Category: Apprentice

I’m thinking a better word for being a disciple of Jesus

To What End? The Telos of the Disciplines.

It seemed an inauspicious beginning. Last November, in an effort to revive this long dormant blog, I offered a simple post on being an Apprentice of Jesus. That post did not contain a single reference to any spiritual disciplines. The omission was not intentional, but it wasn’t an oversight either. A vague sense of discomfort plagues me when I start to write or teach about spiritual disciplines, rules (or ways) of life, or any of the elements contained in an otherwise welcome renewal of interest in spiritual formation. At least it was vague until I remembered an article by James Bryan Smith written for the September 2022 issue of Christianity Today magazine.. Smith was Dallas Willard’s teaching assistant for his courses at Fuller seminary and worked with Willard and Richard Foster in launching the Renovaré ministry in the late 1980s. Smith’s article was “Dallas Willard’s 3 Fears About the Spiritual Formation Movement.”

According to Smith:

“[Dallas] worried that the focus would be on the practice of the spiritual disciplines themselves rather than on what they were intended to do. Dallas felt this would naturally degenerate into a focus on technique—on the how and not the why of the spiritual exercises. Dallas also feared that churches would co-opt interest in spiritual formation as a tool for church growth—and that, because it likely would not lead to numerical growth, leaders would then relegate formation to one of many departments in a church rather than viewing it as central to their mission. Finally, he was concerned that the growing number of formation ministries would compete with each other—rather than cooperate—in order to validate their work and ensure their survival.”

On the second and third of Dallas Willard’s fears, I may offer some thoughts in a later post. However, the first fear listed raises an important question: what exactly is the “why” of the spiritual exercises? To begin to answer that question, one can look at the consequences focusing primarily on the “how” of the disciplines. Fortunately, Smith address this in another Willard quote:

“In one of our last conversations together, I asked Dallas what would be at stake if his fears became reality. His answer: ‘A lack of transformation into Christlikeness.’”

But is it possible that such transformation is less the goal of the disciplines than it is the effect of seeking that goal? Another of Smith’s recollections give us a hint.

“Dallas taught that disciplines such as prayer, solitude, and Scripture memorization are only one part of the formation process. The second part is the work of the Holy Spirit, and the third is learning how to see life’s trials and events in light of God’s presence and power. One of Dallas’s fears—something he essentially predicted—was that interest in the practice of the disciplines, while essential, would eclipse the other two parts.”

These parts are not three unconnected activities, but three interconnected aspects of the work of apprenticeship. The work of the disciplines is something we do. The way we see our life “in the light of God’s presence and power” is something that grows in us as we become more aware of God’s involvement in our lives. However, the work of the Holy Spirit is God’s sovereign work – which is not to say that we have no part to play in that work. The work we do is in creating space in our lives for the Spirit of God to take up residence and produce the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Or in other words, the character of Christ.

The disciplines are the essential tool in creating this space. And, oddly enough, preparing to go to sleep is a good analogy for the process. Philosopher Jamie Smith addresses this in his book Imagining the Kingdom. Throughout the book Smith intersperses brief insets under the title of “To Think About.” Drawing on some writing by philosopher Maruice Merleau-Ponty, Smith writes:

I cannot “choose” to fall asleep. The best I can do is choose to put myself in a position that welcomes sleep. I want to go to sleep, and I’ve chosen to climb into bed – but in another sense sleep is not something under my control nor at my beck and call. “I call up the visitation of sleep by initiating the breathing and posture of the sleeper … There is a moment when sleep ‘comes,’ settling on this imitation of itself which I have been offering to it, and I succeed in becoming what I was trying to be.” (Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty, P 189-90, emphasis added.) Sleep is a gift that requires a posture of reception – a kind of active welcome. What if being filled with the Spirit had the same dynamic? What if Christian practices are what Craig Dykstra calls “habitations of the Spirit” precisely because they posture us to be filled and sanctified? What if we need to first adopt a bodily posture in order to become what we are trying to be? (James K.A. Smith. Imagining the Kingdom (Grand Rapids, MI, Baker Academic, 2013), p. 65)

This is an idea and image worth exploring and it raises both further questions and further concerns. The concern that is foremost in my own thinking is the communal context of the Christlike life. Throughout the New Testament the primary context of Jesus’ teaching, and that of Paul and the other New Testament writers, is the corporate nature of discipleship. The “lone ranger” kind of discipleship/apprenticeship is a figment of our western imagination, it cannot be found in the Scriptures.

