades ministering to the poor and the young. He has a very interesting perspective.

As someone who is Sri Lankan but was trained in the west and chose to go back to his people and not to those with the most, but those with the least. Ajith is filled with insight and wisdom. He has learned things that work and things that don't.

And his book Discipling in a Multicultural World is a really important resource for churches around the world and I believe especially for Western churches because as we talked about last week, he can help us with our blind spots and we have plenty.

We had a wide ranging and important conversation about discipleship that I believe can help you and your church to better pursue Christ's mission no matter where you are, no matter who you're with. With that in mind, let's get to my conversation with Ajith Fernando. Happy listening.

Ajith Fernando, welcome to Apollo's Watered.

Thank you.

It is a delight to have you here today. I know I told you a little bit about the show, but are you ready for the fast five?

I hope so.

Here we go. You're going to do great. Number one, the best food that's only found in Sri Lanka is what we.

Have a thing called lump rice, which is unique. It's a mixture of Dutch, Indonesian and Sri Lankan rice with all sorts of flavors.

It's baked in coconut, wrapped in coconut, in plant in banana leaves. And there are a lot of things that they have put in. I guess that's a favorite.

I wonder if I can get that in the United States or will I have to go to Sri Lanka to get it? Is that where I need to go?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. How about this? Number two, the habit that I have that my children and my wife laugh at is what?

Oh, there are so many things they laugh at. I don't know which one to mention, but I am extremely forgetful and I leave my car keys, some in one place, glasses in another place. And then I'm.

I'm also usually I. I wait till the last moment to get dressed to go to a place, and then when I'm about to leave, I don't have my car keys. And it's a major problem.

They have struggled for years to get used to that.

None of that sounds any different than my life. I think we have similar habits. Question number three.

When I come to the United States, the most fun thing that I enjoy Doing that I can't do in Sri Lanka is what one thing is, meeting.

With people in the theological sphere. I chose to work with the poor in a very non Western setting, but my training was in a Western setting, in a theological setting. So I miss that.

So when I come, sometimes I go to a college, I meet professors, and I learn a lot from just sitting and chatting to them.

I understand a little bit what you mean.

There's something about that conversation that just excites you and sets your mind at ease that you don't always get to have where you're at with the people around you. Number four. If I could meet one figure from the past, not from the scripture, it would be who and why.

It would be John Wesley, because God called me to work with the poor.

And I have always felt that some educated people need to devote themselves to trying to break through to people who have been under poverty and to see leaders coming out of that background. And that's something that John Wesley did. He worked with the poor. He was an educated person himself, but he worked with the poor and leaders emerged.

So that was a real good model for me. And so I would like to see him.

Number five, if I were to travel to one place that I've never been in the world, it would be to where and why.

I don't know how to answer that because, you know, I, I do a lot of travel and I don't enjoy travel at all. So, so, so I, ah, I, I, I wouldn't know. What, what?

Oh, well, there are certain places in India like the Taj Mahal and, and some, some of those places that when I go to India I just minister and I go and I come back. I have a family, so I don't like to stay a day more than I have to. So I never do the tourist thing when I travel.

But maybe some places in India that I would like to see.

Where in India besides the Taj Mahal?

I can't tell you much more than that.

Well, there are some very beautiful places. The Taj Mahal is beautiful, but I enjoy going to places like UTI or Nanetal where they have the northern, the mountains, the Himalayas.

It's just wonderful, very wonderful. Well, let's hear more. I want to talk about a little bit about you and hear more of your story.

You are a seasoned Christian statesman that have influenced so many people, whom God has used you to touch so many lives around the world. But I'd like to hear a bit of your story, how you came to know the Lord and you Allude to that in your book that we're going to be talking about.

But how you came to the Lord and how God called you to work where you're at with those in poverty.

Well, actually my mother is a convert from Buddhism and she was a very strong Christian who taught us or we have five of our siblings all following the Lord now, two in full time service. She taught us the scriptures from the time we were children and it was she who led me to Christ.

