Formation

Author: Canon Dr. Josh R. Ritter, Canon for Formation, Episcopal Diocese of Texas

Friends, we are in a time of looking to the future. We have Faith in the Future, and it is up to us to walk into the future…together.

And part of that faith in our future is the recognition that we are invited into the movement of God’s Spirit to build and co-create the future we want. As Jesus teaches us, we can plant the seeds for the harvest of God so that it may be on earth as it is in heaven.

What we build matters. The seeds we plant matter.

As formation leaders, we can be intentional, thoughtful, and compassionate as we build together. Because the future of the Church is a bright one, but it is our choice to join in the movement of God’s Spirit to do the hard work of building.

It is exciting to do this work together. There is no place on this earth except the Church where we can shape, form, and transform people’s lives with the same depth and breadth of spiritual growth and deliberate discipleship. There is no place on this earth except the Church where we can come together in sincere and transformational relationships of deliberate discernment that have the meaning, purpose, and belonging offered to us through the generosity of Christ. There is no place on this earth except the Church where we can create spaces of belonging without othering so that people can awaken from the domination systems we are trapped within and come alive into the true Life of God’s Spirit.

It is the Church, my brothers and sisters in Christ, that will change the world.

Some say the Church is dying. I believe the Church is coming alive. It has, perhaps, been slumbering a long while, but it is now coming alive.

I believe the Church will change the world. And it will take every part of the Body to build the Church of the future, so let us discern together how to build and what to plant. We can discern together, and together, we are the Body of Christ.

The Sacred Order of the Priesthood. The Sacred Order of the Deaconate. The Sacred Ministry of the Laity. We are all the Body of Christ, and we are all needed. We are all inter-connected and inter-woven.

All of the baptized are ministers of the Church. All parts of the Body must work together to weave the tapestry of the future of the Church, and it is time that we start acting like a family instead of a loosely affiliated group of people who agree to the same propositional statements because that is not a Church. That is a social club.

It is not up to one more than any other to build and to plant the seeds of hope and healing. Bishops cannot do it alone. Priests cannot do it alone. Deacons cannot do it alone. Laity cannot do it alone.

Our Church is not lay-led, clergy-supported anymore than it is clergy-led, lay-supported. Neither statement truly makes sense within our Church or within God’s Kingdom. The former can devolve into anti-clericalism, and the latter can devolve into clericalism. Each creates an US versus THEM narrative of divisiveness that Jesus tells us to resist and dismantle at all costs. The reality for us as Jesus’s disciples is much more simplistic and also much more complex because the truth is…the Church is Spirit-led, disciple-supported. The Spirit has come and is with us always, and it is leading us, guiding us, and discerning with us. We are all inter-connected and inter-woven within the Spirit.

Our Church is hierarchical in the best sense because that hierarchy is the bridge from one to another. Our people – bishops, priests, deacons, and laity – are all called to care for one another and for the Church in different and significant ways. Our churches are called to be hubs of life and social action, and our hierarchy is the connectors and tendons of the Body of Christ. It is our support and our common bond. It is not oppressive but liberative, and it holds us and weaves us together.

A liberative hierarchy is not the same as an oppressive bureaucracy, and hierarchy is healthiest when it is life-giving, inter-connecting, and inter-weaving us all into the aliveness of God’s Spirit.

All of us are, as disciples, commanded to support and to follow the leading of the movement of God’s Spirit, which is always a movement of love. It is a command of Jesus to follow, and it is a command of Jesus to love as he loved…with unconditional compassion. These are not options or suggestions. They are required if we want to be and call ourselves disciples, and it is not up to one of us more than anyone else to fulfill these requirements.

But compassion is HARD. It is easy to say, and it is easy to feel warm about it. Yet, it is difficult to practice. It requires sacrifice on our part. It requires us to give up something of who we are to God, to surrender and submit to God alone. It requires us to give up our conveniences and our comforts.

Compassion cuts us to the core if we let it, and then, it opens us up to life. Yes, it does require much of us because it is WE who are responsible for manifesting the compassion of the Body of Christ in each moment, and it is only WE-TOGETHER who can build the Body of Christ, who can incarnate the Body of Christ on this earth.

WE-TOGETHER are born of fire, born to burn brightly and brilliantly as the stars, and Jesus commands us not to hide that light.

There are many who sleep and are dead right now, dead in the grave, as Jesus says in the gospel of John, and he is right of course. Most of us are asleep, dead in the grave…the walking dead, but Christ has come! So that we may be resurrected into life!

Yes, my brothers and sisters in Christ, the church is coming alive, and we need to build.

And we need formation leaders to do this building. We need transformative, bridge-building leaders who are ready to say yes to FOLLOW. To practice receptivity. To practice heartbreak. To practice letting our heartbreak marinate us and soften us to listen to God’s Spirit so that we might follow it. We need leaders who PRAY and allow God to transform their hearts. We need leaders who listen to the wisdom and the whispering of SCRIPTURE.

We need formation leaders who can facilitate hard conversations and spiritual formation. We need leaders who practice communication as a spiritual practice…healing, compassionate, generous communication that serves to bind the wounds of our divisiveness and fragmentation. We need leaders to be bridgers and to BUILD bridges of peace in our communities…and to make more bridgers of all people.

We need Beatitude Leaders who follow…blessed are the leaders who have admitted we are empty and in need of God’s help…blessed are the leaders who are called to follow our heartbreak out into the world…blessed are the leaders who are gentled by God and who want life to be more wonderful for everyone around us…blessed are the leaders who are seed casters of peace and the good news of God’s love for every single person and every part of Creation.

As disciples of Jesus, we are all called.

We are all called to be practitioners of the Way of Jesus. We are called to be communities of discerning discipleship practice.

To be fully Spirit-led, then we must be disciple-supported. It is our calling, our true and deep calling, to discern together…EVERY time we come together, supported by each other. Discernment is a process that NEVER ends. It is the heart and soul of discipleship. It is the core of Christianity. It is the primary teaching of both Jesus and Paul.

Even in Jesus’s most desperate moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, there he is…teaching and modeling for us discernment…begging his disciples to discern with him. What will he do? What should he do? Go to the cross? Run? Walk the path of Love? Will it be too difficult?

Discerning together and then taking action is what Jesus shows us to do.

Jesus’s call to us was not “listen to me.”  His call was “follow me. Do not just watch my path to the cross. Follow me there. Do not just learn about me. Become me.” If we look carefully at our scriptures, what we find Jesus telling us is to…

“Practice as I practice. Here is my teaching. Dismantle the evil of othering. Heal the spiritual disease of divisiveness. Resist the endemic of fragmentation. The antidote to these things is belonging…deep love and cherishing…compassion and generosity. So practice that. Practice generous and compassionate communication. Be skillful in your inclusion and in your conversations. Listen carefully. Be attentive to others feeling seen and heard. Facilitate connection. Communicate the good news of empowerment. Now how do we apply it? Go and BUILD! Build bridges to all people.” 

Let us go and be bridge builders and teach others how to bridge. Let us go and be practitioners of Jesus’s good news. Let us go and show the world that the Church has come alive…