From that New Testament perspective I can only be a disciple in the context of a community of disciples. I can only be an apprentice in the context of a community of apprentices. This brings to my mind a book by the Rev. Dr. Alison Morgan, Following Jesus. While the book is a valuable tool for any group of apprentices, it is the secondary title that caught my imagination: The Plural of Disciple is Church. If that’s true, and I believe it is, then I come back at last to my revisionist version of Inigo Montoya: “Church! You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means!”

Life at 46

It isn’t my age. In fact, I can barely remember being 46. But it was on this day 46 years ago, in 1978, that I was ordained a priest in the “One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church.” At least that’s what the ordination certificate says.

Although Evergreen, Colorado, has a number of excellent coffee shops and some remarkable brew pubs, I’m not expecting any anniversary discounts today. Being an Episcopal priest is not a particularly notable status in our culture – and it never was as important as we thought it was back in more religious times. That is NOT to say that being a priest is insignificant, only that its significance is not in the arena of national cultural life.

A person ordained a priest maintains two statuses. First is in the Holy Order of priesthood. That status is reflected in three functions: presiding at the Eucharist in the gathered Christian community, pronouncing blessings, and declaring absolution from sin. The second status is the ministry in which the ordained person participates. That can be in parish ministry, institutional chaplaincy, education, or any number of ministries that we can exercise over the years.

The arena in which I exercised Holy Orders has been exclusively the local congregation until I retired at the end of 2018. It was only in the last years of parish ministry that I finally stumbled on a connection between Orders and Ministry that changed the way in which I exercised ministry in the parish. (I have no doubt that many Episcopal priests have been aware of and functioning in that connection for most of their ordained life. I’ve always been a bit slow to catch on.)

The connection is the role of the parish priest in modeling the priesthood that the church members possess in Christ. In short, to teach others to bless, to teach others to pronounce forgiveness of sins, and to teach others to make common things holy (as in Holy Communion) by offering them to the God who transforms and transfigures. That is why this blog is called “The Apprentice Priest.” And that’s what I hope to explore in greater detail in the coming months and (maybe) years.

Reconnecting: The Apprentice Part

In an ongoing effort to render this old blog site habitable, a few items of furniture need to be brought into the sunlight again for a thorough cleaning. The first piece of furniture relates to the choice of its name: The Apprentice Priest.

Why Apprentice?

Today apprentice is not a synonym for disciple – but that’s because being an apprentice isn’t what it used to be. Unlike the reality show version of apprentice, modern apprenticeship is a step towards professional status in a trade. It does not involve living with one’s instructor or observing their lifestyle and character. 

I picked up the practice describing myself as an apprentice from Dallas Willard. He well may be the source of the current adoption of apprentice as an alternative to disciple. But apprentice is probably popular because it is new. Human culture will undoubtedly be able to drain it of substantial meaning as we did with Christian and disciple. Christian and Christianity are terms that come loaded with a great deal of baggage that has little to do with what we read in the New Testament. While I am happy to be known as a follower of Jesus or an apprentice of Jesus, I prefer not to accept the term Christian until I understand what associations it has for the person with whom I am speaking.

Disciple has its own problems. Alison Morgan reports: “In 2011 the Anglican Diocese of Gloucester conducted a survey among its clergy, asking what they regarded as the most important elements of discipleship. The survey reported widespread agreement across the diocese: clergy from all contexts and traditions selected ‘Bible study’ as the foremost activity of a Christian disciple, followed by ‘prayer.’ There was no suggestion that discipleship should involve any element either of ministry or lifestyle; indeed, ‘personal morality’ was rated bottom of the seventeen options offered, along with ‘witness’ and ‘faith at work.’”[1]  

Morgan later observes: “Jesus wasn’t training theologians; he was training practitioners, and the primary context of training was not the classroom but the community.’[2] This is consistent with Dallas Willard’s contention that “The term ‘discipleship’ has currently been ruined so far as any solid psychological and biblical content is concerned.”[3]

On the other hand, apprentice has an advantage over the other terms. Christian is rarely used to imply any relationship except that between Christ and the individual believer. However, to be an apprentice, you usually have to be apprenticed to someone. One can be a disciple of anyone, living or dead. But one can only apprentice oneself to a living person. Therefore, to be an apprentice of Jesus means a) that He is alive, b) He is accessible in relationship, and c) that relationship is capable of growing, evolving, and deepening.