And so that's my background, that's how I came to know the Lord.

And then how did he call you into where you're at now? You said you were trained in academics in the west, but God called you to work with the poor in Sri Lanka.

From the time I was a child, I was uneasy about, you know, my family is not rich, but they are fairly affluent and you know, the fact that we had a nice house and things like that, whereas the poor were struggling so much.

In fact, as a young teenager, sometimes I used to sleep on the floor saying I want to sleep the way the poor sleep, you know, and so that God gave me a burden for that. My father also had a strong social conscience. He started World Vision in Sri Lanka, so, so he also was concerned for the poor.

And I grew up in my teens I joined Youth for Christ and I never left. You know, when I finished my studies, they told me to take over the ministry and I went there.

And we were working mainly with middle class, English speaking, Westernized youth. But God gave us a vision that now we have to go to the unreached. And a lot of the unreached in Sri Lanka were from poor backgrounds.

So that's what we gave ourselves to, how to proclaim the gospel in a way that is understandable to them, that is appealing, and also helps them to grow up to be leaders.

And how long have you been doing.

That full time with Youth for Christ now? For almost 47 years.

47 years. That is incredible. Incredible. What a hallmark of faithfulness.

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I wanted to talk about your book. You've written many books over the years and I've been privileged to read many of them.

But I enjoy this one, particularly called Discipling in a Multicultural World. What brought about or what was the reason behind you writing this book?

Well, one thing is that all through my ministry, all through my 46 years of ministry with Youth for Christ, I have been discipling people. New Christians, one or two and more mature Christians, growing young leaders, many more.

I was very burdened by the fact that a lot of people talk about discipling, but they don't do discipling. You know, it's something that is, it's a, it's a value that people say is very important, but it's not an essential value.

So, so, so that made me interested in this. I mean, I thought my, I, I need to write something.

But then I realized that a lot of the books on discipling were written from a very individualistic Western perspective. And in our part of the world, when people come to Christ, there are issues that are very important like family, how to relate to your family.

And you know, one of the struggles I've had is just trying to develop Christian people to accept the Christian lifestyle. People from a honor and shame oriented society. Some of the things the Bible calls sin is honorable in our society.

So for example, telling a lie to protect a friend, to protect the honor of a friend is a merit. It's a thing that is considered very meritorious, very, very good.

So how can we get this message out so that people don't have to betray their culture. They can stay within their culture but also grow to be mature godly Christians who get their lifestyle from the scriptures.

So that's one of the things that really influenced me when I studied. I, I had the privilege of studying under two of two fathers of the Inductive Bible Study Movement, Dr. Robert Trainer at Asbury Seminary and Dr.

Dan Fuller at Fuller Seminary. Where I did my graduate work and I learned the value of studying the Scriptures, getting the scriptures to teach us, listening to the Scriptures.

And I thought I must somehow take this to our culture. And how do I do that? You know, a culture that is more, you know, more emotional, more experiential.

Truth is sometimes people find out the truth not only by logical argumentation, but by sensing, by feeling and things like that. How can we take these great principles of inductive Bible study and present it to people who are of a non Western culture?

So these are some of the things that have driven me.

Take me to the streets so I can celebrate. Never knew Feeling better than today means what?

Beginning of a brighter day Letting in a feeling Mending what we break Find us all we sin and dissonance.

This.

Discipling in a multicultural world, you talk, you start off talking about spiritual parenthood. Why is that such an important concept for those whom we are discipling to understand?

Well, I think today there is more than before. We are lacking parents. People are so busy. And in your culture, people are independent from their parents at a very young age.

From an outsider's perspective, it seems to me far too early. Parents could love their children a little longer with a little more concentrated love, I felt.

But a lot of people are making big mistakes in their life because of insecurity and because of no guidance. And I think God intended us. I mean, I have had the privilege of having friends who have helped guide me all my years of ministry. I was a leader.

I'm no longer the leader of Youth for Christ. I stepped down from that job about 12 years ago. I now am now a staff worker.

