Worship

38. Lamenting a Lost Practice

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Every Sabbath morning at the start of worship, my pastor invites us to the meeting. He makes it clear that our presence for fellowship and worship and praise is the intersection where we, the gathered, meet with one another, God the Father, and Jesus the risen Christ in the counsel and care of the Holy Spirit. As a result, I have come to embrace the notion that the congregation of believers- those who congregate for an encounter with God and for his glory- does, truly comprise a meeting.

Likewise, I think the earliest believers, despite all their ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity, viewed their shared meals together as a meeting, (i.e., as worship) and I like to imagine that they looked forward to these regular meals with great anticipation and joy. This is why I also think of their gatherings as meal-meetings, or what I also like to call fellowship meals, because I also believe the common shared meals and the meetings of the early Church were inextricably connected, not necessarily to the extent of actually being Greco-Roman meal-symposiums, but of at least having evolved out of that prototype.

Of course our worship today, particularly on the Sabbath, is much different, crafted around centuries-old liturgies, creeds and doctrines, not to mention overt cultural-sensitivity to people’s lack of time for multiple meetings in a week. Thus, compared to those first Christians, our worship is much more formal, and our meeting together for shared meals far, far less common. And, it is this general loss of the shared meal- in families and church families alike- that I believe is something to lament because the places at our dining tables are so consistently and symbolically empty.

Our tables are empty because we no longer view a shared meal as a fundamental way to also share the gospel, and because we are unwilling to share our lives in such intimate, selfless, and demanding ways as hosts, who take, thank, break, and give bread to others. But most of all, we should grieve because we are so distracted, and always, always in such a hurry to be doing something else. As I wrote at the start of this chapter, regularly breaking and eating bread together is a practice meant to make us think of Jesus, to recognize his presence at our meal fellowship, and to remember his incomprehensibly great love for us. Our determined failure to practice shared meals on a regular basis should make us stop and think about why we no longer eat together and what we’ve lost in the process.

~ Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Please make comments in the LEAVE A REPLY box, and contact me if you need further information about using this text for a small group or Sunday School study, or as the theme for a weekend retreat.

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37. Radical Hospitality is RISKY

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Recall that a special hallmark of the Greco-Roman banquet was that invitations were sent ahead of time to request a guest’s presence. The early Christian meal-meetings, on the other hand, took place in believer’s homes, and appear to have been open to any who had been baptized as believers as well as those who claimed to believe. Moreover, following Jesus’ teachings, the meals would have been evangelistic in nature in that they would also have been open to the maligned and risky fringes of society.

So, now we not only have Jew and Gentile together at a fellowship meal, but men and women, slave and free, educated and illiterate, the economically advantaged side by side with the poorest of the poor. The heterogeneity of the people at this kind of meal, or gathering, would have been a radical occurrence in that day. Actually, if you think about it, it would be a radical occurrence in our time too.

Radical hospitality is risky. It involves the kind of love that sent Jesus from heaven as a fully human being and set his face toward the cross. It’s the kind of love that denies the fear of the rhetorical ‘what ifs’ with sincere determination that Jesus’ love for ‘the least of these’ is the life to which all believers are called. In the end, radical love accepts the likelihood that others will take advantage of the generosity and servant-heart of those willing to empty themselves of pride, fear, and security.

Apparently, this was no different in the early church, because the writings of both Peter and Jude address a form of Gnosticism evident in the lives and actions of some who claimed to be believers (2 Pet 2:13 and Jude 12). Both authors mention the immoral behavior of some at the “love feasts”, or agape meals of the early Christian communities.   Gnostics believed that the sinfulness of their behavior, particularly their sexual proclivities, was “covered” by their salvation through Christ. In other words, they used their salvation as a kind of ‘get out of jail free’ card to justify their ongoing lustful immorality.

