This essay is part of a series reflecting on the loss of transcendence in contemporary cultures and the experience of resonance through the Relevance to Resonance project.
Note: I’ve changed some details from the story from worship to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.
Discouragement has been a kind of elevator music looping in the background during my seven years as pastor. It slides into conversations with colleagues. It has echoed in the pauses at each congregation I have served, even as we’ve tried new things and connected with our community in new ways. When I’ve needed a more concrete metaphor to express it, I say that it feels like we’re trying to push a boulder up a hill. Many of our denominations are struggling. Most of our congregations grieve a past they can’t recreate. They long for change and yet might also resist it. Meanwhile, clergy feel the weight of leadership in a time of increasing secularization and polarization.
Four years into serving my first congregation, it seemed that our strategies and hard work were producing only a temporary reprieve from the forces of decline. I wondered if I was lacking something, if I was missing something, if I was doing something wrong. My muscles were tired of pushing the boulder. In the angst, God showed up in a way that concretized my theology of the role of pastor in this time.
Holy moments
It was Sunday morning. A mother with twin first graders, new visitors, walked through the doors. I secretly worried they’d be disappointed, but I pushed the thought aside, and worship began. During our moment with the children, we talked about how God made each of the kids in God’s image. We read a book about different situations kids experience. One of the characters had diabetes, one was blind, one had autism. When we got to a page about a girl with dyslexia, one of the little girls who grew up in the church pointed to the picture and announced that she has dyslexia. I thanked her for sharing and asked her what it feels like to know she’s made in God’s image. She said that she knows God made her, and she likes herself the way she is. Her mom teared up as she watched her daughter share with complete trust. It was a holy moment.
Later the kids left for Sunday school, and after a sermon and a song it was prayer time—a time when the congregation is invited to share joys and concerns. After a few of the usual requests to pray for people who are sick, a man in our small choir stood up. With a shaky voice, he told us he was grateful for the little girl who shared about her medical condition with confidence that she was an image of God. He had just been diagnosed with a mood disorder and was struggling very much. He didn’t want to tell anyone, but listening to her share helped him. She was the voice of God for him.
After the service, the visiting mom of the twins hugged this young man and told him she was grateful to find a place where people could be real. The mom of the little girl who shared hugged me, thanking me for a space where her daughter could be held with love. Our lay reader thanked the younger generations for navigating our human situations with honesty in a way that his generation avoided.
I went home that day stunned by the Holy Spirit. God shows up. God ministered to all of us that morning, not because we did anything to earn it through relevant worship or innovative programs, but simply because God is God. My job was to hold the space for people to encounter God and each other, and affirm how these connections are at the core of Christian faith and practice. In uncertainty and heartache we meet each other, and Christ meets us, and something new unfolds full of glimmering melody for others to witness and join in.
Resonance
In The Congregation in a Secular Age, Andy Root calls what we experienced resonance, drawing from the work of philosopher Hartmut Rosa. So what is resonance? Resonance…
- comes in moments of experiencing deep connection to the life around us.
- arises when we are grounded in the reality of what is.
- is the delight that comes from being alive and human in this moment.
- is meaningfully encountering the stories and being of people around us.
- is when we are affected palpably by beauty and goodness.
- is when the busyness around us recedes and we sense the vibrations of what is eternal.
From my view, resonance roots us in the relationships that sustain us. Resonance points us to what is sacred. If God took on flesh in Christ to connect with us in our humanity, and if the Holy Spirit invites us into an ongoing dance of love between Creator and created, then resonance reveals lived expressions of incarnational, trinitarian faith. Resonance reflects the good news, the gospel, that we are loved and held by God in Christ no matter what.
But apart from moments like that Sunday morning in worship, when resonance rushes over me, what can I do to allow resonance to shape my pastoral identity and ministry, knowing that the emotional and spiritual demands of pastoring will continue? What has emerged is a simple practice of prayer.
Ignatian prayer: consolation and desolation
In seminary, I took a series of classes on Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius of Loyola was a 12th-century soldier-turned-monk who taught a form of prayer based on paying attention to the moments of consolation and desolation in our days.
- Consolation refers to moments when you feel close to God, are growing in faith, and can give to others in joy.
- Desolation refers to moments that turn you in on yourself, when faith or courage shrink, and when joy is hard to come by.
Consolations aren’t all obviously positive. Something that makes you feel good could be a desolation if it pulls you away from people who matter most. Something that hurts could be a consolation if it deepens your compassion for others’ suffering. Ignatius would call this prayer practice, discernment, a daily process of listening for the Spirit’s call and responding to it.
Ignatian discernment and resonance
Ignatian discernment synchronizes well with the concept of resonance. As a pastor in a secular age, attending to resonance is a powerful element of prayer. Resonance becomes a bridge between secular and sacred. God is showing up in all kinds of ways, singing out over the elevator music of malaise (to use Root’s term in The Pastor in a Secular Age). If as pastor I am absorbed in institutional metrics and congregational laments about what used to be, I might miss hearing and articulating God’s song calling out in the here and now. A discipline of prayer that tunes me to the music of God and the gospel is vital.
Practicing Ignatian prayer
Here’s what this prayer discipline has looked like for me:
- I go through the events of the week, noticing moments that stand out in my memory.
- When did I experience or witness resonance?
- When were others around me connected to each other, experiencing delight and aliveness?
- Which moments were dull or dead or draining or rushed with busyness?
- What are moments of resonance showing me about God’s desire for my community, congregation, or self?
- How can I respond to them faithfully and concretely?
This practice has led me to ask the people of my congregation where they have experienced life-giving connection to God and each other. Their answers point them to all kinds of places, not only time spent in church. Their collective answers have guided us to adjust where we focus our energy together and how we frame our priorities. We have shifted our focus from many things to a few things. Where there is connection and life, we focus more.
And, so…
A lot has changed since that sacred Sunday morning when a child voiced God’s song, creating community and assuring me of my vocation. Institutional decline has accelerated with the impact of the pandemic, church has become less a part of more people’s lives, and discouragement has continued its refrain for many. In it all, a prayer practice of attending to resonance is a door into hope, orientation, and direction.
And so I continue as a pastor in a secular age. Sometimes it still feels like pushing a boulder up a hill. But I try to notice that the hill is covered with green grass. When I look around, what a view there is! What good traveling company God gives! And when the elevator static in my head gets too loud, I know to listen for God singing out reminders that the God who made the hill is the God who rolls the stone away.
Suggested resources:
- View these two animated videos on Church in the Accelerating Age produced for the Relevance to Resonance project.
- Watch the five-part Congregations in a Secular Age video series with Blair Bertrand, featuring Andrew Root’s book.
- Root, Andrew. The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life. Baker Academic, 2021.
- Root, Andrew. The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God. Baker Academic, 2019.
- Sotomayor, Sonia. Just Ask: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You. Penguin Young Readers Group, 2019.
- Wise, Heather. “Listening for the Music of the Gospel: On the Relationship of Depth Psychology and Theological Dogmatics.” Ph.D. Dissertation. Union Theological Seminary. May 2016.