But all my life, even when I was leader of Youth for Christ, I always had people, friends who were guiding me. So I think we all need people with whom we can just sit, talk, share our battles, share our dreams. Just friends.

And I think parents, parents are good friends.

I mean, I typically, Jesus said, I don't call you servants anymore, but I call you my friends because everything I learned from the Father, I told you. And you know, when you chat, that kind of relationship develops.

And I think today's world needs this much more than earlier because the whole concept individualization has resulted in the whole concept of parent being under assault.

When you look at the concept of discipleship and how it's played out and you've gone between the east and the west, what have been the differences that you've seen in how discipleship looks in the east to what it looks in the West?

I have Seen some wonderful models of discipling in the West. So I can't criticize the West. I mean, I had the privilege of studying under Dr. Robert Coleman, who became a spiritual father to me.

And I always look to him as the one who told me, taught me so much about God, so much about theology. Actually, a lot of my theological orientation came from him.

And I also had Dan Fuller at Fuller Seminary as my mentor, who really became a father to me. So I have had good models of discipling in the west, but sometimes it becomes very program oriented, like a course.

Now this is one of my weaknesses is that I'm not very course oriented. You know, I'm more connection oriented, relationship oriented.

But the weakness is that if you don't have courses, discipling courses, you know, sometimes you end up going round in circles. So I see the value of courses. But in addition to this, that aspect, I think there needs to be the lingering aspect.

You know, just sitting with people, just chatting, spending time together. And especially now with this digitalized world, people are finding it less and less convenient to spend long time chatting to people.

So I think that's one thing. You know, another thing is sometimes in the west, the discipling is a, is one to one, which is okay.

I mean, I think that's very good for a person to take responsibility for another.

But Christian growth in the Bible is not just one to one, but one to one within a community, you know, So I think it's very important for discipling to be done in the context of a larger community.

Now, as a parachurch person who works for, with unreached youth, but tries to send them to churches, this is one of our biggest challenges because we realize that if we don't disciple within the context of a local church, we are, our young people are going to be lost, you know, so, so however hard it is, however more efficient, it is for us to keep our people to ourselves. And this, this is one of the big problems with youth movements.

You, you, you keep the young people with themselves, and they enjoy programs that are very contextual, that are very relevant to them. But once they finish the age of youth, they are not incorporated within the church.

They don't feel one with the church, and the church can lose them because of that.

So I think it's very important to be more generalist in our discipling, to get people to be part of a wider community so that it's discipling one to one within the context of a larger body.

And I don't want to Be sitting alone in a room that just filled with my soul. So I came to this place. I'm looking for a familiar face. And that's when I saw you seeing.

The challenges with youth and being part of a parachurch organization and trying to get them into the local church, as you just mentioned. Do you see though, that the youth today, especially in Sri Lanka, are. Have you noticed any shift in America?

We see a shift Covid, because we shut down. There was a huge shift, but there's also been a shift because of smartphones. We call them digital natives this Generation Z.

And with the aspect of globalization and how this is filtered around the world, I would suppose that it's not that much different in Sri Lanka, is it? Or am I wrong there?

No, the digitalization has affected us big time. Partly because in the west it came.

Well, it was an explosion, but technology developed slowly in the west, whereas we suddenly took a leap to a technological world because the technology was not something that was opened only to the elites. The poor also were exposed to technology, and even the poor, even if they can't afford to eat, they will have a smartphone.

So we were hit and caught unawares because we were not prepared for this. Whereas the west was a little more prepared for you also.

How has globalization affected how the youth of Sri Lanka are different than their parents generation? I mean, every generation has the difference between their parents.

But within an honor shame culture, the structures and the expectations are very, very different, passed on from generation to generation. And you mentioned this within the book.

There are a lot of things when you're talking about discipleship of someone from a different culture that you have to take into your mind that many Westerners aren't familiar with. But because of globalization, because of immigration, because of people moving in, tragedies and displacement, the world is everywhere.

