Exercising the Faith Muscle

When it comes to fatherhood I find that every day is a school day. I’m constantly learning about the bewildering world facing our teenage children. Whether it is the pressures of social media and apps like Snapchat, BeReal, or dear knows what the latest one is, or why pop stars like Harry Styles or Taylor Swift can break the internet when tickets for their concerts go on sale. It’s a constant battle to stay in touch.

We recently went on holiday for a week to the north coast of Northern Ireland. My son is a keen climber, while his father is, perhaps, the most unadventurous soul on the planet. We booked a day trip to do some Coasteering together.

Coasteering is combination of scrambling up rocks and jumping off cliffs into the sea. It seemed like a great idea at the time, but I found myself getting pretty nervous as the morning came around. Our group of 5, included our instructor, Jordi, an mazing young man who runs Coasteering NI. We met two brothers, Terry and Pete, who were on this experience to celebrate a significant birthday and, as we donned wetsuits and buoyancy aids in Ballintoy harbour, we made nervous small talk as we prepared to walk out to the beginning of the course.

Jordi made us aware of some safety precautions and, as we walked along the grassy cliff to our starting point, it began to become more real. There would come a point when I would be expected to wade into the sea and scramble up some rocks and do the first jump on the course. Conditions were calm, but I could see the swell and, as a fairly basic swimmer, I was feeling a bit anxious. I’ve never been keen on the sea, unless I’m looking at it from a window with a nice drink in my hand, or walking along a beach a safe distance away from it. My swimming tends to be in swimming pools in very regulated conditions.

Jordi brought us to our first jump. It seemed very high! He explained the technique of entry to the water, gave us a demonstration and invited us to jump right in and scramble out as we made our way around the course. After some discussion about who would go first, our two companions launched themselves one after the other. Conor was next and then all eyes were on me. I tiptoed to the edge,  looked down and felt my heart thumping out of my chest. It seemed an awfully long way down.

Jordi was taking photos for his website and calmly talked me through it all. He suggested the best thing was simply to decide to go, walk out and drop. The more thinking time, the harder it would seem. He did acknowledge that it seemed a pretty unnatural thing to do, to just step off over a cliff and plunge into the sea. After a bit more thinking time I knew I had to trust the process or I would be holding up the whole group. It seemed like an eternity as I launched myself off the edge until I hit the cold water. I bobbled to the surface and scrambled out to great cheers from the group.

One of the things about living a life of faith is that we are always anxious about doing new things. If we have never worked with children before or gone to visit someone in a nursing home. If we have never stood up in public to read a lesson or tried to share why having a faith is important to us with someone else, they are all terrifying experiences.

Jordi said to me that jumping off these rocks would always be difficult even for him. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. It’s never something you underestimate, but if you do as he says and trust the process, it will be ok. It was a very profound lesson in the journey of faith, and I learned a huge amount from our morning together, which was way outside my comfort zone.

There were a number of really important takeaways from this experience for the life of discipleship.

The first is how reassuring it was to have a leader we could trust. He was experienced, safety conscious and reassuring throughout. He was very honest, too, about the challenges of the experience ahead. He recognised it wouldn’t be easy for some of us and modelled each part of what we needed to do before we did it for ourselves. He didn’t push anyone to do anything they weren’t comfortable with, and he cheered us on when we managed to do something we found challenging. Are we like that in our congregations? Do we encourage people to take another step and show them how to do it and walk with them through the process?

The second was how great it was to be doing this as part of a group and not on our own. There was a sense of embarking on an adventure together and we could cheer one another on as we took the next step. There was also a sense of accountability and a recognition that, sometimes, we have reached a level and, rather than hold everyone else back, we need to wait a while and let them move through to the next level. It was a great activity to do with my son and show him that he was actually much better at the adventurous stuff than his old dad. He was patient and encouraging, even though he must have been desperately embarrassed at times at the sight of his dad holding back and cowering on the ledges before stepping out. That’s why it’s so important and encouraging if you are exploring faith to be part of a church community, or an Alpha group, or a house group and have companions with you on the journey.

Lastly, there was a real sense of exhilaration and joy as we pushed through the uncomfortable bits and experienced new things, like being out of our depth, the coldness of the sea and the sense of being fully alive this all brought. The life of faith, too, is an adventure and it often leads us in surprising directions and yet, as we embrace God’s will and purposes for our lives, we feel more alive than we have ever been.

Could you hold in your prayers, please, the families of Jim Harrison and James Johnston, who died earlier this week, in their sorrow and deep sense of loss. We are awaiting details of the timings of their funeral services, which will likely take place next week.

Look forward to speaking again soon.

Much love to everyone,

Jono.