A Quiet Pentecost: Inviting the Spirit into Congregational Life

PREFACE

SPIRITUAL FORMATION HAPPENS all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. The culture in which we live; family, friends, and enemies; the technological, political, and social forces in the world, all these shape us as human beings, shape our spirit. At the same time, the triune God—God the Creator, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—surrounds us as individuals and as communities of faith. When we invite the Spirit into our lives, spiritual formation turns in a new direction. Christian spiritual formation is the process through which we become new creatures in Christ. Through the centuries Christians have sought and developed practices designed to be effective means for such formation.

During the past thirty years, various Christian denominations have embraced spiritual formation with renewed intensity as a distinct approach for cultivating Christian life. Resources and networks of persons have emerged. Spiritual Directors International has grown from a predominantly Roman Catholic organization to an ecumenical and interreligious network of more than sixty-five hundred members worldwide. Seminaries include courses in prayer practices, spiritual disciplines, and spiritual direction. The accrediting body for seminaries, the Association of Theological Schools, has listed personal and spiritual formation as a key criterion for seminary education since 1996. In practice, most Protestant seminaries have been serious about spiritual formation studies for only a little over a decade. Therefore, persons who have learned the rich legacy of prayer and spiritual disciplines may be laity attracted to this area of study, recent seminary graduates, and clergy who have pursued these studies in continuing education opportunities, such as Certification in Spiritual Formation, The Upper Room Academy for Spiritual Formation, or doctor of ministry programs.

In recent decades, the literature in spiritual formation has proliferated at an astonishing rate. I am particularly familiar with resources and programs offered by the United Methodist Church. The Upper Room, an ecumenical ministry of the United Methodist Board of Discipleship, has developed spiritual formation programs including the Walk to Emmaus, the Academy for Spiritual Formation, and Chrysalis, in addition to resources such as the Companions in Christ series. The UM Board of Discipleship also has supported the development of Covenant Discipleship Groups nationally. In 2000, the United Methodist Church approved the nationally recognized Certification in Spiritual Formation. Many persons are now pursuing this specialized ministry as laypersons, in preparation for the ministry as deacons, or as continuing education for elders. Hearts on Fire: Fellowship of United Methodist Spiritual Directors and Retreat Leaders has been established as an affiliate organization of the United Methodist Church, under the sponsorship of Upper Room Ministries.

A Quiet Pentecost offers more than forty stories of inviting the Holy Spirit into congregational life. These voices come from United Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Missionary Baptist, Roman Catholic, African Methodist Episcopal, and United Church of Christ congregations, as well as retirement centers and campus ministries. All witness to the power of spiritual formation practices, whether in congregations, chaplaincy settings, or college campus ministries. These practices work! They are new wine, drawn from ancient sources. They enable people to experience a lived relationship with God and to grow in companionship and mission within their congregations and communities.

My gratitude is extended to each contributor for a pioneering spirit and generosity in sharing these stories. To the countless persons engaged in spiritual formation and spiritual direction ministries or curious about initiating them in their congregations, may this book be a source of affirmation and inspiration.

Dwight Judy

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Evanston, Illinois

Winter, 2013

INTRODUCTION

And how is it that we hear,

each of us, in our own native language?

—Acts 2:8

Thirty students in a college campus ministry undertake a month-long 24/7 prayer ministry. They prepare the walls and floor of a room for recording prayers. The walls fill with prayers from the heart—laments, praises, confessions, global concerns. A sacred space has been created.

An ecumenical group of women meet monthly to pray for world peace. They walk in prayer on a labyrinth, receive inspiration, and share their hopes together.

A pastor is sent to close an old downtown church in a declining city. As she guides her congregation with scripture reflection (lectio divina) over several months, they receive a vision of opening a Free Store to serve the needs of the community. They are renewed as they serve ten thousand people!

People flood their urban neighborhoods with invitations to worship and to block parties, asking nothing, offering prayer.

OOVER THE PAST thirty years, a quiet revolution has been occurring in Christian life. For some people, a renewal of personal prayer accompanied by the reflective reading of scripture has brought about a new relationship with Jesus and his compelling teachings. Others have felt the mysterious sense of divine presence. Liturgies of anointing and healing have created space for profound encounters of personal reconciliation. People across the age spectrum are recognizing the need for daily prayer.

