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Q & A
Q&A: Embracing full-time faith Mary Jacobs, Jul 12, 2010
Derek Maul
This life is “far too important not to embrace it with absolutely every ounce of enthusiasm we can muster,” writes Derek Maul, author of The Unmaking of a Part-Time Christian: Beyond a Part-Time Faith (Upper Room Books, 2009).
A blogger, speaker and newspaper columnist, he’s married to Rebekah, a Presbyterian minister living in Brandon, Fla. He spoke recently with staff writer Mary Jacobs.
Why are so many of us “part-time” Christians? I think our world is so fragmented, especially the way we run life here in North America. You’re a member of the Rotary, the YMCA, the golf club and the church. We’re not unified, but we’re not created that way. We’re created for a relationship with God. Faith is meant to be systemic, as opposed to topical.
[Author] Richard Foster says that superficiality is the curse of our age. I think it does more than dilute our faith; it takes it away. This is a relationship we are talking about. We miss out when we dilute our experiences. Instead of being part of the greatest story, we’re just a subplot or a comic strip or a 30-minute sitcom. It’s so much richer than that. Our lives are so precious. Why waste time on half-measures? We equate the full experience with being busy and it’s not. It’s about being engaged.
You write about your experience of returning to the “real world” after spending three months on the Appalachian Trail. How does that relate to the idea of being a full-time Christian? When I was hiking on the trail, there was the sense that the spiritual journey was in every footfall. You’re always on the pathway. You don’t have to think about being on the pathway; you are there, rather than stopping, going to church and going back to “normal life.” The journey is the destination. Being on the trail and then looking back on that experience reminded me of how integrated the spiritual life can be. But it’s so easy to get spliced up and compartmentalized in our modern culture.
What does a full-time Christian look like? I think it is a life where faith is the subtext of everything that we do. Recently, I had an experience when I was walking the dog and suddenly I realized I’d been praying since I’d gotten up from bed. It was not, “Oops, now it’s time to pray”—I was already there. So I’m talking about a sense in which God is so wrapped into the ebb and flow of life that God is the subtext to everything. It’s going to affect the way we respond to our kids when we’re angry or when we’re in a business meeting that’s not going well.
Many readers might say, “I’m a full-time mom” or “I have a full-time job” and therefore “I can’t be a full-time Christian too.” Your response? It’s not mutually exclusive. There’s this idea that we can’t be spiritual giants, we have to leave that to the professionals. But we can be involved in all these other things and still have a sense of full-time faith. We can be the presence of Christ in this world. Christ said that we were going to continue his work; literally, he wanted us to be his presence. It’s not as if we have to drop out and become monastic; it’s the opposite. Jesus wants to be invited into the everyday world. God wants a permanent seat at the table of our consciousness. We can think of Jesus as a filter through which we can pour the contents of every single day.
You wrote about an experience, when you were young, of being a “real” full-time Christian: You were part of a group that was doing nothing but worshipping, studying, traveling and sharing the gospel. Yet that intense community was fraught with problems, including the suicide of a friend. What lessons did you learn? The problem was that the people who were leaders in that group had no accountability to higher-ups. Christianity is a team sport. We have to have accountability and be part of a church in order to be grounded in the collective wisdom of so many people. There’s a lot of anti-denominationalism around these days, but it’s helpful that denominations have centuries of thought, accountability and biblical study to ground us. The spiritual life is not something we are supposed to go off and do without being grounded.
What’s the “payoff” for being a full-time rather than part-time Christian? I wrote about an experience hiking to a summit that was too difficult for many hikers on the trail. I realized there are views reserved only for the serious hikers. That’s a microcosm of the whole book. The pay-off for being a full-time Christian is the view. The discipline of that full-time relationship will lead us to understandings and experiences which are simply not there as a part-time Christian.
Derek Maul
[Author] Richard Foster says that superficiality is the curse of our age. I think it does more than dilute our faith; it takes it away. This is a relationship we are talking about. We miss out when we dilute our experiences. Instead of being part of the greatest story, we’re just a subplot or a comic strip or a 30-minute sitcom. It’s so much richer than that. Our lives are so precious. Why waste time on half-measures? We equate the full experience with being busy and it’s not. It’s about being engaged.
You wrote about an experience, when you were young, of being a “real” full-time Christian: You were part of a group that was doing nothing but worshipping, studying, traveling and sharing the gospel. Yet that intense community was fraught with problems, including the suicide of a friend. What lessons did you learn? 
