Rowboat Church, Sailboat Church

I am not a sailor.  I do not even play one on TV.  But even I know the difference between a sailboat and a rowboat.


Either a rowboat or a sailboat can take you places.  Both types of boats require effort to move.  The difference is where the primary energy comes from to move the boat.  Rowboats are driven entirely by the energy of the person rowing.  Sailboats involve the energy of the sailor (after all someone has to put up the sails and move them into the proper position) PLUS the energy of the wind.

The wind makes all the difference.  When you’re in a sailboat and you're sailing with the wind, there is a definite sense that you are participating in something larger than yourself and your own power. With a sailboat, the wind does the Big Work; the sailor's work is all about harnessing and riding on the power of the wind.

With a rowboat, on the other hand, it's all up to you. 


What is intriguing to me are the parallels between these two types of boats and two different ways of living our lives and being the church. Joan Gray has written a powerful book entitled, Sailboat Church: Helping Your Church Rethink Its Mission and Practice (available from amazon.com or thethoughtfulchristian.com), in which she utilizes the metaphors of "rowboat" and "sailboat" to analyze the state of the church in North America.

Across North America, we may find many "Rowboat Churches" - where everyone works really hard and tries to accomplish a lot, but they feel like they are doing it all on their own.  Some of these churches may be accomplishing big things, but even in those congregations, you can sense a heavy pressure to perform and achieve.  Often, there is not a sense of joy and delight in the power of God, but rather a sense of obligation to "do something big."

Living a “rowboat life,” or being a "rowboat church," can utilize a lot of energy, and when things are going smoothly, it can look really impressive.  Any credit for the rowboat’s success goes to the rower!  “Look at that person go!  He/she is a really strong rower!”  "Look at that church!  What an impressive church!"  But when things aren’t going very well for the rowboat, the only available answer is “row harder.”  In life, this means that we must pull harder, work harder, sleep less, stop resting, push yourself harder, harder, harder.  It’s no wonder that rowing can become exhausting.

For all of the "Rowboat Churches" out there, there is always the possibility of becoming a "Sailboat Church." Even if you and your church have been "rowing" hard for a long time, and have been thinking that "no one else is going to help us, so we've got to work really, really hard," it is possible to change.  It is possible to begin making small shifts to being a "Sailboat Church," where you will begin to experience the energy of the Holy Spirit moving you, guiding you, and giving you energy.  There will still be a need for energetic participation; there will still be plenty of work to do, but the work will be oriented towards following the Spirit of God, being led by the Spirit, and feeling the support, energy, and strength of the Spirit.  

Everything in a Sailboat Church will be undergirded by prayer.  In the words of Joan Gray, "Prayer saturates the lives of leaders and members in a Sailboat church.  It is deeply and broadly woven into the church's culture.  More than anything else, prayer serve to make life in the Sailboat church a transforming experience for individuals and communities."  Gray writes that this is because "God has chosen prayer as the main way God's power flows from heaven to earth."

When we live our lives with the Spirit of God, we do not try to accomplish everything on our own.  We invite God into our work.  We rely on God during our work.  When we are having a conversation with someone, we listen for God’s leading in the conversation.  What does God want us to say?  Does God want us to speak more?  Does God want us to listen more?  When does God want us to share an opinion?  When does God want us to keep that opinion to ourselves?
 
In what ways are you living a "rowboat life"?  What would it look like for you to begin living more of a "sailboat life?"

Together, we have it all

One of the biggest pressures we may face is the pressure to "have it all together."  We can feel this pressure from all over the place -- it can come from the media, where we are exposed to beautiful and gorgeous celebrities, who seem to have no pain in their lives and are held up as what we should be like; it can come from well-intentioned people, who teach us to cover up and hide our faults, and at least look like we have it all together; it can even come from our places of worship, where we may especially feel like we need to look happy and satisfied with life.  After all, Jesus came to offer us "abundant life," so if our lives are anything less than abundant, we may feel like we are letting Jesus down!

There can be a lot of pressure to be The Total Package, all by ourselves.  We may feel like we're supposed to be smart, confident, attractive, humble, kind, strong, assertive, understanding, athletic, well-balanced, relaxed, non-anxious, careful, carefree, and on and on and on...

That's a lot to live up to.

But the truth of the matter is that none of us is The Total Package, all by ourselves.  None of us is complete.

We were never meant to be.

According to Genesis 2, when the first man was created, God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone."  The man needed a "helper."  The man needed help.  The man was not enough, all by himself.

The first person who was created needed another.

We all need others.

Greg Ogden, in his very helpful book, Unfinished Business: Returning the Ministry to the People of God, writes that, "We don't have it all together.  But together, we have it all." This is one of deep implications of the concept of the church as the body of Christ.  The church - all of us together - are the body of Christ. 

