I started to add running to my morning exercise about a year ago. At first, it started as just adding a ½ mile jog onto the end of my 3+ mile walk in the morning. A year later, without pushing myself hard, I run/jog the majority of my 3+ mile route usually 2x a week. It’s been a rewarding journey learning how to pace myself and trust my body as someone who’s overweight, an ex-smoker, and diagnosed with asthma at 15.
The time I spend exercising each weekday morning along the Lake Michigan shore is time I spend with God. The team of ministers I work with have made a covenant, which includes living our discipleship and upholding each other and our mission for about an hour each day. As I walk or run, I’m often in prayer, feeling the frustrations of my life and/or focusing on our team praying. I also try to listen, to allow myself to be spoken to by God through my thoughts, to see God in the sunrise over the lake or the behavior of the water. Sometimes, it lies motionless. At other times, waves crash against the seawall where, at points on my trail, sea spray hits against my skin. This morning, however, I heard God in a different. God spoke to me through shutting out my surroundings. In doing so, I had a brush with divine wisdom that I needed for today. I want to share it with you.
On the mornings I chose to run, I often push myself. I’m either tired from the day before and need to force myself to run through my fatigue. Or, I try pushing my endurance and breathe a little harder, which is very rewarding when I am done and I feel the release in my legs and body. Running can have a calming effect on my day that way. If I do this often, my morning run changes the character of my time with God. My prayer and medication is more based on feeling my way through. I strive to find God in the run. My thoughts focus on the meaning of my physical pain, the fatigue of my legs, and my thoughts compete with obsessions about how far I’ve run, whether I’ve reached the mid-way point, or how far I am from finishing when I can cool down and walk the rest of the way. Pushing myself has a spiritual quality to it.
I often feel that all of us in denominational ministry, especially serving the Community if Christ, are running a marathon in our work with the church. The pain and frustration I feel from pushing myself as I run can be the same experience of pain and frustration I feel emotionally as I try to fulfill people’s expectations in my role in ministry. Whether preparing a sermon, running a meeting, or just trying to do the right thing by a church member – all in an environment of denominational decline and dwindling resources in which our problems are too big to respond to – I hit points in my role in ministry in which I just look for the finish line or obsess about how far I have to go before I can stop. I’m looking for a break from the jurisdictional responsibilities and congregational problems that our North American church, as a whole, are facing.
I had a different experience today, though. As I ran this morning, I began a little tired. I had a 13 hour day yesterday. And, on Sunday, I was a part of closing one congregation and at another that is trying to be reborn. I had my mind on some relationships and projects that I’ve been trying to get control of and successfully complete. Taking a different tact today running, however, instead of pushing myself I decided to pace myself because I wanted to run a little longer today. During my time with God as I jogged, I felt God talk to me. It didn’t come through the beauty of the lake or my meditations on God. The moment of communion and epiphany came when I felt divine wisdom intersect with my body’s feeling and prayers as I was jogging.
Almost ½ way into my run, I realized I was really enjoying it. Yes, I was tired. My legs were fatigued and felt a bit heavy. But, I was pacing myself and my body felt good. I emotionally felt up and I wanted to keep enjoying that feeling.
As I continued to jog, instead of enjoying the beauty of the lake or the sun rays I could see descending through the cloudy morning sky, I closed my eyes and shut out all that was around me to focus on the enjoyment of jogging. My eyes peeked open every few second just to make sure I stayed on the trail and didn’t run into cyclers or other runners on my path. But, for the vast majority of those couple miles, I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t focus on how far I’d run or how far I had to go. I simply enjoyed the running.
I felt God speak to me through the experience about the pace of my mind and of my life in all this. This wasn’t a mental exercise or logical conclusion I came to. It felt like a moment of revelation – revelation for that moment, for today, for what I was struggling with at this point in my ministry and my walk and run through life.
As I serve in this call to the church, I don’t have any idea how long it will take before I see things turning around for my congregation, the congregations I serve, or the North American church in general. I don’t know how long it will take before the decline and contention seems to end. I don’t know if the search for good pastors or volunteers for church camps will ever become easier, or if there will be a change in momentum. I don’t know how many congregations I will help close or watch struggle for direction. I can’t see the finish line for this job, nor any sort of mid-way point. And no amount of short-term accomplishments will change the overall trends. All I can do is keep running.
But…if I pace myself, discipline myself to stay with the Covenant, discipline my life to pray for and seek community with others, I won’t only learn to enjoy the run. I can learn to close my eyes and take my mind off the obsessive search for signs of change, for finish lines, and half-way points. I don’t have to rely on my eyes to find meaning or see what I can only trust in faith, whether it be new life or just plain relief.