Try to imagine, if you will, the meal-meetings of the early believers. Given the heterogeneity of the participants, it is not hard to envision that some of those present were, in their ‘former’ lives, accustomed to attending meals followed by an evening of drinking, entertainment, and revelry, including sexual escapades. Others, still Jews by self-description, would hold to a habit of meals in which ceremonial purity rituals were still adhered to. Still others could be in attendance even though they were not believers at all, perhaps joining in for a free meal, or to find out what The Way was really all about. “In such a socially porous environment it would not be hard for false teachers claiming to be Christians to slip in and freeload, and cause trouble… Christianity was an evangelistic religion, and so this meant risk for the Christian community because they were open to having guests and strangers attend their meetings.”[1]

These are ingredients for a very interesting, even disastrous meal indeed, and the warnings from Peter and Jude would have us understand that the revelers may have gained an upper hand as false teachers. Still, the premise of the fellowship meals was to share the love and fellowship of Christ in ways that were edifying and promoted the virtues of a Christian life. There was, and always will be inherent tension and risk involved here. While we are called to “expel the immoral brother” from our fellowship (1 Cor 5:13), and “with such a man do not even eat,” (1 Cor 5:11), we are also to be open and inviting even to the worst of sinners. The distinction revolves around one’s claims to be a believer, baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit. If such a one continues in sin despite loving confrontation and counsel from believers, that one is to be excluded from the fellowship to the point that we not even eat together. It should not, however, ever prevent us from inviting the unbeliever to our fellowship or our meals.

In Post 38, we will look at the hard truth: our tables are too often empty.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] Ben Witherington III, Making a Meal of It (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2007), p.89.

35. Food Fight!

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Paul was a major player in confronting early Christians about their need to set aside personal and heated differences over their food practices of the past to enjoy fellowship meals of mutual edification and submissive accord. A careful read of Paul’s letters to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians clearly shows that some of the biggest divisions among early believers were sparked by radically different food customs and practices at the meals of the gathered community. Try to imagine the consternation of the Jewish Christian eating with a Gentile Christian. The Jew would be upset by the so-called unclean practices of the Gentile. The Gentile, not caring to adopt the ball and chain of the Jewish purity rituals would also be made to feel inferior for eating certain foods, in particular the meat from animals sacrificed to idols. Paul worked tirelessly to get all believers on the same page where sharing food was concerned; his letters, most certainly circulated and read at the shared meals of the early Christians, are filled with admonitions that they stop their petty bickering over food and the separatist notions these disputes fostered.

In his letter to the Galatians Paul wrote, “When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group” (Gal 2:11-12). Apparently, Peter’s conviviality with Gentiles was met by separatist Christian Judaizers with such disapproval that he had begun to withdraw from meals at which Gentile Christians were present. Paul insists that it is not the Gentile Christians who must act more “Jewish” but the Jewish Christians who must live like Gentiles, and he publicly calls Peter to account for his legalistic behavior. Accusing Peter and the Galatians of being brainwashed, Paul instructs them to justify their actions solely on Christ, and resume their shared meals together, because “the table was a prime and powerful image in Paul’s world for boundary marking and community inclusion.”[1] Paul scolds Peter for succumbing to the pressures of some Jewish Christians who were still following the Jewish requirements for ritual purity. Imagine the irony if you can. This is the same Paul who once bragged of his righteous keeping of the law, and the same Peter who was with Jesus when he condemned the Pharisees for the blind way they assumed ritual purity was counted to them as righteousness. It is no wonder Paul confronts Peter to his face.

In post 36, we will continue this discussion!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

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[1] Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, p. 186.

34. Worship & the Shared Meal

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“They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all people” (Acts 2:46-47). Luke distinctly tells us that they met together in their homes for meals, and that these meal-meetings included corporate praise. So it seems possible that “church” – the early practice of corporate prayer, worship, and the breaking of bread- occurred at these shared meals. Today, many scholars believe the shared fellowship meal was most certainly the primary venue for  the reading of circulating letters or in-person visits from itinerant apostles like Paul, Peter, and John.

