Back to basics: simple, effective practices for discipleship

“What’s your goal?” Derek Olsen asks in the beginning of his guide to the Prayer Book, Inwardly Digest. If an athlete plans her workout routine to build up strength for a big competition, Olsen suggests, our spiritual practices should be approached with the same intentionality.

In the “sport” of parish leadership, as summer ends, we are leaving the off-season and ready to kick off a new year. Communities across the church are spending these last weeks of summer getting geared up to learn, pray, and teach throughout the program year. Which makes it the perfect time to ask: what’s your goal? 

Whether you’re a solo athlete, part of a team, or maybe even a coach who is guiding/inspiring the practice of others– there’s no better time to get back to basics. At Forward Movement, we hear again and again that simple, effective practices can revitalize your church community. Start the year off right with practices that can connect leaders with God and with God’s people – throughout each day, week, and year. 

Daily spiritual practices

For decades, each quarterly booklet of Forward Day by Day has featured the same two prayers on its inside cover. A Morning Resolve, in the front cover, begins:  “I will try this day to live a simple, sincere and serene life.” On the back, we read For Today: “O God, give me strength to live another day.”

To get back to basics with our spiritual practices, we have to start small. Our daily habits – prayer and reflection, service and praise – string together into the “simple, sincere and serene life” we try to live with God.

Forward Day by Day has lasted so long precisely because it offers a simple daily habit: a scripture verse, a bite-sized reflection, surrounded in prayer. Whether it’s reading this little booklet, praying the Daily Office, or another daily practice of scripture and prayer – keep your goal in mind, and draw closer to God each day.

Weekly spiritual practices

Of course, these daily formation practices will only go so far in isolation. Scott Gunn and Melody Wilson Shobe write in Walk in Love: “When we come together each week and pray according to the Book of Common Prayer, we are praying, in a deep sense, as a community…. we are keeping a tradition of worship that stretches through time and is shaped by a tradition of prayer that has been passed down from generation to generation.” 

Sunday morning gives us another opportunity to engage with scripture and prayer, but with even stronger ties to our community. On Sunday, we’re reading the same scriptures as our siblings across the church, and reflecting on their words as they apply to this people, in this place. To say nothing of how we come together as one Body at the eucharistic table. Olsen says:  “At the very heart of the Eucharist is the incontrovertible fact that it’s not just about me and that we are all in it together. Literally.” How do your practices of weekly worship connect with this truth, and this goal?

Seasonal spiritual practices

Lest we get too focused on weekly worship metrics, the seasons of the church year bring us back to take the longer view. From Walk In Love: “In the Christian life, we measure our time not by things we achieve or things we need to do. We measure our time by what God has already done for us in the birth and resurrection of Christ Jesus.”

You may already be planning your community’s journey through the year –  the watchful expectation of Advent, the somber penitence of Lent. I hope you’re also planning moments of celebration – not just the big-ticket days of Christmas and Easter, but throughout the joyful seasons that follow. And that’s to say nothing of the season we’re in now, hitting the midpoint: the long green season of discipleship, where we listen again and again to Jesus’ words and try to figure out how to live them out in our lives – together.

What’s your goal? Here at Forward Movement, we’ve got an answer ready: to inspire disciples and empower evangelists. Whatever your season, whatever your church role, and however you might describe your goal, we pray you go into the coming weeks inspired and empowered to serve God in your own community.