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Radical Reformation History  /  Lecture 4: The Church Councils and the Pilgrim Church  /  Discussion Questions
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Question 9
In the “white tennis shoes” illustration, Dean shows how a possibly legitimate concern can evolve into identity, separation, and spiritual violence (“maybe spiritually or with our words”). What are the modern equivalents of the “white tennis shoe” issue in your setting, and what practices would actually keep a church from drifting from correction into cruelty?
Another way to ask: What are today’s versions of the “white tennis shoes” issue in your church—small concerns that turn into identity and division? What habits could keep correction from turning into cruelty, even just with words?

Direct Answer Dean doesn’t name specific modern “tennis shoe” issues beyond the illustration, but he clearly means any disputable standard can become a badge of true-Christian identity that fuels separation and harsh speech. The main practice he recommends to prevent cruelty is continually returning to Jesus—especially the Sermon on the Mount—as the measure of church life and decision-making.

Support from Transcript:

  • The illustration’s progression: a concern becomes “the only Christians are those who” meet that standard, then expands into finer rules, then “you’re not greeting them anymore… excommunicating them… saying all manner of bad things.”
  • Dean clarifies he’s “not… against standards,” or brotherhoods “coming together to work out the way they’re going to live.”
  • The safeguard: “every step of the way… it’s got to be coming back to Jesus. If what we’re doing doesn’t look like Jesus, we’re losing it.”
  • He suggests a concrete practice: “If every beginning of every intense brother meeting, should we open up the Sermon on the Mount and say, ‘Let’s hear what Jesus said the church looks like?’”
  • He warns of “spiritually… slicing people in half” with words, paralleling council violence.
Discussion Follow-ups What issues in our setting are “easier to talk about” than heart obedience? How could we build meeting habits that force us to ask, “Does this look like Jesus?” before we act?

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