We are all very excited about the gift of new life that God has given our family! He is a God of miracles and has done a mighty work in Chad’s life and in our family as a whole.

We have been so blessed by dear friends who have helped us through this difficult time in our lives! We thank you for being Christ to us in our need. And now as we face this new stage of our lives we ask that you will once again help us pray for God’s guidance. We are in need of a home and for a job for Chad. We know that nothing is too difficult for God and we are trusting in His perfect will for us even though we cannot see what that is right now.

Again, we have been so blessed to have so many of your prayers, support and words of encouragement during the last few months. May the God of peace reign in your lives!

Amy Holtz

Below are addresses where we can be reached. I will not have email access and can use a phone on weekends to call family. Amy has access to the paypal account should anyone wish to show their support that way (there is a donate button on the top right of blog). It’s a crazy and daunting thing to leave a wife and 5 kids for at least 6 months. However, I am confident all will be well. I think God is granting us the gift of faith for this season.

To Reach Amy, please contact her directly via Facebook.

Our kids are Sophie (9), Eli (8), Maddox (6), Brody (5), and Ava (1).

Please continue to keep them in your prayers, hopefully as others of you pick up the mantle and continue the tradition of coffee and morning prayer

My address is:

552 E. Fairview Rd.
Williamstown, KY
41097

My date for leaving has been moved up to this Thursday. My son Brody’s 5th birthday. I want to believe the best present I can give him is a whole and well daddy.

Shouldn’t We all hope for the same for our kids?

Much love to you all.

Chad.

It’s with a mixture of sadness and hopeful expectation that I am saying good bye.  This will be my last blog post for quite some time.

Sadness because Dancing feels like a comfy pair of slippers.  A lot has come to pass for me and my family because of the things written in the pages of this blog.   And a lot of friendships (and other things) have been forged.   I have learned a lot over the years from each of you, whether you liked or hated what I had to say.   I hope you have received from me even half of what I have gained from all of you.

Hopeful expectation because I have mercifully been given an opportunity to save not just my life but that of my family.   I have a chance to be reconciled to my wife and kids.

I’m going to rehab.

Easter Morning, 2011

A couple weeks ago Amy asked me if I would be open to a live-in facility treating sexual addiction.  I told her I would be open to doing anything if it meant further healing and the possibility of rewriting our story together.   Soon after we found a place that seemed to fit our practical/financial needs while addressing the spiritual dimension of this 20-year war I have battled.

Pure Life Ministries, in Big Ridge, Kentucky, seems to be the spot.

A few days ago Amy invited me home – on the couch – while I wait for my application to be accepted. It was today.

I’ll be checking-in within the next week, we hope.  The $2000 induction fee (which is pennies compared to most treatment centers) has to be paid first and thankfully a few donors have offered to help with some of that.

Once gone I will not have access to email, internet, social media, cell phone or cheetahs (the last is the most difficult).    I’ll have to relearn the art of writing letters or using a pay phone on the weekend.

This journey will be for a minimum of 6 months or as long as one year.  

I don’t need to tell you what a burden this places on my wife.   With 5 kids to raise she is taking a huge risk sending her husband off for 6+ months to heal.   She is Amy, Full of Grace.   Words can’t express my gratitude towards her nor my sense of helplessness as I leave them behind to fend for themselves.

The reality, however, is that in my acting-out she has been fending for herself for far too long.

I’ll be turning the keys to this site along with the Paypal account linked to this blog (upper right) over to her.   Amy is going to need help during this time and I am choosing to trust that the family I have come to know and love online will think of her and our kids from time to time and drop them some words of encouragement if not some spare change.

Thank you for your prayers, love, support and friendship.   Life has been one helluva journey since March and that whole business with losing my job as pastor for believing that there is enough hell on earth for us to fight that we don’t need an eternal one.  But I never felt more like a pastor than I have with you, here.   Thank you for that gift.

Here’s to hoping and praying that indeed…

Love.

Wins.

Below is the video of that talk which I delivered at Outlaw Preachers Reunion this week.  Since that time I have been deeply moved by the stories of brokenness I am hearing from fellow travelers as well as hope-filled stories of redemption.   This is what should be happening in our churches!