Each of us is a part.

We were never intended to be the total package, all on our own.  But all of us together are the total package.  Each person brings particular gifts to whatever community we are a part of.  We bring our gifts, but we do not bring all of the gifts that the community needs.  We need others.  Each of us needs the help of others.  Together, we have it all.

The Eyes Have It

One of the ideas we find in the Bible is that humans are not able to look God in the face and live.  In Exodus 33:20, the Lord says to Moses, "You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live."  The idea here seems to be that God's holiness is so overwhelming, so massive, that humans simply can't handle it.  It is similar to the way that we may go blind if we stare into the sun.  Our eyes simply aren't made to handle that much intense light.

There is, however, a counter-idea that we find in the Bible, which is that one goal of our lives of faith is actually to seek the face of God.  Psalm 42 pleads, "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and behold the face of God?"  Psalm 27 insists, "Your face, Lord, do I seek."  And just nine verses before the above text from Exodus 33 (which prohibited seeing the face of God), we read that "the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend" (Exodus 33:11).

To seek the face of the Lord, or not to seek?  That appears to be the question.

In a corresponding manner, we may think about the power that is found in the eyes of others.  In the course of ordinary daily activity, it is entirely possible to go throughout an entire day without ever really looking into the eyes of another person.  We interact with others, we talk with others, we may even look at the eyes of others, but we may never really look into the eyes of other people.  Why is this?
My sense is that this is because looking into the eyes of another person is such a powerful thing.  Looking into the eyes of other people slows us down.  You cannot look into the eyes of another person while you are in a rush.  You cannot do a "drive-by-look" into another's eyes.  If you look into the eyes of another person, you must stop doing everything else, slow down, and give them your attention.  In biblical language, you must "die" to your haste and your hurry.  (Maybe that's part of what it means that we cannot look at the face of God and live.  A part of us - the part that is in a hurry - must die.)

For people who are in a hurry, this is a real problem.  It is much easier and faster to just talk at someone, to get what you need from them, maybe even check in with them how they're doing, but then to carry on with whatever you're doing, and not to engage with them.

But when we look into the eyes and the face of another person, it is as though we enter a different sort of time and space.  It is more intimate, and we are brought closer to the reality of the other person.  It is popularly said that "the eyes are the window of the soul."  If this is true, then when we look into the eyes of another person, we are drawing closer to the core reality of the other person.  This proximity to the core of another person may feel threatening to us, or it may feel threatening to the other person.  (It has long been the case that tyrants and overlords would not allow their subjects or servants to look them in the eye.  To do so would violate the brittle lines of social hierarchy, indicating that the two persons were, in fact, equal human beings.  What a radical idea!)

In the coming days, I would invite you to the spiritual practice of looking into the eyes of others, not just at them.  Experiment with what this feels like.  What feels refreshing and renewing?  Does it feel threatening or unnerving?  Does it feel relaxing, and can you feel yourself slowing down?

Blind Spots

Two Sundays ago, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading was John 9:1-41, in which Jesus heals a man born blind.  One set of characters in this story is a group of powerful religious leaders, whom Jesus engages in conflict.  (It's remarkable how often the good, proper, diligent religious leaders come in for quite a hard time with Jesus!!)  These religious leaders are sure that they know the truth.  Their certitude blinds them to dimensions of grace, truth, reality, neighborliness, mystery, and compassion.

This story makes me wonder about our own "blind spots."  What are the things that keep us from seeing life clearly?  What dimensions of reality, truth, grace, mystery, and life are kept hidden from us?  To what aspects of life are we blind?  What aspects of life are we unable to see?

Our biggest blind spots are often directly related to the primary ways that we like to think of ourselves.  When our sources of identity and self-esteem are threatened in some way, we may lose our ability to perceive things accurately.

For example, imagine people who base their identity and self-esteem on how much money they have.  The more money they have, the better they feel about themselves.  Now, imagine those people losing an enormous percentage of their money in the stock market.  If these folks genuinely believe that their self-worth is tied to the amount of money in their accounts, their capacity to see any beauty, joy, or abundance in the world will be severely diminished at that moment.  They may begin to panic.  They'll be blinded.

Or, imagine people whose self-esteem is based on whether people like them or not, whether people approve of them or not.  When people praise them, they feel terrific.  But now, imagine those people  being severely criticized for something.  If these folks genuinely believe that their self-worth, their identity, is based on whether people like them or not, then their ability to think clearly and calmly may be threatened when they get criticized.  They may panic and be unable to see clearly.

Who are you?  On what do you base your self-esteem?  For many of us, we may have built our lives and our identity around becoming a success, or being thought of as nice, or being acknowledged as right, or around staying safe, or around being really popular.  We may have become really good at these things!  The trouble is that these things never last.  They can be transient, fleeting, and taken away from us.  And our zealous pursuit of these things can blind us to larger, deeper, more lasting dimensions of life.

