Week 1: Homework

Determine and declare what you will do as your spiritual workout for the duration of 201. This should include daily, weekly, and occasional spiritual practices. Write the workout down, share it in your coaching call and begin implementing it. We will call this your spiritual workout (SW).

Spiritual Workout Menu:
- Solitude + Daily reading in the morning
- Prayer before work (or equivalent time)
- Solitude refocusing during lunch
- Prayer, gratitude, confession at the end of work (or equivalent time)
- Fellowship at least once a week

Set aside one hour of solitude, review those entries, and describe, as clearly as you can,
an experience you had in which you felt hurt, embarrassed, rejected, ridiculed, or
condemned.

I remember sitting in the sanctuary of the youth building at my old church. I'd spent the morning serving with the children's ministry, politely socialized with some adults at "big church," had brunch and made it back to church again for youth group. I never really felt like I belonged there. I'd had a few sort of friends for a while. I always felt more like a hanger-on than a friend. I felt like I always had to be pleasing and on display, or I'd be left alone. My friends were older than I was, and once they graduated, I was alone again. I tried for a while, but I just couldn't seem to connect with anyone there. I got along with the youth minister and our speaker, but I always seemed to tell the wrong jokes, laugh at the wrong things, be interested in the wrong topics and be fascinated by the wrong parts of the Bible.

I spent so many Sunday nights, sitting alone, watching everyone else find the friend groups they'd been in forever. It was too late. They'd already made their friends. I could tell when they were just being nice to me because they were in church. It was fairly obvious. Instead, I tried to find others who were alone. A good thought, but not so great in execution. I'd end up with people I felt I couldn't leave because I didn't want my name added to the list of those who had abandoned them.

It was lonely. It was painful. It as repeated, outright rejection in the house of God. I listened to the sermon, buried myself in the word, and did my best to struggle through the time left for discipleship groups. Another, smaller setting in which the differences between myself and, seemingly, everyone else could be put into stark contrast. I'd been in small groups with these same girls since seventh grade, and even during my senior year of high school, I never spent any more time with them than was required for D-groups and other church events.

I learned that I would never be able to connect with my peers. I could carry on interesting conversations with adults on a variety of topics that interested me and I took great pleasure in letting it all go to bond, heart and soul, with the kids placed under my care. I was an old soul who was young at heart. It sounded pretty, but what it meant was crushing loneliness and disconnection from the people I would be around the most.

Vows created:

• I will not be vulnerable to people who don't care
• I will not seek/allow room for the love of others
• I will not be like my peers
• I will always be content with being alone

I think I'll start with this. I probably will need to beef it up, but I'll start by regulating what I sorta kinda do now.

Write a one-page journal entry as a response to this question: What is your first, instinctive response to the idea of launching or joining a missional community?

My first response is a mixture of great joy and terror. The thought of being in a community of individuals focused on creating change in the community for the glory of God sounds like a dream come true. I have been opening myself to the possibility of other life paths beyond the one I'd planned for myself, and service to the community has been a constantly recurring theme. 

Not only that, but it would sate my craving for fellowship. The thought of simply interacting with people with the goal of relationship makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. It's like another business networking event for my life. I never get authentic relationships from such events. I put on my extrovert skin, smile, laugh, crack jokes, entertain and seek to impress. I use up all my energy trying to be acceptable, then leave drained and still disconnected. Having a shared goal and purpose not only makes it more likely that I will meet people of like heart, but it gives us something to focus on beyond ourselves and how great we have to pretend to be. 

Bonding over work, struggle, success and failure is much more doable than being expected to conjure a relationship out of thin air. I find I am the most connected with people (with few exceptions) when I am participating in or leading a group that has a shared vision. I am better able to celebrate others' strengths and encourage them as they work to improve their weaknesses. I have a goal upon which I can focus my energy so I don't have to approach others at full force.

I also find myself to be most joyful and content in the midst of service. Using what skills and talents I have been blessed with to serve those in need. When it's not about me or you, but about showing God's love for another, I am at my best. I noticed this during the mission trips my old church would go on. Summer in Mexico is unnecessarily hot, but knowing that I was acting as an example of Christian living and loving while also improving the lives of the children at the orphanage made every second of dehydration worth it.  I could put up with half-hearted praise, cliques, isolation and pretense because I knew that what I was doing was bigger than that.

Now for the bit about terror. It's not so convoluted. Fellowships is not my strong suit. To say it is a struggle is an understatement. Meeting new people and, most often, even keeping in touch with current friends takes a tremendous amount of energy for me. I have to claw through fear, anxiety, insecurity and fatigue just to give my best friend a call. MY BEST FRIEND. I avoid answering the phone simply because answering seems like one of Hercules' tasks. So, intentionally throwing myself into a group of new people is, by comparison, equivalent to trying to balance the world on my back. (My back gets sore loading the dishwasher. I know for a fact that I cannot handle the world.)

Reading: Week One

This is the beginning. Definitions, evaluations, vocabulary and review. I'm hearing a lot of things that I know that I think that I know, while also knowing that I don't always live like I know these things...

Make sense? No? Good.

We're beginning by starting with spiritual disciplines. Praying, fasting, reading the Bible, meditation, etc. Some might say these items make up the "Laundry List of Good Christians." While it can often be that way, it is clear that this process is challenging me to make it more than a to-do list. It's also saying that I'm going to have to increase the intensity. For one who takes great pleasure in avoiding exercise, I'm admittedly reluctant to hear such talk.