Help me take this message to others.   If you are part of a church or college, I would love to come speak with your people and share my story.   Naturally, I would be willing to change the title if appropriate, but I think after listening to the video you will understand why I say what I say.   Please email me at chadholtz36@gmail.com and if you feel so inclined, there is a donate button on the top right which helps support this blog and ministry.   Thank you.

Watch live video from outlawpreacher on Justin.tv

Cleve had asked me to talk about grace.  He made this request immediately following my tearful recounting of how my sexual addiction had cost me everything – my wife, my home, my job –  landing me here, in Durham, seeking some sanctuary among friends.

I’d like you to come Sunday and talk to our gathering about grace,

said Cleve.   An odd request given what I just told him, but that’s the point.

Faith is odd.  And demanding.

That gathering was intimate and diverse.  A testament to the sort of vision and prayer giving flight to this unchurch church.  I felt at home.  And this is what I said, or hope I said,  when it came time for me to say…anything.

Most times when I am asked to speak to a group it has to do with grace.   But it is grace of a particular sort.  Karl Barth once quipped,

Strange Christianity, whose most pressing anxiety seems to be that God’s grace may prove to be all too free…that hell, rather than being populated with so many people, may in the end prove to be empty.

What Barth is going after there is what caused one particular church to go after me in March of this year, deciding that a pastor who believes against hell, which is a posture I believe every Christian should maintain, wasn’t fit for their service.    But whether hell exists or not after I die isn’t the sort of grace I feel like talking about this morning with you all.

That sort of grace is amazing, and it’s worth losing a job and much more over.  A few days after I lost my job as pastor and the news began to spread a pastor, Carlton Pearson, called to encourage me and walk with me as he had gone a similar journey before.   He asked me a question that haunted me because I knew the answer all too well but was too ashamed to speak of.   He asked,

Chad, of all the people God could have selected to place on a platform like this to talk about God’s universal grace, why you?  Why a rural Methodist student-pastor not yet out of seminary?

Before he finished asking I knew the answer.   It hit me like a hammer to a nail:

Because I’m a sex addict.

I didn’t have the courage to tell him that on the phone.  But I knew.

Grace.  When Cleve first asked me to speak about grace to you all a number of images came to mind.  One was the Prodigal Son story.  I have Rembrandt’s painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son as my screen saver.  It’s a beautiful portrait capturing the loving, tender embrace of our Father  enfolding the broken, hurting, weary body of his son.  Of you and I.

But the following words from Paul were the most captivating for me the last few days:

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12)

Boast in my weaknesses.   What an amazing thing.  It would make for a great tag-line at any church, wouldn’t it?   First UMC (Boasting in our Weakness) or The City Well (Boasting in our Weakness).  I was raised in a church culture, perhaps you can relate, where nobody boasted in weakness.  In fact, if it wasn’t overtly taught it was certainly implied that weakness has no place in here.   You may have had a fight with your spouse on the way to church, relapsed on Saturday night, doubted God’s existence on Thursday, but when you got out of the car in your Sunday’s best it was all smiles and “God is good!”    We don’t want to share our weaknesses, especially in church where we are told that if we are Christians, we should be perfect.

I suck at being perfect.

Two months ago my wife asked me to leave.   What began as an addiction to pornography had manifested itself over time to something much larger, to the point where I had broken every vow I held dear.

I sit before you today a broken man.   While I believe in the power of God to reconcile all things, I have no idea how my particular story might reconcile itself.   I have no idea what tomorrow holds.  I can only look at things today and name them for what they are.   Pretty bad.

I have a blog called Dancing on Saturday. The name carries two important images for me.  The first is “dancing” which harkens back to a theological term the early thinkers gave to our Triune God.  This God lives and breaths and moves in community – a perfect harmony of peoples – beautifully choreographed in such a way that creation is an obvious byproduct.   Because our Creator dances, so can we.

The second is not so pretty.   Saturday is that day between the cross of Friday and the resurrection of Sunday.   Saturday is a place of fear and trembling.  Oddly, it’s in that “fear and trembling” we are called to work out our salvation (Phil. 2:12).   Saturday is where many of us live much of our lives.  We find it difficult to believe.  We look at dreams shattered and vows broken and wonder if God is even aware that we exist, much less madly in love with us.

