A Few Analogies for Faith

A few days ago, while driving to work, I began to think about the diet/exercise program I've begun, it's the "Hacker's Diet" you can check it out here. Being the church nerd that I am, it quickly moved into ideas that related to faith and sermon preparation.

I've heard the analogy before about thinking of Sunday worship like eating a meal. "You wouldn't eat a cheeseburger one day and expect it to carry you through the week would you?" The idea being that Sunday worship "feeds" us, and we're starving our faith because we don't have enough to eat. I think this idea gets it backwards. Worship isn't about feeding us. Worship isn't about us at all. Well that's a novel idea isn't it? No analogy is perfect of course, and I am certain the ones I am about to put forth have their flaws as well, but this one plays to our culture too much. It takes the act of worshiping our God, and places the emphasis on what it does for us. In essence we're all a bunch of little idols running into the sanctuary waiting for the pastor to "Wow, me." Ok maybe that is a little extreme but it should make it easy to get my point.

So being a former track star, I'm always looking for ways to compare things to track, since it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to relive those days. For once I actually came up with a decent comparison. When track season was approaching, we started conditioning weeks in advance, so that when it came time to have a meet, we would be in shape. To get in shape required that we run, a lot, throughout the weeks leading up to the meet. One couldn't expect to just walk up to the starting line and win when the other 7 people lining up had gotten in shape.

Hopefully you've already figured out where I'm going with this analogy. If we look at Sunday as "the event" to perform at rather than to gain from it changes our faith strategy. The rest of the week isn't spent living off of that moment, but rather building up to it. If we are using and exercising our faith throughout the week, how much better will our part in the event be? If I skipped practices for a month (or even a week!) I would be letting my teammates down when the next meet came up, because I wouldn't get the points we needed, or hold up my leg of the relay.

The other part of this, which deals more with the "Hacker's Diet", is that we are living in an age of instant gratification. So many diet's fail because the first few days of it are pretty hard and we don't see immediate results, so we assume it isn't working and throw in the towel. Our expectations of our New Year's resolution to exercise and get in shape often fail within the first month because we don't see immediate results and it is just too much effort. (The author of the "Hacker's Diet" points out 1 full hour of non-stop running only burns about 700 calories, which is the equivalent to a big mac and fries (no drink or 0-calorie diet soda) or 50z. of BAKED potato chips.

How does this relate to faith then? Well we often want to have a sense of a strong faith, like those saints and bastions of faith that we hear so much about. Again though it's like trying to run a marathon without every training! Part of our conditioning for track was starting out small and working out way up. We set an achievable goal for the end of the season, we set goals to attain by extra effort and personal bests, and we set goals for our first meet. For instance one year my season goal was to run the 400m dash in 51.0 seconds, my extra effort was to beat the school record of 49.9 seconds, and my first meet goal...55.0 seconds. You have to start somewhere. Our training to reflected a build up, beginning of the season 4 laps, then run a 100, 200, 200, 100 at about a 60% pace. End of the season 6 laps, then run 200, 200, 300, 400, 300, 100 at 75%-80% pace. Recovery times between each of those sprints went down from 60 seconds to 20 seconds. All those numbers are probably pretty meaningless to most people, but what they represent is a build up as we got stronger, we didn't start by doing the hardest stuff right out of the gate because it quite possibly could have killed us, and just wasn't healthy.

So too with our faith! If we've been neglecting it for years we shouldn't expect it to just drive our lives all of the sudden. Granted we hear stories of new Christians who immediately after converting are just so strong in their faith, but how many of them actually were converted by just walking aimlessly into the church one day? I think you'll find many of them were influenced by other Christians, and looked into scriptures on their own, and probably went to worship several times and then had their wonderful conversion experience. The point is we need to build our faith, and that won't come from only attending "the event". But we don't want to over-extend ourselves when we've gotten out of shape. We have to build our faith, which takes time, and effort. A simple way to start is a daily devotion, it doesn't have to be an hour long spiritual session every day, but maybe 5-10 minutes at the beginning of one's day. There are two ways that this can go. One like the "Hacker's Diet" exercise routine, the time will never increase, but the quality will, and you'll get more and more out of it. The other thing that may happen is it'll really get a hold of you. You may find yourself devoting 15 minutes, then 20 minutes, then 30 minutes. The same holds true for prayer, scripture reading, and other faith practices. Then comes time for "the event" we'll all do much better, and come time for those spontaneous times where we may need to exercise our faith other times, death, tragedy, crisis, moral decisions, it will be there and ready for us to use.

