Spritual Formation and Spiritual Frustration

I have been hearing some frustration in the posts by my classmates lately (mine included). I think by and large that goes along with Spiritual formation. Like my friend Pam says the contemplative life is like a path tangled with roots. It is a difficult way. How do we get others to come along with us? How do we really do social justice? How do we really allow God’s power to work through us in supernatural charisms? How do we start? Who do we blame when the Body isn’t as beautiful, sweet smelling, as the incarnate Christ should?

In War and Peace, Tolstoy makes a case that it wasn’t Napoleon or Alexander who determined the course of history, it wasn’t their genius or that of their generals that determined their battles success. It was the hearts of the men, each fueled by the flow of history that determined the war.

As a staff pastor I thought, “if only the the pastor got behind my vision, if only he announced the intergenerational sunday school class from the pulpit, I could succeed.” As I a senior pastor I am learning how little structures and programs affect the hearts of the masses. I can hold out church planting as a last hope... “if only the church’s DNA was different, if only it was hard wired to love the way of discipleship...” If only.... some how I think these hopes are just as hollow unless I can find the place to start. “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I can move the world.”

Skimming through The Great Omission by Dallas Willard, I ran across this quote.

What to do now!
Convert the world? No.
Convert the church? “Judgement,” it is famously said, “begins at the house of God.” It has the divine light and divine provisions, and because of that is most responsible to guide humankind.
But “no” again. Do not “convert the church.”
Your first move “as you go” is. in a manner of speaking: Convert me.

The place to start is in me. The great hope is in me! (and greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world.)

The silent power of God

What is the purpose of pentecostal power? If it is mystical, then what is the purpose of contemplation? It desires to do. Foster calls the charismatic stream the power to do while the holiness tradition is the power to be. Being strongly rooted in the Pentecostal tradition, I can wonder if we’ve even begun to tap into a power to do. Looking at the bigger picture we can see we’re doing, the Assembly of God is growing by leaps and bounds especially world wide; at home much slower, but we are still the fastest growing denomination. Still when we look at local narratives we don’t always see it fleshed out. Am I any more empowered to do than my brothers who pastor other churches and do not claim the pentecostal experience?

Rolhieser tells of Daniel Berrigan’s response to the question of God’s presence in today’s world.

He simply told the audience how he, working in a hospice for the terminally ill, goes each week to spend some time sitting by the bed of a young boy who is totally incapacitated, physically and mentally. The young boy can only lie there. He cannot speak or communicate with his body nor in any other way express himself to those who come into his room. He lies mute, helpless, by all outward appearance cut off from any possible communication. Berrigan then described how he goes regularly to sit by this young boy’s bed to try to hear what he is saying in his silence and helplessness.

After sharing this, Berrigan added a further point: The way this young man lies in our world, silent and helpless, is the way God lies in our world. To hear what God is saying we must learn to hear what this young boy is saying.

This is a powerful image of finding God in the silence, of finding the power that “lies muted, at the deep moral and spiritual base of things.”

Foster reminds me that for William J. Seymour, the renewal of the sign of Pentecost signaled divinely initiated racial reconciliation. Just as the original day of Pentecost had people from all regions of the Roman world hearing their own language, and has been seen as reversing the disintegration of Babel, this new Pentecost could bring integration reversing the babble of segregation. If this was God’s intent, and I believe it likely was, we quickly throw our monkey wrenches into it. Charles Parham quickly dismissed as sinful the worshiping together of black and white brothers. And the Assemblies of God became the white Pentecostals as the Church of God in Christ became the black. Some of this may have had to do with the strength of Wesleyan holiness with its view of sanctification as a second work of grace in black spirituality, but I’m sure the majority of the issue wasn’t theological but racial.

So if Azusa street was to usher in a power to do reconciliation, have we failed? I asked myself this yesterday as I pondered. If the power of my pentecostal experience is supposed to be a conduit to flow to those around me has it failed? As a fellowship have we embraced the Pentecostal power to change?

“Ask Zollie Smith if we failed.” The still voice came to my mind. Zollie Smith is the first black man to be on our national executive leadership team, moving from Executive Presbytery to be Director of Home Missions this year. It took a hundred years but God isn’t through yet! It is interesting how God chose the Charismatic Stream to effect Social Justice in his church. Zollie inspires me, not because of who he is, but because he shows who we are becoming as a church. Like Barack Obama challenging our concepts of race in presidential politics simply because he’s there, God is challenging the world through us because we are here.

So if the power of the Spirit is meant to make me a conduit of God’s power, to change me so powerfully by his presence in my life that my life changes the world with it’s presence, what will that look like? Lord God use me, let that power that underlies all that exists flow through me to the world around. Flow river flow. Spring up oh well of eternal desire!