Saturday is where we the Church are called to sit and speak.  We point with crooked fingers and lives toward an empty tomb even as we stutter over the words of our creeds.  Saturday is where we are called to dance.   And we all need dance partners.   Church is a good place to find a bride to dance.  In church when I am too weary or jaded to sing I know someone will stand and sing for me.  Perhaps next week I can sing for them.

One place I have found great dance happening has been in 12 Step meetings.  Surrounded by fellow addicts who listen to the brokenness of others, share their own hope and experience and strength and offer nothing more nor less than a hug and solidarity in the midst of a storm is grace personified.  I have seen more grace in a circle of addicts than in a host of churches.

This saddens me because I love the church.  But I am hopeful seeing a gathering like this today.   That you are all giving me space to share this today speaks volumes of the sort of place this already is.   Grace.

Grace is a phone call from a friend at a moment of crisis.  Grace is sitting among a group of addicts bearing one another’s burdens.  Grace is homemade biscuits at Duke Park on a Sunday morning with new and old friends.   Grace is being asked by your pastor to come speak about grace in the midst of brokenness.

Grace is boasting in our weaknesses so that the power of both the suffering and risen Christ may rest upon us.

I want to close with another passage of Scripture that I hope you’ll chew on the rest of your day or life.  It comes from no stranger to brokenness, the prophet Hosea:

Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.

After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.

Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth (6:2)

He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.

Grace.

The writer of the story is looking back, reflecting on the dark road down which his or her addiction led them and now, years later, they are ready to share their story with the world.   Now that they have an established career, an amicable relationship with the people they’ve hurt, a restored leadership role in their church, 6 years worth of sobriety chips in their dresser, a lovable, scruffy, dog named Grace, they are now happy to tell their story of past suffering.

I’m glad those stories exist.   They serve a wonderful purpose, giving people like me hope.  It would be sad and depressing if no story had a happy ending.

But if I may be so bold to speak for most of us Christians, we are addicted to happy endings.  In our good-intentioned insistence upon Easter we skip over Dark Saturday.    We do not do very well when it comes to sitting inside tombs.

Get yourself all resurrected, cleaned up and shiny white and then tell us your wonderful story.  

That is a church culture I have known most of my 37 years and perhaps one you know, too.   Perhaps it’s why you won’t presently step foot in a church.  You, like me, are still dirty.

But I won’t give up on the Church.  As Augustine is famous for saying,

She may be a whore, but she’s my Mother.

1700 years ago we still had an understanding of ourselves in the Church that dirty saints can nurture other dirty saints.   If, that is, we will risk being vulnerable.

And so I’ve heard all the success stories, at least the ones that are able to still speak.   I wonder about the many, many more who never got their dog or their pulpit back.   I wonder if I will be among them.

The reality in which we live, Church, is one where not every homeless person ends up being discovered because of their golden voice.    Some die hungry on the streets in a pile of their own shit.   Not every broken marriage comes out on the other side as reconciled sweethearts.   Not every addict makes it through the rest of his or her life without relapse.   People die.

Many more are weeping alongside the waters of Despair.  They hide their voices in their hang-ups because their tormenters require from them songs of mirth.    They demand Easter songs or no songs at all (my own paraphrase of Psalm 137:1-3).

The Church has little room for singing the blues.

But sing we must.   At least this is what I am learning.   And it is why I have chosen to do what I do here.   I didn’t choose the title for this blog years ago thinking that it would come to this but how perfect it fits:  Dark Saturday, the day where nobody knows if Easter will happen or not is where I find myself.   It is also where many of my readers find themselves.    They ache. They hurt.  They yearn.   They cry out.   And for whatever reason, my words have provided a momentary balm.    Here are just a few excerpts from some of the many letters I receive daily (obviously their identities will remain confidential)….

Your story has made me want to check out a local 12-step group. I attended my first meeting. You don’t know how relieved I was to admit my addiction and to start undoing the fear I have that I will one day blow it so bad that it will ruin my family, my ministry, and my faith. Thank you so much for putting yourself out there.

I hope you’re doing well. Remember that all the way on the ____ Coast there’s a troubled guy that sought healing because of your willingness to be honest.

