Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard on the Beatitudes

January 31, 2019

Dallas Willard's understanding of the Beatitudes:

It will help us know what to do—and what not to do—with the Beatitudes if we can discover what Jesus himself was doing with them. That should be the key to understanding them, for after all they are his Beatitudes, not ours to make of them what we will. And since great teachers and leaders always have a coherent message that they develop in an orderly way, we should assume that his teaching in the Beatitudes is a clarification or development of his primary theme in this talk and in his life: the availability of the kingdom of the heavens. How, then, do they develop that theme?

Dallas Willard and Church Growth

January 14, 2019

It's good to return periodically to Dallas Willard's perspective on church growth:

The gospel of King Jesus and of his kingdom-now is indeed “the power of God that brings salvation/deliverance.” To prove this, just preach, teach, and manifest the good news of life now, for you and everyone, in the kingdom of the heavens with Jesus—your whole life. Study the Gospels to see how Jesus did it, and then do it in the manner he did it. You don’t need a program, a budget, or any special qualifications to do this. Just understand it in the biblical form and do it. Scot McKnight gives you the key.

Dallas Willard on Coming to Know Christ

December 4, 2017

The paragraph below remains one of my favorite from Dallas Willard’s work. The last sentence breaks the flow with its “mainly…Paul” line, but he’s attacking a stream of thought in academia with which he was all too familiar.

If you really want to know Christ now, you have somehow to set aside the cloud of images and impressions that rule the popular as well as the academic mind, Christian and non-Christian alike. You must try to think of him as an actual human being in a peculiar human context who actually has had the real historical effects he did, up to the present. You have to take him out of the category of religious artifacts and holy holograms that dominate presentations of him in the modern world and see him as a man among men, who moved human history as none other. You must not begin with all of the religious paraphernalia that has gathered around him or with the idea that his greatness must be an illusion generated by an overlay from superstitious and ambitious people—mainly that “shyster” Paul—who wanted to achieve power for their own purposes. (Willard. Knowing Christ Today, 67)

Tools for Christian Leaders by Dallas Willard

July 16, 2016

I rarely weep.

When I heard that Dallas Willard died, I did.

Few authors have so helped me see Christ, his goodness, and the greatness of his kingdom.

Since his death various essays, talks, and interviews keep appearing in compilation volumes. In Renewing the Christian Mind is transcript of a talk Willard gave off the cuff in which he gave some principles for how to lead in a Christian organization. Here are some of the principles he outlined in my own words (not in the order of the book):

What does it mean to "have faith in Christ?"

February 22, 2015

What is faith?

What is Christian faith? I don’t mean “what is ’the Christian faith’?” I mean, when I Christian has faith in Christ, what does ‘faith’ connote? Many Christians carry a meaning of the word faith around in their heads that leaves them with no actual ground to stand on for living the good life hinted at in Deuteronomy 30, the Sermon on the Mount, Micah 6:8, and Romans 12-15.