Operation: Genesis

We had our second event for the Operation: Genesis program. This time it was floor hockey at the local National Guard Armory. First let me remind you that I was born and raised in Ohio and have been attending seminary in the Bay Area of California, neither of which are places one thinks of when one thinks of hockey. I'm on internship in Minnesota, where a lot of people live and breathe hockey and can skate as soon as they can stand up right. I also have to say that being a student, and now an intern pastor, I do a lot more sitting than when I used to at least run for track. So frankly I'm just glad to have come through intact. I played for about a half an hour, with no illusions as to my abilities, I didn't attempt to score any goals and only attempted to frustrate the other team by stopping theirs. I cleared out the puck several times, and I only ended up with a little bit of floor burn. Well and I was so winded I nearly got sick, and my entire body is still sore (no I didn't get body checked thankfully we weren't that rough). Still the guys played on quite a bit longer even after I left. We had more guys for this event than the first and I hope we can keep continuing to grow, build relationships, and bring the program forward.

Deep Breath!

Well another St. Thomas Meditative Service has come and gone, and as much as I enjoy the service, it is a relief that this one is over. Mostly because this time around it was my responsibility to organize the service. Being one to delegate I was not too worried about the process, but it was still a bit trying for me. Probably the biggest issue was just the timing, even being a leap year February still is kind of a short month, so time went fast. I was coming off of preaching and giving a Valentine's day talk at a brunch, along with trying to get ready for the Operation Genesis kick-off. So it just got me a little bit burnt out, so I put off planning for the St. Thomas Meditative Service until the next week. That next week also happened to be the week immediately preceding the service itself. Woops! Fortunately people were able and willing to help and things did fall into place. I am especially grateful for our musicians who played so wonderfully, you wouldn't have known how little time I gave them to prepare! All in all the service went splendidly and I think it really helped those who attended have an encounter with the divine.

Onward

Well I now have a weekend of preaching and speaking behind me, it was a big weekend for me. Now I just have to make sure I'm keeping up with my LSA (Learning Service Agreement), plan the next St. Thomas Meditative Service, and finally get the ball rolling on the Operation: Genesis group. Whew! So with that new tinge of guilt that there are others things that I should be doing with my time right now I will leave this post at that!

St Thomas Meditative Service

Well we now have had our second St Thomas Meditative Service. I am glad to say that I think it went well. Our turnout was not as much as the last time, but the stations for the break out time were still very well done. I gave the message at the service, our theme was Light in the Darkness. I felt pretty confident about it, I didn't even use any notes, and a few people commented afterwards that they appreciated the message. The most powerful part of the evening though, in my opinion, was the music, there was a lot of talent there. We'll be hard pressed to come up with that much talent again! I will be heading up the next one, so I've got a high bar to reach for.

Preparation

Much of being an intern is about preparation. Preparing to be a worship leader, preparing to teach confirmation, preparing to find your pastoral identity. My supervisor has been helpful in this area because he has been giving me many different resources to help in that preparation. The latest of which is "Leading Congregational Change". I've honestly only read the preface and the first chapter, but even those have been quite enlightening. It did raise an interesting question about the role of pastors though. Are pastors generally leaders who help move congregations through change, or are they managers who help maintain the status quo (if it ain't broke don't fix it)?

Which then makes me think, are our seminaries preparing us to be leaders or managers?

Moving Forward

Well even though our speaker for the Exemplary Youth program canceled, he had to have emergency back surgery, we went on with the meeting. Most people had gotten the word that the meeting was canceled so attendance was pretty low. Pastor Menke gave a short presentation on what some of the problems are, and then discussed further how those problems were present at OSEL. Those that did attend had some questions and the dialog was fruitful and seemed to convey some of their excitement about the project. I hope that this is a reflection of how the rest of the congregation feels about this as well.

Also moving forward is our Operation: Genesis program, which took a short hiatus to avoid holiday conflicts. We're all still really excited about getting something going with the young men, and I hope we can keep building on what we've got so far.

Hit the ground running

Having to hit the ground running seems to be a common theme in my life in the last few years. From moving out to the Seminary (always right before classes) to vacations, and returning from vacations it seems as I'm always having to be on the move. Sarah and I got to go home and see our families. I preached on Christmas day, which made for me having taken part in 8 services in 3 days, and then we flew out the day after Christmas. We rented a car and drove out to see Sarah's side of the family first and of course split our time pretty well evenly between her side and my side. It all went entirely too fast, I did end up losing my voice for a few days, right when I would have been preaching again had Doug not stepped in so Sarah and I could go see family (Thanks Doug!), but other than that the trip was good.

Then hitting the ground running yet again we come back to St. Paul, hop in a taxi and head back to our apartment. Sarah worked a full day, I went in for a half day (on what is normally my day off, but I needed to know what was going on) then we both were assisting the Sunday we got back. Sarah's supervisor got sick so her big day got even bigger, I was able to help out a little by picking up a few things for the evening at her church, and I stuck around to help setup for the event too. Thankfully she had a lot of good help and so she wasn't really alone and things went well.

The rest of our week is pretty busy, asides from a quick hour or two together in the evening I think we'll get to see each other Saturday...maybe. Such is the life of a clergy couple.

Godspeed.