What am I to do?

I am an introvert in a church tradition that adores extroverts and looks with suspicion on the quiet and the silent.

I embrace the spiritual in a church tradition that has pushed more and more to the academic.

I like to listen to my life for signs of God in a church tradition that thinks faith begins and ends with the Bible.

I am fascinated by 2,000 years of the best practices of the church in a church tradition that thinks church history started with C.S. Lewis.

I want to help develop community and find ways to serve my neighbors in a church tradition that says that these things don’t count for real evangelism.

I like my politics to reflect the Jesus I read about in the gospels in a church tradition that seems to back one side, Christ’s teaching be damned.

So why have I stayed in this tradition? Why have I been in the same church for more than 10 years and the same tradition that I grew up with? I can point to three ideas that have kept me tied to my church tradition and developed my sense of calling within that tradition:

Spiritual Heritage: One of my favorite books is Dakota by Kathleen Norris. In the book, this noted writer and poet with ties to the New England literary elite discusses her heritage in the Great Plains but also her Spiritual Heritage as a Christian and protestant. I loved the way she voices the idea that to be cut off from your spiritual heritage is to be cut off from your identity and your sense of place. I first read this many years ago around the same time as my spiritual breakthrough. As I began to search for deeper and more profound religious experiences, I was intrigued by other traditions and strands of faith as the way I must go but Norris’ sense of spiritual heritage just seemed like a worthy value to hold on to and pursue. It made me appreciate the finer points of my own tradition.

Photo by Karl Fredrickson on Unsplash

Balanced Faith: Also at the time of my spiritual breakthrough, I began reading Richard Foster. His book, Streams of Living Water, establishes the idea, from a scriptural and spiritual stand point, that the church established by Christ, was not meant to be an affinity group based on doctrine and personal preference but was meant to include six “streams” that have surfaced in various traditions. Foster envisions these streams coming together in a balanced, strong, and vibrant church. What if Charismatics became a little more Word-centered, what if the Christian social activists were a little more contemplative, what if Evangelicals were a little more concerned with social causes? By combining the best of all of these traditions, the Church finds its best footing and is better equipped to do what God wants done.  This made so much sense to me. I didn’t want to abandon one affinity group for another, I wanted to be a part of bringing the best practices of Christ’s church back to my own church for the betterment of all the churches.

A Sense of Calling: Dallas Willard says that spiritual formation is becoming who Jesus would be if he were I, with my same background, context, and giftings. If this is true, then I am not called to be another Jesus, as we know him, but one that he would be if he had lived my life and participated in my history. This has brought out a deep sense of place and time for me. Instead of chasing some ideal of Christlikeness that “must” include starting my own church, or attending a certain type of church, or running off to an exotic location as the only real way of living out my faith, I began to realize that perhaps I was called to my church and my tradition to bring more balance to the faith, to bring more heart than head, to introduce practices that may be foreign to some, and present a different approach to the Christian Life that just might help others grow closer to Christ. I felt called to minister to my own church using the tools that I had learned from my readings and trainings in Spiritual Formation and Discipleship. This hasn’t always been easy, but time and time again, I have felt the tug of this call.

I have spent so much time in the last few months reflecting on the teachings and miracles of Jesus that I felt like I was ill prepared for Easter week. I wanted to feel connected to the reality of Jesus’ last days, his crucifixion, and resurrection. I immediately thought of a book I read several years back called Unapologetic by Francis Spufford. His chapter on Jesus is one of the most powerful things I have ever read. His description of Jesus’ crucifiction is the kind of raw, stark, and beautiful thing I needed this week. So, I thought I would share a few of Spufford’s words and offer a little meditation for us to get in line with the level of love and sacrifice present in Easter week. More to come this week.

Daylight finds him in a procession again, but this time no one could mistake him for a king. He’s stumbling along under the weight of his own instrument of execution, a great big wooden thing he can hardly lift, with an escort of the empire’s soldiers, and the bystanders who’ve come blinking out of the lodgings where they spent the festival night don’t see their hopes, or even the possibility of their hopes, parading by. They see their disappointment, they see their frustration…

Place yourself in the crowd that morning. What is going through your head as Jesus stumbles by? Are you saddened? Angry? Ashamed? Disappointed? Relieved? Glad? Are you being swept away by the jeers and cat calls from those around you? Do you want to spit at him like the person beside you? Or are tears rolling down your face? The pure humiliation of Jesus’ parade through the streets is shocking compared to the promise of just a few days before. Isn’t that just like us humans. We will turn on a person for no good reason other than our personal preferences weren’t met that day and we might as well take it out on something or someone.

