Cold coffee, burning hearts

I got my start in professional ministry in Minnesota. The year I moved there, it snowed on Labor Day. My sense of dread at being snowbound during what the rest of the country calls “Fall” was mitigated by this saving grace: I would surely have scores of eager parishioners who would turn out for an adult education series in which I could show off all the learning that earned me a newly-minted master’s degree. What else were folks going to do in those long, dark winters?

Well. Let’s just say I was the one who had a lot to learn. I spent many winter nights trying to warm the parish hall with a budget-conscious thermostat, an industrial-sized pot of coffee, and the body heat of two or three good souls. The pastor, who’d been around the ecclesial block a few times, had the good sense to hold forth only on Sunday mornings between masses. The attendance was respectable, but even he never had what you’d call a “turnout.”

This is the image many of us have of adult formation. It was in the face of this image that eight years ago the bishops of the united states said:

There are many obstacles to adult catechesis, many challenges to overcome to bring the living word of god to the adults in our faith communities. But just like the disciples after Jesus revealed himself to them, our hearts burn within us to proclaim the good News of the reign of God. We are committed to this plan and are willing “to exercise utmost courage and patience” as we implement it. We move ahead full of hope, knowing this vision of adult faith formation can become reality. (Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us, 181, 182)

I want to believe, I really do. I have, at times, been hopeful, patient, maybe even courageous. I’ve also been frustrated, disappointed, and discouraged over the years as I poured countless gallons of undrunk coffee down the drain.

I’ve heard all the reasons adults don’t show up for formation classes. We all have. Say them with me:

• We live in a post-Christian society.
• There are many more entertainment options now.
• Parents are busier than they used to be.
• There are more single parent homes than there used to be.
  

Okay, okay. All true, I suppose. But I walked into borders bookstore last November, and in the magazine section, at eye level among Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated, were three religiously-themed magazines. No big deal you say? The magazines were Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. Featured on their covers were, respectively, a cross, a rosary, and a renaissance painting of Christ. A whole lot of post-Christian, entertainment-saturated, busy parents must be reading those kinds of stories.

Newsweek, et. al., are not evangelizing. They are selling stories. if faith stories did not sell, they’d dump them and sell other stories. So how is it that the secular media can sell faith stories and those of us with faith cannot? Perhaps we disciples have forgotten how to put the news in good News.

I was at a diocesan religious education conference the day after I saw the magazines at borders. At the closing mass, the local bishop gave a standard closing homily. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. And then he ended with a story. It was a story of a very personal and deep loss he had suffered. He told us why, and how, in the face of such loss, he still had faith. The assembly was rapt. Some were in tears. All of us were formed in our faith in that moment.

That bishop’s sharing of his personal faith struggle was exactly the kind of courage the conference of bishops promised us in Our Hearts Were Burning. It was a new model (or renewed model) of how to teach faith. That’s news. Good news.