Becoming Pilgrim Churches

No, I'm not talking about doing a pilgrim service on Thanksgiving Sunday. I've been there and done that. My sense is that it doesn't work too well, especially if you're a visitor and you want to sit with your spouse (separating men and women doesn't work that well in modern America).

Yesterday I mentioned the book From Nomads to Pilgrims (Alban, 2006) and I can now report that I finished it last night. I plan, as I said yesterday, to write a book review for Sharing the Practice, so I'm not intending to review it here, except to say, that it's very much worth reading!

What I'd like to do is reflect for a moment on this transition from spiritual nomads to spiritual pilgrims that figures prominently in the book. I want to think about this comment in Diana's conclusion to the book:

"At first, we called such churches 'practicing congregations,' butincreasingly, we have come to think of them as 'pilgrimage congregations,'
communities of Christian practice moving forward toward the ultimate goal of
knowing God" (p. 167).



The point of the book, as I see it, is that we live in an age of spiritual nomads -- another word used in the book is spiritual tourists -- where people are seeking spiritual sustenance but never find it. The only place to find it is in the company of others -- in community. My son said he didn't believe in institutional religion. I think that's because he's a PK and there are expectations of him, but he's not alone. But if we reject forms of institutional religion we're left on our own and therefore, we're likely to be nomads. The image of the pilgrim is fitting, however, because it contains within it of being on a journey, but it's a journey in the company of others. The congregations whose stories are told in the book exemplify ways in which mainline Protestant churches have been able to connect with those on a journey but needing to find a company to walk with. What is clear in the book is that congregations who are open to the future but honor their traditions have much to offer those who wish to transition from being nomads to being pilgrims.

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