…he’s turning his bruised face toward the whole human crowd, past and present and to come, and accepting everything we have to throw at him, everything we fear we deserve ourselves. The doors of his heart are wedged open wide, and in rushes the whole pestilential flood, the vile and roiling tide of cruelties and failures and secrets. Let me take that from you, he is saying. Give that to me instead. Let me carry it. Let me be to blame instead. I am big enough. I am wide enough. I am not what you were told… I am the father who longs for every last one of his children. I am the friend who will never leave you. I am the light behind the darkness…

What do you fear you deserve? What has my sin done? What should be in store for me? Jesus takes the blame. He embraces our faults and takes them in on himself. That is the picture of Jesus as he heads to the cross.

In a type of closing ceremony, on the final day of the final gathering of the Apprentice Experience in Sierra Madre, California, each of the participants got to say a few words about their experience in the program and then received a certificate. Here is what I said:

I don’t deserve the gift that AE has brought me. I don’t deserve the strong spiritual friendships that I received through our small groups and connections that I have made. I don’t deserve the chance to wrestle with such important issues and ideas that were taught by such strong teachers. But, God isn’t interested in what we deserve, he is interested in what He can provide. Thank God for his abundant and generous provision.

Random observations from 18 months of the Apprentice Experience:

• I have become a fan of Wichita, Kansas. I have the shirt to prove it. Not a bad smaller big city.
• I have always liked Scot McKnight. His blog is one of the best things on the internet. Getting to hear him speak on theology, Christology, and soteriology sounds really dry when I write it but he always makes these topics accessible. The best part, though, was finding a library with a TV in a Catholic retreat center so that Scot and the rest of us could watch his beloved Cubs in the World Series.
• My small group, made up of five individuals – a California pastor, a Kansas youth pastor, a California matriarch, and a Kansas graduate student – has been consistently one of the highlights of our gatherings. We have bonded over meals, over texts, and in our scheduled time together. They are loving, interesting, and authentic people.
• Just about everyone in our Community would be someone who I could sit down with right now and have a conversation that weaves elements of Spiritual Formation and discipleship without any hesitation. I have lived most of my Christian life having to pick and choose the ways I talk about these things because people look at me like I am speaking a foreign language. It is nice to find my tribe.

• My biggest takeaways have involved intense personal conviction. One gathering included me coming to grips with my overly critical nature. One forced me to evaluate what it means to forgive and how to do it. I became more vulnerable by intentionally seeking out social opportunities with my fellow AErs instead of slinking to my own personal space.
• There is always a two-hour stretch sometime during the Gathering weeks that we spend in complete silence. I spent one of these times walking through the Stations of the Cross. I would just sit on a bench in front of each station and take in the station. When I got to the station where Jesus is taken down from the cross I couldn’t see the image on the stone because the sun was shining so brightly in my eyes. The exact angle that I was sitting mixed with the timing of the day made it to where even the darkness of Christ’s temporary death was not visible.
• All of our readings have influenced the blog. My posts on lament, the times I tried to tell my story, my discussion of vulnerability, and others have been directly inspired by something I read from our assigned readings. I so enjoyed the excuse to reread Dallas Willard‘s classics The Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart.
• This final gathering will be a little different as we will be in Southern California at a retreat center in Sierra Madre. This will be an interesting change of scenery from Kansas. Our guest teacher will be Shane Claiborne and the overall theme will be community. I so need this time away in rest, contemplation, and community.
• I want to say a special thank you to many of you who have contributed to my fund-raising efforts to make this all possible. Some of you contributed graciously and generously. You may not realize it but your contribution paved the way for the learning and transformation that has shaped the best parts of this blog and the best parts of my efforts at doing kingdom work in my job and in my church. Your contribution has not gone to waste, I can assure you.