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Summer is often a fluid time. Even for those without school-aged children, the changing schedules, vacations, and special events can make it difficult to maintain ordinary habits like healthy eating or exercise. Most people get to the end of the summer ready for the regularity of the fall. Of all the habits that often get disrupted over the summer, the impacts on our normal patterns of prayer, reading the Bible, and church attendance are the most significant, exactly because these are the habits that matter most. 

During the school year, small groups and Bible studies provide a regular time for pursuing God with other Christians. Growing in the faith together and taking care of one another is not just a nice thing that we can take or leave —it is integral to the Christian life. In the words of John Wesley, “the New Testament knows nothing of individual Christianity.” At the beginning of the book of Acts, right after Pentecost, the church immediately started to gather in each other’s homes to pray together and grow in the knowledge of God together (Acts 2:42-47). As the people gathered to grow in the faith and pray together, the Holy Spirit moved in the church and new people came to faith in Jesus Christ. Individual lives were transformed as people grew nearer to God through their common pursuit. In other words, gathering with other Christians isn’t just a nice thing when we have time. It is integral to the faith, integral to our own discipleship, and integral to the growth of the church. 

This summer, as schedules get scattered and ordinary habits are hard to keep, do not neglect the moments on the calendar when we can grow in the faith together, pray together, and care for one another! Put the book clubs on your calendar—come even if you haven’t had time to read the book, or even if you haven’t purchased it yet! Show up at the fellowship events and be at church when you are in town! The Christian life is meant to be lived together, and these moments provide opportunities for us to take care of each other and grow in Christ together.

In Christ,

Steven+

Ordinary Time

Pentecost has come and gone. This Sunday (June 15) is Trinity Sunday, one of our 7 principal feasts. Trinity Sunday always feels (to me) like the last echo of what began in Lent, a final feast to shut the door on Easter Season as we turn the corner into the Season after Pentecost. Technically, we are already in the Season after Pentecost, but before the colors turn green every Sunday, we get one final feast day.
 
The Season after Pentecost is one of two periods of Ordinary Time (the other is the period after the Epiphany). Most of the Church year is made up of these two green seasons, the two “ordinary” times. Advent and Christmas and Lent and Easter (the times of fasting and feasting) grab more attention, but most of life is neither fasting nor feasting—it is “ordinary.”
 
This makes sense. After all, most of life can’t be fasting (although a few ascetics try) or feasting (although a few hedonists try). Either one would wear our bodies out, eventually. We need normal life! But the lesson is deeper than biology; it isn’t just that we can’t sustain continual fasting and feasting in our bodies—we need Ordinary Time spiritually.
 
Penitence (the spiritual discipline that accompanies fasting) and celebration (the spiritual discipline that accompanies feasting) are profoundly important parts of discipleship, but most of the spiritual life is made up of the “ordinary.” Simple obedience, daily prayer, seeking to grow steadily in love and faith—this is the normal stuff of the spiritual life. The longest seasons of the Church’s calendar are “ordinary,” because most of the spiritual life is “ordinary.” Most of it is neither on top of the Mount of Transfiguration nor in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Most of it is, well, “ordinary.”
 
There is a vital starting point, though: Ordinary Time always follows a feast day celebrating God’s work in our lives. In other words, this period of “ordinary” growth in Christlikeness doesn’t happen on our own, by our own strength. The long, steady progression of “ordinary” discipline is in response to God and because of God. The first season of Ordinary Time follows the Epiphany, when God revealed himself to the nations in Jesus Christ. The second season of Ordinary Time (the one we are now in) follows Pentecost, when the Spirit was given.
 
We are embarking on the long season of “ordinary” Christian life. Daily habits of faith, simple disciplines and obedience, perseverance in love, prayer, and evangelism—these are the spiritual movements of this season. But all of it follows Pentecost; all of it is only possible because of the gift of the Spirit.
 
As this season winds on, and you feel your disciplines flagging or even failing, cry out to the Father for a renewed gift of the Spirit! This is Ordinary Time, but perhaps more importantly, it is the Season after Pentecost, the time when we learn to live in the strength of the Spirit.
 
In Christ,
Steven+

Pentecost

We move from celebrating the Ascension of Jesus last week, to the celebration of the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost this Sunday. The account of Pentecost is in the second chapter of Acts and features some Holy Spirit pyrotechnics along with a killer sermon from Peter, ending in the greatest altar call of all-time, and a wild charity drive (or was a charioty drive back then?).

We often think of Pentecost as the birth of the church, but sometimes we forget that the church had parents. What I mean to say is that Pentecost is not merely a Christian holiday. Pentecost was a Jewish holiday, also called the Feast of Weeks, on which the people would gather together to praise God for his gifts of bounty at the end of the harvest season. It was called “Pentecost” because it was the fiftieth day after the first sheaf had been offered to God. It was for this festival that the crowds had all packed back into Jerusalem, which provided the apostles with such an evangelistic opportunity.

It is not merely a bit of trivia that Pentecost overlaps with this harvest festival. Jesus had once told his disciples that the harvest was plentiful, but the workers were few. Then, at just the right moment, he sends the Spirit to aid the disciples in reaping the very first harvest of our faith. The feast of Pentecost remains a feast of harvest and gratitude. As Christians, we celebrate that the firstfruits of the harvest have been offered up in the self-sacrifice of Jesus at Easter, and that our whole lives are a part of this harvesting endeavor.

The exciting gift of the Spirit has never been merely for Christians to enjoy the presence of God. The gift of the Spirit is the power and authority to carry on with the Kingdom mission for which we are all commissioned - to be workers of the harvest. As we approach Pentecost, think of the works that the Lord has done in your life and ask Him where he might be sending you to reap.

Michael+