There is ministry that God longs to see done in this world that we can only accomplish working together as partners.  Like good ballroom dancers, we need to begin to discipline ourselves to stop looking down at our own feet and start looking up and ahead to see where God is leading us together.

My 14-month old daughter has recently started to take her first few tentative steps.  She’s very proud of her newfound mobility but she’s also still pretty unstable on her feet.  It’s interesting (and a bit humorous) to watch her as she toddles along ponderously looking at the ground, carefully thinking about each step. In time, of course, she won’t have to think about what her feet are doing nearly as much; she will learn to walk without looking down. Though it may at first seem counterintuitive she’ll ultimately learn that she can move much more effectively when she doesn’t look down at her feet. She’ll realize that her feet are connected to the rest of her body, and she doesn’t have to look down to make them work.

Becca’s first tentative steps remind me so much of my early days learning ballroom dancing.  When I first started dancing it was all I could do to get my feet to go where they were supposed to go.  I remember hours of practice in the basement: “Forward-side-together; back-side-together.”   I thought I would never learn!  I practically sweat blood trying to learn how to do the basic left and right turn combination in waltz—a fundamental movement for all of waltz.  As hard as it was when I first started, I now do turns without nearly so much thought about where my feet are.  Yes, my feet are still moving, but I am less aware of them; they are connected to the rest of my body and they move in response to how I want my body to move.   

Ballroom dancing is about two people moving together as one.  Therefore, the strength of my connection with my partner is far more important than what my feet are doing. My dance teacher often admonishes me not to look at my feet while dancing.  She’s trying to discipline me and set me up for future success in dancing.  It turns out that if we look down while we dance, it actually pulls us off balance (the average head weighs a much as a bowling ball, so imagine all that weight pulling us down!)  As a seasoned dancer, my instructor knows that if I stand up straight and look ahead as I dance my connection with my partner will be stronger and my dance experience will be much more fun!  I might muddle through some basic steps with a bad connection, but I’ll never make that much progress; I’ll probably eventually end up frustrated and give up because I can’t make progress learning more advanced dance steps.

It occurs to me that we can view our individual relationship with God as a dance.  If we think of God is our dance partner (and oh by the way God always insists on leading J!) then the most important thing for us is to establish a strong connection with our “partner.”  It’s easy to get preoccupied with looking down to see what our own feet are doing (i.e., we get focused our own personal agenda) but if we do, the connection with our partner inevitably suffers. The Message translation has an interesting passage about this:

So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.  —Colossians 3:1-2 [MSG]

There is another partnership that has recently been established in my own community.  Two United Methodist Churches in our area, including the one I attend, have joined to form a cooperative parish—my wife is now the lead pastor for the Patapsco–Lodge Forest Cooperative Parish.  In some ways this new partnership is a concession to the reality of declining attendance and struggling finances that many churches are facing in today’s world, but it also represents a genuine desire to do more effective ministry in our community than each individual church can accomplish on their own.  Our new motto is: “Two unique churches; one common ministry.”  In other words, the two churches have chosen to partner to make (more effective) ministry together.

It strikes me that this is similar to what happens when two people choose to join together as dance partners—in this case, two unique individuals join together to make dancing.  If you watch an experienced dance couple, it can be a thing of beauty.  It will often appear that the couple glides effortlessly across the flooring, moving as one in rhythm to the music. But of course the reality is each partner is actually working very hard to make something beautiful together.  They know that the partnership cannot possibly succeed unless their connection together is strong and that requires that both individuals dance their respective parts as strongly as they possibly can.  (In ballroom dancing the leader must lead strongly and the follower must be equally trained and disciplined so that they can respond to the leads appropriately—i.e., you can’t “just follow;” it actually takes lots of practice to do it well.)

I think this new partnership our two churches are beginning has great potential to help God’s dream for Southeast Baltimore come true.  If we can learn to dance well together, then it can truly be a thing of beauty that the people of this community will respond to—it might even be a model for other churches to follow. But, as Becca is learning right now, we must learn to walk before we can run… and we must learn dance steps before we can truly dance.  Learning to dance well takes lots of practice—take it from me, it takes hard work, sweat… and sometimes tears.  One has to be willing to sacrifice self to make our partnership with God and with one another as strong as possible.  If we insist on having everything our way, we won’t make a very good dance partner.

Speaking more generally, I think that for followers of Jesus to begin to do the ministry that I believe God longs to see done in this world—to really address the big problems that our world faces today—we’re going to have to learn to move more effectively as partners in ministry. We need to begin to discipline ourselves to stop looking down at our own feet (i.e., our own interests) and instead look up and ahead to see where God is, and where God is leading us together.  We’re going to have to build stronger bonds of connection between our various churches, between denominations (and perhaps even our connections with people of other faiths) so that it begins to look to the outside world that we move almost effortlessly as one—unified as Christians.  (This was one of Jesus’ greatest desire for his followers—John 17:20-21.)

I can almost guarantee you that the people we long to reach with the message of Christ don’t particularly care what denomination we represent, what church we are from, what cooperative parish we represent, or any other community affiliation. What they care about, even if they don’t realize it yet, is getting a glimpse of something new and different in their midst—a fresh wind blowing if you will.  In many cases, they need to see that something other than the status quo is possible for them. They need to see something that gives them an inkling of the “hope that’s tucked away in you and me,” something that makes them long for more of what we have…

So our challenge then—in whatever community we find ourselves a part of in our own local context—is to learn to dance well with one another.  We must work to break down barriers that strain our connection and keep us from dancing together more effectively, or that impede others from joining the dance.  I pray that our ever-growing dance will radiate more and more of God’s beauty to the world.  May people be drawn to that beauty and begin to dance with us.   May we not shy away from opportunities to reveal more of the hope that is within each of us. May our hope become contagious “infecting” those we come into contact with every day, and may that contagious hope begin to transform our churches, our community, and ultimately, our world!