I must say I considered myself an agnostic until I heard of you loosing your church ect. You and Rob Bell have helped me to know that I am loved. You inspire me, you are wide open and more honest than most of us can face. You open up to the universe and everyone in it. That in itself is extremely healing because you are owning it.

Chad, I just want you to know I struggle with you and thank you for sharing your burden. Secrecy is always the tool of the powers of this world. Compartmentalizing is a great tool, but also a weapon of choice by the forces of darkness to keep the light confined. Thank you for lighting the path out of darkness.

I write to you with tears streaming down my cheeks. I just read your very honest revelation that you are a sex addict on your blog….FIrst, let me say, “thank you” for being so honest and transparent with your own life…I think God just offered me an invitation to get healthy and sober. Your prayers will help me work up the courage to accept.

You have no idea, Chad, how much good you have done over the past few months and, with your latest blog post. Thank you for slapping me upside the head. You will never know how grateful I am.

My writing (or journaling) gives me great joy personally but these testimonies and many more like them give me purpose.    We all need a purpose.   As I said here, you are invited to help me in that pursuit through your continued prayers and letters as well as through donations.   This, for the present, is how I make my living.

So I don’t know how this story will end.   I can’t see around the bend.    I am confident, however, that this is a road I need to travel and I don’t wish to travel it alone.    If my journey, as dark and twisted and dirty as it may be, gives someone else the courage to take a step then perhaps we can one day give thanks.   Giving thanks whether we still find ourselves weeping along the waters of Babylon or playing fetch with Grace.

Maybe, just maybe, life in God is a bit of both.

And after the storm,
I run and run as the rains come
And I look up, I look up,
on my knees and out of luck,
I look up.

That was my posture Tuesday morning.   The day prior I was sitting in court, the first hearing in a divorce proceeding where custody arrangements for our 5 children and financial obligations were set. The judge’s ruling on both of those matters was not surprising as most of that had already been pre-determined.   What was surprising, however, were the emotions that came with it.

Sitting alone on one side of the courtroom awaiting our turn was the most humiliating and painful experience of my life.   Being run out of town for believing against hell felt nothing like the hell my sexual addiction had now presented.   In mid-July I wrote about how I really mucked it up this time, but sitting in court Monday made those consequences I wished away or ignored a sobering reality.  It was a perfect storm.

And so I found myself Tuesday morning mourning the devastation the storm in my life wrought.   I had built a house on sand, seeking shade behind the backlight of a porn-packed laptop which in the end took it all, leaving me scorched and barren.  I wanted to die.

And I look up, I look up,
on my knees and out of luck,
I look up.

In the midst of my crying out to God my phone rang.  A dear friend from Durham.   I almost didn’t answer because of the state I was in but this was a friend with whom I knew I could be vulnerable.

Would that we all have at least one person in our lives like this.

Gareth insisted I come spend some time with he and friends who can sit with me through this storm.   This was no time to be alone and, he said, we can walk with you over the hill.

And I took you by the hand
And we stood tall,
And remembered our own land,
What we lived for.

The ensuing 8 hour drive began to lift my spirits.   And for the first time in months I began to “remember our own land” and what is worth living for.

Apart from my kids what truly gives me life is when I write and speak.  I have tried to make a living through other means since being dismissed as pastor and it has not worked.   Particularly now, given the circumstances I find myself in, my present career in sales is untenable.

But if I am to believe what my friends tell me, I am still a pastor.   My church is not one of brick and mortar but, ironically, made up of the very stuff that has been my thorn – the internet.   I continue to be profoundly blessed and encouraged by the number of notes I receive from people whose own faith or recovery has been helped through my willingness to be vulnerable here, among you all, whom I am happy to call friends.

As I look up from the bottom in which I find myself I am reminded that I still believe in a God who is in the business of resurrection.   Out of the pits of hell life springs.   Into chaos, God speaks.   I believe in the power of the gospel to transform lives, including my own.

And so it is that i am choosing to reinvent myself today.  Or, at, the very least, my vocation, and I want to invite you to join me.   I would love nothing more than to take your hand as you take mine and together we navigate the complexities of living After the Storm.    In the midst of my own brokenness I find myself more aware than ever of the sustaining grace of God.  Where weakness abounds, God gets to work (Rom. 5:20).