This is why the Christian faith insists that the only firm foundation for our lives is God's gracious love for us.  Everything else can be taken away from us.  We haven't earned this love, we don't deserve it, and we can't control it.  But God pours it out on us, abundantly, anyway.  And it will never be taken away. 

One Step at a Time

‘Step by step.’  ‘One day at a time.’  ‘Every journey begins with a single step.’  Our culture has a variety of wisdom-sayings that encourage us to take things slowly and deliberately and patiently.  These sayings are very important, because in our anxiety and haste, we can feel like we have to “fix everything RIGHT NOW!!!”  But when we take things slowly, and only expect to figure things out “one step at a time,” even our most difficult projects can become manageable.

A number of years ago, my wife and I took a trip to Zimbabwe to visit our dear friends, Mark and Ruth, who were working there.  A highlight of the trip was a day-hike that we took with Mark.  We were hiking up one of the many kopjes (medium-sized hills of rock; pronounced “copies”) around Zimbabwe.  The kopje we climbed is named Ngoma Kurira, and is about 25 minutes outside the capital city of Harare.

Mark had told us that it would be a “nice day hike.”  Well, my assumptions about what constituted a “nice day hike” (easy, gentle slopes; about a 45 minute walk) did not match the reality of Ngoma Kurira.  The hike involved navigating a small ravine, in which we placed our feet on one side of the ravine, while we leaned across to place our hands on the other side of the ravine.  We then crab-walked our way for a short distance, while virtually horizontal over the ravine.  (If you’re having trouble getting a visual image, that’s probably just as well.  Believe me, it wasn’t pretty.)

But the most demanding—and ultimately, the most satisfying—part of the hike was climbing the face of the rock, a 500-yard climb at a 60-degree angle.  Standing at the base of the rock and looking up, I laughed nervously and said, “We’re going up that?”  Mark said, “Yep.”  I said, “No, seriously.  For real?”  Mark said, “Yep.”  I continued, “Mark, I’m not sure I can make it to the top of that thing.”  And then Mark said—and this is what blew me away—“Right now, your task is not to get to the top.  Your task, right now, is to focus on finding a place for your left foot to go.  Then, your task will be to find a place for your right foot to go.  Eventually, you’ll be at the top.  But you’ll only get there one step at a time.”  So, for the next 45 minutes, I focused on one step at a time, not thinking about anything else, as we climbed the steepest, longest rock-face I have ever climbed. 

45 minutes later, we were at the top.  It worked.  My nervous, skittish self had become a rock-climber.

So many times in our lives, we become consumed by, threatened by, intimidated by the big questions in our lives.  “What will I do with my life?  How can I become a good person?  How can I put together this major project?  How can I finish this work of art?  How will I ever raise a child successfully?”  We can become so demoralized by where we think we need to end up that we do not pay attention to our next step.  “What is the next thing I need to do?” 

It is good and necessary to have a general sense of where we are headed.  Otherwise, we’re likely to go nowhere.  (After all, we did select this one, specific kopje to climb.)  But once we have established a general sense of where we’re going, then we can concentrate our energies on the much more modest task of, “What is the very next thing that I need to do?”  Sometimes, the “very next thing” is simply to pray for clarity about what the “very next thing” actually is.   One step at a time.

Lent: A time for laying down our defenses

This Wednesday (March 5), Christians around the world will celebrate Ash Wednesday.  This day begins the 40-day journey of Lent to prepare ourselves for the events of Holy Week – Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.  

The preparatory season of Lent is a time when we can reflect on, and ask God to deepen, our own commitment to God and God’s kingdom.  During Lent, we are invited to reflect on our own lives - in as honest a way as possible.  During Lent, we engage in the kind of practice that 12-step movements call a “searching and fearless moral inventory."

Our Lenten self-inventory is “searching” because we want to examine every part of our lives.  We want to look into the shadows of our lives, looking under all the rocks and hidden places inside of us, looking for all the places where we try to hide from God and God’s call on our lives. 

Our Lenten self-inventory is “fearless” because we can engage in this self-examination without any fear that we are going to find something that will make us unlovable to God.  There is nothing that can make God reject us.  Absolutely nothing can separate us from God (cf. Romans 8:38-39), not even the unsavory and unattractive parts of our lives.  God does not reject us, only accepts us.  We are profoundly and completely accepted by God, as we are.  God accepts, and is ready to heal, every part of us - even those parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of.  When we are willing to turn over to God those parts of our lives that we are afraid of, or ashamed of, God sets us free.

