Another lesson from our dear friend Escherichia coli

A while ago I posted about what our dear friend Escherichia coli (E. coli) can teach us about raising up new leaders (click here), and today Escherichia will once again be teaching us another important theological principle; this time on sanctification.

But first an introduction to E. coli and a process known as Bacterial transformation.  Despite the bad reputation E. coli gets in the media, this little gram negative bacteria is essential to the proper health of our intestinal flora.  E. coli plays a key role removing in the toxic O² gas which otherwise would kill many of the obligate anaerobic (cannot tolerate O²) bacteria within us, and we need our intestinal bacteria!  So having E. coli is important.

Bacterial transformation is a process by which bacteria cells are able to find and absorb new DNA fragments from their environment.  This allows for a transformed bacteria to begin expressing novel DNA sequences and novel proteins.  Some bacteria are naturally able to incorporate environmental DNA, this characteristic is known as "competency", while other bacteria like E. coli require a bit of coaxing¹ into DNA uptake.  Transformation for E. coli is contingent upon prior external events, and only then is E. coli able to incorporate and begin expressing new DNA.

Cool, so what does this have to do with us?  I submit to you that we are like E. coli.  Despite all that we are capable of or our best intentions, left to our own devices Humanity will never save itself.  At the Fall we lost our identities, our humanity was warped, and ever since we have been shadows of who we were intended to be.  We are broken and hurting and we cannot change ourselves.  But in Jesus everything changes, He's a game-changer.  Through His work and His grace we are now able to be transformed; His victory is the external event upon which our ability to be transformed depends.  Like transformed E. coli expressing novel DNA, in Jesus we are changed and now able to express an identity which was previously foreign to us.  We are made human, as God intended in the beginning, once again.

I encourage you to allow Jesus to transform you as He alone can, back into who He alone intended you to be.  May we all live as transformed E. coli expressing our renewed identities.

---

1. Ingraham, John L. et al.  Microbe.  ASM Press. 2006. p.187.

E. coli and Multigenerational Thinking

I love bacteria (mostly).  We can learn a lot from these little bugs, about Biochemistry and a couple Theological metaphors too.  Today we will look at our friend (most of the time) Escherichia coli (E. coli).  E. coli and the Apostle Paul both have the same idea about replication and discipleship.

An often under-appreciated component of our faith and the proper functioning of a church body is the raising up of new leaders.  Leaders demonstrate a lot of their vision for the Church by how they work to raise up new leaders.  A "God-sized vision" is bigger than any of us.  No one person is the answer to what and where God is leading His people, globally and also locally.

A proper stewardship of God's call/gifting to leadership is illustrated by a person's ability to pass the baton and allow others to step in to be a part of God's process.  Not only does this help guard us against the aptitude of power to corrupt, but it also prepares the community for when a specific leader leaves.  All of us within the body of Christ are replaceable, and must be, because God's work of redemption on Earth is greater than any of us.  Are our leaders, and we as leaders, working to prepare our replacements?

The book of Judges is a story of failed leadership.  Over and over we see this cycle of failure and bondage which stems from the leaders' inability to raise up the next generation of leaders.  Before Judges we see Moses lead God's people.  Moses discipled Joshua, and when Moses dies Joshua is prepared to take over (Deuteronomy 34:9, Joshua 1:).  We see is Judges 2:7 Joshua too raised up other leaders after himself.  The breakdown in leadership, which sets the stage for the entire book of Judges, comes in Judges 2:10 "After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel".

If this is the problem, the answer, according to Paul and E. coli, is a multigenerational view of replication.

The whole life-cycle of an E. coli cell takes 60 minutes to complete, but under ideal circumstances E. coli cells are able to divide ever 20 minutes1.  E. coli achieves this rate of replication by reinitiating DNA replication before the previous round of replication finishes.  Within a given cell we see "mother" chromosome, "daughter" chromosome, as well as "granddaughter" chromosome2.  For optimal growth E. coli has to think beyond the daughter generation and onto the granddaughter generation.

The Apostle Paul had the same idea.  In his final letter to Timothy, his primary disciple, Paul writes in 2 Timothy2:2 "the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others."  Within this one sentence we see Paul describe four generations of leaders; Paul, Timothy, reliable people, and others.  Paul understood for the First Century Church to grow and persist it was crucial to have a multigenerational mindset.  This remains true of the Church even today.

As Paul writes and E. coli shows, let us grasp and practice the work of multigenerational thinking.  As my father-in-law and veteran church planting coach Kevin Sutter puts it, our goal should be to train up others and "work yourself out of a job."3

---

1. Ingraham, John L. et al.  Microbe.  ASM Press. 2006. p.172.

2. Crooke, E. et al. Organization of sister origins and replisomes during multifork DNA replication in Escherichia coli. PubMed. 2007.

3. Sutter, Kevin.  Keys to Church Planting Movements. 2006. p. 63.