Stage 1: The Recognition of God
For Christmas, I received a LEGO set. I’m not sure how long it has been since you built a LEGO set, but it had been a while for me. My kids have been building them for years, but it has been more than a decade since I was asked to help.
I opened the box, pulled out the four bags of Legos, and found the instruction booklet. This particular set contained 608 LEGO pieces and 64 pages of visual directions. I happened to be building an orchid, so the direction booklet gave a small blurb about orchids, and then most of the rest of the booklet was pictures to look at and copy.
While there aren’t any words describing what to do, there are images that take you step by step through the process. You begin by opening bag number one and then proceed to use all of the legos from that first bag before you open bag number two. You could open all the bags of legos at once and dump them into a pile, but it would slow down the building process because it would take much longer to find the pieces needed in each step of the directions.
Eventually, you work through all the steps in the booklet and end up with a LEGO creation that resembles the image on the box. Though, that process isn’t without setbacks - at times, you place a piece in the wrong place, requiring you to pause and move it before you can continue, and at other times you aren’t sure what the directions are trying to get you to do so you need to ask for help. But the more you interact with the pieces, the more you understand how they work and what they are meant to do.
Our faith formation journey is much like building a LEGO set. Though an imperfect analogy, it will be one we can come back to in the weeks ahead to visualize the stages of our formation.
Last week I mentioned The Critical Journey, a book by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich presenting the six stages they believe represent our formation journey as we encounter Jesus over our lifetime.
In referring to Stage 1, they write, “The recognition of God is where we all begin the journey of faith. We may experience it during early childhood or as adults who come for the first time to recognize the reality or presence of someone who stands behind it all. Regardless of our age, however, it seems true that most begin the journey in a childlike way. We come to it with an innocence, a freshness, that is seldom ever again as vivid or vital.”
Whether we are learning about Jesus, gardening, cooking, investing in the stock market, building a house, parenting, teaching, or pastoring - whatever it is, if it is new to us, regardless of our age, we must begin at the beginning. Our journey of learning and discovery might move more or less rapidly depending on our age, but in learning anything new, we need to start with the basics.
Think back to when you encountered Jesus for the first time. What do you remember about that moment in time? How old were you? Where were you? What was it that got your attention and made you curious to know more?
I was a little girl, about five. It was summertime, and my family, newly involved in church, hosted a group of kids in our yard as we played games and learned about Jesus. As I listened that day, I heard something that made me say, “I want to know Jesus; how can I do that?” - and my journey began.
When we first encounter Jesus, it is a lot like opening the LEGO set for the first time. We aren’t familiar with all of the pieces, we don’t understand all of the directions, but we know what we are building, and we are excited to get started.
In this first formation stage, we tend to trust what people tell us about Jesus. We don’t necessarily question what we are taught, as we are absorbing as much information as possible. Reading our Bible in this stage might be confusing, so we trust others further along on the journey to teach us and to help us understand. In this stage, we are like sponges, soaking up everything we hear. This is a stage full of curiosity, awe, and wonder.
At one point or another, we all find ourselves leading or teaching someone in Stage 1. This responsibility is not to be taken lightly, knowing that this person, young or old, is just getting started in their journey with Jesus and will absorb, as truth, whatever we are teaching them. We must help lay a foundation rooted in God’s truth, not ideas of our own making.
This stage might last for months or years, depending on our age and experiences within this stage. As with anything, it is possible to get stuck here. Imagine my LEGO set. What if I received it, opened the box, looked at the pieces, and got so overwhelmed that I never actually started putting it together, either because I didn’t understand how or because it felt too hard? I would own this beautiful piece of art, but I would never enjoy it.
The hope is that those who encounter God in Stage 1 will not remain in this stage forever but will continue to learn and grow and find their way into the next stage - The Life of Discipleship.
More about that next time.
~ Melissa