Pilgrim Practices

Discipleship for a Missional Church

Norris

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781621891871
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Despite a wealth of literature on the missional church and missional living, few resources help Christians and churches think through what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ and what specific practices help cultivate lives of discipleship. Written from, with, and for the church, Pilgrim Practices: Discipleship for a Missional Church introduces Christian practices from the Letter of James to help guide Christians and churches in their journey of discipleship. This book frames discipleship in a way that has been largely abandoned in modern congregational literature, as fundamentally an issue of identity--an identity that is necessarily formed and practiced in and with the church community. It is a lifestyle that cannot be lived on one's own. Discipleship ultimately means engaging with others on a journey of faith sustained and cultivated through certain practices--pilgrim practices. The practices examined in this book develop and direct the risky pilgrim journey of Christians, transforming pilgrims into disciples--as the Body of Christ--who participate with God in God's mission in the world. In this time of transient identities, individualist impulses, and fleeting commitments, this book offers specific practices to help Christians form their identity as disciples and to help Christian communities live their calling as the pilgrim Body of Christ in the world.

Part I

Pilgrims on the Way

1 / The Pilgrim Road, or Why Practices Matter

One of my favorite scenes in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy comes near the beginning of the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring.1 Frodo and Sam are embarking on their journey to return the dangerous ring to the volcanic region of Mordor in order to destroy it. As they are leaving the Shire and walking through a cornfield, suddenly Sam stops. Frodo asks him if there is a problem, and Sam replies that if he takes one more step it will be the farthest from the Shire he has ever ventured. As Frodo recalls Bilbo’s words to him as a youngster, “It is a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” Sam and Frodo pause in a moment of reflection, fear, and anticipation, knowing that they are on a journey after which they will never be the same again.

As Christians, we also think of life as a journey. This idea has become popularized in recent books, articles, sermons, and curriculum. The popularity of “missional” language, emphasizing the “sent-ness” of God’s people out into the world, heightens this metaphor of journey. It is not a new concept, however. Christian heroes from Teresa of Avila to John Bunyan spoke of the Christian life as a journey toward God. Whether understood as a voyage out into the world or inward toward the center of God (or both simultaneously), this metaphor has helped Christians understand what it means to be a follower of Christ for centuries. Stopping with the concept of a mystical or missional journey, however, fails to describe all that it means to be a disciple. Disciples are not on individualized excursions with occasional refresher stops at the local waffle joint or sanctuary of their choice. They are not on impulsive road trips or aimless wanderings to try to find themselves. Instead, they are on a journey of anticipation with an established destination. As Sam and Frodo understand at the beginning of their journey, standing at the edge of all they have known, it is both a choice they make and a journey to which they are called, a formative and transformative adventure that binds people to one another in unique and imaginative ways. In this way, disciples are better understood as traveling on a pilgrimage.

Pilgrim Progress

Most religions historically required some form of transition from one stage of development to another, and in this vein, they developed certain rites of passage. While some of us may feel the urge to seclude some of the teenagers in our churches indefinitely, ancient tribal religions often secluded young initiates or removed them from the village for a time in order to aid in their religious transition. Christianity and Judaism developed rituals such as catechisms or bar/bat mitzvahs. For most religions, these transitions incorporate some form of marginalization from dominant society, a detachment or separation from a social structure or cultural conditions.2 Anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner note that Christianity also generated its ritual transition, especially during the Middle Ages, in the practice of pilgrimage to a sacred site or shrine.

On vacation in Rome a few years ago, I remember walking miles through the historic districts from my hotel to visit two churches, one that claimed to hold St. Paul’s head (evidently sealed in gold after being beheaded in what is now St. Peter’s Square) and the other a piece of Jesus’ cross. (In full disclosure, I also visited a church that claimed to hold the finger of St. Thomas that touched the scars on Jesus’ hands and side!) While these artifacts may seem odd or even grotesque to those of us with modern religious sensibilities, hundreds of years ago Christian pilgrims made long and dangerous journeys to worship at such sacred sites. These pilgrim journeys “cut across boundaries of provinces, realms, and even empires,” note the Turners, involving much danger and sacrifice.3 Hunger, disease, thieves, and fatigue all complicated the pilgrim journey. The pilgrim had to be ready to sacrifice health, money, safety, and even life for the sake of the goal. For this reason, pilgrims found it imperative to travel together—not only because companionship made the journey more enjoyable but also because the danger of the course required solidarity, and the worship at the destination was best shared with others. Pilgrims traveled to the margins, physically and spiritually, in a journey of transition. They knew they would be constantly changing, never again the same, on this journey across territories; they also saw endless potential for redemption and renewal in this journey through time.