Tilting at windmills

In Holy Longing Ronald Rolheiser suggests that Social Justice is different from personal charity, that if we are to engage in Social Justice, we must address the systemic concerns of injustice rather than just meeting the needs that result from the injustice.

A few years back, our local ministerial association started what we called Project Caritas to be an arm of our collective churches to address social justice concerns. The main effort of the project was a fund, fueled by our community Lenten offerings. Since I was so gung ho about engaging in social justice, I became the treasurer. We used the money to meet the urgent financial needs of people who came to us. A couple weeks back we ran out of money, and decided to end the project.

The question remains, "did we engage in social justice at all?" Did we address any of the underlying injustices that caused these problems. We talked about them... Things like unemployment, health-care costs, a difficult economy, but what could we do? Addressing such systemic issues seem too big for state or even federal government to handle. What can we do?

I wished we could start a revolution like Che, but without the guns.

The task is too much, I feel like a solitary Quixote in a world of injustice. Yet Rolheiser calls this work, our tilting at the windmills, a non-negotiable essential to our spiritual formation.

I am reminded of Willard's Divine Conspiracy: we undermine the world's system by living in the kingdom of God, by becoming like Jesus, so that the kingdom rules in the areas of our influence. In so doing we subvert the world and chip away at evil's hold, the devil's injustice.

Rolheiser agrees. "The struggle for justice and peace is not ultimately about winning or losing but about fidelity."

We go on tilting at windmills, regardless of our results, because ultimately our motivation isn't our own gain, or notoriety, nor is it even about humanity and making the world a better place. Our motivation is that divine fire within that compells us to live, and to love. It is the beating of a heart much too big for our chest, indeed too big for the universe to contain. So we fight on. Not with the arms of Quixote or Che, but with peace, love and a subversive spirituality.

Espresso fueled poetry

Contemplation of your beauty is like
The cold mist
It refreshes
And it bites
It tingles my nostrils
And empties my body of it's flame
Like the prick of coming tears
It widens my lips and glosses my eyes
Contemplation of your mystery is like
The cool fall
It enfolds me like a turtleneck
And transforms me with its colors
It makes me feel dashing and handsome
And warms my hands with coffee and apple cider and cocoa
It is perfection
And it is gone

Abba Antony and Faust

His first temptation experience we are told, happened because the devil “wished to cordon him off from his righteous intention” and so he paraded before Antonius a host of memories about what he was leaving behind: “the guardianship of his sister, the bonds of kinship… the manifold pleasures of food,” and the like. At first all of this raised “a great dust cloud of considerations” in Antonius’s mind. But his resolve stood firm. Next the devil “hurled foul thoughts” at him, but Antonius “overturned them through his prayers.” So the devil, “resorted to titillation,” but Antonius, “seeming to blush, fortified the body with faith.” So turning to more blatant sexual temptation the devil decided to “assume to form of a woman and to imitate her every gesture,” but Antonius “extinguished the fire of his opponent’s deception.” Back and forth they went, Antonius winning round after round until the devil “fled, cowering at the words and afraid even to approach the man.” Concerned that we understand whose power was behind these victories, Antonius’s biographer writes, “This was Antonius’s first contest against the devil – or, rather was in Antonius the success of the Savior.” Well it may have been “his first contest,” but it was far from his last. -Richard J Foster

How different is St. Antony from Goethe’s Faust! In heaven God gives Mephistopheles permission to test Faust, just as he did Job. But this Faust doubts the existence of Heaven or Hell and accepts Mephistopheles’ friendship as a test to the power of his own convictions about the nature of the world. He is willing to accept all the power and delight Mephistopheles has to offer without accepting the reality of the spiritual world he came from. Mephistopheles parades the same sort of temptations before Faust as the devil did before St. Antony. Faust fails, quickly overcome by the beauty of a woman, drunk on a vile elixir of lust. He damns his soul to eternal punishment, while costing the life of Gretchen and her brother. He watches from hell as Gretchen is escorted to heaven, completing his own personal hell.

It is sobering the battle to come as we draw near to God. It is only those “who believe he is and rewards those who earnestly seek him,” who can please him, who can overcome the enemy. In Invitation to a Journey, Mulholland talks about the Awakening, the Purgative, Illumitive and Unitive way.

Lord God, if in drawing to union with you I must pass through the dark night of the senses, and the dark night of the soul as saints have through ages past, Lord let it be. Though tears come to my eyes at the thought of not feeling your closeness—of sensing with Jesus on the cross your abandonment, still I will love you!

The Name of Jesus

This week I am experimenting with using Jesus as a mantra. A mantra is a short prayer repeated over and over until it “settles into your soul like a nest (Henri Nouwen’s image).” Nouwen goes on to say,

“The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart. This repetition has nothing to do with magic. It is not meant to throw a spell on God or to force him into hearing us. On the contrary, a word of sentence repeated frequently can help us to concentrate, to move to the center, to create an inner stillness and thus to listen to the voice of God.”

