One of my favorite authors is Barbar Brown Taylor. She was named one of the top 20 preachers in America. A few years ago she wrote a very honest memoir of her decision to leave her role as pastor called Leaving Church. She is a person who was willing to ask the hard questions and see where the path would take her. I resonate with her conclusion:
“I thought that being faithful was about becoming somone other than who I was, in other words, and it was not until this project failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.”
This deeply reflective author bring to us some wonderful questions to consider about our communities of faith and self. This weeks installment of Walking with Questions calls us to stop and ponder the type of communities and relationships that we are a part of and are creating:
“What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are suppose to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?”
What if we could listen more? What if we had the courage of Barbara to unlearn what we think we know rather than continuing to look for things that confirm what we already think?
The journey is about two things. One getting to know yourself in a clearer way without all the props and distractions we put around ourselves to hold us up. But the second reason is the most important I believe, to learn to ask different questions. We do this by coming into contact with people and places that we have never encountered. The very act of walking into the unknown empowers the ability to question or at least encounter uncertainty which is a prerequisite for asking good questions. Perhaps our most important life long adventure is to ask better questions. It is our ability to ask questions that will release us from what we think we know in order to be open to what we could know.
For the next few posts I am going to introduce some people who have made me ask different questions in my life. I will offer some of their perspective in hopes that you will go and engage them more fully on your own. The companions you invite into your journey will make all the difference in both the way of the journey and destination you are likely to reach.
So, here we go…
“Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all possible religions. And therefore if the cross is the sign of anything, it’s the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all the world’s problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing. What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can’t do a thing about the world’s problems—that is it never did work and it never will…” Robert Capon – The Mystery of Christ and Why We Don’t Get It
What is beyond religion? What would my life be like if I let go of religion? What do I think I need to do to gain the acceptance of God?
Some time ago, I was reading through the announcements at my church. Something stood out to me. If I participated with everything that applied to me, I would have come to eight to ten meetings to talk about God and the Bible. It seems that we have come to spend much of our time in our communities of faith talking about faith. There is a world of difference between hearing a truth and experiencing a truth.
There is a passage in John’s first letter that calls us to reach beyond talking about our faith and actually experience it as we love others. But to do so, we must begin in a very paradoxical place.
“My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves. And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing our condemning ourselves, we’re gold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive… (I John 3:18-22, The Message).
The place we must begin to live in our faith is being honest with ourselves. John reminds us that what limits us most is our own doubt and insecurity about ourselves. Our fear keeps us from reaching out, from fully engaging those around us, from really experiencing the grace that has been extended to us.
Too often we come to our churches wrestling with our own shortcomings. We worry they will be revealed. We worry that we do not measure up. We too often come thinking we are here to prove something. I wonder if John, as he was writing this passage, thought of another scene many years before when Jesus was on bended knee beginning to wash the feet of his friend Peter. Peter struggled with believing the mystery of grace. He did not want to be served. He did not feel worthy. And that is the point. When we are worried about our worth we cannot receive the love and acceptance that Jesus freely extends to us and we cannot pass that love on to those around us.
We are asked to come and trust what cannot possibly be true. We are asked to trust that eating a little piece of bread and drinking a small sip of wine brings life to our spirit. We are asked to believe that no matter what we bring in terms of our state of faith, God has already seen and known this. It does not stop him from loving us.
So as you reach out and consider the people around you, consider that reaching as a reminder that all has been made right for us with God and if we trust it, with each other. There is more going on than we can understand. Our job is not to explain it only to trust it. As we receive what we can see, bread and wine, trust that we are also receiving what we cannot see – unconditional acceptance. When we truly trust this we will no longer live separated and divided. We will live at ease with God and our neighbor and that will change the world.
Pilgrimage is one of my new passions. It first got my attention when I read a book by Paul Boers — The Way is Made by Walking. It was his reflections on walking the 500 mile Camino De Santiago route in Spain. When I read it, I heard the urge to go for a long walk.
Boers defines pilgrimage as “religiously motivated travel for the purpose of meeting and experiencing God with hopes of being shaped and changed by the encounter.” This was my hope this summer as I set off for Melrose, Scotland with my daughter. Our 65 mile walk took us through many villages, past castles and abbeys. We began and ended on two of the most famous Celtic thin places (places where it seems the phyical and spiritual worlds are closer and there is a history of interaction with God in those places). I did not know what to expect from a thin place. Would I hear a voice? Would I get ideas that I had not before known? The answer is I experienced a deep emotional openness and peace. The night before we started our walk, we were in Melrose whose abbey was just a few feet away from our bed and breakfast. I woke up in the middle of the night with a longing to return to a place that I had not yet left. As I read my journal now, the question I had then was “Is this what the relationship God has called me to? Nothing spectacular, simply a place to sit and rest?
