What did Camus discover? Only that Francis was the same in secret as he was in company. He saw the saint creep out of bed early and quietly in the mornings so as not to wake his servant. He saw him pray, write in his journal, read the office, answer some letters, then pray again. The beautiful manners, the unruffled compassion, the courtesy and humility were all on display through the peephole as they had been in the pulpit or at the dinner-table.

Francis de Sales lived a life of congruence: he was what he seemed to be. His life with God, his personal serenity, his love for others: they were all in harmony.

Spirituality (from its 17th century French usage) is mainly about how I relate to God. ‘Spirit’ in the Bible = breath, life. The opposite of spirit is not matter, but death. ‘Spiritual’ worship is the offering of all we are to God (Ro. 12:1). It’s about my ‘desire’, how I pray (the very best index of who I really am).

Ministry is mainly about how I relate to others. Every Christian is a minister, a servant. Some ministers are pastors – shepherds, leaders, mentors. Their task: to empower others towards God’s potential for them. So they spend half their ministry alone, with God, half with people (and the rest in administration!). They do three things, essentially: pray, teach, train (or delegate; Ex. 18:19-21, Acts 6:1-7). There’s only one generalization you can make about biblical pastors: they spent a disproportionate amount of their lives in deserts.

At the end of A Faith to Proclaim, Presbyterian James Stewart writes: ‘I know the terms our fathers used – such as “meditation” and “contemplation” – are much disparaged in this hectic age; we are not shining examples of the immutable peace that is God’s gift… somehow we have to recapture the things for which these words stood. In honour to our (ministry) vows and our vocation we are bound to discipline ourselves to make time to company with Jesus…’

IMAGES OF MINISTRY

The minister – whether pastor or other – serves by introducing persons to Jesus, our only antidote for alienation. Alienation (sin) is the severing of self from self, self from others, self from God; and all these are connected (if I’m alienated from self I won’t be OK with others). The opposite of alienation is belonging: the process is called metanoia (‘turning’ from blaming, to owning one’s alienation and being ‘converted’). Truly ‘converted’ people are eucharistic, thankful, grateful.

The Wounded Healer: The minister of Christ expects trouble (as Jesus promised) in a world tempting us with clean sorrow and clean joy. The Lord is closer when we are vulnerable, when we stop pretending to be powerful, and admit how wounded we are. Personal spiritual renewal comes only through brokenness, dying (Psalm 51:10-12,17, John 12:20-28). The Christian life begins and continues as a via crucis. We recognize Judas and Peter in ourselves – we’re both wicked and weak. And yet, in our despair, when resurrection seems unlikely we hear him in the garden or on the sea-shore, alive, calling us by name.

Because we are identified with a dying/risen Christ, our ministry is a ‘living reminder’ of this oneness. So we will avoid crucifixion-only spiritual masochism or resurrection-only triumphalism. And our pastoral task is to prevent others suffering for the wrong reasons.(1)

The Servant Leader: Ministry is the translation of the Good News into human relationships. It’s having authority to empower others to live in the Kingdom. ‘Authority’ = a firm basis for knowing and acting; ‘authorities’ maintain their position after knowing/acting have finished, and ‘lord’ it over others (which is why people who climb institutions have difficulty maintaining a spiritual life). Jesus, in contrast to the authorities, was a servant, identifying with us in our ordinariness (the Suffering Servant wasn’t good-looking, Is. 52:13). So ministry has to do with ‘the quiet homely joys of humdrum days’ (Sangster), the sheer Mondayness of things. Such servanthood is indiscriminate (if I cannot embrace someone, it is because he or she reminds me of some fear in myself).

The Scholar Teacher (Latin ‘schola’ = free time): Henri Nouwen (Creative Ministry) contrasts ‘violent’ and ‘redemptive’ teaching models. ‘Violent’ teaching is competitive (knowledge is property to be defended rather than a gift to be shared), unilateral (the teacher is strong/competent, the pupil weak/ignorant), and alienating (students and teachers belong to different worlds). ‘Redemptive’ teaching is evocative (drawing out potentials), bilateral (teachers are free to learn from students), actualizing (offering alternative life-styles in a violent world).

SPIRITUAL FORMATION is the process whereby the Word of God is applied by the Spirit of God to the heart and mind of the child of God so that she or he becomes more and more like the Son of God. It’s ‘growing firm in power with regard to your inner self’ (Eph. 3:16). It’s the maturing of the Christian towards union with Christ.

