Saint Benedict Episcopal Church

I’ve been throwing around the word, formation ever since I arrived at St. Benedict’s and many folks have said to me, in one way or another, “HUH? What on earth is that?” Remember when all we had to worry about was Christian Education and Church was something that everyone attended on a Sunday morning? 

Something that the Wednesday morning discussion group has taught me is times have changed dramatically from the mid-20th Century to the present. Part of the change that has taken place in the church is our shift in emphasis from being a place of merely education for all ages to a place of something deeper something more than… something that goes beyond just the head knowledge. 

That’s not to say that the mind is not important. After all, this the Episcopal Church—a church that prides itself on being a thinking person’s church, a place that values reason.  However there is more than just the intellectual sphere when it comes to faith. 

A wonderful line from Joan Chittister’s book, in Search of Belief says this about faith: “To say ‘I believe in God,’ then is to say to the world at large that I am steering by a star that cannot see but which I am convinced is there because I feel that it must be.  The mind boggles at the intellectual poverty of the position.”

Or, as my God father use to say, “Faith is caught, not taught.” Think about that for a moment… caught.  How did you catch on fire for God?  I caught faith because of two people primarily, (even more as I stop to think about it) my mother and my godfather.  My Godfather was an Episcopal Priest that taught me all about the Prayer Book and Church History, but more important than that, he taught me how to waltz and I knew that I had an adult outside my parents that I could go to when my teen-aged world was falling apart. I knew that Father Bill loved me no matter what. I honestly don’t remember a single confirmation lesson (as he was my confirmation teacher) but I remember how much he cared about me.  

All the knowledge in the world about the rich history of the Church, the Christian faith and all the saints is wonderful amazing stuff to know, but more important than the facts he gave me was the relationship and his presence in my life.

For so long, the church has valued head knowledge above all else—above prayer, above experience, above our spiritual journeys and our feelings; formation is about the whole person and about learning from a place of the soul heart and mind. Faith is a proposition that goes beyond the mind. Faith requires us to view life through a certain lens. Rather than saying my head says one thing and my heart another, Formation strives to listen to the whole self. Christian formation is about listening to one another and learning from not just the head, but also the heart.