Being an apprentice of Jesus the Christ is where I want to be. Sharing some of that journey’s failures and successes is one reason I’m resurrecting The Apprentice Priest. And the “priest” part of this? Maybe in a couple of weeks, I’ll have more to say.

[1] Alison Morgan, Following Jesus: The Plural of Disciple is Church, ReSource, c. 2015, p. 44

[2] Ibid, p. 48

[3] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission p. 53

Rock ‘n Roll

My vote for the most profound theologian of the past 50 years goes to an anonymous London taxi driver. N.T. Wright told his story back in 2010 when Wright served as the Anglican bishop of Durham. The story inspired Wright’s Easter sermon that year, and it is best to let the bishop tell it in his own words:

The taxi driver looked back at me in his mirror. His face was a mixture of amusement and sympathy. We were stuck in traffic and he’d asked me, as they do, what I did for a living.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you Church of England people’ (having told me he was a Roman Catholic himself). ‘You’re still having all that trouble about women bishops, aren’t you?’

I had to admit that that was indeed the case.

‘The way I look at it,’ he said, ‘is this: if God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, all the rest is basically rock’n’roll.’

https://ntwrightpage.com/2016/03/30/resurrection-and-rocknroll/

Rock ‘n roll indeed. Yes, that probably is an over-simplification, but the hard truth behind it is that if God did not raise Jesus Christ from the dead, then as Paul told the Corinthians: “Your faith is futile.” Most of the things that self-identified Christians squabble about are of debateable importance. But if Jesus is not raised, then they are of no importance at all.

May I suggest that we take the Resurrection of Jesus as a pair of glasses, corrective lenses through which we look at Scripture, theology, history, the physical and social sciences, and, in fact, every human endeavor? Let us remember that resurrection is not resuscitation. The description of the risen Jesus’ physical actions in the Gospels indicate much more than restoration to the life Jesus lived before his crucifixion. This is something new.

To look at our lives through those Resurrection glasses is to invite ourselves to assess and reassess all else that we believe. Maybe how we see our world is more a product of the culture in which we were raised and less the product of Jesus’ Kingdom.

Conversion Unstuck

In previous postings (May 12, June 6, July 3) I looked at the problem of conversion when it is considered a singular event rather than an extended journey.  I considered the problem in three contexts; first of an individual coming to faith from outside the covenant tradition of Israel: Simon the magician (Acts 8:9-24). Second, problem of conversion in a community, many of whom also came from outside the covenant tradition. In that case it was the church in Corinth, primarily looking at Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. In the third case it was the apostles themselves who served as an example of the problem of conversion; a problem even among those steeped in both the covenant tradition and the teaching of Jesus. Perhaps all these stories connected with our experience of people of faith or communities of faith. But whether we found a connection or not, all three of those postings only described situations. There was no mention of a way forward, of getting the process of conversion unstuck.

It reminds me of one of my mother’s favorite jokes (she was a medical secretary). A man visits his doctor and describes a whole host of symptoms. The doctor listens carefully and then he asks: “Have you had this condition before?” The man answers in the affirmative and the doctor then says: “Well, you’ve got it again. That will be fifty dollars. Next patient.” Fortunately, my postings are free of charge, but it’s still not helpful to leave us with a description we may already recognize.

Of course, the first step is to recognize that conversion is a journey and if we’re not making progress, we need to get unstuck. There are several tools available to us in getting moving on our journey. These tools, often called spiritual disciplines, are, or should be, quite familiar to us. Most Christian traditions include prayer, Bible study, and service. There are several other disciplines including fasting, giving, worship, penance, devotional reading and more. And these are not new. Their pedigree is older than the Church, for we learned them from the Jews.

These disciplines have indeed been around for centuries, but by themselves are not sufficient to start our journey into a fuller conversion. If they were, Christian history would read rather differently. At their best, they might awaken a hunger for closer connection with Jesus. At their worst they create a complacency that can produce legalistic self-righteousness. It is not that these disciplines are faulty. They are all good and several of them necessary to the journey of conversion. It is that there are two critical elements missing: understanding the context of the disciplines and understanding their purpose.

Most of what Jesus teaches about the values and priorities of the Jesus path assume it is lived in community. The late Canon David Watson once observed that “the meeting place is the learning place for the marketplace.” Many times, when I’ve quoted that in sermons and teachings, the only response I get is a blank look. Part of the problem is that Watson was speaking in British idiom and I’ve only ministered in the US. But the main problem is that we fail, on the whole, to appreciate the essential nature of community in following the Jesus path.

