When I started reading Ethan Bryan’s story, I couldn’t help getting caught up in his joy. I began to share his thrill of meeting a hero. I started thinking of the things I loved as a boy, and I started thinking of my own dreams. In a way, as Bryan’s reader, I got to play catch with him a little bit, share in his life and participate in a conversation.
For Bryan, playing catch is a kind of spiritual practice in sharing life together. “The rhythm of throwing the ball and then feeling the pop of the catch is prayer like. It’s a rhythm and a conversation.” Playing catch, like prayer and conversation, requires trust; trust that the person on the other side is going to throw something I can catch, trust that he or she will wait ’til I’m watching and trust that what I throw will be caught. I think there’s something deep we can learn from viewing our interactions with each other as games of catch. Fundamentally, if we want to enter into life together, we have to trust one another. For Bryan, playing catch is like a spiritual practice. Likewise, spiritual practices are like playing catch, requiring participation and trust. In this response, I want to take a deeper look at how essential trust is in our worshipping communities, and how we can begin to participate with God and one another more fully by simply offering trust to one another.
Some might say I’m being naive; offering blind trust is not being responsible to the pursuit of truth. Being responsible requires a skeptical eye. Skepticism reigns in our post-enlightenment world as the standard of morality. The ethics of skepticism teach us to not take a position for fear of being wrong. If you are not skeptical, then you are lazy. But that’s just a sad and lifeless way of interacting with the world. I choose to trust people.
Nonetheless, the ethics of skepticism have found their way into our churches and our worship. Everything that is sung, read or spoken goes under the gauntlet of popular scrutiny. This must be especially frustrating for worship leaders who are always searching for the newest method of worship, since new songs and prayers do not have the clout of history behind them. If every word sung or preached is subject to the beliefs and lifestyles of the individuals gathered there, then the church forfeits its prophetic voice. When the ethics of skepticism are welcomed into worship, then the Word of God is rejected when it challenges the beliefs or practices we have brought with us into the place of worship.
In order to appease both the ethics of skepticism and our nostalgic Christian experiences, two movements in North American Christianity seem to have been birthed. The first, which is as old as democracy, is the movement to worship and gather only with people who look and think the same way. This has resulted in the myriad homogenous churches and denominations you can find in the phone book. If the preacher says something that doesn’t jive with you, you can just go down the block to the next church.
The second is this find-out-for-yourself attitude toward the truth. This has forced people into their private studies, gathering as much information as possible (or at least what’s available on the internet), watching pastors on television and consuming large amounts of Scripture privately. Attending worship becomes just another way of gathering information in order to create an individual conclusion. Singing songs becomes an attempt to really “feel” the Spirit in order to validate current thoughts or beliefs. The sermon is only true so far as it corroborates other information that has been gathered privately. The ethics of skepticism in Christianity have taught us that the most important battle is to get the beliefs just right, and it has sucked the life out of churches. Gathering information and determining facts become the highest pursuits, even over living life together.
While Bryan’s article makes me wonder if I love anything as much as he loves baseball (or why he loves the Royals so much), it also demonstrates the sacred nature of relationships over information. When Bryan had the opportunity to come face to face with his childhood hero, he made a somewhat odd request: Bryan wanted to play catch with Frank White. It’s funny that this is a counterintuitive request. After all, this is what Frank White does best; he plays catch, but when Bryan asks White how many people have asked him to play catch, he answers, “No one. You’re the first… People want pictures and autographs, but no one wants to play catch.”
Most people are interested in obtaining “artifacts from times when [they] come close to greatness.” Unwittingly, multitudes of Frank White fans have reduced him to an autograph machine in order to prove their status as fans who have encountered a hero. But Mr. White is not an autograph machine. He is a person, and he is a baseball player. He plays catch. This is why Bryan’s request is so remarkable and why it belongs in a journal of faith, life and youth ministry. Rather than seeking evidence of Frank White, he just allows Frank White to be who he is.
Alright, enough of comparing Frank White to Jesus. While I’m sure Mr. White is as humble as Bryan says, I don’t know anything about him. However, I do see an analogy for American Christians in the whole playing-catch-versus-receiving-an-autograph discussion. It can be so easy for us, who are infected with modern skepticism, to see Scripture as an autograph of God. “Here it is! Proof that God became human! Look! That’s his signature!” This way of thinking opens Scripture up to all sorts of scrutiny. “Did Jesus really say that? Did that miracle really happen? What corroborates the New Testament’s claims? Do we have any other ‘autographs’ of Jesus that match this one?” When the ethics of skepticism determine our belief-making processes, Scripture becomes just a piece of evidence in the pursuit of truth, and God just becomes a mysterious and mischievous evidence-dropping machine.
