Community Group Backstory

Here is the backstory for the community group I will begin leading on Sept. 17, entitled – “Recovering the language of the Psalms to shape and enrich your devotional life.”

I grew up with family devotions and was introduced to personal devotions when I was 15. I wondered, “Why do I need more?”  In our teen years we are getting ready to leave home and the comfort that comes from safe routines that give a sense of security and identity. The summer before I left home I burned through the Bible in two months to prepare for a Bible exam at Covenant College. I passed. That exercise started me on the practice of reading through the Bible every year. Bible reading and prayer were transfer skills and practices I brought from 18 years of family devotions. I say 18 years because I sat in the highchair at the kitchen table and listened before I could talk. I am one of those Christians who grew up with, “Jesus loves me, this I know because the Bible tells me so” on account of family devotions—devotions that were then reinforced by Sunday school and Sunday worship, in that order.

Fast forward 40 years into my deployed military ministry in Iraq and Afghanistan. (More details from those 40 years will be considered in upcoming blogs for the community group.) In the hospital in Iraq (which I have read was overrun by ISIS) and in the mountains of Afghanistan, I ministered mostly to young airman, soldiers and Marines. Often what came out of those listening relationships was a desire to learn how to connect with God on their own because war bestows chaos on life’s schedules. We ate and slept when we could, where we could. Sometimes, I only saw them for a very few days each month. They needed to be able to survive spiritually, and maybe thrive, on their own. I encouraged them to have a spiritual wingman or battle buddy if they could find one.

In our community group, we will focus on personal devotions. I always encourage people to find a spiritual family, a small group whenever they can, and a local church. But so often finding group time in a 16+ hour day is for many as hard as it was in the deployment environment. Like I did with those people serving in war I would like to share a skillset to create your/our own portable spiritual MREs, that is, Meals Ready to Eat. Be assured—the community group study time will be about the Psalms and their language/words—not war stories. Each person’s story is unique and that will be valued in the community group.

In talking with people in the past few years, I hear they want to move beyond the routines of devotions—often Bible Reading and prayer—into something more real. The great undefined of “real” is, it seems, the sense that something is missing. There is a desire by many for there to be more in their devotional lives.  One of the missing needs in their devotional lives, I discovered, was for the language/words to describe what I refer to as the actions and experiences of a Christian devotional life. That is where the community group Working Group Objective came from: “The goal of this study and discussion of selected Psalms is to recover Biblical language to shape, enrich, and describe the actions and experiences of our Christian devotional life.”

This community group will be more of a first draft rather than a first edition of what I have learned from my own life and ministry. This group study of selected Psalms will not answer all the questions people have about a devotional life. The goal as stated “…is to recover Biblical language to shape, enrich, and describe the actions and experiences of our Christian devotional life.” What I want to share is not new. We will begin at the recovery of Biblical language in the Psalms, and that Biblical language will then, I hope, “shape, enrich and describe” our daily devotional lives.