Author Gary Rogers speaks with Kirk Hunt about his book, Unlocking The Power Of Fatherhood, and the need for effective men’s ministry in churches.

Kirk Hunt for PneumaReview.com: Who or what inspired you to write Unlocking The Power Of Fatherhood?

Gary Rogers: It started at 4:30am on a Saturday morning. I got up, made my coffee, went upstairs to my office, and asked the Lord what he had to say.  I spent about 2 hours with the Lord as he explained a few things to me. So that you understand the rest of the story, I need to introduce you to my dad.  As a young boy, he contracted polio that left him with a paralyzed right leg. It also left him with a compromised immune system that failed him again, with finality, at the age of 53. The child that the doctor said would never crawl, much less walk, learned to walk without a cane, crutch, or brace.  The child that was destined to become an invalid became a man that everyone turned to in the time of their greatest need. Every day in the life of my youth I got a lesson in Character and Courage. I learned what it was to be a man, and I learned what it was to be a father. I grew up seeing an example of how to overcome the impossible. Through his example, I learned how to take on the challenges of life meant to turn me into a victim and come out the other side as a sovereign. On that Saturday morning, I was inspired to share his life story.

Kirk Hunt: What was the most positive aspect of the process of creating Unlocking?

Gary Rogers: I think it was the journey to discovery surrounding the purpose of the hard times that we all seem to endure. For, it is in the hard times where we are transformed into the people we need to be, to accomplish the purpose for which we were created. That was an epiphany for me, as I had previously seen those times in my life through the lens of failure. More importantly, I think that this revelation has the potential to help many overcome the scourge of victimization that weighs heavily upon them. Seeing the difficult season in a positive transformational light has the potential to set us free to walk into the high purpose of God’s plan for us.

Kirk Hunt: What was your most significant challenge while writing Unlocking?

Gary Rogers: Basically, I had no idea what I was doing, as I am not a professional writer. Everything I wrote was from my own experience without the benefit of research. All I had was a preliminary list of potential chapter headings. I would literally sit down to begin a chapter with only one or two sentences in my head. Things would just flow from there. After 9 or 10 pages of handwritten text, I would come to the end of the chapter and not remember everything I had written. I would go back and review it wondering where all that had come from. I see this entire work as a grace gift from the Lord.

Kirk Hunt: How has your experience with Unlocking informed or influenced your writing?

Gary Rogers: After writing the book I have come to realize the great need for building up men. I have been somewhat surprised by the positive responses I have received from people who have read the book. My passion is growing for making a positive impact on others and empowering them to live life to its fullest.

Walter R. Dickhaut, in his small volume, Building a Community of Interpreters: Readers and Hearers as Interpreters, proposes that listeners and hearers of a sermon, story or biblical text function as interpreters of the meaning of each of these types of expression or forms of communication. Dickhaut’s thesis maintains that the hermeneutical process is better perceived as a spiral, rather than a circle with a closed circuit, because the reader of any text can influence its interpretation (12).

Dickhaut presents his proposal in two parts. The chapters in part one explain the process of listening, which involves the numerous occasions when one meets the text, the particular angle of vision of the reader and the metaphorical filters and lenses applied in each hearing. Every time a reader encounters or meets the same text, it is not the same reader who encountered the text previously (18). Time and the circumstances of the reader have changed. He may have acquired new learning or modified certain perspectives (18). A filter applied by a reader or listener removes what the reader prefers not to engage (21). The reader is often unaware the presence of these filters. Information that does not conform to the reader’s beliefs or opinions is filtered out. Dickhaut wants the reader to be aware he is wearing these unexpected blinders in the form of biases and prejudgments. When mindful of the blinders, the reader is better able as to make appropriate adjustments (25).

Lenses, on the other hand, focus the listener’s attention on specific interests and features that aim to discover something new (21-22). Lenses empower interpreters to discover “mystery, surprise, and expectation” in biblical texts (34). Lenses function to enhance or enlarge certain details (22). The reader’s angles of vision also shape interpretation. Angles of vision are shaped by the listener’s personal experience, family history, theological and political positions and social and cultural location (27).

The second part, chapters seven through fourteen, is an expanded discussion on the lenses of
mystery, surprise, and expectation, punctuated with three of the author’s sermons. The author encourages the reader to view texts through the lens of mystery and read and listen in such a way that he is satisfied with a sense of the mystery of God rather than needing explanation and rationalization. To read with expectation is to read and listen as one dissatisfied with certain aspects of the world we inhabit (86-87). Surprise in a biblical text can be achieved by searching for things one does not understand, because in doing so the reader “is more likely to learn something new, something that surprises him” (67).

The book’s strength is its reflection on the various factors that potentially effect the listener’s interpretation of a sermon or biblical text. Thus, preachers and teachers are introduced to features that influence the listener’s interpretation of a text or sermon. The author delivers on his goal to encourage building a community of interpreters. In the Afterword, Dickhaut maps out sessions for a Bible study group that explores what happens to meaning when a reader opens a book or listens to a sermon from various angles and when wearing a variety of spectacles.

Reviewed by David Seal

Publisher’s page: http://wipfandstock.com/building-a-community-of-interpreters.html

Preview Building a Community of Interpreters: https://books.google.com/books?id=YkxNAwAAQBAJ

This article by Olga Soler is the chapter “Summing It Up” in Creative Ways to Build Christian Community edited by Jeanne C. DeFazio and John P. Lathrop.

If ministry is only the work of professional clergy and is restricted to what goes on at a church service or a major Christian event, then the church is lost and doomed to implode and die in our century. Why? Because, though these things may serve God, the personal touch is often lacking in them. People think clergy pray because that’s what they are paid to do. Many people are church-phobic. Large gatherings may attract people, but they cannot keep them. Happily, there is more to church and ministry than these. Ministry is what the whole priesthood of true believers everywhere does every day in the course of their faithful lives. It is what they do because they love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. It is what they are because Christ lives in them, and they are his. Real church is not an institution or a corporation. It is a loving, hospitable family that reaches out to the world the way Jesus’ hands of love and healing did when he was in the world. So, if the answer is this simple, why do we need books like the one you are holding? We need them because the meaning of true ministry and church may be lost in the fray of the spiritual war that is raging for the conquest of this earth. We must keep taking it back to the biblical norm in order for all of us in the church to survive and join in the victory won by our precious Lord.

No amount of money, sophisticated projects, grand displays, or facilities with impressive or elaborate architecture will make up for the power of what God can do with a community that is functioning in the way that Christ intended it to: being continually enriched and expanded by tapping into all the gifts God has given to its members. Christ told us how to do it in his word, and the value of this plan has not diminished through the centuries. If we are to each other and to the world what he wants us to be, the harvest will soon be reaped, and we will all go home.

It all begins when we realize how truly precious real community is. In the words of Dietrich Bonheoffer, as he reflected on fellowship from a cell in a Nazi prison,

It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that at any day now may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: it is grace, nothing but grace that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.¹

Yes! When every job possible is automated, every materialistic need met, every gadget conceivable invented, and people have seen every special effect on film in a depersonalized futuristic utopia of science fiction, the personal touch will still be in demand. Stories told by human beings will still mean something. A letter written by hand will still be valued. A meal cooked and shared in a hospitable home or church will still be a delight. A song sung by a voice near you or the mystery of a work of human art will still draw people in. A prayer or teaching shared person to person will still heal, edify, encourage, and inspire. The love shown by another person will still be an incomparable thing. How does one create a real community with Christ within? By taking all the gifts he gives us and helping us share them with each other and with the world.