“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.
“Spiritual Formation Is Becoming Like Jesus” – John Mark Comer in Christianity Today: “Spiritual formation is simply the way the human spirit, or self, is formed into a definitive shape—and ultimately how each of us is formed to be like Jesus. In doing so, we become our deepest, truest self—the self that God had in mind when he willed us into existence before time began. Put another way, spiritual formation is the process of being formed into people of love in Christ. Let’s parse this out—starting by defining what this process entails. Formation into the image of Jesus is a long, slow process, not a one-time event. There’s no lightning bolt from heaven. Spiritual growth is much like bodily growth—very gradual. It takes place over a lifetime at an incremental, at times imperceptible rate. Yes, we experience periods of dramatic change like birth or a teenage growth spurt, but those key inflection points are the exceptions, not the rule. As the Regent College professor James Houston often said, ‘Spiritual formation is the slowest of all human movements.’ This is a provocative challenge to our instant-gratification culture; we’re used to fast and faster—the entire world just a swipe of our thumb away. Click the button and get it delivered within hours. But the formation of the human soul doesn’t work at digital speed.”
“US pastors struggle with post-pandemic burnout: Survey shows half considered quitting since 2020” – Peter Smith at Religion News Service: “Post-pandemic burnout is at worrying levels among Christian clergy in the U.S., prompting many to think about abandoning their jobs, according to a new nationwide survey. More than 4 in 10 of clergy surveyed in fall 2023 had seriously considered leaving their congregations at least once since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and more than half had thought seriously of leaving the ministry, according to the survey released Thursday by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. About a tenth of clergy report having had these thoughts often, according to the survey, conducted as part of the institute’s research project, Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations. The high rates of ministers considering quitting reflects the ‘collective trauma’ that both clergy and congregants have experienced since 2020, said institute director Scott Thumma, principal investigator for the project.”
“What Happens When a Pastor Reads Poetry?: Tears that come from a well of gratitude” – Doug Basler in Ekstatic: “When my English professor read us ‘Pied Beauty’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins she warned us that she would not likely get through it. Her daughter has freckles. She made it through the ‘couple-colour’ sky and the ‘rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim.’ But, sure enough, when she got to ‘Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?),’ she broke down in tears. I thought I understood why. Maybe I did, at least to the extent that a twenty-year-old was capable of understanding. She was often moved to tears as she read passages of poetry or prose out loud to our class. Her pauses were not for dramatic effect but because she would get choked up by the writing. One of my seminary professors would do the same as he moved from a discussion about Greek verbs to a reflection on the grandeur of God’s grace. My pastor in Gloucester, Massachusetts would regularly need to stop mid-sentence during his sermon to collect himself as he fought back tears. I loved this characteristic in all of them, partly because I too know what it is like to be overwhelmed with emotion in the midst of preaching. But, also because I know their tears came from a well of gratitude. And genuine gratitude comes only when you understand the details of life as a gift, as grace.”
“Incubator for discipleship” – Edie Gross at Faith & Leadership: “At the outset of its Opening Doors capital campaign in 2016, leaders at Austin’s Covenant Presbyterian Church made a pledge: Once the congregation had paid off its remaining $7.5 million in building debt, some of the yearly savings from debt service would go to broaden its missional work, both existing ministries and new endeavors. Celebrating its debt-free status in January 2019, the church began honoring its promise, using $100,000 of that year’s surplus to erase more than $16 million worth of secondary medical debt that had burdened Austin’s poorest residents. The following year, its missions committee awarded another $100,000 in grants to four community organizations addressing homelessness in Texas’ capital city. Alongside traditional missions work, Covenant also established the Institute for Missional Formation, tasked with addressing a more abstract problem. Too often, senior pastor the Rev. Thomas Daniel told his congregation, we lead ‘bifurcated lives,’ with our faith lives entirely separate from our work lives.What if the church could equip its members to integrate the two — ‘where God has you seven days a week, where you are, for a purpose’”’? he asked. What would that mean to the city of Austin?”
“The Overwhelming Impact of Global Grief: Embracing a Localized Emotional Economy” – Leon McKenzie at the C4SO blog: “As a pastor, my role is to support people through the challenging seasons of life. Sickness, death and life’s difficulties are burdens that clergy members carry. However, since the outbreak of COVID-19, I have found myself overwhelmed and unable to process one more tragic story from my congregation. The constant grief and loss have left me exhausted. It seems that people are falling ill and passing away at alarming rates, and terminal diseases are affecting individuals worldwide. It’s interesting to note that terminal conditions are an inevitable fate for all human beings. I’ve always known this, and I’ve made peace with it since Jesus saved me. But despite not personally experiencing significant loss within my church or social circles, I find myself drained and fatigued. Why is that? The answer is simple: I’ve been inundated by the loss and grief experienced by countless people around the world.”
“Grace Perpetual: The surprising neglect of one of the great Christian novels of the twenty-first century” – Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb in Comment: “In the final chapter of Francis Spufford’s novel Light Perpetual, one of the central characters approaches the end of his life under hospice care. The spiral of his thoughts brings him to this question: ‘Mightn’t there be a line of sight, not ours, from which the seeming cloud of debris of our days, no more in order than (say) the shredded particles riding the wavefront of an explosion, prove to align?’ The whole novel, leading up to this moment, constitutes an answer to this question. There is indeed a ‘line of sight, not ours.’ There is a meaning to the world beyond the ‘shredded particles’ of our moments and our days and someone, not us, who sees. And the final paragraphs give an appropriate response to that truth: praise. The last conscious thoughts of this character are the words of Psalm 150: ‘Let everything that has breath, give praise.’ Light Perpetual is saturated with religious significance but has been curiously overlooked by Christian readers otherwise eager to champion novels of faith and redemption. While Marilynne Robinson was justly lauded for writing the first great novel of faith of the twenty-first century, Spufford has received little attention in religious circles. I talk to a lot of Christians about the fiction they are reading, and none has ever mentioned Spufford’s novel. Perhaps this is because Spufford is British rather than American, but it’s not because he’s an obscure writer. He has a well-earned reputation for high-quality nonfiction, and his debut novel, Golden Hill, won several literary awards. Light Perpetual itself was reviewed in venues like the New York Times Book Review and the Times Literary Supplement. It is not for lack of exposure, then, that his novel has been overlooked by his fellow Christians.”
Music: Jeff Johnson, “The Jesus Prayer,” from Lauds
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Matthew Erickson 