The calendars of most youth workers are full. We often run our ministries the same way, filling our calendars with events, hoping something connects kids to Christ. Despite our best efforts, we rarely take time to slow down…but what would happen if we did? What value might slowness bring to our lives and those of our students? To find out, we asked three folks, involved in ministry, who are seeking to live out the value of slow.
Youthfront President Mike King has developed a rhythm of life involving prayer, beauty, retreat, pilgrimage, silence and solitude that governs the way he lives. His book, Presence-Centered Youth Ministry: Guiding Students into Spiritual Formation, teaches youth workers how to help students do the same.
Though she can’t remember a time she didn’t pray, Sybil MacBeth also can’t remember a time she prayed well. She’s the author of Praying in Color, a practice born when her desperation to pray for family and friends intersected with her love of color and doodling.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is a co-founder of Rutba House, a house of hospitality where the formerly homeless are welcomed into a community that eats, prays and shares life together. He’s the author of several books, including The New Monasticism and Strangers at My Door.
YouthWorker Journal: Gandhi said, “The trouble with you Americans is that you start doing before being.” What does it mean to do before be?
Sybil MacBeth: In a capitalist society, we’re trained to produce, to succeed. If there’s no growth, we wonder, “What’s the problem? What do you have to show for what you’ve done?” Parents are scared their kids are going to get in trouble, so they over-program them so there’s no time to daydream and confront emptiness. As adults, being means checking in with our souls. It means asking the larger questions, “Why am I here? Who am I? What should I be doing?”
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: To do before being is to be more concerned with what you achieve than who you are. This is a basic question of identity: Do you matter because of what you do? Or do you matter because you’re created in God’s image?
YWJ: Do you agree with Gandhi: Is doing before being a problem for Americans?
Mike King: North Americans are pragmatists. Our lives are governed by chronos. Chronos is a Greek word that describes time as ordered, chronological and measured by hours, minutes and seconds. In many churches, chronos is given priority. We, the people of God, become enslaved to appointments, calendars and things-to-do lists. If we desire to nurture a faith community that thrives, we must grasp the importance of orienting ourselves to kairos, God’s economy of time.
Sybil: American Christians are completely guilty of that. We’re all about business and entertainment. A lot of contemporary churches want to keep people interested. There’s always noise and activity. There’s either music or people talking. There’s no built-in silence. There’s no time for reflection.
Jonathan: Gandhi saw how much Americans are driven by our need to achieve and how little our Christianity has done to challenge that.
YWJ: What effect does the speed of life have on our souls?
Sybil: We’re designed for speed and slowness. We don’t want to have a completely slow life. We want a saner life. If I’m too busy and fast, I get frazzled and short-tempered and take it out on the people I love.
Jonathan: In the 20th century, we learned we could go faster than the speed of sound and not fly into a thousand pieces. We are now, in the 21st century, beginning to pay attention to the long-term effect speed has on us as people—mind, body and spirit.
YWJ: Tell us about a time when speed impacted your soul.
Mike: I’m an ambitious Type-A, hyper-driven person addicted to accomplishment. I seek out times of contemplation, solitude and other spiritual practices for sanity and to discover what it means to become more fully human and faithful in my life with God.
Jonathan: I spent a few years in my early adulthood racking up frequent-flyer miles for Jesus—going everywhere on mission trips and adventures. One day I realized for all my talk about God’s love, I didn’t really know who I was or where I belonged in the world. I had to slow down and stay put to learn that.
YWJ: Mike mentioned spiritual practices. What’s the biblical foundation for them?
Mike: Paul speaks of runners who run the race and must go into strict training in order to excel. For runners to succeed, they must practice. Likewise, Christians must practice. In
Jonathan: The Bible is full of spiritual practices—Abraham going on pilgrimage, Daniel fasting, Deborah praying, the psalmist writing a song of praise. Through spiritual practices, people connect their daily lives with God’s mystery.
YWJ: How do spiritual practices contribute to faith formation?
Mike: Christian practices are intentional activities that shape and habituate us to live meaningful lives in Christ. The Christian life is meant to be lived in a community that practices what it means to be the people of God faithfully. Christian practices cannot manipulate grace; they are a means of grace.
Sybil: I am what I practice. If I decide I’m going to have a practice of gratitude, every day I might spend 10 minutes looking at what I’m grateful for in my life. When I do that enough, I become that. Those practices become the muscles and sinews of my spiritual life.
