Sacred Pathways

One of things we learned in the school about is how different people get closer to God. Personally, when I learn more about the universe, science, morals, apologetics then I feel like I understand more about God. Writing and discussing things with other people does something similar for me because my second highest pathway is relational. So for me to express that I am getting closer to God, I don’t express what I am feeling necessarily, but more what I am thinking. Small groups are very important to me because I am so high in the intellectual and relational pathways, but I have to be careful not to make other people do things that are a high priority for me.

Some people feel like they get closer to God in a 10 minute conversation with a fellow Christian and some in an hour sermon. Some people get closer to God through a walk in the park and some by an intensive Greek exegesis of the scripture.

Gary Thomas writes a book called Sacred Pathways in which he expresses all of the different ways which people worship God and get closer to God. I will try to summarize briefly, but you should read the book:

o Naturalist – Gets closer to God through being in His creation
o Traditionalist – Gets close to God through ritual, knowing that they are doing same things as his father, his father and the same as Christians one 1000 years ago.
o Ascetic – Gets closer to God through Solitude, Fasting, and Suffering
o Service – Gets closer to God through service to others
o Activist – Gets closer to God through actively challenging injustice, protesting, etc
o Contemplative – Gets closer to God through meditating on God’s character, love etc.
o Intellectual – Gets closer to God through their mind, learning something new about Him
o Relationship – Gets closer to God through being around other believers, activity may not matter so much as being in community with other believers
o Sensate – Gets closer to God through feel, taste, smell, seeing, and hearing. All senses engaged. Music, incense, beauty are all important
o Enthusiast – Gets closer to God through intense worship experiences.

I am high with Intellectual, relationship, musical worship, and naturalist in that order. I am low on ascetic and contemplative. Now if everyone we know in the body of Christ is spread out between these: How can the average church service appeal to everyone? In fact you can see people you know and even whole denominations in these categories.

The concept that is expressed in this book is fairly simple, but once you get hold of it I think it could be life-changing.

Catholic and Orthodox churches seem to believe in putting their folks on the tradition or ritual paths in the congregational setting.

The discipleship path that churches sometimes put their followers on can be pretty formulaic. The classic formula of Protestant churches is usually to put people on the musical path in the large group and then put them on the contemplative and intellectual path at home in their quiet times. We are told quiet times are the way to get closer to God, but we are usually not informed of the variety of activities of which this could be composed.

So what is the point? The point is that if you find that something brings you closer to God, then you should make a plan to do more of that. Make a spiritual game-plan based on the ways that you naturally experience God, but also plan to improve on the ones you are really bad at. For me this would be contemplative and ascetic, ie solitude, fasting, praying alone etc.