And I think many in the west are still trying to grasp this because they see the world at their doorstep right now and they don't understand the cultural challenges of those coming in from different cultures. In the area that I live in, there's a very large Indian population, very large, and it's growing exponentially right now.

But many of those who share my skin tone don't always see or know how to interact, even though God calls us to what are the things that they need to be made aware of when we're talking about the challenges of those from more of an Asian background face that they themselves might have blind spots to.

I think the Asians are living in this mixture. Globalization has affected us, the digital world has affected us more and more. Our people are becoming individualistic.

For example, there were retirement facilities was unheard of thing in our part of the world because the children looked after their parents when they were old. That was, that was a given. Now it has changed. Suddenly retirement facilities are coming up.

Children have gone abroad and they don't feel bad about leaving their parents and going. They will send the money for them to be housed in retirement places, but they will send the money which means still there is that community concept.

So we are living in an in between time. I think it's going to be a long time before our people lose that family orientation. Not the nuclear, but more of a more extended family.

Commitment to the extended family and right and wrong is to a great extent determined by how you preserve the honor of your family. And we have to be very careful about that when we are discipling people. How can we honor our parents but at the same time obey the Lord?

And those are things that we have to keep talking to our children about. For example, our youth workers in Youth for Christ. When non Christian youth come to our ministry, the workers go and meet the parents.

So parents relationship with parents for us is an indispensable part of youth work. Because you can't really have an influence upon the children if the parents are not with you.

So these are things that we have to keep alert to always. And I think a lot of that honoring parents is a biblical. It's biblical.

You know, I think the individualism in the west has reduced it, its importance in the West.

But maybe that is a weakness in the west because there is much more, I think there is much more that can come from family ties than the west is harvesting right now.

I would wholeheartedly agree with you because the structures that we, we find meaning, we find out who we are, we have our identity, our purpose are found usually within families and even church families. But with the disintegration of the family within the West.

And I pastored in Chicago, as you're familiar with the area and even the church and you knew the founder of the church where I was pastoring.

I remember being with all of these young people and not, I think there were 20 young men that I was with and only two of them had fathers in the home. And that's a very huge challenge. I mean it's a challenge that many Westerners don't know what to deal with, especially in the American suburbia.

But with the assault of the family, with the rise of quote unquote alternative lifestyles, it's changed many, many different things. And this is where I think that we have to learn from one another.

And the west needs to sit at the feet of those in the east that they may teach us how to deal with this.

Because I also think you mentioned honor and shame and you allude to this in the book where honor and shame is present within the west and it's rising. It may just have a different name, like the cancel culture in which we find ourselves. Help our people understand honor and shame.

We've talked about a lot on here. We've had Jason Georges on as a guest, Jackson Wu, we've had Taylee Lau, who just wrote a book called Defending Shame. Excellent, excellent books.

But it's always good to keep it in front of us to see how other people describe it, but help us to understand this cult, this honor, shame orientation.

Firstly, the Bible talks a lot about honor and shame. So it's not something that is inferior. I think that's something that we must remember.

It's not something that is inferior to a Western model of individualistic determination of what is right and wrong. But honor and shame, basically, it is right and wrong is determined by whether it brings honor or shame to you and your community.

It's very much of a communal. The community is important and preserving the community is a high aim in honor and shame cultures. Preserving the honor of the community.

So I guess that would be the thing.

So, for example, if the leader tells a lie and everyone knows that the leader has told a lie, you preserve the honor of the leader by not confronting him about the lie, you know, and confronting him about the lie is considered wrong. It's considered a sin. So we have to try and bring in the Christian ethic.

One of the things that I have felt is important, which I think may be a little controversial, is to make sin shameful, you know, so that people abhor sin not only because it's against God's law, but also because it's shameful. It is shameful to do this. And Paul does this. Paul uses shame language a lot. You shouldn't even be talking about these things in public.

That person who doesn't look after his parents, his aged relatives is worse than an unbeliever. This is shame language. So I think we need to bring in that. But that's a bit controversial because it can be over, you know, it can be overdone.

