Building The Playground

Community, Following Jesus & Experiencing Faith

Day 5 of the build

2 to go!

The rain has been pouring down throughout the day, yet progress has been made on the playground that my family and I have come and joined with about 50 other people to help build at Westminster Woods Camp. I'm including some of my pictures in a slideshow below. You can also see more photos of today's work and witness the emergence of the playground on the Woods website HERE.



I was talking with someone about the playground, what it represents for the camp and in a way what it means for the larger community of faith. Things are getting rough from the church. It's not just the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence that are finding it to be an unwelcoming place. Many people don't even consider the Church community as an option, or a desireable place because it seems either a) so out of touch, b) irrelevant, c) a tradtional throwback to the 1950s, or d) an unwelcoming exclusive place, or e) all of the above. While I can understand, and myself have felt this at times, I have to admit that being actively involved as a participant in the life of the church as my community of faith is not only formative but foundational for me in my life. As our churches either close, or struggle to attract anyone who is "post-modern", "po-mo", or "emergent", I don't believe that such doom and gloom has to come to pass.



We have to change. We have to be transformed from the builder-generation, corporate-cultured way of doing and being church that has come to dominate our country's experience and spiritual sphere in the past 60 years. No one wants to come and listen to some sort of quasi-corporate expert talk to us about faith with some flow-chart or boring 3 point sermon. People want to experience it for themselves. We want to participate in a community of faith, feeling connected to others who are on the same path, seeking the same spiritual journey, desiring to practice spirituality in their daily life - not just with an ordained "expert" one hour a week on Sunday. This playground thing is all about it. It's an event, a worship gathering - in which we are experiencing what faith means as a community gathered to accomplish something bigger than us. It's a community that's come together in faith because of a vision that was born by a cosmic power about 2 years ago in the hearts of a few key people - I have to call that the living Spirit of God moving in our midst. This is faith. This is the real stuff of practicing our spirituality. It's not just talking about what faith looks like. It's not hearing about what faith can do for you and to you. It's experiencing faith in 12 inch deep mud, around a table sharing dinner with soaked-through people filled with joy, sharing drinks with friends at night reflecting on the meaning of the day and the way in which our shared faith has made so much meaning in our life. Faith isn't a spectator sport, I often say. It's dangerous. It's challening. It's makes you change, be open to transformation. It's oftentimes quite muddy. But it's real. It makes meaning of and in our lives. It invites us to make meaning together as a community confessing a shared hope that their is more than what we just see, or can buy in a store, or experience through our tivos.

Maybe that's why church is struggling - Presbyterian, or other. For the past 60+ years we've been so busy talking about faith, that we've forgotten how to practice it?

We still need help up here at the Woods - Saturday and Sunday! Come work on this amazing project. Come experience what faith is all about, what Jesus really meant when he said, "Come and follow me!" Info is on the Camp Website.