Assumptions of spirituality include * God is doing something before I know it; * Love and Prayer are gifts; * The aim of spiritual formation is not happiness, but love, joy, peace – and courage and hope; * Prayer is friendship with God, a response to his love; * Prayer is subversive: it’s an act of defiance against the ultimacy of anything other than God; * We are always beginners in the life of prayer: pray as you can, not as you can’t (‘to seek to pray is to pray’).

JESUS OUR MODEL

Jesus is our pattern for ministry – to God and for the world. Close communion with the Father was at the heart of all he was and did. As his disciples saw this reality they wanted to be part of it (why don’t more people ask us to teach them to pray?). His prayer-life was disciplined and ordered, although he too, was busy. It begins with a contemplation of God – ‘Our Father’ – before moving to human need. He prays hard before important decisions, like choosing the twelve. His meditation on Scripture gives strength in times of testing, particularly when the devil wants him to do ministry another way. Time is found for prayer – 40 days, a whole night, very early in the morning: hurry is the death of prayer. (When did you last take a retreat?). Nowhere does Jesus pray ‘to feel good’: for him, and for us, the key imperative is obedience.

THE SAINT AND THE PHARISEE

In general there are two religious mind-sets – those of the ‘saint’ and the pharisee. We all have something of each in us, and the potential to be either. Both may be ‘orthodox’ theologically, even ‘evangelical’. Both pursue ‘goodness’ but by different means, for different ends. (Someone said pharisees were ‘good’ people in the worst sense of the word!). Saints (like Jesus) emphasize love and grace, pharisees law and (their interpretation of) ‘truth’. Saints are comfortable with ‘doctrine’, but for the pharisee doctrine becomes dogma, law becomes legalism, ritual (the celebration of belonging) becomes ritualism. The saint lives easily with questions, paradox, antinomy, mystery; pharisees try to be ‘wiser than God’ and resolve all mysteries into neat formulas: they want answers, now. The saint listens, in solitude and silence; the pharisee fills the void with sound. For the saints it’s ‘rising by dying’, for the pharisees ‘rising by doing’.

With Jesus, acceptance preceded repentance, with the pharisees it was the other way around. The saint, like Jesus, says first ‘I do not condemn you’. Pharisees find that difficult: they’d prefer ‘go and sin no more’. Jesus welcomes sinners; sinners get the impression they’re not loved by pharisees. For the pharisee, sins of the flesh and ‘heresy’ are worst, and they are experts on the sins of others. For the saint, sins of the spirit – one’s own spirit – are worst. Saints are ‘Creation-centred’; pharisees ‘Fall-centred’. (2)

For the pharisee ‘my people’ = ‘people like me’; for the saint ‘my people’ = all God’s people. Pharisees are insecure (needing ‘God-plus’ other things); the saints are secure (needing ‘God only’). The pharisees’ audience is other people: their kudos provides a measure of security (psychologists call it ‘impression management’; Jesus calls it hypocrisy); the saints’ only audience is God: their inner and outer persons are congruent.

Pharisees hate prophets (‘noisy saints’) and their call to social justice; saints love justice. (Saints aren’t into writing creeds very much, which is why the two things most important for Jesus – love and justice – don’t appear in them).

So saints remind you of Jesus; the pharisees of the devil (demons are ‘orthodox’). Saints see Jesus in every person: they haven’t any problem believing we’re all made in the image of God (= Jesus) although they’re realistic about that image being marred by sin. Saints are spread through all the churches: the closer they are to Jesus, the closer to, the more accepting they are, of others. ‘Ambition’ for them means ‘union with Christ’: they call nothing else ‘success’. In their prayer they mostly ‘listen’, ‘wait on the Lord’; the pharisee needs words, words, words. Pharisees have a tendency to complain about many things; for the saints life is ‘serendipitous’: they have a well-developed theology of gratitude. Pharisees are static, unteachable, believing they have monopoly on the truth, saints are committed to growing. (Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum; the Spirit abhors fullness – particularly of oneself). Jesus was full of grace and truth; Peters says grow in grace and knowledge: pharisees aren’t strong on grace, but for saints ‘grace is everywhere’.

The religion of the saints is salugenic, growth-and health-producing; that of the pharisee is pathogenic. Only one thing is important: to be a saint.

SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES

The spiritual life cannot be nurtured without discipline.

Make a chapel or oratory somewhere, perhaps a corner of your bedroom, away from interruptions (put the telephone answering maching on), where you do your prayer and Bible/spiritual reading (not ‘Bible study’ or sermon preparation). Daily solitude is not a luxury; it is a necessity for spiritual survival. If we do not have that within us, from beyond us, we yield too much to that around us.