“A primary way first-century “Christians” spent time together was at meals.  There they made decisions together about their inner workings and their  relationship to the broader world. Meals were the place where they taught and learned together and where they worshipped, prayed, and sang their songs together. This was the time that they had arguments, sorted out differences, went their own ways, and reconciled with one another. It was a central community event. These meals provided the primary experiential evidence for those who opposed them, those who dropped in for visits, and those who were curious about them.”[1]

These meals fostered fellowship and community and most likely served as a major factor in the development of both early Christian identity and its spread. If you recall from Chapter Five that the shared meal of the Roman era was on the order of the Hellenistic pattern of greeting, meal, and symposium, then it’s not hard to imagine these early Christians meeting together in one another’s homes and dining rooms, as any newly formed club or guild would quite naturally do.   Christians would greet each other with a kiss, offer water for washing of hands and feet, break bread during a common meal while reclining on couches, share the cup of wine, then participate in any number of postprandial activities such as singing, praise, teaching, testimony, preaching, discussion and prayer. Such meals would create not only a sense of community (koinonia), but of friendship (philia), and grace (charis).[2] In other words, the shared meal was very likely a critically formative practice giving rise to a new social and religious identity known simply as The Way.

This is especially important to note, because the gospel was for all people, not just the Jews. So, these meals brought together quite disparate groups of people not heretofore affiliated with one another. “Given the diversity that came to characterize Christian groups at a very early stage of development, how could a sense of cohesion have developed so easily? How could individuals from diverse ethnic, religious, and social backgrounds come to call one another “brothers and sisters”? …The most likely locus for this development is the community meal, with its unparalleled power to define social boundaries and create social bonding.”[3]

In the next post, #35, we will begin to ask why so many NT letters address food disagreements in the early Church.  And, like a simple meal, please SHARE this post!

~ Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] Hal Taussig, In the Beginning was the Meal: Social Experimentaion and Early Christian Identity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), p. 21.

[2] Taussig, p. 27.

[3] Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, p.184.

33. Glad Hearts Eat Together!

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In the first chapters of the book of Acts, Luke picks up exactly where he left off in his gospel, reviewing Jesus’ last moments on earth eating with and teaching the disciples before ascending to heaven. The disciples, now referred to as apostles by Luke, return to Jerusalem after Jesus’ ascension to wait for the promised baptism by the Spirit. They spend the next fifty days praying with believers (in Acts 1:15 Luke says there were about one hundred and twenty gathered), until the day of Pentecost. From this point onward, the fellowship of baptized believers grows under the preaching of Peter and the apostles.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42-47).

This passage in Acts 2 contains several important clues about how “church” may have operated in those earliest days. Obviously, there were no church buildings or church staff, no pews, fellowship hall, or Sunday school rooms for the first Christians, and no trained clergy, except possibly for converted Pharisees and scribes with a schooled understanding of the law. There was no set liturgy, no New Testament gospels or letters yet written, nor any prayer books or hymnals to use. In other words, the early church had no formal infrastructure, and no real recognizable identity through a set, much less standardized set of Christian practices across the Roman Empire.

From a sociologic and historic perspective, nascent social undertakings often rely heavily on the infrastructure already present in society at large. For example, when we plant a new church today, it is common to meet in an existing school or office building otherwise empty on Sundays. Likewise, when a new belief system is born, it will often be imbued with elements of the culture out of which it emerges, and Christianity, born in Jerusalem during Roman occupation in the Hellenistic era is no different.

We know from Scripture that these earliest Christians met together on a consistent basis. In Jesus’ day there were two main ways people regularly met together, at the temples (Jewish or pagan), and at meals. In other words, worshipping together and sharing meals were common social practices of that era. Peter and the apostles prayed at the temple and taught in the temple courts where Jewish religious teaching in Jerusalem had always been done, until this became increasingly difficult because of the opposition of Jewish leaders. This leaves the shared meal as the one standing social practice by which early Christians could meet together in small groups.

