Taking Spiritual Disciplines Deeper
Rev. Allen V. Harris,
Regional Pastor & President Christian Church in Ohio
Spiritual disciplines, grounded in scripture, have long been a part of the Christian journey. Somewhere in Church history they were lifted up as a special focus for the season of Lent. I have always appreciated focusing on spiritual disciplines during this sacred period as it helps me remember and engage them throughout the year better. Which is another way of saying that all too often I forget about how meaningful and powerful spiritual disciplines are until I’m reminded in the days leading up to Easter!
I’d like to take a moment with you to lift up the “classic” spiritual disciplines that I know and love and perhaps find just a bit more meaning and value in them, as well as to explore how we can take them a little deeper into our faith formation through this coming year.
Prayer & Meditation (1 Thessalonians 5:17)
Prayer is obviously a spiritual discipline that hopefully we engage in daily and year around. When I was a youth, I still remember being taught by my youth minister the helpful guide for prayer with the acronym ACTS representing Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication (or intercession.) You may have another helpful guide for ensuring your prayer life is broader and more faithful. I’d love to know what that is!
One way to expand our prayer life during this season might be to overlay a scriptural call to faithfulness with our regular prayer formula. For example, we could take Micah 6:8 and pray on doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God through each of the steps of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. You could also use Matthew 22:37 and think about loving God, loving yourself, and loving your neighbor with each of those as well. Pick your own but find a way to freshen up your prayer life during these 40 days.
Bible Study (2 Timothy 3:16)
Another familiar spiritual discipline is the study and exploration of Holy Scripture. Personal meditation on a single scripture or a section of text (sometimes called a pericope) is powerful. If you have never used Lectio Divina to meditate on a biblical text, I strongly encourage you to do so. But also exploring quality commentaries and even exegesis by scholars is important as well to allow God to work through our wise sages and ancestors in the faith to inform us today.
And yet I learned early on when I was a young and inexperienced preacher that studying the Bible is one thing, but then having to teach it – either in a preaching or teaching mode – was an entirely different thing, and extraordinarily harder. One way to take Bible Study to another level this year is to challenge yourself to prepare a sermon on a text and offer it to your Sunday School class or, in conversation with your Pastor and Elders, preach it as part of a service of worship. If that is too much, create a small group session or Sunday School Class lesson on it.
Almsgiving And Stewardship (2 Corinthians 9:7)
A third spiritual discipline involves the sharing of our resources particularly with those less fortunate than ourselves. “Almsgiving” is a bit of a dated word, but it really means stewardship, particularly on behalf of those the world understands and treats as “the least of these.” I would begin by strongly, encouraging you to give regularly to your home congregation, and perhaps even during Lent stretch yourself by giving a little more each Sunday and on each of the special day services. If you don’t have a local congregation, you might choose a Disciples of Christ congregation with which you feel a connection near or far and for each the Sundays of the season give an offering or give to Disciples Mission Fund weekly.
A new take on this spiritual discipline might be each week to look for a nonprofit organization or faith-related entity that is doing something good in the world to address important issues, such as reconciliation in peacemaking, the root causes of hunger, or supporting immigrants and refugees. Make this an “over and above” offering so that it is truly sacrificial and not a substitute for supporting your home congregation. And if your resources are too limited, then consider putting a container near your bedside and emptying your change each day into it. On the Monday after Easter roll the coins and take the money to give to an outreach cause in your neighborhood.
Hospitality & Fellowship (Acts 2:42)
Perhaps one of the lesser known but equally important spiritual disciplines is that of hospitality. So many stories in the Bible show the power and beauty of table fellowship, and welcoming people into one’s home. Friday fish fries are a popular and familiar example of just such a practice during this holy season.
One way to deepen this spiritual discipline might be to intentionally invite those who might not normally gather with you to join you for a meal, a for coffee or tea, or just a deeper conversation. Perhaps there is a new neighbor on your street, a family that has been visiting your church, or a community or nonprofit leader you’ve been wanting to get to know better.
Or maybe your way of taking this spiritual discipline to the next level is simply making the meals you already have with others more meaningful. During Lent can you and your beloved or family plan a sit-down meal with no cell phones at the table at least once a week? Perhaps just planning a healthy dinner on a regular basis after which you write a letter to a friend might make this special?
Service & Advocacy (Galatians 5:13)
Acts of benevolence, compassion, and service to others have long been an aspect of the Lenten journey as well as the Christian faith. Your congregation or community may already have ministries in which you are involved such as hot meals, clothing, distribution, a food pantry, or parish nurse program. Committing or recommitting yourself to helping with these would be a great start.
To take this further, however, one might add education and advocacy to your service. If you’re congregation has a food ministry can you find a way to build relationships and be in conversation with those who visit your ministry to get to know them as individuals and perhaps even find out what might be the cause of their lack of food. Through research with organizations like Bread For The World you could find ways to advocate to change policies and laws that work against people who have lack of adequate food, especially nutritious and healthy food.
This could be done for almost any outreach ministry or benevolence program. If you have a tutoring program or a little library, one could research public school funding and public school library support. If your congregation settles refugees, you might advocate for them and learn more about the context and situations in the countries from which they fled. If you have a clothing ministry, perhaps you can connect with similar programs that work to avoid discrimination of all gender identities such as Margie‘s Closet in Lakewood, and seek to make your program more inclusive.
Fasting & Simplicity (Matthew 4:4)
One of the most famous but perhaps least followed spiritual practice, at least by we Protestants, is fasting. This invitation to abstain from something, most well-known for abstaining from meat on Fridays or from sweet treats like chocolate, is intended to help us recalibrate our understanding of what we truly need versus what we simply want.
I remember as a youth in high school having 24-hour and then 36-hour fast where we raised funds for organizations that fought poverty and addressed issues of hunger. They were some of the most unique and meaningful experiences I had as a youth.
One way to deepen the spiritual discipline of fasting would be to understand it from the perspective of simplicity and seek to better understand and confront our culture of consumption, planned obsolescence, and consumerism. Rather than choosing something temporarily to give up, what would it mean if we inventoried the “stuff” our life and came up with one or two things that we did not need at all, but only purchased simply out of desire, and give it away to a family member or friend who needs it, or to a resale shop. We might then see Lent as a trial run for a lifetime of simplicity.
When it comes to engaging in spiritual disciplines and faith formation practices there is nothing magical about the forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter (plus Sundays). What they do provide us a time set-aside from the daily life of following Christ to focus on some helpful habits in a focused way in order to reengage them for the long haul. The six I have shared with you are not the end-all and be-all of spiritual disciplines, they are just the ones that resonated most with me. And there is no shame in fulfilling them simply and at face value. But if you are anything like me you occasionally need to “spice up” your spiritual journey. Perhaps I have given you some ideas for doing just that, or at least spurred you to think about your own ways to deepen, broaden, expand the spiritual disciplines you do find meaningful in new and more compelling ways.
Whatever the case may be, I pray you a meaningful Lenten journey with Jesus, and may we all meet again during Holy Week at the table, at the cross, and at the empty tomb.
Faithfully Yours,
Allen