Here’s one of my favourite stories.
It appeared in the March 2005 Record in an article on Crieff Hills Community, a retreat centre north of Toronto: “A professor at a Christian college … was curious [about retreats]. The weekend challenged him to the very core of his being. … ‘How could I have been so wrong?’ he asked, and ‘What am I going to tell my wife and my colleagues?'”
That last line cuts into me – I can imagine him sitting down with his family: “So, I had this spiritual awakening and, well, our life and the way we’ve approached everything is all wrong …” There goes the marriage and with that some friends and family; there goes the job and with it financial security. And all because the poor man had a spiritual awakening. Once you’ve been there, you can’t go back. And suddenly in the eyes of your comfortable world, you’re a crazy person.
Spiritual awakenings are killers; and, they happen all the time. Perhaps that’s why, on a very deep level of our psyche we know to avoid them. We layer ourselves with self-justifications, with (in my case) intellectualism, with (in the case of many churches) bureaucracy. We avoid the stuff that can ignite a fire in us. You might remember our May issue this year which carried a survey of the Presbyterian Church by its members which showed we are not big on reading the Bible, prayer or evangelism in general. Perhaps we’re afraid of spiritual awakenings.
Putting a magazine together every month is an organic process: some articles take years to percolate, others just sorta kinda land in our laps. The cover story in the April issue came out of a presbytery’s effort to redefine what it means to be a leader. It was a powerful and emotional process; and presented a new way of thinking. The next month was the national survey with a harrowing portrait of the Canadian Presbyterian Church. Earlier in the year we had a story about the hard work done by chaplains; and then a story on clergy depression. In the fall, an article ostensibly on rural ministry, which challenged the whole church to rethink its polity. In case you’ve forgotten, here’s the challenge: “I can find no clear warrant in scripture for the practice of ordination to Word and Sacrament as we now practice it.”
Amongst other articles over the year, we had two of our leading teachers present a series called Theology 101. Along the way we had other theological articles as well – on how to read the Bible (deeply, carefully, widely), on communion, on the sermon, on looking at Judeo-Christian icons from a Muslim perspective.
I wish I could claim the editorial team designed and planned all these ahead of time. But, I know, it is serendipitous. For example, in the October issue four people – David Webber, Calvin Brown, Roland DeVries, Liz Stark – wrote on similar themes in four different ways. I wish I could claim credit for the happy accident. And, in this organic mixture of articles, I see a portrait of this Presbyterian Church.
I see a body of believers, inching towards a spiritual awakening. Trepidatiously, of course. I can glimpse it clearly in stories of local churches and their community efforts. One of my favourite stories was in March, of St. Andrew’s, Duncan, B.C., which turned an expanse of grass into a community garden. They called it Redemption Gardens, a name that resonates on so many levels.
The congregation calls itself fearless, and you have to be to get your hands dirty with community. One deed morphs into another and the good folks at St. A’s, Duncan, find themselves with a preschool program, an internet café, and free trade initiatives. This is what happens with spiritual awakenings; you start doing church instead of merely being at church. And suddenly, before you know it, you’re an evangelist, because you allowed a person with few resources to grow her own tomatoes.
And that tomato is a direct by-product of a baby born in a manger 2,000 years ago! Put that way, I fear a spiritual awakening coming.