The sharp point of the Lenten invitation is that we are invited to lay down all the ways that we defend and protect ourselves.  Over the course of every day, in a whole variety of ways, we can guard and protect ourselves from other people, from events in the world, and from God.  From the time we are small children, we are taught to protect and defend ourselves.  “Keep your guard up.”  “Watch your back.”  “Eyes open, at all times.”  “Boys don’t cry.” “Don’t let others get mad at you.”  “It’s best to do everything yourself; that way, you can make sure nobody messes it up.”

These words of advice may serve us well if our primary life-goal is to 'stay safe' or 'be popular' or 'always be in control.'  But when we live by these and similar codes, we will be (1) reluctant to trust others (including God), (2) hesitant to share ourselves with others (including God), (3) inclined to avoid sharing our gifts with the world, and (4) tempted to see other people as threats rather than neighbors.

The Christian life is a journey of learning to live for the world, rather than living in fear of the world.  It is a journey of living with the world - in all of its pain and complexity and messiness - rather than trying to stay safe from the world.  We are invited this Lenten season to lay down some of our self-defenses, which may have helped to keep us safe in the past, but which have also bound us and held us back from a life of freedom and abundant love.

What is one way that you protect yourself from the world?  (If you’re like me, you may have a whole repertoire of ways to keep yourself safe!)  What is one way that you defend yourself against being vulnerable, guard yourself from being exposed to the thoughts and opinions of others?  Please do not beat yourself up about this, but simply begin to notice the times during the day when you go into “self-protection” mode.  When are you most likely to feel the need to self-protect?  What goes through your mind when you feel like this?  Can you notice some negative repercussions of this self-protective behavior?  What does it cost you, or take away from you?

As we become aware of these ways we protect and defend ourselves, we can ask God in prayer to help us lay them down.  We can ask God to help us let go of these defenses, so that our hands can be more open to share life with the world, instead of clutching on for our personal safety.  As we lay our fearful defenses down, we will walk into our lives with greater freedom, no matter what may come our way.

No punishment

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love." -- 1 John 4:18

The verse above is an enormously important text for taking the measure of our spiritual growth.  We may ask, "How is it going with my spiritual life?" We can re-phrase this question by asking, "How often am I afraid?  How large a presence does fear play in my daily life?  Am I afraid of other people?  Am I afraid of God?  Am I afraid of the future?  Am I afraid of taking chances?  Am I afraid of messing up?  Am I afraid of what other people might think?  Am I afraid of what will happen if I really speak my mind?  Does fear drive any of my actions?"  If you're anything like me, the answer to at least some of these questions - and sometimes a lot of them! - is "Yes."  The amount of fear in our lives can be a gentle signal of how much growth we have yet to do in our spiritual lives.  (It can also be an enticement to continue on the spiritual journey, to imagine how much more abundant our lives will be as we live with less fear.)

I take it that the key goal of our lives is to move towards "perfection in love" - complete love for God, complete love for other people, complete love for the whole creation, complete love for ourselves.  One of the things that can block us from this life of greater, deeper love is fear of punishment.  This can even (and perhaps, especially) be the case when it comes to religion.  Fear can drive a lot of "religious" behavior.

People can go to worship, not to praise and adore God with their whole hearts, but because they think that might make God less likely to punish them if they've been to church.  People may be scared of God, rather than filled with love for God.  People can also do a lot of religious and service activities, not with love and generosity, but with fear.  They can engage in these activities as a way of demonstrating to the world that they are good religious people, and as such, they deserve to be rewarded, and not punished.  Their activities, then, do not flow with love and joy, but are done with a kind of tightness and rigidity.

We may say what others want us to say, even though we don't agree with them, because we don't want them to punish us by rejecting us.  We can keep our mouths shut when someone is telling a racist, sexist, or homophobic joke, because we don't want them to punish us with ostracism.  We can spend a lot of money on clothes or cars because we want to fit in with the crowd, and because we don't want the crowd to punish us by making fun of us.  Large parts of our lives can be lived in fear.

Whenever we are acting out of fear, we are not living in Love.  We are not allowing Love to guide us.

Let me say it as clearly as I can: There is no punishment.  I truly believe this.  God may judge us, but God does not punish.  Love may judge us and hold us accountable, but Love does not punish.  Now this does not mean that there are no consequences for our actions.  Along the way, we will make mistakes, even horrible mistakes.  We will commit sins and offenses.  And there will be consequences for those mistakes.  If we break a precious vase, it will still break, and we may still need to pay for it.  But we need not experience that as cosmic punishment.  If we lose our head and yell at a loved one, the relationship may still be damaged, and we may need to engage in the difficult process of saying we're sorry, making amends, and working for reconciliation.  It may be difficult, but we need not experience it as cosmic punishment.  We are still, and always, held by Love.

Love will hold us accountable, but Love will do that without punishment or cruel scorn.  So we need not be afraid of being held accountable.  We can live in Love, always.