There is no finish-line in ministry any more than there is a finish line with Christ. Ministry, like discipleship, is not a series of tests on fulfilling others’ emotional or scriptural expectations, or test of organizational accomplishments. We are called to trust less in these criterion of success or fulfillment and, instead, on the covenant. Covenant and discipleship are Christian code words for a different kind of life and different kind of community than our world offers. It is measured in completely a different way.
True. Life, and life with others, remains a marathon, of sorts. But, we cannot measure our progress solely on what we can see. It isn’t always about finding God in the beauty of our surroundings. Sometimes, there is more tragedy than beauty. We also cannot give into staving off life’s despair and difficulties by setting artificial goals with discernible mid-points and finish lines. Ministry, like discipleship, requires that I learn to close my eyes and trust in what I cannot see. Living in covenant with God and others requires trust, which is only learned when we can pace ourselves and enjoy the journey. The Covenant, like our life’s journey, is sure.
Christ has crossed the finish line and continues on that we might learn to walk/run with him each day.
mighty economy (“In God We Trust”) is shaping up a storm of forces that will both shake us and unravel some of the fabric of our society and its mode of relationships. An economy that survives on consumption, self-regard, and debt is simply not a mode of community, sacred or otherwise. It is a mode of relating in which the very meaning of human being is redefined. The edifying and enriching part of human relationships becomes what enriches and feeds ourselves, while the commitment and obligations that create and sustain these relationships are relegated to a secondary position. Our world promotes “have now, earn and pay later” relationships, whether we are looking for a home, a hassle-free meal at the end of a harried day, or the long-standing love of a significant other. I can only hope a uniquely Christian and profoundly human faith and community can respond with knowledge of a different kind of relationship – ones that flow in grace, peace, and generosity, as well as grounded in a commitment to what ultimately creates, redeems, and sustains human relationships. I’m tired of relationships based on fear and promises that are increasingly empty. I’m looking for a community that begins with people who hit the bottom of their addiction and finally realize that real life, now and eternal, begins somewhere on the other side, at the edge, of “me.”
individual statements or offer alternative perspectives. The restraint on debate to two minutes per person and slow speech required for translations within those two minutes also make it difficult to express or explain ideas. I understand why these constraints are in place and would not want to endure meetings in which these time limits were lifted or non-English speakers were excluded. So, perhaps blogging is a more removed but alternative way to speak on some of the issues expressed in quorum meetings and on the conference floor. Perhaps my thoughts can offer a broader or alternative understanding for church members to choose from or prayerfully consider with their own.
Some voices have expressed how previous scriptures on baptism, either D&C 20′s treatment of the question of rebaptism or general lack of scriptural support for any other authoritative form of baptism other than immersion, are reason to vote down or doubt the document’s divine counsel. In both cases, prescriptive scriptures about the practice of baptism are being used as if they are the proper or only scriptures to use for comparison or to test continuity. Some have also said that the current question being asked about rebaptism is the same one answered by D&C 20, as if the context is no different. While I think these are tenable comparisons to make and important for consideration, D&C 20 and other scriptural prescriptions for the mode or proper form of baptism are not the most important scriptures in which to look for precedents or comparative references. These kind of references are important only for a literalistic or legalistic view of scripture. Such an approach forgets or relegates other forms of scripture as less important or irrelevant for consideration. It is easy to forget scripture is much more than theologically prescriptive or ritual instruction (like Leviticus). Scripture also expresses divine revelation in the form of proverb, poem, narrative (like the Gospels), parable, and analogy – which are arguably more indirect forms of revelation that require nuanced and more responsible interpretation. The change in the practice of baptism prescribed by the inspired counsel provides just the opportunity to explore how there are previous precedents for just the kind of change in baptismal practice we are facing today.
Like baptism in the early Restoration church, circumcision was a peculiar sign of select membership for Israel. It was a sign that conferred Israel’s special place with God. It signed Israel’s election. The sign of circumcision marked Jews as a peculiar people shaped in an exclusive covenant between God and them in the same way baptism in the early Restoration church marked a special and unique relationship between God and the Restoration. It was a sign of the return of the full Gospel and its authority in the world. When Paul crossed cultural boundaries and went forth among the Gentiles making disciples of Christ, he did not requiring this sign. This created a fundamental tension with the Jerusalem church, which was shaped by centuries of practicing circumcision. In the end, the Jerusalem church reasoned that it “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose no further burden” (Acts 15:28). The exclusive sign of election gave way to a more relevant prescription for what it meant to be a disciple of Christ in other cultures. Viewing the inspired counsel this way, it does not come out of the blue but follows one of the most important and decisive scriptural precedents in the New Testament. It follows a period in the life of the earliest Christian church, which the Restoration looks to for its example and modern-day expression.
