ordinary time… is it?!
NOTE: I am out of town 11 June - 7 July, so I thought I would use this opportunity to invite some of the leaders I have the opportunity to serve with to write a guest devotional. My “pen” will return on 12 July… and you might (rightfully) prefer their reflections to mine!
This week’s devotional comes from the pen of Pastor Jennifer Thigpen. Jenn is the Multi-Ethnic Coordinator for the Western District of The Foursquare Church. She is a Fuller Theological Seminary graduate and serves on the Foursquare Doctrine and Ethics Team and Foursquare Multiply, where she coaches and resources church planters. In her free time she is an assisting pastor at Pasadena Foursquare Church.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…” Ecclesiastes 3:1, NIV
I’ve spent my life being formed by and leading in Pentecostal-Charismatic spaces, but in my adulthood, I have found a deep appreciation for the rhythms of the liturgical calendar. Seasons like Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost mark so many important days in the life of my faith. For church leaders, those big days are where we put much of our time, energy and resources. (Enter “Easter is the church’s Super Bowl” chant here.)
But the part of the liturgical calendar I have come to love the most is “Ordinary Time.” Ordinary Time is the longest season of the church year, broken into two parts: spanning the weeks between Epiphany (January 6) and Ash Wednesday, then spanning the months between Pentecost and Advent. It is all the time that isn’t marked by fasting or feasting; it’s just…ordinary. Ordinary is often cast as boring or uneventful, but it is so much more than that.
In liturgical contexts, ordinary time is marked by growth, maturing, spiritual disciplines and discipleship. It is the invitation to faithfully follow Jesus amid the (sometimes) mundane, everydayness of our lives. In fact, the life of Jesus is where the reading and liturgy of ordinary time invites us to reflect most often – the teachings, the miracles and even the mundane.
So, why do I, a Pentecostal Foursquare pastor, care about ordinary time? Because reminds me that Jesus meets me in the ordinary spaces of my life: in the rhythms of work and rest, around tables and in living rooms, in sermon prep and on walks, with friends and family, in church and outside of it. It is an invitation to orient my life in the way that Jesus oriented his.
I grew up as a product of the church growth movement of the 1990s, where so much of my discipleship and development was event-driven and experience-oriented. “Come to [x] conference!” “Bring your friends to [x] event!” For a certain generation (looking at you, fellow Millennials), we were raised to chase moments and to create experiences, but aside from giving us a formula for how to do our quiet times, there wasn’t a whole lot in the way of how to follow Jesus in ordinary time – in the days between youth group services and events, in the months between camps and conferences, in the years between revivals and great awakenings. We, like every generation before us, have had to learn how to follow Jesus in the midst of paying bills and starting businesses, raising families and building community, shepherding congregations and mentoring students, celebrating big wins and grieving big losses…you know, the ordinary stuff.
For me, the gift of ordinary time has been encounters with God and God’s people. What I used to think of as a lull in my calendar has become a meaningful slowing to reorient myself and my story to the life of Jesus and find intentional presence with God and others. For all the big days that we give our time and energy to, may we all lean in a little bit more to the gift of the ordinary for ourselves and those around us.