The meeting place, in Watson’s observation, is the regular gathering of Christ’s people in worship and fellowship. Yet even that can be misleading. Worship is an action directed God-ward. The community’s attention is directed towards those who are leading the worship. It is not a place of conversation or relation-building among those gathered. Worship, whether liturgical or non-liturgical, is not designed to create or build relationships. Those relationships are formed in smaller configurations where there is time to share and reflect and experiment with the Spirit filled life in Christ.

It is in these smaller groups, as well as in corporate worship, that the meeting place becomes the learning place. The learning can be factual – as in getting insight to Scripture through sharing understanding. It can be behavioral – as in sharing struggles and practices in prayer. It can be relational – as in dealing faithfully with others whose style of communication, values, and personalities are quite different than our own. When what we are learning becomes part of our own behavior, we carry that into the world outside our group and our congregation. And the meeting place has become the learning place for engaging in the marketplace – a Britishism that refers not to the large halls of commerce but to the town market where, in the midst of our personal commerce we connect with our local community.

That now leaves us with the final piece of the puzzle of getting conversion unstuck – the purpose. And that purpose is not what we often think it is. But that must wait for the next post.

And now a word from the author

I’m opening a new avenue for Apprentice Priest reflections. These videos will be rather brief but I hope will start some conversations.

I will still be writing posts for this blog, the next one — in the series on “not quite converted” should be posted in the next week.

The Lentiest Lent We’ve Ever Lented

That comment is showing up regularly throughout the world of social media. It could also be the longest. Our isolation is likely to continue through Easter Day and well beyond. Yet even in the midst of our current chaos, the Christian year moves through its own rhythms, whether we are allowed to gather or not. Each Sunday and major feast has its own prayer, its collect[1]. For many Episcopalians, Sunday will be the only time they hear or read the collect of the day. Those who follow the discipline of daily Morning and/or Evening Prayer may offer that collect each day throughout the week. Yet even then, the calendar moves on and we don’t use the collect until next year.

And then there’s the reality that very few Christians attend churches that use these particular collects, and fewer pause to reflect on what has just been prayed. Then there’s the new, current reality that we cannot, for the immediate future, gather for worship. Even those who join their congregations online seem to be about half of what we used to have when we could meet in a common place.

Because of this I suggest we might look back a couple of weeks and reflect on the collect for the Third Sunday of Lent:

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer

That first declaration may seem inaccurate to us. After all, we are doing quite a lot to help ourselves. Whether it is increasing our capacity for testing or working on a vaccine for the COVID19 virus or issuing stay at home orders or practicing social distancing or thoroughly and regularly washing our hands or turning our manufacturing from normal consumer items to masks and PPE and ventilators, we seem to be charging through to a solution even in the face of political maneuvering, finger pointing, wishful thinking and short-sightedness. And yet. Our failure to comprehend the fundamental connectedness of creation led us to this point. Whatever we can accomplish to ameliorate the pandemic will not change that self-sabotaging flaw in human nature that prefers to narrow our vision to what results in our own benefit. Our inventiveness has changed a lot of things in this world and not all of them for the worse. And yet, we can’t seem to change our behavior even when our circumstances demand it. We have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.

So the prayer begins with an honest evaluation of human limits. From there the prayer moves on to our need from our Creator, “keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls.” That distinction has echoes of a very unbiblical Platonism. In the Scriptures the body/soul distinction is very fuzzy. The Gospels tell the story of Incarnation, that God who is Spirit willingly embraces matter. Having already declared the material world “good” in Genesis 1, God now makes it holy in John 1:14: “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Because of that fundamental unity of soul and body that makes us human, things which cause harm to the body also assault and hurt the soul and those things which assault and hurt the soul affect the body adversely. Perhaps that is why the prayer uses “and” rather than “or.” The two conditions are inextricably interrelated.

The prayer then concludes with the common doxology: “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen” It is through Jesus the Messiah that connection has been restored between creation and the Creator and so our prayers find their natural path through him. We are also reminded that this Jesus both lives and reigns. The unity described in the doxology is the model for the unity for which Jesus prayed we might be one as he and the Father are one. If a collect is a summary prayer, it certainly seems that the Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent summarizes our situation accurately. It might be worth our while to offer that prayer daily through this season of pandemic.

[1] A collect is a prayer that isused in “collecting” the community for worship and also several elements of prayer and praise into one.