There is nothing more rewarding and more fulfilling, in the long run, than serving God and seeing life from this perspective. To find it, you will need to have moments when you can be alone with God, in the silences, and take in the wonder and grandeur of seeing your own lives in this perspective of things. God knows each hair on your head, and God knows and lives throughout the waves of energy, light, and space that stretches out into eternity. And, in those moments, you will know and feel how God knows and always thinks of you. I know my love for you and my affection are both a sign and gift that God gives me because it is God’s own love and affection for you.
As I prepare for a sermon today, I know, somehow, God cares for me and the people I’m going to worship with today in the same way. Each worship service is a sacrament of our love for one another, shared in Jesus Christ. What makes Jesus special is that his life, death, and ministry is the promise that all that we sense, believe, hope for, and marvel of in ourselves and each other can become real. Jesus was the full bloom of God’s eternal love and purposes in one life. We learn who we are and can be through him. The love God had for Jesus came true in his life and purpose, even amidst confusion, misdirection, and tragedy. I, too, feel and hope that the love I feel for you can come in full bloom in you – that you will grab it, grasp it, and pay it forward because it is just a small piece of God’s love that lives in me and so want to give to you.
I have moments in my dissertation writing when I feel like I’m a horrible writer and I need to just to quit. I go down an emotional rabbit hole. Writing has never been my strong point. I’ve had moments in my academic career when professors have read my work and told me they had no idea what I was saying. Of course, I knew exactly what I was saying. I never really learned whether it was a problem of my choice of words, writing style, or that my flow of thought was just plain incoherent. Maybe it is a mix of these things. But, internally, the problem I feel is that I get lost amidst the trees. It’s not that I don’t understand what I’m saying or thinking. It’s that I see so many questions and connections at once, I get lost in perspective. And, as I get lost in the possibilities of one sentence or paragraph, I make the mistake of wanting to put too much in a sentence. That can make it difficult to cipher what I’m saying.
The dissertation process, however, requires me to do what I don’t feel good at doing: outlining a set of ideas in an argument that I can deconstruct by simply taking another angle on my own line of thinking. This is horribly frustrating for me because beneath all the critical thinking I am fearful of being discovered as an impostor, an idiot, simple-minded, or someone found impersonating someone worthy of a PhD.
If you feel lost in your church right now, you are not alone.
If you are in a bubble and don’t feel like you can actually reach out and feel someone near you, you are not alone.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been tackling problems that don’t revolve around ethereal stuff like “new ideas,” “vision” and other theological talk that can lack consequence. In fact, I’ve been so sucked into these challenges that I’ve begun to wonder whether discussing the church’s problems or their solutions really matters if the people in the discussion aren’t somehow personally and materially invested. They, somehow, need to be givers or prepared to become givers to what we share. A giver gives so much more than money. But, they give money, too. They give to something beyond themselves.
We struggle on both sides. In the church, we have many congregations that are deeply attached to their houses of worship. 75-90% of the time, those churches are paid for. These buildings are the ebenesers, the alters, of a previous generation. They are the hallmark of our denominationalism. We are no longer a frontier movement. We now have our church on the corner. This was the success of previous generations. Because of them, I would bet 75-90% of our congregations have no mortgage, only maintenance and monthly bills. Five to fifty gather in them once a week.
Outside the church, we also live in a day when the relationship between spirituality and economics is wholly out of whack. Unbriddled greed and a world sold out to the god of wealth and wealth-production, has horribly contorted the relationship of our economic and spiritual needs. All around, I see its effects in “liberal” and conservative forms. Many Christians have literally sold out the doctrine of economic wealth and prosperity: we can spend ourselves out of crises, whether spiritual or economic. This not only makes absolutely no sense, wealth and prosperity – no matter how American – are false gods. They are not the good news, but a completely alien form of religion and spirituality. Christian faith and the call to prophetic community operates on a different kind of sense. Christ’s community is not based on getting what you pay for. Nor, is its growth based on profits or consuming more. The salvation of the church, on earth as it is in heaven, is based on what is given and what is shared: the shared grace, disciplines, practices, vision, and shared convictions. The church is a witness to community.