We should ask ourselves why we don’t do the same.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

11. What ARE You Sharing with Others?

~ This Side of the River ~ 2 Comments

Instead of moving into the next chapter on the shared meal, I thought it might be a good time for DESSERT: to REVIEW the notion and nature of the Christian practices, and give you some discussion questions to think and pray through.

Christians are in training, actively practicing particular behaviors that lead to a mature faith and Christlike attitude.  Training takes intention-we need to plan it into our hours and days.  It takes submission, obedience, and sacrifice.  More than anything else, our training takes time.  When our life is already too crowded with a full schedule, we must learn to discern where and how our time is being misspent-as individuals and as a family.  We don’t “make time” for the disciplines and practices; only God makes time.  Instead, we shift our attitude and priorities.  We whittle down here, plan better there.  But mostly, we give our time to the Lord and ask him to help us use our waking hours in ways that honor him.

We have seen how our individual attention to the spiritual disciplines and our shared participation in the Christian practices forms us in our faith into the holy living to which we are called.  They strengthen us to live in a world that is not our final home, to share Christ’s gospel with joy, and to serve God and neighbor out of a delighted obedience.  This is a humbling yet energizing way to live one’s life in sacrifice, thanksgiving, and hope.  Not a life that is all about “me” but one that is focused intentionally on the believing community of “we”.

The early Church that formed out of persecution and dispersal in the first century was marked by the things believers had and did in common.  In our hyper-individualized society, it is difficult for us to comprehend the necessity and power of such communal or shared practices.  Those historic Christian practices formed the essence of our shared practices today, particularly those of worship, prayer, and Holy Communion.  Still, other practices, like that of the shared meal among believers, are no longer a regular part of our life in common.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. The thesis of this chapter is that growing in your Christian faith requires sustained practice. List here some individual spiritual disciplines you do now to grow in your faith.  What do you like about each one?  What makes it hard to do them consistently?  What discipline do you NOT do now that you would like to incorporate into your daily walk?  Why?
  1. Discuss the nature of the spiritual disciplines and the Christian practices. How are they alike?  How are they different?
  1. Life often goes too fast, and we begin to feel as if we are running aimlessly on a treadmill going nowhere. How can attention to the disciplines and practices give you a new sense of purpose and direction and peace?
  1. If your life is simply too crazy-busy, take some moments to ask why. List here those things that take up most of your day/week.  Is there anything you and/or your family consistently do that could be put aside?  Done differently?  Ask yourself what you do, then ask yourself what you want, and consider how these answers differ.
  1. Have you ever given much thought to the shared Christian practices? Why is it important that you and your children are present in corporate activities like worship, prayer, Holy Communion, testimony, and confession-forgiveness-reconciliation?  What does it mean if you are routinely absent from these practices (either mentally or in your physical presence)?
  1. The next chapter will discuss the notion and nature of the shared meal as a distinctly Christian practice. Jot down your week’s typical meal patterns/schedule and with whom they are shared.

Please share your thoughts-it helps me as I continue to write the back chapters of this book to get a sense of what you think, what you do vs. what you wish for.  Thanks! You can click on SHARE to send to friends, and write in the Leave a Comment box below.  

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

(featured image credit:  High Tea in China.  K.Richardson. 2016)

10. The MEAT of a Christian Practice

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In the last post, I introduced the idea that our customs are not the same thing as a practice, and promised to sketch out the common elements of a Christian practice.

Let’s start with the idea of customs.  As an example, meal customs are informative.  Why did Jesus recline at meals?  Why did the Jews wash their feet before entering the dining area?  Why did Jesus tell the story of the man who threw a banquet for friends who were no-shows?  As we will see in subsequent posts, the meals that Jesus attended were shaped by the influences of Greece and Rome, as well as Jewish tradition, and, as a result, diners’ behaviors were circumscribed by particular customs.  A fundamental question for us is how did Jesus’ first followers move from those religiously and socially-traditional meals into the practice of the first century church in which shared meals were an integral part of the worship experience?

If a Christian practice is an activity that is regular, shared with other believers, and designed to strengthen our common life together as Christians, then it might be helpful to try and sketch out what I believe are the common elements of a Christian practice on our way to showing how the shared meal qualifies as such a practice.