Another singer/songwriter, Andrew Peterson, paints a beautiful picture with his words in Many Roads:

Could it be that the many roads you took to get here/ Were just for me to tell this story, and for you to hear this song/ And your many hopes, and your many fears/ Were meant to bring you here all along.

So if you’ll trust me with your time I’ll spend it wisely/ I will sing to you with all I have to give/ If you traveled all this way, then I will do my best to play/ My biggest hits (that don’t exist).

Change.  I’m making some serious changes in hopes of using my gifts of writing and speaking to sustain me and my family.   One of those changes is recognizing that my blog where I share my life with others takes time – time I love to give – but doesn’t pay to even allow me to have internet service at home (thank God for Starbucks).   I desire to devote more time to my writing and to this blog and in order to do so I have linked up a PayPal account (see the DONATE button on the top right).  If you have been blessed by this space perhaps you will consider making a donation to the ongoing ministry I feel called to provide.

But there is more.   Funds permitting I will revamp this website and begin hosting online weekly Bible studies along with recovery resources.

And speaking of recovery, I have exciting plans for launching Recovery Church, not in the way I once thought, but here, online.   There are a number of ways I wish to serve and while the means may appear unconventional I sense they can work.

In a world where you have far too many choices of things to read and people to friend, I am so grateful for you.   Hearing your stories of pain and triumph as you give me the space to share my own have been a source of great healing, not only to myself but to many others.    It’s what church ought to be.

I’ll close the way I began by sharing the last stanza of After the Storm.   May it be so.

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

There are moments in time, events, which leave an indelible mark upon a person.   Moments which shape us and change us.   And some are even bigger than one person, changing an entire group of persons, a nation, and a world.

The moment I am talking about, of course, is the release of Pearl Jam’s debut album, Ten, of which this week marks the 20 year anniversary.

I was 17 when it happened, a senior in high school and suffering the familiar angst of all boys my age who were madly in love for all the wrong reasons and wondering what the future held outside the Nest.

While Pearl Jam was not the first band responsible for changing the way we listened to music (Nirvana and others beat them to the punch), Ten was instrumental in bringing the new grunge sound into the mainstream (as reported by Guitar World in 2002).    Pearl Jam made us all conscious of a new day in music dawning with or without us.

Eddie Vedder, the lead singer and writer for PJ, filled my ears and heart for years following their first release and remain to this day a constant friend, a mere click away on my iPod.   The lyrics haunted and moved me.   Ten is an album that tackles subjects like depression, suicide, loneliness and murder.   On the lyrics, Vedder said, “All I really believe in is this f**king moment, like right now.  And that, actually, is what the whole album talks about” (Rolling Stone, Oct. 31, 1991).

This week there is another anniversary taking place of which you also may have heard.   I was in my apartment in Pewaukee, WI when I learned about the first tower falling.  I felt what most everyone else felt – horror, dread, sadness, despair, anger.    I had just gotten out of the Navy 4 months prior where I had served 8 years as a Hospital Corpsman.   As it became clear that this was a terrorist attack I wanted to reenlist.    I was eager to get back and help in any way I could.   Our way of life was attacked and I, along with every other good American, would not stand for it.

It’s funny how 10 years can change a person.   As I reflect on my reaction that day, and the reactions of most people who flooded the churches the Sunday following, I realize how little the gospel makes a difference in what many people still defend as a “Christian nation.”

Karl Barth, writing in the early 20th century during the rise of Nazi Germany knew very well the conditions of a State caught in upheaval threatening to change the political landscape of the world.  He critiqued the very foundation of both the Revolutionaries (those who wished to change what was) and the Reactionaries (those who legitimized the existing social order).   Both were willing to die for their cause.   And both, Barth said, were trapped by the very same thing.

He surveyed the cultural landscape and noted that those revolting and those reacting both demanded religious allegiance of a serious kind.  They both wanted obligatory recognition of their God-ordained, God-sanctioned existence.   That is to say, my posture on 9/11 and the months following, as I gathered around watering holes and in churches to talk about the news, and where my contentment or resentment rose and fell on the heels of what I perceived to be good or bad State-craft, pegged me as either a revolutionary or a reactionary (or both).

