A little experiment in ordinary reality

April 18, 2016 | Web First
Chris Brnjas | Special to Canadian Mennonite

Marketed “for twenty- and thirty-somethings who wish they could do camp again,” Pastors in Exile (PiE) and Silver Lake Mennonite Camp near Sauble Beach, Ont., ran what they called “Winter Camp for Grown-ups” from March 4 to 6, 2016.

So why would two pastors—Jessica Reesor Rempel and I—have any interest in leading a winter camp with no explicit religious or spiritual language in the advertising. Shouldn’t our job be to lead Bible studies, prayer groups and spiritual retreats?

Well, yes, and we do those things, but, for the most part, only a small percentage of young adults our age will make time for those groups. So it takes a little bit more creativity; it takes meeting people where they’re at and letting the “spiritual” bleed out from the everyday.

People know we’re pastors. People know Pastors in Exile (PiE) is a Christian organization. We don’t have to force anything. We just keep the door open.

By using religious terminology to describe events, it implicitly says they are irrelevant to the rest of ordinary life, and that “stepping out” of reality is necessary to encounter something transcendent.

For many young adults, that has its time and place, but for many others it also is limiting. Most young adults today want to step deeper into the experience of ordinary life—not step away from it.

Here’s what I saw that weekend:

• Young adults of varying backgrounds and spiritual identities discussing deep questions of purpose and meaning, speaking support and insight into each other’s lives.

• Spontaneous songs sung around the campfire, some with spiritual undertones.

• Deep discussions about Jesus, the Christian tradition, technology and the holiness of the everyday.

• A morning service reflecting on how people’s images of God have changed as they’ve grown up.

You might think, “Hey, that sounds like a spiritual retreat.” Except it wasn’t. It was just an experiment in ordinary reality.

Chris Brnjas is co-founder of Pastors in Exile (PiE), along with Jessica Reesor Rempel.

See also “Church geeks serve PiE.”

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