Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline is one of the faculty readings for this year. I commend it to all of us because of our mutually-expressed need and desire to stoke the fires of godly living in our campus culture this year. If teachers are going to lead students to greater godliness, we must first go there ourselves.
I consider Celebration of Discipline to be one of the top 10 most formative books to my own life.
Foster is a Quaker, and he clearly writes from that perspective (e.g., reliance upon inner spiritual light, abounding in mercy and forgiveness, importance of the gathered community). However, he is also clearly grounded in the classical spiritual disciplines far beyond just the Quaker tradition, quoting ancient church fathers and medieval mystics as well as more recent saints. The fact that Elton Trueblood wrote the Introduction speaks of the high quality of his thought and writing.
Foster structures the book in three major parts, each containing four chapters.
PART 1: THE INWARD DISCIPLINES: Meditation, Prayer, Fasting, Study
PART 2: THE OUTWARD DISCIPLINES: Simplicity, Solitude, Submission, Service
PART 3: THE CORPORATE DISCIPLINES: Confession, Worship, Guidance, Celebration
Foster recognizes that many (most?) of the Disciplines have fallen into disuse by many (most?) believers, so he includes very practical advice re: getting started in each of them. However, he constantly reminds us that the Classical Disciplines are not just for spiritual giants, but for all of us who want to grow in grace.
I love the book, but I do think it would have been more complete if he had included a chapter on Church Discipline. You pick up principles and bits and pieces of this topic from other chapters (Submission, Confession, Guidance), but a more focused and concentrated treatment would have enriched the book. He could have subsumed Celebration under Worship, and thus added Church Discipline into the Corporate Disciplines section without losing the overall structure of the book.
Rather than engaging in a detailed analysis of the book (we’ll do that together), I’ll whet your appetite by letting Foster speak for himself. Here is a quote from each chapter.
Introduction: “Joy is the keynote of all the Disciplines. The purpose of the Disciplines is liberation from the stifling slavery to self-interest and fear.”
Meditation: “If we hope to move beyond the superficialities of our culture – including our religious culture – we must be willing to go down into the recreating silences, into the inner world of contemplation.”
Prayer: “To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.”
Fasting: “More than any other single Discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. …In many ways your stomach is like a spoiled child, and spoiled children do not need indulgence, they need discipline.”
Study: “In study there are two ‘books’ to be studied: verbal and nonverbal. Books and lectures, therefore, consitute only half of the field of study, perhaps less. The world of nature and, most important, the careful observation of events and actions are the primary nonverbal fields of study.”
Simplicity: “Consider your clothes. Most people have no need for more clothes. They buy more not because they need clothes, but because they want to keep up with the fashions. Hang the fashions. Buy only what you need. Wear you clothes until they are worn out. Stop trying to impress people with your clothes and impress them with your life.”
Solitude: “One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. …The tongue is our most powerful weapon of manipulation. A frantic stream of words flows from us because we are in a constant process of adjusting our public image. We fear so deeply what we think other people see in us, so we talk in order to straighten out their understanding.”
Submission: “I said that every Discipline has its corresponding freedom. What freedom corresponds to Submission? It is the ability to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way. …In the Discipline of submission we are released to drop the matter, to forget it. Frankly, most things in life are not nearly so important as we think they are.”
Service: “More than any other single way the grace of humility is worked into our lives through the Discipline of service. …When we set out on a consciously chosen course of action that accents the good of others and is for the most part a hidden work, a deep change occurs in our spirit. Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but screams against hidden service.”
Confession: “Without the cross the Discipline of confession would be only psychologically therapeutic. But it is so much more. It involves an objective change in our relationship with God and a subjective change in us. It is a means of healing and transforming our spirit.”
Worship: “Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the formal disuse of forms and rituals. We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.”
Guidance: “In our day heaven and earth are on tiptoe waiting for the emerging of a Spirit-led, Spirit-intoxicated, Spirit-empowered people…of a disciplined, freely gathered, martyr people who know…the life and power of the kingdom of God. It has happened before. It can happen again.”
Celebration: “It is an occupational hazard of devout folk to become stuffy bores. That should not be. Of all people we should be the most free, alive, interesting. Celebration adds a note of gaiety, festivity, hilarity to our lives. After all, Jesus rejoiced so fully in life that He was accused of being a wine-bibber and a glutton. Many of us lead such sour lives that we couldn’t possibly be accused of such things.”
I said I wanted to whet your appetite. Hungry? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled!