Impacting our heads, hearts and hands

Michelle Nunn explores the power of holistic discipleship and authentic living

As we approach our centenary year at Regents, we have been working as a team to review our vision and mission. We have also been discussing the values that underpin our lives and individual ministries, and our collective mission as a college.

Values lie at the core of our personality and unify our behaviours. They influence our choices and responses to people and life circumstances, and motivate us day by day. Misalignments between our values and lifestyle result in an incongruent life, characterised by inner, and sometimes outer, conflict.

In my time at Regents Theological College, I have been impressed with the team’s commitment to holistic learning, impacting our heads, hearts and hands. If you engage in learning at Regents, you’ll hear our team talk about right belief (orthodoxy), right desire (orthapathy) and right action (orthapraxy), and you will see that our lecturers plan and teach for the whole person. They don’t just espouse the importance of holistic learning they practise it daily.

So often, this is not the case; people and organisations verbalise values that they are unable to practise. We see this frequently in the world around us. Leaders, politicians and everyday people espouse values that aren’t expressed through actions and words. People think of themselves as caring, but when someone is in need, they are too preoccupied or busy or inconvenienced to help. Perhaps, they say they are inclusive and open to new friendships, but in reality they keep a tight, impenetrable circle of friends just like them.

As we read the Gospels, we recognise that Jesus intentionally challenged the values and beliefs of people. Jesus recognised that people’s core values defining their sense of right and wrong had been distorted by societal influences. Or that they had lost sight of what is genuinely worthwhile or utterly worthless. He taught that there would be a reset in us! His teaching was particularly uncomfortable for the learned, the scribes and Pharisees, and in the four Gospels it is the unlearned religious outcasts who drew more readily to him.

“Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect,” said Paul (Romans 12:2, NLT).

With our Pentecostal appreciation of the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and the perception that the disciples were unschooled and unlearned men, we can easily develop an attitude that devalues study and/or preparation for ministry. Yet Scripture reveals those drawn to Jesus as disciples spent years at Jesus’ feet being taught (Luke 10:42) and shadowing him as he ministered to the broken and lost. History has demonstrated that knowledge of the Word and intellectual ability are important in ministry and leadership in both the traditional and Pentecostal churches.

In these days, when humanity is deep in deception, studying the Word, knowing God, and recognising God’s truth is vital for every one of us, in every generation. Only as we live in right relationship, with a right understanding of the Word of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit will we be able to live out our values, living content, congruent, consecrated lives that honour God and witness Jesus’ love to humanity and all his creation.

“Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have,” said Paul. “I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength,” (Philippians 4:11-13, NLT).

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.