Meet Mary Gilmore as she appears on the Australian $10 note. Gilmore was a prominent Australian poet and journalist who attempted to plant a socialist colony in Paraguay in 1896, which miserably failed. In the 1930’s she wrote a regular column for a Communist Party newspaper. In her later years, she separated from her husband. What’s her value? Well, she's a ten, of course!
My friend and fellow Basileian in Wales, Tim Abel, promotes a Secret Counsel alternative to the popular practice of counseling.
As a Soul Friend, Tim is forming a colony of heaven on earth by giving people a place to belong in order to believe instead of requiring them to believe before they can belong.
Tim doesn’t do multiple counseling sessions with people. He typically meets with someone just once, rarely twice. It doesn’t matter if they are Christian believers or nonbelievers. Tim gets things headed in a transformative direction by asking one simple question: “On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the highest, how valuable are you?
Think about it. How would you answer that question for yourself?
Tim says, “Most people say, ‘I’m a six or a seven.’” Very rarely does anyone say, “I’m a ten” or “I’m a one.” But it’s the second, follow-up question that Tim asks where things get interesting: “What was your value on the day of your birth?”
At this point, people cock their heads sideways, ponder a moment, and then in a flash of insight say, “On that day I was a ten!”
“But on the day of your birth,” Tim says, “you hadn’t done anything, good or bad. Nor had anyone done anything good or bad to you. However, on the day of your birth you were a ten? How can this be?”
Like the sun coming up after a long, cold night, Tim says that people begin to transform physically in front of him. It dawns on them that their value isn’t determined by what they have done to others (good or bad) or what other individuals or even systems have done to them (good or bad).
At this point, Tim will have the person stand up and walk across the room. "Show me," he says, "how a person walks who is a ten.” Tim then returns to the original question: “So, on a scale of one to ten, what’s your value today?” The answer comes forth, “I’m a ten!”
To declare, "I'm a ten!" is radical stuff because such a confession is a vital step in changing one's world. Changing worlds is what heroes do. Heroes change the external world in outward, visible ways, but not apart from also choosing to change their inner world in unseen ways.
Then, to be sure the person has thoroughly got it, Tim asks, “So what’s Hitler’s value as a person on a scale of one to ten?” When the person says, smiling and shaking their head at the same time, “He would be a ten too,” then Tim knows the person he’s working with has had a breakthrough. Now the person is ready, willing and able to start taking responsibility for his or her life like never before and move forward into their destiny and become a colonist of new worlds.
What Tim does is “The Celtic Way of Discipleship.” The ancient Celtic Christian communities were colonies of heaven where, because they were "belong in order to believe" environments, even unbelievers became disciples and members of the colony before they were believers.
What Tim models is the kingdomcultural alternative to the two false alternatives of making “converts” and syncretism. (Please note that I put the word “converts” in quotes here in order to indicate that I’m using it in its popular, twisted and mistaken sense, not in a positive way whatsoever.)
“Converts” are people who believe in order to belong, but who never get out of Babylon or get Babylon out of them. While the souls of “converts” are saved for heaven, they have little to no feel for what it means to belong to a colony right now that is heavenizing earth. “Converts” are not colonists of a heavenly city, but subcultural exiles in Babylon, living in holes in the ground in someone else’s city.
Let us who are Christians repent daily of being “converts.” Lord have mercy!
Then there’s syncretism. About 99% of the time, those who promote “believe in order to belong” forms of evangelism and the Church, mistake the “belong in order to believe” approach of making disciples for syncretism. Let me give you a practical instead of a technical definition of syncretism. The ancient Roman Empire was syncretistic. You could believe whatever you wanted about gods, goddesses, powers, angels, demons, rocks, cows, the sun, the moon, the stars, and even “God,” so long as you affirmed, “Caesar is Lord.” As long as you could demonstrate your submission to the declaration, “Caesar is Lord,” then you could belong to Roman society and believe whatever the heck you wanted.
And here’s the thing about Caesar and syncretistic Rome––they don’t care if we make “converts.” What they can’t tolerate, however, is if we make disciples in a “belong in order to believe” kind of way. Disciples know they are tens and tens don’t make good slaves.
Disciples are colonists of an alternative, heavenly empire called the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not a bunch of principles to believe in, but a society of colonies to belong to. It’s all about Word made flesh, not just words.
We’ve come full circle. Today, much of the western world is Rome 2.0. “Converts” who keep their religion to themselves on Sundays are not a problem to modern Roman authorities––authorities who enforce a twenty-first-century form of syncretism through the power of the state.
The Fallen World System in all of its incarnations––call it Rome, Babylon or whatever––is a form of society that has no solution to the problem of evil. Thus, “converts” flee from evil while syncretism embraces (“celebrates”) evil in all its varied forms. “Converts” are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good and syncretism is so earthly minded that it has forgotten about (the third) heaven altogether.
Through repentance, disciples take responsibility for the evil they have done to others. And by forgiving, disciples also choose to be defined and devalued no longer by the evil done unto them. Disciples are those who have entered into the secret counsel of a new form of humanity in Christ whose mission is to exhaust evil by overcoming it with good.
Each of these Secret Counsel blogs is but a doorway that opens up into a place bigger on the inside than looks possible from the outside. So in upcoming blogs I’ll develop in greater detail some of the ideas in this one. But in the meantime, you can check out the following:
1. George Hunter’s book, The Celtic Way of Evangelism
2. My article, “Running Our Own City”
3. A somewhat provocative piece I wrote entitled, “To Hell With Hell, Not the Church”
Thank you, Tim, for opening a door to the kingdom of God for believers and unbelievers alike in your “secret counsel” alternative to “counseling.” What you're doing gives me hope, courage, boldness, and humility to imagine, cultivate and launch colonies of heaven on earth for people everywhere who confess, “I’m a ten!”
Boyd+
Second Sunday in Lent, 2015
Boyd writes a new Secret Counsel blog every couple weeks. Click here to see the whole collection.