For me, the pilgrimage is a place to find healing in the ordinary. I can do nothing each day but put one foot in front of the other until I finish my days task. I cannot change my circumstance only contiue on as the path leads me. Each day I am given resurrection as my sleep turns my tiredness and brokenness into strength for another day. I started our journey with a deep sadness and a hope for an encounter. I ended with healing and peace. The encounter was not spectacular or awe inspiring. It was a stillness that came from the walk. I continue each day to yearn for my next walk and just maybe another day in Melrose.
Where are you going? What do you wish to encounter? What adventure would bring you peace? Have you taken a pilgrimage? What is it about this experience that grips my heart and changes me?
As I looked behind me, I could see the top of the oak tree my long and slender platform extended from, shake and twist with every move I made. Looking forward, I could see way below me the bottom of the ravine where it appeared the open maul of the earth was ready to swallow me. I heard the metal clink as the karabiner gate closed into place. Immediately it hit me; the weight of the cables pulling me towards the edge. The harder I resisted, the greater the tension on the swing cables and the stronger the draw to the edge. I was faced with a decision at that point in time. On one hand, I could allow my fear to keep me frozen in place. Although the status quo was unpleasant and unsustainable, I knew what I had there on the end of that platform. The other choice was to keep resisting the source of my fear and let the weight of the cables do their job and pull me into the unknown where after the second or two of weightless uncertainty, I would experience the adventure of a lifetime. I am glad I took the leap.
This same scenario could be a description of my life of faith. I have had different sources of fear that motivated me towards God. At first it was the fear of judgment and punishment. I am glad that God had something much better in mind. My experiences, both structured and planned as well as those happenstances of life, have continued to question the skewed vision I had of God. Each time I was willing to question what I thought I knew, I discovered a clearer picture of the truth (Robinson, 2009). What causes you fear? Where might it seek to lead you?
This post isn’t going to be controversial, I don’t think. Although the topic: What is CQ Missional?- has proven to be controversial for some, confusing for others, and a great learning process for me- interestingly enough.
This post is about the words we use that help us describe what we do, and what we’re about. We want to get to the point in the description, and have clarity (something I’m not always great at, I like the “stream of consciousness” stuff).
Here is the answer: CQ Missional helps people discover their role in making the world a better place. Its not rocket science. We want to help people…help people. And while these words may sound a bit “vanilla”, they are all on purpose, and each has an important meaning and context.
Those words have risen to the top in the last 5 months- as I have fumbled trying to explain how we do things and what we offer and how that is unique or enough like what the people want to hear. Some people have chosen to not work with us because the language doesn’t sound like something we hear at my church- and that causes them concern. Thats ok. I just want our words to be honest, real, and easy to understand for anyone we may encounter- and I’m praying that is how we operate as representatives of CQM as well.
We do believe that Christ is the center of the story. I also know that we will work with people from all walks of life- and I am jazzed to interact with all of God’s children, and ….help them discover their role in making the world a better place. A better place in a “Lords Prayer” sort of way… That is our working definition of Missional- and it has much to do with the Lord’s prayer when Jesus prays “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
I’ve found my time explaining what CQ Misisonal is to be very interesting in what thoughts and questions the process has brought up in my own mind. This is good, and not easy. I want to explain what we do because it is a unique approach, and there is a vision attached. However- I am discovering that my own need to position us as “unique, creative, out of the box, …” motivates my stream of words. It starts to look like I’m the center of the story at that point. To contrast- I would rather be part of a work that cares about the people we come across, and simply does the things we do well to help people find their unique role in the big Story. If we get to help people…. help other people… (making the world a better place); then we’re doing our job.
So- helping people discover their role in making the world a better place… this is what we do. I’ll write more in future posts about the purpose of each of the words and the connectedness to what we’re about as a community. I will also use this blog to post upcoming book excerpts for us to wrestle with.
I’m looking forward to the dialog.
Please engage our different blog posts which will be produced almost everyday by a variety of friends. These are different people who provide engaging questions and content all around the “missional” life. You’ll find opinions and questions that will be diverse and expand the “missional” thread- shoot back with your perspective! I want you to help us think. Maybe we can help you as well. We want to be a community that helps people, and having our assumptions challenged in this group can be one way that we help each other grow. I am so thankful for our blogging partners, and excited about the content, stories, and most of all- the lives they live. Our agreement with our team goes for 6 months, and we promise not to edit or censor their content- trust is a big fat word around here.
I also look forward to contributing weekly and connecting with readers as someone who cares, and who is a fellow journeyman. Not Journey, as in “Don’t Stop Believing” with short guy with mullet Steve Perry belting it out (thats excellent as well…) but more like sharing the life journey. As we walk together with this community, we will have shared experience. Shared experience plus reflection is big time way that our ears and eyes are opened to mission and purpose. God is speaking to us all the time. I look forward to seeing what you and I are discovering.
Pilgrimage is one of my new passions. It first got my attention when I read a book by Paul Boers — 
This post isn’t going to be controversial, I don’t think. Although the topic: What is CQ Missional?- has proven to be controversial for some, confusing for others, and a great learning process for me- interestingly enough.