I’ve chosen “Jesus” as my prayer partly because I am strangely uncomfortable with his name. For some reason speaking it, hearing it, sounds tinny, shallow and devoid of the intimacy I desire and know with him. I hear others say it, or sing it and it sounds flaky. Perhaps I am jealous. I mean do they really have the kind of intimacy with him that I have, that I long for? I like to use pet names for him, like savior, master, lover, or my Jesus. I wish I could call him Josh. “Jesus” just seems so Christiany. I mean it’s not even how his parents would have said his name, Yeshua. I know, I’m pretty messed up. I guess I feel the same way about my wife’s name. It is rare I ever call her Elaine. That is for people who don’t know her as honey, or lover. It sounds funny and uncomfortable coming out of my mouth, like I am angry or something. Though I have also known how hearing your name on loving lips can be a powerful thing.

My experiment began Sunday in service, inviting everyone to focus on his name for a few moments. Then yesterday I prayed Jesus over and over as I walked the labyrinth, all the way into the heart of God and all the way back out to the world. I thought of the song, "Take the name of Jesus with you." I'd have sung it, but I don't know how it goes! Then last night as I went to bed, I counted his name on rosary beads, twice around. On the beads that separate each decade I prayed "Protect us Lord, as we stay awake, watch over us as we sleep, that awake we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep rest in his peace." All in all a great way to fall asleep!

My hope is that in praying Jesus as a mantra, I will become comfortable with his name, and more than that, there will be a sweetness, a fullness divested to it.

Sunday Night with Tom Trask

Man, I miss Sunday night services. They are the perfect answer to my weekly postpartum depression after preaching. So when Brad Trask sent an invitation to all Michigan credential holders to come out to a Sunday night service, I was into it. His church is only a couple hours away, and he had the Detroit Life Challenge choir singing and his dad preaching.

The service was nice. It wasn't spectacular, or extravagant, just what Sunday night services always were growing up. I wasn't surprised because Brad, and the ministers who showed up were greatly influenced by Tom Trask's ministry and were old-school A/G. Ah, my roots. How I miss a good pentecostal service with out concern for time, and much lingering at the altar. It was such a refreshing and blessing to have the congregation of Brighton A/G pray for the ministers who came out and for Bro. Trask as he moves on.

Speaking of which, when people were wondering why he was leaving, and had a hard time accepting that he just heard from God, I agreed. "Something must have got him praying in that way in the first place right?"

He talked about it a little bit, at this, his last time preaching as the General Supt., and I got the impression that God spoke to him in the course of his regular prayer time. That shouldn't be hard for us to understand, though as I have lamented before, we pentecostal can be an awfully pragmatic bunch and demand rationales for all our movements. He said that he prayed about it from Nov. to the end of July after he heard God tell him to move on, just to be sure he heard right. His description of the process gives me renewed faith in his obedience. I just thought you might want to know.

Defining Spiritual Formation

Rolheiser suggests that Private prayer, private morality, social justice, mellowness of heart, and involvment in a concrete community are “nonnegotiable essensials” to the formation of classic Christian Spirituality.

These remind me of Foster’s streams of Christian tradition, Contemplative (private prayer), Holiness (private morality,) Justice, Charismatic (mellow heart?), Evangelical, and Incarnational (Rolheiser would certainly see this to include having community).

Even we Pentecostals don’t go so far as to say that the Charismatic stream is essential for salvation. But then that isn’t the point; we’re not talking about a moment of justification, but a process of being formed. Perhaps each of these traditions is an absolute, nonnegotiable essential. Perhaps it is precisely those differences that sometimes divide us that in the end are the key elements to wholeness. I like this thought, and I think it is truly what Foster is getting at. The Evangelical stream isn’t singled out by Rolheiser, though I am sure the Word and it’s incarnation are central to his Catholic theology.

In keeping with these essentials, I would define spiritual formation as “Being formed by God into the very image of Christ as we are immersed in the streams of a wide Orthodoxy unto depth of intimacy with Trinity and Man.”

Show coming up!