The sweeping movement of grace by which the world was created and is sustained is orchestrated by God the Holy Spirit. In God’s sovereign freedom, the Holy Spirit stirs where God chooses. Remarkably, the Spirit has selected human life as a privileged place of redemptive activity. In the day-to-day rhythms of our life, the Holy Spirit comes to us with gentle persistence, inviting us to join the wondrous dance of life with God.¹

Spiritual formation began to emerge in Protestant Christianity as a special focus in the 1980s. At that time, it was not clear whether this field of practice would be a passing movement or would endure. Thirty years later, spiritual formation is here to stay, claiming its own place among other dimensions of congregational life. This approach to Christian living is embraced across the theological divides that all too frequently create disunity among Christians. Spiritual formation has secured a place among other disciplines in the seminary classroom and within congregational life as a means for individual and corporate renewal.

In teaching spiritual formation practices through the years, I have repeatedly witnessed the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of individuals attracted to these studies. A sustaining image for me in this work has been the distinction in the New Testament between the resurrection appearances of Jesus and the moment of Pentecost reported in the book of Acts. Among retreatants and students I observe that individual encounters with the resurrected Christ are very much with us. People are being touched in surprising ways by experiences with Jesus as they open themselves to scripture. Or they are touched by divine grace through the Holy Spirit in a way that causes them to look at Christianity afresh. These experiences may arise in prayer. They may come in moments of profound grief as a sustaining presence. New visions for lay ministry are awakening. Some individuals answer a call to ordained ministry. All are inspired to live more faithfully in the challenge to love God with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength and our neighbor as ourselves (Matt. 22:37-39; Mark 12:30-31; Luke 10:27).

In the New Testament, many individuals encounter Jesus after his resurrection. Each exchange is unique, but always people receive hope. Today people sense similar touches of divine grace. That grace may initiate a radical life reorientation like Paul’s change after his divine encounter on the road to Damascus (Acts 9).

Prior to Paul’s experience, many others had encounters with Jesus after the Crucifixion. They were being called one by one to rethink their sense of loss in Jesus’ death. In these encounters, the individuals who met Jesus between the time of the Resurrection and the event we call Pentecost received a transcendent, sustaining reality. In the New Testament these individual encounters precede the event we call Pentecost, when several thousand people heard this message of Jesus in a public way. In the Pentecost event reported in Acts 2, several thousand people heard the good news of Jesus in their own language. People speaking the many languages of the ancient world were addressed directly and immediately.

As I witness the ongoing call to individuals to claim the way of Jesus in contemporary times, this hopeful thought inspires me: when so many individuals are encountering Jesus, can a new Pentecost be far behind?

The stories in this book serve as witness to many small, quiet Pentecosts happening across the church. As denominations struggle to sustain structures that served the church well in past generations, we perhaps focus too much on the big picture of institutional decline and miss the renewal taking place in congregations and other settings.

AS YOU READ THESE STORIES

THE ACCOUNTS OFFERED by this book’s contributors can be a resource of spiritual formation practices as implemented at the grass-roots level. A quiet Pentecost is abounding! People are being met by God and receiving renewed hope for daily life in their own language. Whether we speak of the divides of cultural and racial distinctions or the more subtle divisions of age and technology use across the age span, every community contains many subgroups. Spiritual formation practices are particularly malleable to such distinctions, as we will see. At the present time, Pentecost may be manifested as increased numbers of active church members and increased giving—or it may not. Just like witnesses to the original Pentecost, we cannot predict what the Holy Spirit will do among us. We need to be careful not to put material criteria on this time of renewal. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6). While it is tempting to judge our achievements on the basis of the material or fleshly results we can see, this Pentecost is different. This Pentecost may be as simple as single encounters between people that foster reconciliation or as dramatic as a congregation discerning a new focus for community mission. This Pentecost may happen when young adults in college discover the power of a media-free day. Elder adults may find the joy of devoting time to their personal prayer disciplines in unexpected ways.

