The Lost Discipline of Conversation by Joanne J. Jung: Seemed to Lose the Thread

The Lost Discipline of Conversation:
Surprising Lessons in Spiritual Formation
Drawn from the English Puritans

by Joanne J. Jung

DETAILS:
Publisher: Zondervan
Publication Date:  June 12, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
Length: 224
Read Date: February 6, 2022

From the Back of the Book:

Recovering Spiritual Practices of the Past titles reach beyond commonly known spiritual formation practices in order to mine the wisdom of the past, bringing to light ways of thinking, living, and growing in Christ that the church today has largely overlooked.

In The Lost Discipline of Conversation, spiritual formation professor and author Joanne Jung walks readers through the Puritan practice of “conference,” or focused, spiritual conversations intended to promote ongoing transformation. An antidote to privatized faith, conference calls believers to biblical literacy and soul care in a context of transparency and accountability.

Useful for believers in any sphere or ministry or stage in life, conference is ultimately a tool for nurturing mutual, godly authenticity within community.

Beyond the Back of the Book

Part I, “Rediscovering a ‘Lost’ Means of Grace,” outlined the need for community and the benefit of this practice (although equating it with the Means of Grace is questionable).

Part II looks at the various contexts in which conferencing can take place and suggests some ways to promote it. I lost track of the idea of conferencing during this Part—it seemed so flexible so as to maybe lose meaning.

Part III

Part III is called “Soul-to-Soul Bible Studies,” and added nothing to the work. They were scripts/prompts to guide you through a one-on-one (or larger) study of a handful of seemingly random New Testament passages. The explanatory notes were redundant, and not incredibly useful.

I didn’t see the point of this part at all.

So, what did I think about The Lost Discipline of Conversation?

Seven years before this was published, Jung published Godly Conversation: Rediscovering the Puritan Practice of Conference, and I can’t help but wonder what my reaction to this book would be if I’d read it first. This feels like it’s building on the work done in the initial book. Maybe I’d walk away from this with a greater understanding of both Jung’s overall project as well as the Puritan practice of conference. Still, this book needs to be able to stand on its own, and it just doesn’t.

The biggest question I have from this book is what’s the foundation for this practice? How is “conferencing” based on, or built on, Puritan thought? You can’t follow Puritan practices (on this or any other point) without their teaching backing it up—it just doesn’t work that way. Leave that to Finney and those who follow in his footsteps, not to Bownd, Owen, or Alleine. Practices without the theology are meaningless actions. It’s not “do X, Y, and Z” to get spiritual growth in a mechanistic/automatic way, it’s not powdered milk where you just add water. The Puritans acted in certain ways (like conferences) because of something. Jung did her readers a disservice leaving that out.

I don’t necessarily contest the value of the practice, but I don’t know that she’s convinced me that it’s as valuable as she sets it out to be. I’ve read a good number of the original sources she cites, and I never got the inkling that this was particularly vital—useful, potentially, but as important as this?

I do have to wonder why the title specifies “English Puritans” when there’s so many citations of New England Puritanism. The distinctions aren’t huge, but there are differences. Just delete the word “English,” and it’s better. That seems picky, and probably is. But at a certain point, the quibbles I had with the material overwhelmed the pros, and the little ones got under my skin more than they should.

I feel bad about thinking like this about the book, because the person that recommended this to me clearly thought I’d appreciate it—and I wanted to. But this is largely a swing and a miss for me. At the risk of repeating myself, I do wonder what my reaction to this would’ve been had I read Godly Conversation first. As it is, though, I’ll chalk this up as a well-intentioned miss.

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