FAITH MATTERS: A Look Back At 2012

EXPERIMENTING WITH SIMPLICITY, AUTHENTICITY

In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day I love the traditional end-ofthe-year retrospectives on websites and news channels. At the end of 2012, we’ll all look back at the big stories and commemorate the important events, such as the presidential election, the death of Whitney Houston, the fi ring of Bobby Petrino and the tragic massacre in Newtown, Conn., among many other things.

On a personal level, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day also is a chance to reflect on what took place in my life in the past 12 months.

One of the highlights of my 2012 is a big change we made at our church, Vintage Fellowship.

Like a lot of churches, we had a small group ministry that met during the week to accompany our Sunday worship gatherings. Our small groups were pretty typical: 8-12 people got together every other week for a Bible study or a book study.

People in our groups built deeper relationships with one another, but most of their time was spent studying and discussing.

While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we identifi ed that our small groups were scratching the wrong itch. In our church community, most people don’t necessarily need more Bible knowledge gleaned from more Bible study. The problem most people have is actually putting into practice what they already know about the Bible. I am included in this group.

And so, this summer, we ended our small group ministry.

Out of its ashes rose a new approach to mid-week gatherings that we call Experimental Collectives.

Our approach is loosely based on Mark Scandrette’s book “Practicing the Way of Jesus.”

In the early summer, Mark came to Vintage to help us strategize making this transition in how we do things.

His visit was one of our 2012 highlights, too.

We launched our new approach in September.

Experimental Collectives meet every week for six weeks. They are high commitment, high intensity learning laboratories, focused on helping people to live out some aspect of Jesus’ teaching. In the collectives, people can experiment with diff erent practices to help them to live a more healthy and holy life.

If individuals want to continue the practice after the six weeks are up, they are free to do so, but the six-week deadline is in place in case the experiments don’t necessarily work well for someone.

We’ve organized the collectives around fi ve themes: authenticity,simplicity, purpose, freedom and community.

So far, we have tackled authenticity and simplicity.

We’re looking forward to continuing with the other themes in 2013.

In the fall, my authenticity collective met and decided to experiment with the spiritual discipline of silence.

We identifi ed that one of the things that keeps us from truly hearing God’s voice is all of the noise of life - cellphones, televisions, Facebook, radio talk shows.

We purposed to be silent together. For six weeks, we gathered on Wednesday nights and spent time in silence.

The first night we met coincided with the start of Bikes, Blues and BBQ.

It was hard to sit quietly with all those motorcycles barreling down College Avenue.

In time, we got better at it. At the end of our collective, we went on a silent retreat together, using the spiritual muscle we had been exercising for the past six weeks. It was a time of greater calm and peace in my life.

In November and December, my simplicity collective identifi ed areas of excess in our lives.

Given how excessive the holiday season can be, we intentionally cultivated greater simplicity in our lives during this particular time.

Some in our collective worked on de-cluttering their homes while others tackled the anxiety caused by their workaholism.

I decided to experiment with my diet. For me, food had gotten out of control. I ate when I was happy; I ate when I was sad; I ate for comfort; I ate to celebrate.

I had no self-discipline at all. Radically simplifying my diet helped to change that.

I took two weeks to make a plan, and then I spent a month implementing it.

For four weeks, I ate only 12 foods - chicken, fi sh, eggs, broccoli, spinach, apples, avocados, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, whole wheat bread, and dark chocolate.

When it ended, I had lost seven pounds and felt like food was no longer my master.

As I look back on 2012, one of the things I will remember most fondly is learning anew that what I know is not more important than how I live.

In fact, the best knowledge is that which is experimented with and experienced together.

Here’s to continuing the adventure in 2013.

ROBB RYERSE IS THE PASTOR OF VINTAGE FELLOWSHIP IN FAYETTEVILLE AND THE AUTHOR OF “FUNDAMORPHOSIS: HOW I LEFT FUNDAMENTALISM BUT DIDN’T LOSE MY FAITH.”

Religion, Pages 6 on 12/29/2012

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