Doing Nothing Gallantly

We called it “the Groundhog Book” to the probable consternation of the Standing Liturgical Commission. They had published The Draft Proposed Book of Common Prayer on February 2, 1976, the Feast of the Presentation. But that is also Groundhog Day and this was the 1970s so it became the Groundhog Book whether the powers that be liked it or not. Nonetheless, Episcopalians (particularly clergy and seminarians) pored over the 1,001 pages to see what glorious renewal of worship or what hideous manual of modern heresy we had been handed. Reviewing the pages with one of my mentors we discovered a new treasure deep inside the book, the last prayer in the section on Ministration to the Sick.

This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.

I’ve already seen this prayer posted in social media in relation to the current COVID19 crisis. With the increasing number of “stay in place” orders, the cancellations of events with over 50 in attendance (in some places over 10), many of us are experiencing the isolation of a recovering person regardless of our health. For those of us who tend towards introversion, this is not a great sacrifice. But for those who those who have lost their jobs, those who are more extroverted and have been told to work from home and struggle with the lack of human gatherings this is a dark and painful time.

How can those living with enforced cabin fever “do nothing gallantly?” I’d love to offer some “3 simple steps” or “four rules for prospering in crisis” but they would be as bogus as anything one might find on social media. There is, of course, one thing that all apprentices of Jesus can do no matter what their situation: pray.

OK, that’s neither original nor exciting. Most of those who read this are already praying. We may be praying for a number of things or a number of persons. But there are two things to keep in mind if we want our prayers to be more than just good thoughts. The first thing is to remember that when we pray we are also volunteering to be part of God’s answer to our prayers or to the prayers of others. Second, and related to that, the prayer of an apprentice also involves listening. In my former parish we called that “Paying Attention.” When we pay attention as an element of our praying we become open to God’s direction in both further prayer and continuing action.

Some nudge to call someone, to send a text or email or some other means of electronic communication or to follow the quiet prod to buy a gift card or take home a meal from a local eatery may be God’s timing to bring hope and courage to others trapped in fear. Doing nothing gallantly is to be content with the limitations imposed upon us in these days and turn our apparent helplessness into means by which others may be blessed, others may be encouraged, others may find hope rekindled, others find healing. To be able to do nothing (at least as our busy-ness loving world defines nothing) is not necessarily to be powerless – if we do nothing gallantly.

What quarantine can tell us about church

From Jack, a retired Episcopal priest and over 60 years of age (but in good health) in unofficial ecclesiastical quarantine because so many churches are in lockdown; to my beloved apprentices of Jesus in all the places where I’ve served (and a few that I haven’t): Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

It feels odd not being able to “go to church” when we are in good health and we’re not on the road and the weather is clear. But “going to church” is a troublesome phrase because it can be read as going to a place or going to an event in which we are spectator/participants. A congregation in Brooklyn had t-shirts printed for their members. On the front it read “I don’t go to church.” On the back, “I AM the church!” It was clever and mostly true. I say “mostly” because to be completely true they’d have to change the “I am” to “We are.”

In the New Testament the English word church translates a Greek word ekklesia. Ekklesia (literally “called out”) had an important meaning in the ancient world before the New Testament was written. In the Greek city state of Athens, the ekklesia was the assembly of citizens that formed the first recorded attempt at democratic rule. Although citizens at that time only consisted of free males of 18 years old and above, they were called out on a regular basis to make significant decisions for the city of Athens.

Ekklesia is a gathering of a specific body, whether the body of the “citizens” of Athens or the Body of Christ. But what happens when the Body cannot gather? We’re facing that problem in many places both in the US and across the globe this weekend and probably longer. If church means an assembly then are we still church when we can’t assemble? The answer is certainly yes, but that yes has something to say about how we see ourselves as members of a church.

The citizens of Athens were part of the ekklesia whether the ekklesia was meeting or not. Indeed, members of the ekklesia could be fined for not attending the gathering (how’s that for a fund raising device for churches?). But the point is that the ekklesia existed even when it was not gathered. And if the existence of the church is not dependent on the gathering of the church, then how are we to model the interdependent life of the that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12?

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1Cor 12:12-27)

Certainly we should pray for one another, for the members of our particular local Body and especially those of that Body who are most at risk in this crisis. At the same time we are the Body of a Christ who was himself Incarnate. As George Mcleod put it, “matter matters.” Thus, prayer in our isolation is vital, but it is not everything. Watching some form of worship via live streaming is helpful in maintaining a sense of connection, but it is not incarnational connection. And since we cannot gather in the same place at the same time during this time, how can we incarnate our community?