As noted, there are several distinct Christian practices which we do together in Christian community, including worship, prayer, fasting, Sabbath-keeping, stewardship, the Lord’s Supper, forgiveness, and, as I claim, the shared meal.  The common elements of these Christian practices are invitation, provision, gratitude, nourishment, and formation.

God invites us into a particular practice whether it is worship or prayer or a shared meal.  We are invited to enter the practice by entering into God’s and one another’s presence, entering into rest and restoration, and entering into community and communion with God and one another.  Thus, there is always a kind of prologue to each practice, in which we mindfully enter into the practice by divine invitation to do so.  From the perspective of a shared meal, we accept God’s invitation to take time out to eat and share and rest together at table and in God’s presence.

There is an element of mutually beneficial provision in each of the practices.  We are individually and corporately provided for with charitable care and concern out of God’s grace and abundance, paradoxically finding in each practice an opportunity to serve as a way of providing for others.  We commit to praying for others, we fast together in lament and petition for a particular provision, and, when we worship and share in the sacred meal of Holy Communion, we realize God’ provision for our own life through Jesus’s life, death, resurrection and coming consummation.  Moreover, we learn, with grace and humility, to accept others’ service to us despite our ever-undeserving state.  Most importantly, God provides this time that we may to set it aside for Himself, others, and for our in-common well-being.

Each of the Christian practices contains the attribute of gratitude.  There is nothing we practice together which does not raise up an unquenchable desire to thank God as the source of all things good, and praise him for being our Creator, Savior, Counselor and King.  When we share a meal, we say grace before eating because we are so grateful for God’s ongoing presence in and provision for our lives, and for the food before us that will fuel our service to the kingdom.

The Christian practices nourish us by both feeding and satisfying our physical, emotional, and spiritual hungers to the point that we, in turn, are energized and able to serve God and neighbor.  We often enter into a particular practice with a mindset that there must be “something in it for me.”  The reality, as is often the case in our Christian walk, is that God intends the practice to show his glory, and create in us as the body of Christ the deep love and sacrificial posture we need to love him and serve our neighbor.

Lastly, the Christian practices all share the element of formation.  The profoundly formative nature of the practices is nearly beyond comprehension.  The practices introduce us to the kingdom of God, then reinforce and direct our discipleship.  We begin to grasp that all the Christian practices are inter-related, and that the more we practice them simultaneously in community, the stronger the weave of our life in common together.  To put it another way, the practices of the first Christians give us a firm anchor in how to live out our common lives (Acts 2:44).  Moreover, the practices act as a compass to direct us-in Christian community– along a path of growth and maturity in our faith, what we often call our ongoing development in Christlikeness.  It is the daily practice of our shared prayer, worship, meals, Sabbath-keeping, and forgiveness that leads, over time, to human flourishing- for ourselves and those we serve- to God’s glory.

Finally, then, we can ask if, in the lives of Christians, the shared meal is simply a custom handed down from earlier generations, or if Christians should view it from a faith perspective as a Christian practice.  It has always been a universal custom for people to eat together, no matter what their belief systems entailed.  As far as family and church family are concerned, it seems to me that we treat the shared meal as custom, easily shaped by the culture and the times, when it may actually be meant to be approached as a central communal practice in the Christian home and in the Church.  The shared meal, like other Christian practices, embedded with invitation, provision, gratitude, nourishment, and formation has the deep potential to fortify and direct our individual and common lives in ways that might surprise us.  So, it is to the notion of shared meals as faith practice we wll turn next time.

Thanks for sharing this space!  We are steadily moving into the MEAT of the shared meal as Christian practice!  There is a button below to :LEAVE A COMMENT.  I would appreciate hearing what you think.

~ Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

(Featured image photo credit:  K.Richardson. 2016)

9. Our Common Life Together

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So, we see that being a practicing Christian takes a lot of practice-that daily attention to the Word of God, the ways of God, and the will of God.  Practice makes us better.  What have you been practicing with and for other believers in your faith life?