And Barth saw it all for what it was and called it what it is:  Pathos. 

Barth would look at all our memorials, all our anniversaries, all our tokens of “We Will Never Forget” and call it all pathos.   It is all very sad.    Particularly if the Church of Jesus Christ is caught in it’s wake.   It is to be expected of the State, for the State is a sight of judgement on which much of our lives are played out.    The State is within the fallen reality of our world – the world in which you and I work, eat, sleep, play, make love and make war.   Our lives, Barth says, must bear witness to our resistance to the religious forming power of the State that dictates to us the ways in which we must imagine the good.

Ten years post 9/11 I see less and less of the gospel dictating the ways we imagine the good.   And the Church of Christ is complicit.   Christians in America today have no problem cheering over the murder of a terrorist or state execution numbers.   The State has been an insistent and vocal teacher of one way to imagine the good.   And we who call ourselves Christian far too often find ourselves as enraptured students.

The way forward, Barth argues, is to starve all of our pathos.    Deprive us of our fervor whether it be revolutionary or reactionary.   Starve us of our desire to dramatically inscribe our lives into their story.

Starve ourselves of both the joyous triumph and the pious sentimentality which accompanies most of all that we do as Christians in America – our political posturing, our “right” vs. “left,” our   ardent nationalism in the name of God, our memorializing of tragedy -  and we will be on the road to the kind of freedom the Gospel promises and that which we, the Church, are called to bear witness.   We will be free from the pathos the State, a fallen entity, seeks to inscribe in us and released for the true joy and contentment the Christ, and Christ alone, brings.

One of my favorite songs on that infamous album Ten is titled “Release.”   I was oblivious to the pathos waging within me 20 years ago – the many ways my story was being written by something other than the gospel – just as I was oblivious to the ways the State was writing my story 10 years ago when the Towers fell.    And I have no doubt that today I am just as oblivious about something else.   All the more reason to make Christ the more obvious, the One who desires to release us from our pathos.

Release

I see the world

Feel the chill

Which way to go

Windowsill

I see the words

On a rocking horse of time

I see the birds in the rain

O dear dad

Can you see me now

I am myself

Like you somehow

I’ll wait up in the dark

For you to speak to me

I’ll open up

Release me

Release me

 

I have a friend who meets me in the same place every time we get together – Panera Bread.  He uses a bit of cream in his coffee whereas I always drink mine straight up black.  We sit down and sip our Java as we settle into a casual banter about our kids, church, doubts, fears, struggles, joys, and Harry Potter.

Another friend of mine who I haven’t seen in years but talk to on the phone about every other month will always make me laugh.   Like clockwork.   We were Navy roommates in Bahrain back in 1994 or so.   I can always count on him to not allow me to take myself too seriously even as he takes me seriously.  Our conversations are peppered with a good many crude jokes about each other, laced with sarcasm throughout, and always end with us telling the other, “Love you, brother.”

What I just briefly described are two relationships rich in ritual.   The common language shared in each of these scenarios are what make these relationships special to me.   Both of these relationships (and I could rattle off several others), regardless of the amount of time spent apart, once together feel like slipping into an old, worn, faded pair of jeans.   What makes them so comfortable?    The rituals we share.

In fact, the more I think about it, relationship doesn’t exist without ritual.  Ritual is relationship.  

I made that comment somewhat flippantly on my Facebook page the other day when a friend worried that in many liturgical churches ritual is valued more than relationship.    I understand the perception behind such sentiments.

I remember when my dad transitioned from being a Nazarene to Lutheran pastor when I was 18.   The first Lutheran service I attended was so strange to me.   Why were people praying out of books?   Why are they all saying the same things?  My impression of them was that they were stodgy and cold.  Surely they didn’t have a real relationship with God if they have to be told how and when to pray!

And I remember my first introduction to a Pentecostal worship service nearly 10 years later.    As I watched people lift their hands in the air or shouting “Hallelujah!” when prompted by the worship leader (or whenever they darn-well felt like it), I wondered, Who are these people kidding?    The sentimentalism combined with group hysteria and arm waving seemed fake to me.  Surely they didn’t have a real relationship with God if they shout Praise the Lord! on cue while waving their arms in unison.