I’ve often taught that worship of an Incarnate Christ must be sensual worship, that is it should be engaging all the senses through which we interact with God’s creation. Vision and hearing may be engaged through live streaming, but that is not enough for it does nothing to establish the physical togetherness of the Body. Still, there are ways.

Calling one another to check in and encourage is far more valuable than we might believe. And though sending physical notes through the mail may not be wise (I’ll leave that one to the medical experts), an email that can be printed out and held in one’s hand is a physical representation of our connection in the Body of Christ.

This may seem rather trivial, but, to misquote Scripture, do not despise small things. The COVID19 virus has, for this time, apparently “dismembered” the Body of Christ. We can give lie to that appearance by using every appropriate resource of our sense to “re-member” who we are until that day when we can regather and receive that which we were given in re-membrance of Jesus. Maybe when we regather we will greet one another with gratitude and wonder, giving thanks for one another’s presence in one Body.

What the ministry of blessing looks like

When I posted my entry on Practicing Blessing in the local church last Monday (12/23) I got one thing wrong. I mentioned a “conversation that was not caught on video.” In fact, it was. The incident involved a pastor who questioned whether he had authority to bless.

Although the questions about the pastor’s authority to bless seem to come mostly from churches in the evangelical tradition, when one casts a net over the question of whether ordinary Christians have that authority, then the doubt extends across most Christian traditions. Russ’s response to an earlier question on the content of blessing speaks to the doubts found about the authority of Christians to bless in our religious culture. The following excerpt (a bit more than 2 minutes) is worth the listen:

An example of blessing

The full videos of Russ’s four talks blessing run around an hour each. I know that few of us are so burdened with free time that watching an hour long video is a challenge. Nonetheless, I encourage all of you to find time to view – you won’t regret it. Again, you can find them here: https://www.trinitygreeley.org/russ-parker-videos/.

Of course, the practice of blessing by all Christians is nothing new, though it has certainly been lost for quite a while. Ian Bradley, in his book Celtic Christian Communities, makes note of the common practice in the Christian communities in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and other regions where “Celtic” Christianity thrived in the 4th – 9th centuries.

With this understanding of the power of the spoken word, pronouncing a blessing or benediction was no mere pleasantry or routine greeting to pass the time of day. Nor did it simply involve, as its Latin root benedicere suggests, speaking well of someone or something. Rather it conveyed to the recipient in an almost physical sense a portion of God’s goodness and grace… Although those delivered by saints and holy men [and women] were regarded as having a special force and efficacy, blessings were certainly not regarded as the exclusive province of priests and monks, and could come from the lips of any Christian. They were emphatically not confined to liturgical use but had a prominent place in the every day lives and conversation of laity and clergy alike, both inside and beyond the monastic vallum.

Ian Bradley, Celtic Christian Communities: Live the Tradition (Kelowna, BC, Canada: Northstone Publishing, 2000), 61

So if all Christians have the ministry of blessing, what is it that we should be teaching them to bless? Given the state of our society, it would seem obvious that we should teach husbands to bless their wives and wives their husbands. In fact, this would be a good discipline for couples preparing for Christian marriage. When the couple is together, their time should begin, or at least end, with blessing. When they are apart, they can bless one another, even from a distance, each night before sleep.

Parents need to be blessing their children, at night as they go to bed and in the morning before they leave for school. Both parents need to participate as a mother’s blessing is not the father’s, nor the father’s the mother’s. Children can be taught to bless their parents and one another.

These blessings can extend beyond the family and even beyond the life of the congregation. But wherever and to whomever the blessings are given, how do we bless. Again, I point you to Russ Parker’s video talks.

There is one other blessing I’ll close with, taken from Russ’s book, Rediscovering the Ministry of Blessing. It is a blessing for the communities in which we live.

Blessing for a town

We stand in the mighty name of Jesus and bless you [name of town], that you might prosper under the mighty hand of God.

We bless you that justice and righteousness might take their proper place within your boundaries. We bless you that the favour of the Lord might rest upon you and give you peace.

We bless you that the Father’s compassion might fall upon your people. We bless your poor that they might be lifted up.

We bless you that the knowledge of Jesus might come in among you like a flood.

We bless the people of God in [name of town] that they might rise up with servant authority and become a people of blessing.

We bless you that the joy of the Lord might be your strength. Amen.
(Worldwide Mission Fellowship)

Parker, Russ. Rediscovering the Ministry of Blessing (pp. 125-126). SPCK. Kindle Edition.