Of course, participating in the shared Christian practices is not simply a matter of making them a priority subject to your will. Practices are not something to control.  On the contrary, Christian practices require active submission.  As an example from my own life, once in a while, when it seems that for weeks I have been home only to sleep and shower, I will wake up on a Sunday morning and contemplate the pleasures of staying home from church, “just this once”, drinking coffee, reading, catching my breath, and having the house to myself, maybe taking a long walk.  Over the years I have come to label this misplaced desire for home and solitude as “red flag Sunday” because rather than being at church, actively practicing with my believing family and sharing the Lord’s meal with them at the Communion table, I am being tempted to stay home alone attending to my own leisure while pretending that worship-and my place within it- is inconsequential.  In these instances, I must recognize Satan’s lie; there is nothing corporate or worshipful about staying home alone on Sunday morning.  If you are like me, you dutifully go on to church anyway because this is how you participate in a practice; worship, as a shared Christian practice, means your presence is important.  As a church member, you have made very public promises to this congregation to be there for and with them.  In my experience, sitting in worship and Sunday school on a “red flag Sunday” is always the most wonderful morning in God’s presence, praising him together with my beloved church family, and with absolutely no regrets.  A life of practice, then, gives us the strength to be submissively yet firmly obedient in times of temptation.

As you may have guessed by now, these shared Christian practices are, by nature, meant to infuse, inform, and support life, minute by minute, day by day, and season by season as we yield to their power through Christ and the Holy Spirit to structure and direct our life.  They are the cure for the arrhythmic, time-starved heart threatening to arrest your soul’s health and growth. They are simple.  Curative.  Restful.  Spacious.  Grace-full.  Is it not, after all, a life worth considering, when you are asked each day by the Lord,

          “Where are you?”

And, in face-to-face confrontation,

          “What do you want?” 

The shared Christian practices, therefore, are meant to strengthen us both individually and in our common life together as believers.  They help us think critically together, and to develop healthy responses to cultural temptations and evils we must resist, especially those that threaten our common life together.  Craig Dykstra puts it this way:  Our Christian practices give us abilities for “criticizing and resisting all those powers and patterns…that destroy human beings, corrode human community, and injure God’s creation.”[1]   Not long before losing her earthly life to cancer, Kara Tippets wrote of the importance of showing up for one another,

“Friends. Community.  It is the only way to know and be known.  It’s where we see our own humanity and frailty, our gifts and our weaknesses.  When we show up for one another, we invade each other in love and become witnesses to the truth that trials and sickness and pain are not the whole story.  There’s more, so much more. We can remind one another that our lives are not a mistake.  And, more importantly, that we are loved with and everlasting love.”[2]

So, it is in our shared Christian practices we show up for one another in good times and bad. There are so many things we do today, individually and as a society that foster misguided patterns of thought and behavior.  In essence, we too easily become thoughtless.  We waste natural resources, abdicate care of the poor, and prize our individualism, civil rights, and retirement portfolios.  Sustained participation in the shared Christian practices instead teaches us to sniff out injustice, to discern social patterns which threaten family, to give up our right to self, to learn to serve others wholeheartedly, and to work to redeem and restore our all-too-common human penchant for destroying rather than stewarding Creation.  And it teaches us that there is strength in doing these things together.

To What Have You Become Accustomed?

Of course, not everything we do is a practice, so we must distinguish between practice and custom.  In the United States, it is customary to sing the national anthem before sporting events, to use a knife and fork when eating, to have cake on a birthday, for a man to give a woman a diamond ring for engagement, to hold parades on major holidays, and to follow an agriculturally-based school calendar.  In the same vein, there are many once-common customs we have lost.  Men no longer wear dress hats or women dress gloves.  Generations no longer live together in sprawling family units.  It is no longer customary for children to walk to school.

