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and prays for their neighbors. Sometimes it gathers prayer requests and offers intercessory prayer on behalf of those who wrote them. Many transforming congregations also make time during their worship life for corporate silence, for being alone together in the stillness. Some offer entire worship services planned to allow for contemplation, making use of simple, repetitive, quiet songs.
Others practice the Biblical tradition of anointing with oil or placing hands on a person seeking healing and wholeness. Unlike some Pentecostal traditions that may promise a “cure” by such actions, transforming congregations seek only to be a conduit for the Spirit’s power, leaving the nature of the healing up to God’s good grace.
Making intentional time to connect with the power and presence of the Spirit, both corporately and individually, allows transforming congregations to practice resting in God without having to control anything. It teaches them to trust the leading of the Spirit, even when they do not have all the answers. It allows them to reframe their understanding of what it means to be human. When they take time to pray, they learn to see themselves not just as those who consume, but also as those who create, not just as those who seek comfort, but also as those who are called and sent for the sake of the world.
When transforming congregations take time for prayer they not only reduce the stress in their life, they also subvert the claim made by the consumer culture that there is not enough time to do what needs to be done. Prayer allows transforming congregations to let go of the anxiety that causes them to choose the safe, the expedient, and comfortable. It helps them to make bold decisions in order to become the people they believe God is calling them to be. It allows them to say yes to God’s future, even before they know what that future will bring.
Questions for Reflection
1 What causes you to feel anxious? How do you behave when you are anxious?
2 Which metaphor for the Spirit from the Bible particularly captures your imagination? Why?
3 What distractions keep you from making prayer a priority in your life?
4 What could you do to create a set-aside time of prayer amid the noise and clamor of each day?
Spiritual Habit 2
Waking Up
Life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.31
– David Whyte
The Gospel of Luke tells the story of a couple traveling on foot along the seven-mile path to Emmaus from Jerusalem after Jesus’ execution.32 Along the way, a man came up and started walking alongside the couple, but they did not recognize him. Since he seemed oblivious to the events of the week, the couple recounted all that had happened in Jerusalem. “We had hoped that he was the one who would deliver Israel,” they said. Then the man began to tell them how the recent events were a fulfillment of all that the Torah and the prophets had taught.
When they got to the edge of the village, the man acted as if he were going on, but the couple invited him to their home. “Stay and have supper with us,” they said. “It’s late and the sun is going down.” So he went into the house and sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, he blessed and broke and gave it to them. At that moment, they suddenly woke up and recognized Jesus. Then he vanished from their sight.
“Didn’t our hearts burn as he talked with us on the road?” they asked each other. Immediately, they were up and on their way back to Jerusalem. When they arrived, the disciples and their other friends told them, “Simon has seen Jesus!” Then the couple related what had happened on the road and how they had recognized Jesus when he broke the bread.
Educator, clinical psychologist and theologian James Loder calls the events in Emmaus that night a “convictional moment.” Convictional moments are times when we wake up to the activity of the Spirit, when our eyes open to a larger reality that changes how we choose to act, and when we perceive the whole that is more than the sum of its parts. According to Loder, convictional moments follow a pattern with five movements:33
1 A RESTLESS INCOHERENCE that comes about when we experience something new which stands in opposition to what we assumed to be true. In this movement we become aware of a tension between our need for internal harmony and the sense that something is just not fitting. The travelers had hoped that Jesus was the one who would redeem Israel, but with the crucifixion, their hopes were shattered.
2 AN INTERLUDE FOR SCANNING in which we put the conflict into the back of our mind. In this movement we may randomly, almost passively explore possible ways to resolve the tension we feel. The travelers opened themselves up to the teaching of the one who had joined them. They did not engage in debate; in fact the story gives the impression that they listened almost passively to what the stranger had to say – although later they reported that their hearts were burning as he spoke to them on the road.
3 AN INSIGHT FELT WITH INTUITIVE FORCE in which we experience an “ah-ha” and are surprised with a larger, wholly new outlook that comes to us from beyond ourselves, simplifying and unifying the elements that have been in conflict. In this movement, the tension not only is constructively resolved, but we become “new creations.” In the story, that insight took place when Jesus broke the bread. The couples’ eyes were opened and they experienced an “ah-ha” of “seeing,” not the “unrecognized visible Presence” who talked with them on the road, but the “recognized invisible Presence” in their midst.34
4 A PERIOD OF RELEASE AND REPATTERNING in which energy once invested in and bound by the inner conflict is made available for creative action in light of the new insight. As tension is released, we find a new home, and we experience a sense of enlargement, a new quality of openness to self and world.35 Life appears fresh, wholeness returns, and we are amazed that the struggle which occupied us resolves itself in a surprising way. In this movement we make a bold move, choosing a risky path. The couple immediately traveled back to Jerusalem in the dark.
5 A TIME OF INTERPRETATION AND VERIFICATION in which we tell others what happened. In this movement, we put our new way of viewing the world to a public test as we try to live as a new creation. When the couple compared notes with the disciples, the cohesiveness in the stories verified their truthfulness.
Looking back over their life together, most transforming congregations can point to one or more convictional moments when the church was surprised by an awakening in which it received insight from beyond itself and changed because of that new perception. Here are some examples of what it sounds like when transforming congregations talk about the experience:
“We thought we knew where we were headed, and then we all read that book together. It changed everything. Now we are approaching our ministry so much differently.”
“We were doing pretty much the same thing week after week; then four gay couples joined our church. They made us re-think everything we stood for.”
“After the fire we began worshiping in another congregation’s sanctuary. That experience freed us up so much, we’re not sure we even want to build again.”
“I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden we had six autistic children attending our Christian Education program. Boy, did that change how we taught!”
Convictional moments are those times when the church moves forward by leaps rather than by inches. Looking back on those moments, transforming congregations notice how they were joined to the vitality of God, how their consciousness expanded, causing them to feel like they were participating in a mystery larger than themselves. A convictional moment unites a congregation with the energy of the Sacred Spirit that enlivens, dispels fear, and encourages them to engage in compassionate actions beyond selfish pursuits.
For one church, a convictional moment came in the form of an earthquake. Over the years, the church had engaged in many planning retreats. They had talked about reaching out to their changing neighborhood. They had held workshops about contemporary worship. But the church never actually changed. Each time a new idea came up, the affectionate attachment the congregation had for the building