Begin your ‘quiet time’ with a Bible word, phrase or prayer (‘Be still…’, ‘Maranatha’, ‘Lord, have mercy on me a sinner’). ‘Occupy yourself in it without going further. Do like the bees, who never quit a flower so long as they can extract any honey from it’ (Francis de Sales).

‘Lectio divina’ is the slow, reflective reading of the Bible. Scripture is God’s personal word to me – for my ‘formation’ not just information. I read it reverently, ready to be ‘converted’ again and again (conversion begins but never ends), willing to be led where I may be reluctant to go, believing that God has yet more light and truth to reveal to me, and to the church. I try to learn to ‘meditate on the Word day and night’ (Ps. 1:2).

The Daily Office is an excellent structure for daily devotions. Try the 1978 Australian Prayer Book (pp.45-90) or the Daily Devotions version in the latest New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book. The Daily Office, says (Baptist) Stephen Winward is absolutely scriptural, God-centred, depends on an ordered use of Scripture (including difficult and challenging passages), is corporate, educative (we’re in touch with prayer traditions centuries old) and ‘obligatory’ (even though the discipline is sometimes hard). Of course, as the Protestant Reformers emphasised, it can be mechanical, formal, but it doesn’t have to be.

‘Few things are needful, or only one’ says Jesus to Martha (Luke 10:42 RSV mg.). Be still, and know that he is God. Contemplation is the awareness of who (and where) God is. The intellect and lips are still, and one is open to beauty, goodness, wisdom, gentleness and love – in short, to transcendence. It’s the descent of the ‘Word’ from mind to heart. The most important element in the contemplative life is not knowledge, but love. This is a hard discipline for ‘heady’ and busy people.

Christian spirituality issues from, and creates Christian community. We have suffered from too much ‘privatized religion’. Pastors, too, need to be accountable spiritually to someone. ‘Self-made Christianity’ is a contradiction. And remember, pastoral ministry is not automatically self- (or spirit-) nurturing. Because you handle holy things doesn’t ensure you’re a holy person.

Find a spiritual director, a ‘soul friend’, someone who helps one respond to the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit, listening together to the Lord. The key question in direction is not ‘who am I?’ (that’s counselling) but ‘what happens when I pray?’ Spiritual direction is not, in essence, directive (it’s the Spirit that directs). We come to God, said Augustine, not by navigation, but by love.

The sacraments are the Lord’s specific gifts to his people: the corporate acts par excellence of his church.

Fasting is a good regular or occasional discipline. Fast from food, words, TV, spending money, the telephone, sex, watching sport – whatever will help get ends and means in perspective for a while.

Silence is ‘the royal road to spiritual formation’ (Nouwen). It is not just the absence of noise, but an opportunity to listen to the still small voice of the Spirit. ‘Meditation’ is a way for scripture to be internalized not merely (as in T.M. etc.) a technique to ‘calm down’.

Journaling is a useful way to record the promptings of the Spirit in your life. A spiritual journal is a written response to reality: a record of one’s inner and outer life (including dreams), a way to inner growth, reflection and healing.

Prayer cannot be divorced from daily living. Baron Friedrich von Hugel’s first suggestion to Evelyn Underhill when he was invited to be her spiritual director: visit the poor in inner-city London two days a week. After all the Spirit, says an ancient Latin hymn, is pater pauperum, ‘father of the poor’.

A final word from Bonhoeffer: ‘It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he or she is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.’ (3)

Footnotes:

1. Robin J. Pryor, At Cross Purposes: Stress and Support in the Ministry of the Wounded Healer, UCA Victoria, 1986.

2. Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, Santa Fe: Bear & Co., 1983.

3. Prisoner for God, SCM, 1953, 166.

Further Reading:

Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (H & S, 1980), Margaret Hebblethwaite, Finding God in All Things (H & S, 1989), ??, Uncommon Prayer ( ) plus anything by Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Carlo Carretto. Rowland Croucher (ed.) Still Waters … Deep Waters: Meditations and Prayers for Busy People High Mountains Deep Valleys: Meditations and Prayers for the Down Times, Rivers in the Desert: Meditations and Prayers for the Dry Times (Albatross/Lion), and Recent Trends Among Evangelicals, Part 3: ‘Creative Spirituality’ (John Mark Ministries, 1992).

Rowland Croucher