Well, we've tried to classify and clarify the difference between toxic shame and healthy shame. There is a difference, and that's how we've understood it. Because biblically, you're right. I think shame is all over the scriptures in a good way.

I mean, even Jeremiah says you've forgotten how to blush. There's this idea of shame. That's the healthy shame. Because even then, you can't exercise church discipline without a proper understanding of shame.

But there is the toxic element, as you mentioned before, where it can be unhealthy and it helps us to understand the difference. But this is where the community becomes a huge part of it. We need that community. You mentioned this a lot in your book.

You talk about the family, but you also talk being in a covenant community. How do we go about emphasizing that today, especially in our digitized world?

That's a real challenge because people are not used to that kind of relationship anymore.

And I think I am convinced that every culture, when it moves away from certain biblical norms, sooner or later will sense its need for those norms again. So I think deep conversation, that kind of community, we are inalienably a communal people. God made us like that.

It's not good for people to be alone.

And so I am convinced that even the west, which is out on a limb away from traditional morality, traditional structures of life, of community, I feel sooner or later they are going to see the need to come back and the church needs to be doing its work so that when they look at the church, they see these people have what we are missing. And so I think we have to be proactive. Conversation is delightful if you are willing to give the time for it.

And I think we have to somehow develop ways in which we can give people the opportunity of benefiting from long conversation.

I mean, Jesus would hide with his people, hide with his disciples, go to gentile areas where he is not known, just so that he can be with his disciples. And I feel that deep down people are yearning for that. Now there are some who don't want to be open.

And, you know, community is very difficult if there is no passion for holiness.

So we have to really pray that God will inculcate, that people will grow in their passion for holiness, because then they see that they are needy, that they need help, and they will reach out to others.

That sense of need combined with care, willingness to spend time coming from people is, I feel, the way that we are going to restore some of this, not only in the west, but in our part of the world too.

Complete when we finally see here with the song on our backs, it's all we need together with hearts in. There's nothing quite like it.

Well, you mentioned not only being a part of the Covenant community, but you also mentioned the danger of withdrawing once a person comes to know Jesus, of withdrawing from the wider community. How do we help people get and stay involved in the wider community around them?

Actually, we realize this Sri Lanka, the Christians have been persecuted quite a bit in the last 20, 30 or 20 years. And one of the. We realize one of the reasons is when a person as.

As one pastor told me, when somebody becomes a Christian, he becomes a bad neighbor because he's in church morning, evening. Every time he's free, he's in church with the church community. And there is no. They alienate themselves from the community.

So I think what is very important is teaching, teaching people to go into the community. What does it mean to be salt and light? What does it mean to be east in society?

And that is something that we also, I think little by little we began to realize that. I remember when we first started working with non Christians, a lot of our focus was on persecution from your own family.

Later we realized, yes, we have to talk about that, but we also have to talk about relating to your own family. How can you relate to your parents? How is your relationship with your parents?

So when we disciple young people, we tell our disciplers, always ask about their family life, always see that they are applying Christianity to their family life. So I think there is an emphasis that has to come in our teaching that deals with this outside of the.

Obvious, the physical persecution, what does that persecution look like in your cultural context? You mentioned the family. That's how we previously had gone about it.

But can you describe a little bit for us or help us to see how persecution works out in your specific context?

Again, it depends on whether you are in a rural context or in an urban context. In an urban context, it's a little less. But people tend to see they are very upset that people have betrayed their religion because they associate.

Nation and religion are associated together. And those who leave the nation's religion are considered bad Sri Lankans. So there is that shame of having betrayed.

That's much more in the town, in the villages, because in the village, the temple, the Buddhist temple, is considered an integral part of the structure of the village. And when a Christian home is established in the village, it's like an encroachment. These people have come and illegally taken over our land.

And when a church is built, it's even more serious because this is sacred space for them which has been invaded by others. So when you start building something, very often they stop you from building the church, they throw stones, they assault the people.

And, you know, buildings are very. A very serious thing. So we recommend that people don't put boards and things like that at the start. Later on, once they are an established community.

