Because of the subtitle of this conference, “Deep Faith: Faith
Formation for All Ages” I went with a pretty narrow expectation. It’s one I was looking forward to, but narrow
nonetheless. I hoped to engage the
question of how to work at education and formation intergenerationally. How does one shape a Sunday school class or
worship service such that it appeals and genuinely connects with people from
toddler to senior and allows folk of all ages to learn with and from each other? I did come away with a few ideas. Ideas I hope to work at and explore more in
the future, including an understanding that building bridges of learning and
connection intended to meet the particular challenges of, for example, a
four-year-old in worship, may might also be wide enough to include others with
different demographics but similar needs.
Wide enough to welcome many into an experience of God.
What I came to experience in this conference was not wholly
what I expected but was still pretty exciting. Two workshops in particular had
me excited to come home and think about how we implement elements in my
context. The first, led by Carrie
Martens, was a workshop about marking faith and milestone moments across the
life span. Like most congregations we
offer some ritual life-marking moments in worship, like infant dedication and
baptism. We also offer young adults
hand-made comforters when they are ready to move on after high school. But I was challenged to think about the many
other ways to mark life-moments as sacred through adulthood and at points
throughout childhood: the beginning of school for a child, consecration of
singleness for adults who remain unmarried, blessing on retirement when adults
complete work marking a ‘fruitful past and fruitful future.’* Since there is no
beginning or ending to the formation of our identity in Christ, ritual markers
along the journey give us a vocabulary to name that identity. Being able to name our identity allows us to
further deepen and claim it.
One of the areas we Mennonites have claimed as central to
our identity is that of peace-makers.
Yet it seems to me that it’s rare for a congregation to actively engage
in educating and forming members (young and old) in practices of engaging
conflict in healthy and transformative ways. I have certainly heard many stories of
unhealthy and passive aggressive ways that churches have dealt (or not) with
conflict. That’s why Rachel
Miller Jacobs’ concept of ‘Ordinary Time Forgiveness’ seems both so simple
and so radical.
Rachel introduced those who participated in her workshop to
some tools of non-violent communication and in particular we had fun with her
deck of ‘Feelings and Needs’ cards.**
These cards, as the name suggests, each name either a feeling or a
need. When confronted with a conflict or
situation in which discernment or transformation is necessary, one may use
these cards, either alone or with another, to identify the two or three
feelings that are primarily evoked. This
allows a listener to use empathetic responding when choosing cards for the
story-teller to test if the feeling is right and for teller to respond. Once primary emotions are identified, the
needs cards come into play. It is the met
or unmet needs that evoke those feelings and when identified, we can so much
more easily communicate – the first step in moving toward resolution and
forgiveness.
It's more complex than that, of course. And conflicts, like people, may be much more
multi-layered, but because this is about the every-day, ‘ordinary time’
conflict, each of us being formed with the useful tools of engagement is so
important to confronting the really
fraught and complicated stuff. It makes
so much sense to begin engaging the notion of conflict as normal and
forgiveness as central in childhood, then to continue to deepen our
understanding of self and other as we mature, growing in faith and
experience. I am looking forward to
trying testing these and many of the ideas I encountered at Deep Faith and I’m
very grateful to have been able to participate.
__
* Carrie Martens, “Faith Markers at Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church
(in worship),” table.
** Rachel received her cards from Malinda Berry, Assistant
Professor of Theology and Ethics at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical
Seminary. They were developed based on
the Non-Violent Communication practices and principles of Marshall Rosenberg
and much more can be found at Malinda’s website here.
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