What customs have led to habits that might need your discernment?  Staying up too late watching television?  Skipping meals?  Skipping church “just this once”?  Non-stop use of your cell phone while in the presence of others?  Dressing provocatively?  Living together outside of marriage?    Yes.  Your customs are visible in your daily actions and decisions.

In the next post, we will look at the common elements of a Christian practice on our way to studying the shared meal in the life of believers.

Please SHARE this with friends!  Thank you for following along.  Wish we could pull up a chair and share a pot of tea!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

 

[1] Craig Dykstra, Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), p. 43.

[2] Kara Tippetts and Jill L. Buteyn, Just Show Up: The Dance of Walking Through Suffering Together (Colorado Springs, Colorado: David C Cook, 2015), p.11.

6.Spiritual Discipline or Christian Practice?

~ This Side of the River ~ 4 Comments

CHAPTER TWO: A FAITH PRACTICE TAKES PRACTICE

The Christian life is a training ground

As a Kinesiology professor at a Christian college, my office was in the athletic complex. Around 3:00 p.m. on a typical weekday, athletes would begin streaming past my door on their way to practice-a two-hour period for which the coaches had made distinct plans for individual and team improvement. Most of us can relate to this notion that sports performance is enhanced by daily practice of the techniques and strategies necessary to be competitive. The same holds true in music; becoming proficient on one’s instrument takes years of daily practice with repetition of scales and scores on one’s own, as well as corporate practice with the band, orchestra, or ensemble.

So we have a natural understanding that these kind of skills-athletic and musical- require much repetitive practice to grow as an athlete or musician. But, this is often where this application breaks down. Once out of school, our busy lives fog our thinking when it comes to purposeful planning and practicing and cultivating maturation in our faith life. The Christian life is a training ground for eternity. We must, then, submit to its daily practice.

There are two important ways Christians can nurture and deepen their faith. One is to participate in any number of spiritual disciplines like the study of Scripture, prayer, fasting, and observing the Sabbath. The other is to engage in multiple Christian practices including worship, prayer, feasting, testimony, and the breaking of bread.

Notice here the similarities and differences between the two approaches. Both the spiritual disciplines and Christian practices take intention, planning, and follow-through. They require submissive and sacrificial practice that is consistent and repetitive, not unlike the way an athlete shows up to practice and follows a coach’s directions and plan. Both take time and personal investment.   Most importantly, both are formative in nature, meaning that when practiced consistently they become embedded in our daily responses, rhythms, and reasoning, and make us more skilled at handling change, challenge, and the needs of others with grace and wisdom. In other words, through time and practice we mature in virtuous living and Christlikeness, training to one day stand on holy ground.

The critical difference between spiritual disciplines and Christian practices is that the spiritual disciplines are practiced individually, much like a musician practices scales, whereas the Christian practices are performed in and through community with other believers-with an ensemble or the entire orchestra if you will. One has to do with “me” and the other “we”. Table 2.1 helps show where these activities overlap and where they are distinct.

Table 2.1. The Spiritual Disciplines and the Christian Practices

Both (Me and We) Spiritual Disciplines (Me) Christian Practices (We)
Prayer Sabbath keeping Worship
Bible study Solitude Hearing Scripture & teaching
Fasting Frugality Fellowship
Confession Honoring the body Feasting
Forgiveness, Reconciliation Testimony
Lament Hospitality
Submission and Obedience Co-mission
Sacrifice Breaking of bread
Stewardship
Discernment

Undertaking these actions in both our individual and corporate Christian life is not easy, especially at first. Life has a way of getting in the way. But, the more we practice the more likely these will become life habits that help condition and train us in ways which fortify our souls and insulate us against life’s trials and vagaries. In every way, they strengthen our ability to respond to God and neighbor. More importantly, the spiritual disciplines and Christian practices work together to form in us the twin habit of looking for God and looking to God in every life situation.  We will continue this discussion of being a practicing Christian next time, and you will begin to understand how and why the shared meal is, truly, a Christian practice in our homes and the Church.

If this blog is helping you, please leave a comment to stimulate further discussion!