Careful, God might hear you ... practice

Way back in the ancient experience of the Church in Australia — around the beginning of 1991 — a few people from all around the world gathered in a tent on the lawns of a university in the ACT and listened to a preacher. She warned and encouraged the congregation to “be careful what you practice, because you might end up good at it”.

I’ve practised a lot of things in the 14 years since, and have ended up being quite reasonable at some of them. And I’ve certainly noticed that a lack of practice has made an enormous difference to my pianist skills over the years. Maybe the preacher was right.

But, recently, the art of “practising” the faith took on a deeper significance. Prompted by the gift of Lent and going on an exploration with the congregation I am part of, I headed into some of the Christian practices that can help form a day-to-day Christian lifestyle.

Ultimately, Christian practice comes down to both understanding and experiencing God as one who is present in all of life. And one who is able to be experienced more closely as we become more attentive to life.

Now, maybe it has just been my experience of the church, but we seem to swing between two rather strange understandings of God’s ongoing interaction with us. Either it is focused on Sunday as if God is somehow more present when we gather for services of worship, or our understanding of God’s interaction with us is so scattered that we just say “God is in every moment”.

The first doesn’t work, because it doesn’t take seriously that “the world is charg’d with the grandeur of God” (G. M. Hopkins).

But the second doesn’t work either, because it doesn’t take seriously the way that humans are really good at missing the obvious.

For instance, how God is involved in simple things such as the practice of hospitality. Or the practice of being self-controlled enough to say yes and to say no. Or the practice of discerning rather than deciding.

Each of the Christian practices offers a way to developing part of a deeper pattern in life. A pattern that can mark us as a follower of Jesus — make us a follower of Jesus.

So, through Lent, I wandered with the whole congregation into a conversation with God; a conversation that asked us each week to think about how and where God was still speaking with us. Then it invited us to respond by taking on a Christian practice to listen and hear.

As we affirmed that God speaks creatively, we were invited through a step-by-step guide to discern what God might be saying about any situation or issue.
As we were reminded that God speaks unexpectedly, we were invited into ways of practising hospitality.

As we prepared for Holy Week, and felt that God spoke in ways that seemed upside down, we were nurtured into a time where we could reflect on the daily practice of dying well.

And as we sat in the silence of Easter Saturday, we were encouraged — and we warmly took up the opportunity — to practise times of silence, with text, with image, with meditation and with prayer.

Practising Christianity through Christian practices helps form us as a clearly distinct people while we remain in the midst of daily events that everyone of any expression of faith or non-faith must undertake.

Failure to practise would, I am sure, lead in the same direction as the failure to practise my piano skills. Of course, I probably don’t lose myself by failing to practise the piano.

Gordon Ramsay is the ministry team leader at Kippax Uniting Church in Canberra. The journey into the Christian practices that Gordon undertook, along with Kippax’s Christian Education and Discipleship Coordinator, John Emmett, and the whole congregation, can be seen at
http://www.kippax.org.au/hd2/Christian_Practices_Explanation.pdf.