Scripture is not an autograph. Scripture is a means of relationship. Scripture is like playing catch. Bryan writes that “Scripture shares stories of lives lived,” but I want to go one step further. Scripture, as a means of interaction with God, invites the hearer to actually share life with those in stories, namely God and God’s people. Literally, Scripture is a conversation between God and God’s people through God’s people. I mean several things by this.
First, Scripture is the Word of God. When Scripture is read, God is present in the Holy Spirit, enlightening, comforting and correcting. Scripture is not a dead artifact of a particularly interesting time. Scripture is alive, opening us up for God’s examination.
Second, Scripture is a conversation to the Body of Christ and is best read in community and worship. Through the work of the Son for us and the work of the Spirit in us, God has given us the gift of the community. God has given us the church. We are a body of people who have been empowered by the Holy Spirit to receive the Word and interpret it together in the context of worship.
Finally, Scripture is the Word of God spoken through the church. John 1:18 tells us that no one has seen God, but the Son who is God has made God known. Jesus revealed God to his disciples and charged them to testify about him. Scripture is the testimony of the Church about God.
In these ways, Scripture is and has been the conversation between God and God’s people through God’s people throughout history. The testimony of the church goes back to the real and particular experiences of the apostles with Jesus Christ. And this testimony, Scripture, is trustworthy.
Since Scripture is a living conversation, treating it as evidence for God’s existence is actually ignoring God for who God is. It like asking for an autograph from someone who actually wants to play catch, who gets to be who he is when he is playing catch. We must move away from viewing Scripture as evidence of God’s existence and toward an actual interaction with the living God. God, revealed in Scripture, is a God who loves us and longs for us to enjoy life with him. Scripture is a means for him to engage us and for us to share life with him. As Bryan says, “playing catch opens the doors to relationship, to friendship, to learning about one another from one another, to sharing life.”
What does this mean for youth workers? Too often, Christian education and youth ministry get reduced to learning or teaching. We even get caught in traps of teaching teenagers arguments to justify their beliefs (and even using Scripture to do so!). Of course, we should teach our teenagers the Scriptures and theology, but this is not simply a secular cerebral endeavor.
Because Scripture is a conversation and not simply an autograph, learning the Scriptures is actually participating in the life of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. It is holy and transformative. Learning Scripture is like learning how to have a conversation, and you learn by doing.
In the context of Christian education, all interaction about God is interaction with God. It is all prayer. When we read the Bible together, we are praying. When we affirm the creeds, we are praying. When we preach, we are praying. All Christian education is spiritual formation; it is worship; and it is holy. Therefore, we cannot give Scripture to the teenagers in order to prove God (like an autograph). Rather, we must invite teenagers to participate in Scripture (like playing catch), listening and responding to the God who came to us to be with us and for us. When we treat Scripture this way, we leave skepticism at the door because there is no evidence on exhibit. Instead, there is a person inviting us to know him and to be known.
Here are a few ways that youth ministers can foster some of these ideas in their youth ministry:
- Practice Lectio Divina with your teenagers often. I usually have the teens find a comfortable position and prepare themselves silently to hear God’s voice in the reading of Scripture. I ask the teenagers to seek out a particular word or phrase that the Holy Spirit wants to highlight for them especially. Then, I read the scripture slowly three times. We follow this by a time of silent prayer. Sometimes teenagers fall asleep, probably because they need the rest.
- Pray the Scriptures. You do not need to always think up some beautiful, extemporaneous prayer to say in front of the teens. Pray the Psalms or the songs in Revelation. Have the teens read them out loud as their prayers to God. Allow the words of Scripture to become their words.
- Avoid reading just one verse. In fact, don’t mention that the Bible has verses. These little numbers are my biggest pet peeve. They may come in handy at times, but they tempt readers to dissect Scripture and not hear the whole message or thought of the author. Instead, read Scripture conversationally, in large chunks, attempting to hear the whole thought of the author and the voice of God.
What are some of your ideas on how to better emphasize interaction with God in the midst of our interactions about God?
To take it one step further, watch this video by Stanley Hauerwas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Dr1QLiaAo. Here, he says that Christianity is something we receive. Christians do not create Christianity. In what ways does this challenge our democratic western views of community, society and knowing? How do we go about receiving? What part do inquiry and skepticism play into our receiving of Christianity?
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