Personality

My personality type (INFP) has sometimes been a source of shame for me. For instance, one year at our district council a man stood touting the value of assessments for church planters, because, he said, “we wouldn’t want to have a introvert as a church planter.” What does that mean for me, an introverted intuitive feeling perceiving type of guy, who feels called to plant churches? That introversion part is the one that causes me the most consternation, and at times I have found it debilitating to ministry. It is also what disposes me to contemplation and solitude. I have often said that being of postmodernity makes me able to hold opposing thoughts in tension. Perhaps that is helped along by my personality, always looking for the mystery in life, much more comfortable posing questions than in imposing stark black and white answers. This has made me at home with the mystics. Being disposed to feeling, I have taken ministry as a pastor to mean caring about my people and encouraging them to find their way to the depths in Christ. The perceptivity of my personality perhaps gives a bit of extroversion to my feeling and caring that otherwise wouldn’t be there.
This study has led me again to thank God for the personality he has given me. As Mulholland suggests, I do need to nurture my shadow side. My personality isn’t a license to avoid what I find difficult or bothersome. In Holy Longing, Rolheiser suggests much the same, as the soul finds its life in both order and chaos.

He says, “Given this background, we see that the question of what makes our souls healthy or unhealthy is very complex because, on any given day, we might need more integration rather than energy, or vise versa. To offer one simple example: If I am feeling dissipated, unsure of who I am and what my life means, I am probably better off reading Jane Austen than Robert Waller, watching Sense and Sensibility rather than The Bridges of Madison County, and spending some time in solitude rather than socializing. Conversely though, if I feel dead inside and cannot find enthusiasm for living, I might want to reverse the menu. Some things help give us fire and certain things help us more patiently carry life’s tensions. Both have their place in spiritual life.”

In this way I identify more with Mary than her sister Martha. I would find great peace, contentment and joy, sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him talk. In fact it would no doubt pour gasoline on the fire within, driving me to madness. I might have to jump up, if he paused, and pace about. I might bump into Martha, I’d try to help in my excited state, but I’d pick up an apple and instead of pealing it I’d prattle on about what Jesus had said, and forgetting myself, start to eat the apple. Martha would think that I’m just in the way.

I am a dreamer. I die inside with out a dream, a vision of God. I couldn’t go on making dinner if he was there in the other room, maybe if he came into the kitchen I’d be all right, Jesus, Brother Lawrence and I making dinner! The downside is that sometimes I can’t focus on the details that bring dreams into reality. I can get frustrated when my visions of what God can do in me and through me aren’t realized. I need discipline to be a good Mary.

I grew up as a Pastor’s Kid in the Assemblies of God. The Charismatic stream has been a strong part of my upbringing. I knew the immediacy of God in Sunday night services with old folks faces buried in the pews. I’d go around with my dad and pray for them, laying my little hands on their posteriors. Gifts of tongues and interpretation were commonplace in those services. I grew up loving hymns some of which were camp songs from the days of Pentecostal revival at the turn of the last century. I also grew up loving the modern choruses and expressions of worship, singing the praises of a God who was near and soon coming. Strangely enough though, Pentecostals are a pragmatic bunch, and it is only recently that I have seen the mystical value of the gifts of the Spirit.

Growing up –My spiritual heritage and home were like a baptism into the things of God.

It was around me every day. I don’t remember a time that I did not love Jesus. My parents tell me I was five when I asked Jesus into “my pocket.” I have memories of those days, walking around our garden singing songs to Jesus until I forgot what it was I was singing. I felt called into ministry when I was six or seven, we had an evangelist, Curt Zastrow come to our church; he was an evangelist just for kids. I felt God calling me to minister to children too. It wasn’t until I was nine that I realized that his mercy covered my sins and I didn’t have to start over every time I sinned. Shortly after that, kid’s camp at Lake Geneva in Minnesota, I began to overflow with the Spirit, as I experienced what we Pentecostals term the baptism in the Spirit.

Formation at College – I began to really explore my spirituality and imagine new ways of doing things.

College really opened my mind. It must be a common occurrence; my black and white view of truth and scripture took a shaking. I was disconcerted to think that Matthew wasn’t the first to write his gospel; after all he’s the first on in the New Testament. Biblical criticism and exegesis quickly became a passion that strengthened my devotion. I learned to slow down, and learn all that God had for me, and more importantly who he made me to be.

Celebrating Discipline – I began to become.

During some time off from college I began to hunger for something deeper and for discipline in my life. A friend of mine suggested that we read Celebration of Discipline together. I had skimmed it for a course in college, but as we read it together it kicked my butt. Every word seemed to breathe truth into my soul. I began to try to find ways to bring the children I was ministering to into the depths as well, this lead to a transformation in my style of ministry. I came to realize that the children needed their families as a structure for discipleship, and as families we need each other in the structure of the church. I started to envision a church uniquely created to meet these needs. I began to look to the other streams of Christian experience, greatly influence again by Foster. My wife laughs at me because any denomination I am exposed to, I say I want to be that. Really I want to be it all, I want to be a Christian!

At this point in my life I see myself like the servant in the shadows behind the father in Rembrandt’s painting of the prodigal son. I desire with my whole being to be my Father’s servant and see people come to him and embrace him, entering into his depth of love. I want to be lost in the shadows cast by his glory.