From my seat of judgment I declared both groups – the one formal and high, the other informal and low – as non-relational.   Their rituals obviously obscured any meaningful relationship between they and God.

I can be such a prick.

Had I actually been interested in cultivating relationships myself (which requires so much effort and intimacy) I would have discovered that the elderly chanting Lutherans spent much of their spare time canning goods to give to the homeless shelter or praying collects for the sick with friends and strangers in nursing homes.   I would have learned that the pew-jumping, hand-waving, Hallelujah-shoutin’ hippie gave away all of his money to help fund a mission trip for others and spends most of his free time holding ad-hoc bible studies at the local bookstore.

Apparently the rituals they enacted in worship fed their relationships with one another and the Divine in such a way that it bled into rituals they enacted throughout the week which in turn fed their relationships with one another and the Divine, and vice versa.    Their rituals gave form and function to an otherwise vapid and amorphous relationship, much like my coffee time with Allen or my phone chats with Ryan.

Back then I had my own ritual (though I never would have called it that!).  I surveyed the masses during worship picking out the frauds and the unrepentant so that I could leave church feeling rather good about myself.   I had a real relationship, I mused, unlike these phonies going through the motions each week.

Did I mention I can be a prick?

But something happened to me one Sunday morning in a Pentecostal worship service a number of years ago.  The worship leader had the congregation in their usual frenzy while I was striking my usual pose of hands stuffed deep in pockets, especially whenever the signal to “Raise those hands for Jesus!” was given.   Yet this time something was different.   I sensed for the first time that perhaps the problem wasn’t them, but me.    Perhaps they, crazy as they may be and as ritualistic as they appeared in their corporate craziness, had something that I could only theorize or theologize about.   Perhaps the truth was that I was just scared to admit that there was something beautifully intimate about their rituals that made them one with each other and one with their God.   And I craved it.

My hands slowly came out of my pockets that morning and my fists opened as I raised my arms above my head.    I remember tears streaming down my face as I felt walls which I had spent a life time erecting begin to topple.

A simple ritual like raising my hands did more to nurture my relationship with God than a lifetime of ritualistically avoiding ritual.

As the years went by I found myself gravitating more and more towards high church liturgy.   The chants and the prayers and the weekly Eucharist fed my soul and continue to do so in ways I couldn’t have imagined back when I thought ritual was an affront to relationship.   It is my relationship!   Ritual adds form and function to my relationship with God.  It gives me the gift of a common language to share with God and my neighbor.   All of us have been in those awkward first meeting moments where neither person knows the other well enough to know what to say or do.   Relationships take time to form, and they form around shared language and gestures, or rituals.

Ritual has taught me that love is action.  I may not always feel like I am in love, but my feelings are deceptive.   Watch and see what happens to a marriage when loving acts are only done when love is felt.    In the same way I don’t always believe God is real.  Or near.  Or loving.  It is in times like these that I am grateful for the other “cloud of witnesses” that stand around me to say the creeds when my words seem forced.   They believe in my place.   Perhaps next week I can believe for them.

A friend asked me the other day what I get out of going to a liturgical, ritualistic church.   I told him that in a chaotic world where life seems so random it is a gift to be able to re-enact and re-tell the story week after week.   Ritual gives me roots that help nurture relationship when I both feel like it and when I don’t.

When I sat down to write this I did it in part to see if I really believed what I pithily wrote:  Ritual is Relationship.    Finishing it now, while sitting in Starbucks with my Pike’s Place brew to my left, my phone to my right and earplugs in my ears with Mumford & Sons on repeat, I recognize how ritualistic I am in so many things. And that’s OK.   It makes me human.   Perhaps the question to ask isn’t whether or not ritual replaces relationship, since they are one and the same.   Perhaps the best question to ask is,

What sort of rituals/relationships are we performing?   How are they forming us?

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. -Aristotle

It was a little rough getting back in to it.  I was used to easily running 4-8 miles a day with a 13-15 mile run on the weekend.   My first day out I squeaked out a mile and thought I would die.   But after just a few weeks I’m noticing a big difference.   Today I ran 3.5 and felt good, despite the humidity.