Jonathan: Christianity isn’t just something you believe; it’s a way to live. You can’t learn how to live from a sermon. It takes practice. A community of people who are trying to figure out the way of Jesus is a community of formation. Spiritual practices are the means God gives us to grow in grace.
YWJ: What does it mean to practice slowness?
Mike: Patiently trusting the Holy Spirit is necessary for Christian formation and transformation. A slow life is tuned into kairos. Kairos has to do with time being ripe, with unhurried, opportune moments when God transforms. Kairos cannot be forced through formulaic efforts. Think of times when you were just hanging out when you suddenly were engaged in a conversation you never could program. Something mystical happened. You found yourself amazed at the work of the Holy Spirit. These moments happen in kairos.
Sybil: Think about the slow-cooking movement. What the slow-food movement does is take the ingredients in their raw form and let them simmer. The process is as important as the product. You let the ingredients do what they’re meant to do. Slowness is about paying attention, enjoying each moment, and looking for the movement of the Spirit.
YWJ: How can we incorporate slow living into our lives and ministries?
Mike: Embrace fixed-hour prayer. Eat together in community. Set aside spiritual formation days to practice the things you value and are passionate about. Plan events that bring families together to eat, play and fellowship. Do an annual retreat. Encourage personal retreats for staff. Before you start meetings, set aside a time to center yourselves, pray and remember why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Sybil: Make time for doing nothing in your calendar. I create places in my life where my soul can catch up. One of the things I’ve done is from The Artist’s Way. It’s the morning pages. I get up and write in a notebook. It gets out everything that’s happened in my brain at night before I pray. Within that unedited writing often comes what I need to deal with in prayer.
Jonathan: The single most important act of resistance in a world of endless communication and mobility is to live with limits. Turn your phone off at 10 p.m. Don’t answer email after dinner. Turn your computer off one day a week. Silence your phone for 15 minutes a day. There’s no magic rule, but we all need limits because we’re limited beings.
YWJ: How can we incorporate prayer into our ministries?
Mike: When Paul instructs us to pray without ceasing, he doesn’t tell us how to pray all the time. As a result, Christians developed prayer practices to help us pray continually. Incorporate opportunities for silence and contemplation. If we expose young people to ways they can commune with God, they find practices that fit their way of understanding and interaction.
Sybil: Ask, “How do you pray a word of Scripture?” Write the word God in the middle of the page and start doodling. With Praying in Color, people in my family had cancer. I love words, but I couldn’t find the words. I realized I’d written someone’s name in the middle of a doodle. I was releasing them into God’s care.
Jonathan: Invite them into your prayer life. Students need to see there isn’t any magic to prayer—some days you do it even though it doesn’t really do much for you. Connecting with God is complicated. It’s important to let kids know that.
YWJ: In a culture addicted to speed, will youth really respond to slowing down and cultivating practices such as prayer?
Mike: I’ll let Hailey, a teenager, respond to this: “I’ve never been in a place where I felt God’s presence so consistently. Three times a day, at set hours, we stop whatever we’re doing and pray together—it’s beautiful. I never have been so proud to be a part of a community.” She’s talking about LaCygne, our contemplative community south of Kansas City. It’s our North American expression of Taize. What’s happening there among late adolescents is the best answer I have to this question.
Sybil: If you create a non-threatening atmosphere, they really like it. Use candles. Darkness is a wonderful thing because you’re not looking for other people’s approvals. Youth ministry often has been about entertainment. This is anti-entertainment. It’s about creating a safe place for silence and stillness.
Jonathan: Two things are always appealing to youth. One is the mundane cool of the status quo. The other is rebellion against it. Slow is the new radical. Young people get into that.
YWJ: If we cultivated slowness and prayer rather than programs, how might our youth ministries change?
Sybil: Our job is to introduce kids to practices that give them tools for entering a relationship with Jesus for the rest of their lives. Then the Spirit blows where it will.
Jonathan: You might not have as many kids show up…30 minutes of silence isn’t as compelling as a video reel and praise band. However, the fruit is young people who are getting involved with God, not just consuming a God-flavored product. Who knows what might happen if you got a room full of kids to start wrestling with God. It could turn the town around.
Recommended Resources:
LaCygne.org
Apps: DivineOffice, Glenstal Abbey, Prayer by Zondervan
Life Together by Dietrich Bonheoffer
An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor
Flunking Sainthood by Jana Riess
Help! Thanks! Wow! and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle
Read, Think, Pray, Live by Tony Jones
Praying in Color
The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
The Book of Common Prayer
