Time for Honesty

On Wednesday morning I heard brutally honest words.  "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  In a nutshell, as someone placed a cross of ashes on my forehead she told me, “You’re going to die.  Your body will decompose.  You will go back to dirt.”

Not exactly the stuff of Hallmark greeting cards…but an honest assessment of reality.

Nearly every Sunday when I worship I start the service by boldly proclaiming my failures.  Together with the whole community I tell God about my selfishness, my pride, my greed, my anger, and my jealousy.  It’s a no-holds-barred assessment of my life: I have failed God in many ways.

Followers of Jesus Christ have the freedom to express such blunt honesty. 

We live in a world that feels the need to sugar coat everything.   We want to be strong.  We want to be successful.  We want to live happily every after.  These Disney-dreams sometimes creep into our lives of faith.  We can get the impression that if only we believe in Jesus ‘enough’ then everything will go our way.  The pressure is on us to get things right so God can properly bless us.  We need the proper prayers, the proper devotional life, the proper morality.  Do these things and God will shower you with blessings.

It’s a dangerous lie. 

When our faith depends on our good actions, churches become cesspools of hypocrisy.  People dare not show any weakness in faith.  Only stories of God’s amazing power in their lives can be told (and if you don’t have an amazing story, you might try to come up with one to fit in).  Underneath the veneer of a happy smile, however, people hurt.  They doubt.  They struggle.  They don’t want to admit to any problems (other than ones in the past that they have ‘conquered in Jesus’) lest they be looked down upon and judged.  It’s a race to see who can seem the most content in their faith.  “Look at me, God.  I’m awesome.”

It’s a dangerous lie.

We are broken, sinful people living in a broken, sinful world.  That’s the harsh truth.  We have moments when we doubt our faith.  We have times when we wonder if God is even out there anywhere.  We have things that we do which we know full well are wrong, yet we can’t seem to stop ourselves.  We have illnesses that don’t heal.  We have financial problems.  We struggle to raise our children.  The list could go on and on.

Life is difficult…and then you die.  That’s an honest assessment, but it’s not the whole story.  In the midst of this life of pain, Jesus comes for you.  Jesus brings love, hope, forgiveness, and life.  Jesus knows pain, he had nails driven into his wrists.  Jesus knows rejection, his followers deserted him and his people condemned him.  Jesus knows death.  We’re not alone in this journey through life...and even into death.

It’s time for Christ’s church to proclaim the honest reality of the world.  We don’t have to ‘get it all together’ to have faith.  The only way we come before the throne of God is as unworthy people forgiven through Jesus’ death and resurrection.

I am free to hear that I am dust because of a God who redeems the dust.  I am free to confess my failures because of a God who forgives failures.  My role in faith is not to impress God with my faithfulness so I can receive a blessing.  My role is simply to walk with Jesus, in good days and in bad, in hope and in despair, when my faith is strong and when it’s struggling.  In the end, when my body goes back to dust, this is the God who will redeem me.  In the Bible Job proclaims, "After my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh shall I see God."  I will die and God will continue to act.

I am free to be honest.  God knows me too well to do anything else.

Having a goal...and shooting for it!

A couple weeks ago my son Ben and I reached a goal that is out of the grasp of most people: we

completed a half marathon.  For the past several months I’ve been in ‘training mode.’  While I enjoy running year round, this is the time when I increase the number of miles I’m putting in.  I start with 5 mile runs and weekly increase to 6, then 7, up to 9 miles.  I figure that if I can run 9 miles by myself I can definitely run 13 miles in a crowd.  The training paid off.  On a beautiful day in downtown St. Paul I ran my third half marathon, finishing 8 minutes faster than last year.  I wanted to beat 2 hours, and I finished in 1:53.  Goal completed!

Some of the 500 people running that day ran with a very different goal in mind.   “The Securian half-Marathon is an official Wave 1 qualifier for the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon.”  That means some the top runners ran this race with a larger goal in mind.  They sought to qualify to start with the elite crowd in a marathon.  I suspect that their training took a more vigorous course, as the top runner finished over 40 minutes before I did.  For every mile that I ran, he gained 3 minutes on me.  Pretty impressive! 

For me, the Securian half-marathon served as goal to shoot for.  For the top runners, this half-marathon served as a means towards a more significant goal.  For them the half-marathon was not enough: they had their eyes on a greater prize.  We ran the same race…we had different ideas of what the race meant to us. 

Different goals…different training…different outcomes

I think the same can be said for faith formation in many congregations.  People come to it with vastly different goals, seeking different outcomes.   Is it any wonder that we have a hard time agreeing on the best way to ‘train’?

• For some, faith formation means Sunday School attendance.  Having many kids roaming the halls of the church building brings satisfaction and hope.  If kids show up, the goal is complete.
• Others want their children to gain a sense of right and wrong.
• Others want their kids to know something about the Bible. 
• Others come with a goal of keeping youth engaged in faith and the church throughout their lives. 

Is it any wonder that when you bring people together with such different goals and ask the question, “What should our church do with our kids,” you get vastly different responses? 

•  Those for whom Sunday School attendance is the measuring stick will go all out to preserve the status quo while seeking to find a ‘draw’ to get kids to show up.  Perfect attendance pins used to be a draw, but they don’t seem as effective as they used to be.  If only they can find a fun curriculum then kids will flock to Sunday School once again! 
• If the goal is to grow kids with a strong sense of morality, some education needs to be coupled with opportunities for to serve in the world.  Once the kids have the proper background (i.e. when Confirmation is complete), then the necessary groundwork had been laid.    
• If Bible teaching is crucial, then the proper teachers need to be brought in to pass on that information.  You’d never expect a parent to teach calculus to their child, so why would you expect a parent to teach the Bible to their kids?  Trained leaders are good…pastors have the most training and are the best!  These Biblical stories can be taught all the way through Confirmation, but that’s enough.  Sure there are deeper levels of learning, but a basic understanding is sufficient.
• If the goal is to develop young people with a vibrant faith, the research overwhelmingly shows that the most effective way to 'produce young adults who are active and engaged in their lives of faith' is through mentoring from parents and other adults.  These parents seek opportunities for inter-generational learning so their children can be impacted by the faith of their elders.  They seek to be empowered in their own faith journey so they can share those experiences with their kids.  “If Sunday School and Luther League don’t develop kids into a life-long relationship with a living God, then scrap them!” they say.

Ben and I trained for a half-marathon.  It was enough for us!  Others approached the event with much loftier goals in their sights (and they accomplished what they set out to do).  It would have been difficult to train together given these vastly different desired outcomes.

Congregations struggle to agree on ways to raise kids in the faith because they come at it with vastly different goals in mind.  Some parents (and grandparents) are perfectly happy with the ‘old models’ because they accomplish exactly what they want them to accomplish.  Others seek much more.   It is difficult to ‘train’ together given these vastly different desired outcomes.

What ‘goals’ does your congregation have for faith formation?  Is it accomplishing what you want it to accomplish?