In this way, the concept of pilgrimage is essential for rightly understanding discipleship. While many of us may not journey to the ancient shrines of Rome or Jerusalem, the Christian life is a pilgrimage nonetheless. It is a journey not primarily through space but through time, with an end in sight. While some Christians identify this journey with the popular automaker slogan, “Enjoy the ride,” the reason pilgrimage is a more beneficial and accurate portrayal of the Christian life and mission is that the Christian pilgrimage has an end. It is eschatological.4 It is a journey to God and of God’s mission that ultimately ends with the reign of God, with all things made new. Like medieval pilgrims, Christians must travel humbly and vulnerably in their difficult journey, relying on each other—and God’s grace—for strength and sustenance, as well as the hospitality of other people of good will. Like medieval pilgrimages, discipleship is a journey of transformation, a sacred journey with others toward God’s ultimate redemption of all humanity. In John Bunyan’s classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress, his protagonist, named Christian, journeys from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City with his companions Faithful and Hopeful. These travelers meet various temptations in the form of pernicious characters and perilous territories, from Talkative who hears and says but fails to “do” the word of God, to Mr. Worldy-Wiseman who seeks the short and easy way, to Apollyon the ruler of the earthly city who demands allegiance, to Mr. By-ends’s gang who seeks after God only for their own blessing and gain. Despite the misdirection and distractions of these characters, the faithful pilgrims work out their faith together and encourage one another, even after Faithful’s martyrdom. As he crosses the final barrier to the City, a deep and swift river, Christian realizes that he could not make the journey on his own, but only through the help of his companions.5

It is important to understand that this pilgrimage is not an individual undertaking but a communal endeavor; it is the church that is on pilgrimage, formed and sustained through practices, and the individual Christian is part of this communal journey. It is also important to understand that imagining the church as a community on pilgrimage is not a new conceptual framework. Its roots lie in God’s description of the Israelites as strangers and aliens on their journey to the Promised Land (see Lev 19:34 among other references throughout the Torah). The Christian tradition has a rich heritage of pilgrim language, popularized by the ecclesial reflections of Augustine in the fourth century and his writings on the civitate peregrinae, the pilgrim city, in The City of God. In his ecclesiological study Another City, Barry Harvey noted of Augustine’s work, “The members of this alternative ecclesia were always to remember that they were foreign visitors in the imperial city, and thus were to regard their dwellings as though they were tents, for ultimately they were pilgrims in this world, bearing witness in their bodies to another faith, another hope, another love.”6 The language of pilgrimage has become an important image for denoting the church’s relationship with the world, ultimate eschatological orientation, and inclusion in God’s mission of redeeming the world.

Like the ancient rites of passage, Christians participate in God’s mission of redemption through practices involved in the pilgrimage. Diana Butler Bass describes a pilgrim as someone who “adopts a new place and new identity by learning a new language, rhythms, and practices.” A person embarks on a pilgrimage “not to escape life, rather to embrace it more deeply, to be transformed wholly as a person with new ways of being in community and new hopes for the world.”7 The eschatological dimension of this journey means that we are not only experiencing something new but also becoming something new and making the world new in the process. As the Apostle Paul writes, “there is a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17).

Practice Makes Perfect?

In order to sustain the journey, any traveler must maintain certain practices. The Christian life necessitates specific practices to keep pilgrims on the path, moving toward the goal. The concept of Christian practices has gained much attention recently, in academic circles as the field of practical theology and in congregations as spiritual disciplines or practices of faith. From disciplines like lectio divina and labyrinth walking to ministry practices like evangelism or tithing, the idea of practices can denote many different things. In the context of discipleship and pilgrimage, I understand pilgrim practices to be activities in which the whole congregation engages. They are intentional patterns of life that direct the pilgrims as they participate in God, with each other, and for the world. Pilgrim practices are a way of life for a people who commit themselves to Jesus Christ as Lord.