As they list the disciplines and talk about their applications, I find myself bending the truth, making up stories and generally finding ways to justify my lack of vigilance in these areas. I haven't even begun the first step and it already seems like I'm trying to justify my failures.

What practices do I regularly engage?

-Prayer: Shotgun prayers are my specialty. Unless I'm running from God (which happens more than I'd care to admit), I seem to have a constant stream of prayer running through my head

-Meditation: To say I do this regularly might be a stretch, but I often to it to cope with my anxiety and panic disorders, and God is usually involved. Yeesh, that sounds bad on a page.

-Reading Scripture: This has been my struggle for the past few months. It used to take a miracle to get me into the Word. Not for lack of interest, but it just wasn't a habit. My head was so full of everything else that being condemned by scripture was the last thing on my mind. Since then, I've started a few devotional programs that have built up my Bible reading muscle, so now it's something I do almost daily. The only downside is that, having developed the habit, it's easy for me to tune it out when I'm taking the daily dose.

-Confession: Now, I'm not the best at this, and I can't claim it comes for the purest motives, but I am much better at admitting and repenting for my sins, even if I'm not sure what they are. Not that I want to issues blanket repentance, but I'm a lot better at sensing when I'm out of tune with God, so I can ask Him to show me my sin. I know I still take on blame for things that could never have been my fault, and I gloss over those sins that cause too much painful shame for me to dwell on, but that's where I am at the moment.

Some of these come more easily to me because I am accustomed to being alone. In painful situations and in safe ones, I have learned that the place that feels the safest is deep inside my head. So acts that are more reflective, that allow me to process experiences before coming to conclusions, come more naturally to me.

Things that require action have become increasingly more difficult over the years.  Service used to be my heart and soul. I might not be the best singer or tither (is that a word?) or evangelist, but I could serve others until I had nothing left. That was part of the problem, though. That pure, open and willing-hearted service blended into compliant avoidance (ref. Boundaries I'll have to find the book to give more details). My living sacrifice turned into my tool of torture until I drained every last bit of energy I had out of me. Fasting is another discipline with which I struggle. For that one, I worry most about my motives. It's too easy for negative self-esteem or a misguided sense of discipline to corrupt my genuine periods of fasting. The point is to abstain so that one may develop a better connection with the Lord, not because I feel like I'm fat.

Also, I'd be an ace at fellowship, but it tends to require the participation of other people...Geh.

"Now, be still for a moment. What is the internal dialogue that the word ‘accountability’ stirs up in you?"

If I'm being honest (which is the point), then I'd say my first reaction is "Oh, great. Someone else to disappoint. Another toe tapping while I struggle and fail to juggle all the balls, go the distance, find that work-life balance and all together handle my life. The last thing I need is another judge."


Okay, almost done. I thought it would be helpful to list the spiritual disciplines they reference here:

Practices of abstinence: fasting, solitude, and silence

Practices of engagement: study, worship, service, prayer, fellowship and confession.

Interestingly enough, these are less two diverging roads and more two sides of a balance. Focusing solely on one or the other can lead to neglect and opportunities for sinfulness in areas that would have been addressed by engaging in the opposite spiritual practices. I like the way Willard describes it as breathing in and out. You need both to stay alive.

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Okay, so that's all for this week's reading (which I confess to doing kind of last minute. 0.0)

I have three tasks left from this week's homework:

1)  Write down, share and begin implementing my Spiritual Workout (SW)

2) Spend an hour of solitude reviewing journal entries and reflections from the Faithwalking 101 retreat and try to get clear on any vows, or experiences which led to vows

3) Write a one-page journal entry (I'll have to figure out what that means in terms of a blog) in response to this question. What is your first, instinctive response to the idea of launching or joining a missional community?

o Then spend some time holding the hopes and the fears that you expressed in the journal entry before the Lord

o Read the journal entry to at least two people in your life: a friend, a spouse, a pastor, a co-worker,

o Reflect on the experience of sharing this possibility with others. What does it stir up in you?



Gross. I'm going to have to have feelings...and share them.

*sigh* I take up my cross, Lord, to follow thee, and I know that I take each step but by the grace of God.


~God all bless!!!~

A New Purpose for an Old Medium

I created this blog in a stroke of "genius." Like a thunderclap, God had opened my eyes to the truth of a situation and it was my duty, nay, my calling, to share this revelation with the world!

Right...

So, I'm trying this again. With more humble expectations, I hope to share with you my pursuit of Christ as I walk through the Faithwalking 201 course. If you haven't heard of it, Faithwalking, you can check it out at faithwalking.us. It's a revolutionary take on the Christian life. Well, revolutionary in that the expectations and principles are those that seem to have been long forgotten by modern Christianity. I'll post the main idea here:

God is using Faithwalking to create a community of disciples of Jesus who are being personally transformed and becoming catalysts mobilizing Christians to become the functioning Body of Christ in their neighborhoods, workplaces, and 3rd places
• to serve the poor, the marginalized, and those in need
• to work for the common good, and
• to restore individuals, social systems, communities and nations to God's design.

Simple, straightforward, obvious. Right? Until you discover that they are authentic in their desire for these things to come to life. And trust me, the road toward becoming more Christ-like in a healthy, whole and genuine way is no walk in the park.

Even so, I'm inviting you to join me (or kick your feet up and watch me) struggle, push, pray, cry and fight through this journey. God all bless.