I'm starting a short series on Nouwen's In the Name of Jesus this morning in our Sunday School class. I'm excited about it, because I love Nouwen. I know that people have different expressions of spiritual practice and discipline, but I think (and hope for the sake of class) that all people can find something that resonates with their heart in the writing of Nouwen. We are all spiritual, regardless of the expression it takes.
As I consider that last sentence, I think of the fear I have that some people will not enjoy Nouwen because it doesn't make sense to them. That fear, which may or may not be grounded in reality, makes me think that in our movement, we aren't good at encouraging and developing spiritual formation. Frankly, we suck at it. We educate; we don't grow or transform. I think that too often our failure is in assuming that information does something more than simply inform. It doesn't. It takes intentional effort to get more than information out of information. Put in agrarian terms, information is inorganic. It does not by nature produce growth.
Two questions apply these thoughts to something beneficial and rescue me from cynicism: why and how.
WHY?
That is, why do we rely on information for growth when it only informs? I blame the Sunday School model (and hence, unexamined Enlightenment thinking). We've made "doing church" primarily about educating. You come, you get a Lord's Supper sermonette (a Faris pet peeve no-no), you get a teaching sermon, you go to class and learn some more. I've heard criticism of small groups from this thinking. "When will they learn with all that 'fellowship?'" critics ask. Likewise, if you're not coming to class again on Wednesday night, your soul is in danger! AHHHHH!! Educate this young person before he falls away! Maybe young people are leaving because they want more than a "good, biblical education." We try and get people to come to church by poaching on their desire to teach morals to their children. Come to VBS, we'll educate your children and they will miraculously become moral people!
This is not to say that education is bad or wrong; my generation and those after are sometimes woefully ignorant. It is to say, however, that education is not enough. The most spiritual people are not the most educated. Indeed, sometimes, it is the opposite. This is likely because our desire for knowledge is not informed by our desire for knowing God, but by our enlightened worldview that sees knowledge/education/information as the solution to all the world's problems.
HOW?
How do we find balance? How do we grow if not through informing? Where shall we find spiritual transformation?
I have no solid answers. But, I can think of some movements that seem right to me.
We need a movement of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who transforms and causes growth. Similarly, we need a movement of Spirit-filled leaders who can live it for us. We need spiritual guides and mentors to lead our churches more so that we need smart businessmen and women who can please the majority and balance the budget. We need a movement toward community.
And, as we will discuss in class this morning, we need a movement toward irrelevance. We need people who are valued not for what they can do, but for how much they love God. May we all love God as much with our hearts as we do with our minds.
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