Two contributors to this book, Marianne Chalstrom and Brenda Buckwell, independently reminded me of the quiet appearance of Jesus to the disciples when they were hiding behind locked doors in fear (John 20:19-29). This appearance most closely mirrors what is currently happening in small spiritual formation circles. Frequently, in spite of our fears about church survival or relevance to the world, Jesus appears among us when we listen prayerfully together. He still speaks the same word to these small gatherings: Peace be with you. And he breathes the Holy Spirit among us. In these stories, you will be amazed at the Spirit coming alive within congregations when invited.

Consider spiritual formation practices as means of evangelism. The general population is not aware of the living tradition of contemplative prayer available in Christianity. Many people have left the Christianity of their childhood, sometimes also leaving their conscious theological and faith development behind as they have departed from congregational life. Some have turned to Buddhism or to yoga in an effort to find sustaining practices of meditation that offer a modicum of inner peace on a daily basis. They have not been taught the rich Christian history of Centering Prayer or of lectio divina.² The reflective, contemplative aspects of Christianity have been neglected. Some contributors to this book have created spiritual life centers offering workshops, retreats, classes, and events to their communities. They have formed a bridge between Christian practice and missional outreach, as they share faith practices with their broader communities.

This new Pentecost involves teaching people of all ages how to listen prayerfully to others, honoring their unique voice, in a time when discourse has become very boisterous and rude in the media and popular culture. In our media-saturated, sound-bite culture, even small moments of silence are radically countercultural. Such a change of perspective may be greeted with confusion. We will look at the inherent challenges of offering this vision of Christian life.

PUSHING THE PAUSE BUTTON

TEACHING CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER practices, which nurture personal faith, presents two challenges. First of all, these practices are nonpractices in the sense that they call us to pause in our busy lives. These are more about listening than speaking. It takes time for people to learn the art of such a pause. Second, these practices, developed in early Christian monastic settings, only recently have returned to public awareness. We are thus seeking to learn and teach these practices largely on our own. Most of us in the Protestant traditions do not have the sustained daily rhythms of a Christian monastic community in which to cultivate this heart of God’s presence. We are seeking to integrate such practices into family life and active participation in the world.

The gentle presence that we cultivate in spiritual formation practice is described well in Parker Palmer’s understanding of a circle of trust. He contrasts a circle of trust with the circles we ordinarily convene:

A circle of trust is a group of people who know how to sit quietly in the woods with each other and wait for the shy soul to show up. The relationships in such a group are not pushy but patient; they are not confrontational but compassionate; they are filled not with expectations and demands but with abiding faith in the reality of the inner teacher and in each person’s capacity to learn from it. The poet Rumi captures the essence of this way of being together: A circle of lovely, quiet people becomes the ring on my finger.³

Does it make a difference if we learn to appreciate one another within our congregations across theological and cultural differences? Today it is essential, not a luxury. I’ve come to deeply appreciate any practice that puts some space between our quick reactivity and our actions. A few decades ago, such practices were demeaned as self-absorbed navel-gazing. Quite the contrary, such practices are essential to break the imprisonment caused by naming anyone different from ourselves as enemy. We must examine such attitudes and break their power over us in the name of Jesus’ calling to compassion.

CULTIVATING THE MEANS OF GRACE

IN A PLAIN Account of Christian Perfection, John Wesley named the aim of Christian life to be growth toward perfection in love. What a high goal! This aim of Christian life calls us to profound love of God and inward reconciliation with the many forces at work within our own hearts, as well as compassionate presence with others. To cultivate this growth in love, Wesley offered practices called the ordinary means of grace.⁴ We come into the grace of God through

•regular attention to the study of scripture

•public and private prayer

•holy conferencing

•fasting or abstinence, and

•attending the sacraments of the church, particularly Holy Communion.

Wesley wrapped these practices in the ethical requirements to do good as much as one can and to avoid doing evil. Rueben Job’s book Three Simple Rules has brought renewed appreciation for these core spiritual disciplines. People are reclaiming the practices of searching the scriptures and public prayer in small-group settings, as well as private prayer. Holy conferencing (speaking with others about Christian life) is essential for discernment of congregational decisions, as well as sharing the difficulties and breakthroughs of personal spiritual life. We often speak