There are days when I feel really good and then there are days when I feel every joint screaming for ice.  There is not a run I have run to date where I have not at some point along the way wanted to quit.  Just stop and walk, my body tells me.  No one will know.   Who are you kidding anyway? You’ll never run 26.2 miles! I have learned to expect these moments through the course of a run.   But more than that, I have also come to expect the satisfaction I feel when I push through them, placing one heavy foot in front of the other until the temptation to quit subsides.   Ironically, I look forward to these times my will is tested because I now know how sweet victory will taste when I reach my goal –  sweaty, tired, achey, exhausted…joyful.

Running is teaching me things about my life in Christ.  For starters, this journey with God is more like a marathon than a 100-meter dash.  Living in a culture that is result-oriented and seeks immediate rather than delayed satisfaction, the marathon appears counter-cultural.  There are long stretches of road ahead where there are no spectators, no one cheering, no one taking notice – only you and the unforgiving pavement and hot sun.   In a sprint you have the roar of the crowd and the pursuit of others to drive you to the finish line.  In a marathon you have little more than your own thoughts and groans (prayers?) to get you over the next ridge.   Our spiritual lives are not so different.  I wonder how many of us have been discouraged when well-meaning Christians promised us 100-meter lives if we would just  ”Try Jesus”?  I wonder how many of our churches are equipping disciples for sprints when we should be training for marathons?  When I run I am reminded that I am not promised quick-fixes and raucous applause as I go about building for the Kingdom of God.  Rather, I am promised that Jesus is with me every heavy step of the way and that the crown I race for is eternal, a concept I am slowly beginning to understand as I try to imagine the finish line during my first mile.   Kingdom work is eternal work.   While I may not see the results of my faithful efforts today, I believe every prayer, every mission trip, every work of art, every good deed done, every smile given, every testimony uttered, every song sung, every dollar spent, every act of justice, every wrong forgiven, every sick person visited, every widow and orphan comforted, every mile driven and every foot run will be subsumed into the person and work of Jesus Christ and we shall “know even as we are known” just to what extent all of this “training” was put to use in God’s Grand Finale.

Another important way that running reminds me of my life in Christ is by acknowledging that temptations to quit will come.   There are those moments on my runs where I want desperately to just stop – where I tell myself that no one is looking and no one really cares and that the pain is just not worth it.    I have felt similar desires in my spiritual walk.  On a long run you can feel like you are out in the wilderness, stranded, left with only your personal devils.  Running has taught me a little about the joy that can be mine when I push through to the other side.  What if I saw the trials that come my way during my spiritual marathon the same way I have come to see the temptations to quit while running?  What if I began to experience those small, silent, victories that come from persevering?   What if I ran the race so that I might win the prize (1 Cor. 9:24)?   Temptations will come, but we serve One who promises to never tempt us beyond what we can bear and will always provide the means to stand up under it (1 Cor. 10:13).

Lastly, running has taught me something about the nurturing of good habits.  My training regimen is fairly strict.  I will only increase my miles each week by 10%.  This is to avoid injury.  Also, to avoid injury, I warm up before each run, do a five minute cool-down after each run and conclude with some stretching exercises.   I have also had to become more conscious of my diet (this is the last enemy to be defeated!)  I drink more water, eat more fruit, take more protein and vitamins each day.  To run well I have had to make adjustments to how I live my life on a daily basis and how I prioritize certain things.   It should be obvious how this would relate to the Christian life.  If all of these things go into making me a better runner how much more should I expect might be needed to make me a better disciple of our Creator?   Being a Christian, like running, ought to instill in us good habits.  Being part of worship whenever the doors are opened, prayer, Scripture reading, communion, and visiting the sick, widow and orphan are just some of the ways Christ promises to meet us and nourish us so that we might have strength for the journey.  In the same way I would never expect to finish a marathon without training and taking on certain disciplines, I, nor any of us, should expect to have a fulfilling, engaged, toned, and vibrant life in Christ if we are not doing those things which help build our spiritual muscles.

I thank God for the grace God has shown me through running.   Grace abounds.  May we have eyes to see.