Usually it takes about 10 years for a Christian community to be established fully in an area, in a village. And during those first 10 years, especially the first five years, there's going to be a lot of attack, lot of slander, various problems that happen.

And a lot of people give up because of that. Not lot. Some give up after some time, it's just too much. But others stick to it, go through immense pain, but they make it.

And then little by little, they become accepted by the community. The community realizes that what people told us about Christians is not true.

They also seem to be truly committed to people and caring and things like that. So. So it takes time for that.

When you're discipling people and you have a variety of mixture of religions within Sri Lanka. I mean, of course we have many that probably in the west don't know about, but we could call that as the.

As it has been termed that several religions grouped into one called Hinduism. Oftentimes you mentioned Buddhism and you mentioned Islam. Out of those three, what are.

Can you name the challenges unique to each one in discipleship? Or is it more about family and geographical area than it is about religious?

I think family and culture is very important in all three, because once you become a Christian, there is a sense in which you give up the family religion, which is almost like giving up the family. So that's a major, major crisis. That's why we always recommend that you go and make friends with the parents.

The parents may hate you, but our people are polite by nature. So when you visit them, they are polite to you. They may scold you after you've gone, they may scold us.

So we have to make sure that we have as cordial a relationship as possible.

And we need to be, you know, making inroads as much as we can, as much as we can, making inroads into the community to show that we are part of it and we are part of that. Working with Buddhists, I think it's the.

In your country, nationalism and Christianity is associated, whereas for us, Buddhism and Christianity and nationalism is associated. So when a person gives up Buddhism, it's like they're giving up their national identity. So that's very hard, and it's very hard for the parents.

So that's one challenge. Another challenge is theological. In Buddhism, you find your satisfaction by working for your salvation, whereas in Christianity it is grace.

And for them to understand grace takes a long time. In fact, we have found people are first more attracted to the Christian lifestyle.

And little by little, little by little, they begin to understand that the key to this lifestyle is grace. It's something that doesn't come immediately when they are converted. We don't know.

So that's theologically, there are major battles to over to go through. And for example, explaining the cross of Christ is very challenging. It's a big challenge. And it's a challenge that we cannot give up.

You know, using story after story after story, each one giving some aspect of what it means for Christ to die. For us, we try to explain that. So that's with the Buddhist and the Hindu also has that works orientation.

But in Hinduism, the major challenge is that Christianity is respected. And in their pluralistic approach to religion, it's accepted as a legitimate religion, but not as the only religion.

So people will accept Christ, but they are not willing to give up their other God. They just add him, maybe make him the supreme of the other God, but they don't give up the other gods. So that's a major challenge.

With the Muslims, of course, their family unit is so close, it's very, very difficult for them to leave the family. And that is something that is a major thing that we have to work with. And again, the key is for friendship with Muslims. It's vitally important.

Muslims represent one third of the world's population or, I don't know, maybe some aspect. I can't remember the exact figure.

But one of the great, great ambitions of Christians should be to make friendship with Muslims so that the gospel can go to them. You know, a lot of people, when they think of Muslim, they think jihad. You know, Christians, when we think of Muslims, we think gospel.

They need Christ. And the only way they. And you know, jihad is not what every Muslim thinks about.

There are a lot of nice, friendly, civil people who are in the Muslim faith and we need to relate to them, to open bridges, to build bridges so that the gospel can be shared with them.

A recurring theme in the book and in our conversation has been friendship. You refer in the book to what you call holy conversations in the need in discipleship to have these longer conversations.

And you've expanded on it a little bit, go even further. Why is this idea of friendship and taking this Time.

Something in the west that we've become a little bit allergic to due to the demands on our time and the way we view time, especially as individuals. How do we recapture this idea of conversation over time for evangelism and for discipleship?

Yeah, one thing is, I think we have to teach, you know, we somehow find time for the things that we consider priorities. Somehow we'll do that. Unfortunately, today, the priorities a lot are relating to social media, which is somewhat inimical to deep relationships.