Dorothy Bass and Miroslav Volf offered another helpful definition: “Christian practices are patterns of cooperative human activity in and through which life together takes shape over time in response to and in God as known in Jesus Christ.”8 This definition articulates several key components of practices as I understand them: they involve communal action and participation in God’s mission, form a way of life for a people, and deal with social rather than individual activities.9 They produce a place, such as church.10 While Bass and Volf correctly noted that practices are certainly human activities, it is important to remember that these practices do not originate with humanity. Instead, practices like the ones examined in this book are activities God is already doing in the world. Pilgrim practices, therefore, are ways we imitate God’s character in the world and thus participate in God’s mission. In this way, they are missional, communal, distinctive, and formative actions. They constitute the way of life that shapes, crafts, and sustains Christian disciples because they define and transform identity.11

Developing this identity follows the same process as learning to play an instrument or a sport. It takes practice. Theologian Sam Wells, alluding to the philosopher Aristotle, compared discipleship to the development of virtue. “Virtues are derived from repeated practices that a community continually performs because it regards them as central to its identity,” he noted.12 For example, think about college basketball, where players are still learning and developing. I’m a Tar Heel basketball fan, so we could say it is similar to watching the development of a great point guard on the basketball court like Phil Ford, Kenny Smith, or Ty Lawson. As the one who initiates the plays, the point guard is an essential component to a team. Through constant practices, the point guard cultivates certain skills to help him on the court—skills to know which play to call and when, to see the floor on the fast break, and to know where and when to pass the ball to a teammate. These skills eventually become instinct. Basketball announcers sometimes say, “He is thinking too much on the court,” implying that thinking is dangerous in the midst of a game. This is not an indictment on playing the game intelligently; rather, it indicates that good players no longer have to think about what they are doing—it is instinct. Once instinct takes over, the point guard is no longer a person who plays basketball. His identity is instead formed around being a leader of that team.

That is similar to the way practices form individuals and congregations along the pilgrim journey of discipleship. Being a disciple is not about thinking, “What would Jesus do in this situation?” Rather, practices of discipleship, in imitation of God’s character, are developed through the corporate worship and life of the church until they become “second nature,” so to speak.13

One’s identity becomes wrapped up and wrapped in the story of Scripture and the life of the church through these practices. Wells used the helpful metaphor of Scripture as a “training manual,” wherein disciples are shaped by the practices and instinctive habits of the community.14 By reading Scripture, the church learns the story and then continues that story as if it is second nature because its identity is so wrapped up in that strange story of God’s people. Christian identity is not located primarily in church statements, worship attendance, or where one falls on the liberal/conservative spectrum. It is located in particular and peculiar practices and commitments. In other words, Christianity is not something people only think, feel, or say. It is something people do.15

Before moving from this introductory discussion of pilgrim practices, I should explain one more important dimension. The work of philosopher Michel de Certeau adds a subversive dimension to this concept of practice. I have noted that practices are communal, missional, distinctive, and formative, but what makes them distinguished as pilgrim practices is their subversive nature. In his discussion of the ways people outside mainstream society use and reappropriate cultural items from dominant society, de Certeau offered the example of Native Americans’ response to Spanish colonizers. While submitting to their conquerors, he noted, “the Indians nevertheless often made of the rituals, representations, and laws imposed on them something quite different from what their conquerors had in mind.”16 The “others” in a society—those not considered to be part of the dominant culture—reuse cultural products imposed on them by the power structure but do so in their own ways. In this way, de Certeau added, they “deflect its power.” While perhaps not realizing it, he identified a significant feature of Christian practices, that of subversive identity and witness. One example of this from Scripture could be Jesus’ taking a Roman coin with an image of Caesar and using it as a means to reaffirm to his followers that they belong to God, that they were created in and witnesses to God’s image. Jesus took an everyday emblem of the dominant pagan empire oriented toward worshiping that image and reappropriated it to shape the identity of his community (Mark 12:13–17).

Similarly, pilgrim practices form the community of disciples into the Body of Christ, meaning into a society that is subversive or counter-cultural—distinct from the ways of the dominant consumerist, individualistic, tribal, and violent society of modern North America. These practices form a way of life that is different from the everyday practices of the rest of the world; or, in John Howard Yoder’s words, they form “believers who for Jesus’ sake do ordinary social things differently.”17 For example, Christians take the elements of a simple meal, bread and wine, and see new and subversive possibilities in them. For Christians, these ordinary elements are infused with the meaning and memory of Christ’s life and death. The meal attests to the unity of the congregational Body as it eats the Body of Christ and witnesses to the alternative economic ethics of the church, where all are welcome to feast regardless of social or economic status (1 Cor 11:17–33). Through this meal, Christians affirm their commitment to Christ above all, reach out evangelically to those who are hungry, thirsty, or marginalized, and anticipate a future meal where everyone is...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: Pilgrims on the Way
• Part 2: Eight Pilgrim Practices
• Afterword
• Pilgrim Practices Discussion Guide
• Endnotes