Pneumatic Thinking
By Seán Mullan
(From the October - December 2021 issue of VOX)
“Must be age,” I thought. The hills seemed to be getting a bit steeper and a little longer each week. Gear changes were required sooner. “Another birthday approaching,” I told myself. “Were you expecting it to get easier?”
The Sunday afternoon I cycled to visit my daughter and watch Cork take a hammering in the hurling final was the worst. The cycle there was all on the flat. There was only a whisper of a breeze. But I was struggling. Then the woman, who looked like she only ever cycled on a Sunday afternoon, passed me. Easily. I looked for a sign of a battery on her bike but there was none.
As my head went down, I noticed my front tyre. It looked wider than normal. When I got to my daughter’s place I gave the tyres a squeeze – marshmallow, both of them. I realised I hadn’t pumped them or even checked them in months. Two minutes with a borrowed a pump and the cycle back, despite Cork’s defeat, was a delight. I was younger and fitter in an instant. Age was just a number after all!
Air in the tyres – it’s so basic you’ll notice it’s missing. Until you don’t. Checking the pressure is something you never forget to do. Until you do.
“Like hurling, there’s no way to do church on your own. You need to be with a team.”
Like the Cork hurlers, churches have taken a bit of a hammering in recent times. The bans or restrictions on gatherings have been a hard hit for a movement that has gathering at the heart of its identity. Like hurling, there’s no way to do church on your own. You need to be with a team.
There was an amount of hard work and creative thinking that went into finding ways to continue the activity without gathering. Even when the restrictions seemed overly cautious most groups worked to follow guidelines and still try to be a community. There were a few “we must obey God rather than Gardaí” moments but not a lot.
Now gatherings are “legal” again and churches can get back to doing what they used to do; liturgy, singing, preaching, praying, scripture study, discussion, supporting one another and serving those in need. Different groupings have had and will have different emphases and priorities. But as the activities resume, all might benefit from the habit of regularly checking the tyres.
“Jesus of Nazareth trained His apprentices in the trade of daily living.”
With such a variety of activities and emphases what is the air in the tyres? Two words; ‘make disciples.’ Those are the words that Jesus of Nazareth spoke as He was handing on responsibility for the movement He had started to those He had trained. “Make disciples.”
‘Disciple’ means ‘learner.’ In those times, learning was not just a classroom or “Zoom-room” experience. Being a student then was more like being an apprentice today, on-the-job training. Apprentices learn a trade by watching and doing, watching and doing. They observe and work and make mistakes and get corrected and try again and again and again as they perfect their trade. They learn from the master to master the trade.
Jesus of Nazareth trained His apprentices in the trade of daily living. They learned from Him how to live ordinary everyday life within the rule of God, which Jesus announced was present and accessible to all. His invitation was to enter that kingdom and learn from Him how life under God’s rule worked.
I once had a conversation with one of the finest preachers I have known. Week in, week out he preached great sermons to a church full of people who were full of appreciation for his teaching. I asked him what effect he was seeing in the daily lives of those who were always there to hear. “Very little,” was his reply. The activity did not produce apprentices. Replace ‘preaching’ with any of the activities that churches can take on and the issue could be the same. The activity can be really well done and much appreciated yet not make disciples. People become customers who consume rather than apprentices who learn.
Whatever church groupings do together now that they restart gathering, this notion of helping one another live as apprentices can be at the heart. The weekend gathering is a chance to look back on a week in the lives of apprentices, lessons learned, mistakes made, skills honed, deficiencies exposed, understanding deepened. It’s also a chance to look forward to the week that lies ahead in the apprentices’ journey towards mastering the trade.
All the usual communal church activities can be part of the process of apprentice-shaping. But it won’t happen automatically. Like air in the tyres it needs regular checking.
Seán Mullan has been working in church leadership for many years. He has developed a project in Dublin City Centre called “Third Space”.