So I think one thing is to teach people that Christians are countercultural. We are a community people, and therefore we work within that community.

Now, part of the problem, I think, in the west and in our part of the world, it will come in our part of the world, is that some communities have had unhealthy influence on people.

Rather, people had to give up their individuality to become part of the community. So I think that is part of the problem that. That. That people are afraid, you know, of this. So we have to.

I don't know, we have to just teach people that this is just an important aspect of life, you know. And of course, in the Bible, growth is a communal thing. I mean, unfortunately, in English, you can be plural or singular.

And a lot of the you that we have is plural. Lot of the passages that talk about growth is plural.

You are growing in community, but because your language, the tenses, rather your grammar is such that plural and singular is not distinguished by the way the word ends. So that we have sort of got in. Got this idea that it's a lone soldier fighting for the gospel, which is not the biblical model at all.

Did you catch the glaring theme throughout the first half of this conversation? Something that probably feels so foreign to many of our Western listeners? But here's the deal.

Real discipleship requires community, and it's not just a buzzword. It means actually being with people.

We Westerners are so focused on the individual, often for good reasons, that we forget that no man really is an island. As the English poet John Donne wrote, we are individuals, yes, but never merely individuals. We all come from somewhere, after all.

And when we come to Christ, as we live out our faith and our various roles and relationships, we rub up against others and we in the west may not face the same kinds of pressures that Christian converts in Sri Lanka do, but we do face pressures. They are very different, but they are pressures nonetheless.

And in our increasingly secularized world that does use honor and shame to push us to conform or prevent us from from living out our faith.

The lessons taught by wise leaders like Ajith Fernando and the Sri Lankan church can both be a corrective for some of our Western deficiencies and a great help in the coming days. Thinking back to this conversation, I am struck by how many of the specifics that we talked about have that communal aspect in common.

The idea of spiritual parents, family, the idea of growing in community, the need for long conversations like this, and the danger of withdrawal from the wider community. It's not just a Sunday morning thing. There's the need for friendship and holy conversation.

And at no time did Ajith dismiss the importance of knowing things or classes. He champions inductive Bible studies, as do we.

And this is not an either or situation, but a both and a place where we can learn something important from our Eastern brothers and sisters, Christians who have long lived in a multicultural world where they are not the majority. Ajith's argument that we are to be a countercultural community, that we are to grow together, is actually very important.

If we are going to be able to stand together to raise up our children and grow as the church not dwindle into obscurity and failure to pursue Christ's mission for us, we have to take the challenge, like Ajith to heart. We have to ask ourselves what a reimagined countercultural community of the people of God might look like where we are.

I mean, what does it look like? I want you to just think on that for a moment. Use your imagination. What would it look like? Would it mean being in a church? Like building?

Would it mean being in a small group of people, perhaps in your home or apartment or in your dorm? Is it a group of friends sitting outside around a fire pit? I mean, what is it?

Is it having coffee on some Saturday morning at like Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks or some other coffee place? Panera? What might it look like where you are?

And then how can we redeploy as the church to show that we have something important, something that they cannot find in all of the promises of the modern tech obsessed, self driven world? These are big questions and honestly we don't have all of the answers here.

But the more we talk to people like Ajith, the better we will be able to form them. That's what we are here to help you do. Let us know what struck you from this conversation.

We want to know because we want to be able to help you fulfill the mission of God where you are, with all of who you are. In other words, we want you to be able to water your world. And I want to know what stuck out to you. Really. What stuck out? Was it the discipleship?

Was it the community? What perspective did he bring to the table that was different than anything that you have thought of before?

Next time is part two of the conversation when we get into the nitty gritty of things like the place of suffering and joy. Now we talk about joy, but rarely do we talk about suffering. It's always someone else. But suffering has a role to play in our sanctification.

We also talk about the place of worship and prayer, inner healing and a whole lot more.

I want to thank our Apollos Watered.

Team for helping us to water the world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollos Watered. Stay watered everybody.

Sa.