40 Day Challenge

One of the hopes of this MARKcentral was that there would be more stories of people living out the scripture coming out of this week. This was the inspiration behind David and I introducing some group application for all the Mark 1 studies. which looked like two sessions with two exercises to be completed.

The first session, included an exercise inspired by Mark Scandrette’s book, Practicing the Ways of Jesus. In the book, he lays out an experiment done by his community called Experiments in Truth, where members participating in the experiment do some reflection on their lives and identify one area they would like to see change happen, and then identify one behaviour or habit they would like to give up and one they would like to adopt for a period of 40 days. The experiment is meant to be held loosely and not legalistically but has measurable goals and outcomes by the end of the 40 day period. At the end of the time, participants can make decisions about whether this experiment is something they’d like to incorporate in their lives in a regular rhythm.

Some of the questions to help people identify what they want would like to change are as follows: How do I live in my body? What do I think about or dwell on in my mind? How am I managing my feelings and the stresses of life? Where am I spending my time, talents and resources? How am I showing up to my relationships? After reflecting on where you spend your life energy, you can determine one or two priority areas where changes are most needed.

The second step of the experiment is to explore the patterns and root causes for the issues identified by briefly describing the issue or pattern and considering what are the daily choices you make that support this habit or pattern. Reflecting on if there are deeper issues from which this struggle arises?

I’ve known in my own leadership that it’s hard to lead people to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself, so I also decided to partake in the experiment. After some reflection I noticed an unhealthy pattern around envy. I saw how it particularly affected my relationships with friends and colleagues. I also saw it was far-reaching, innocuously affecting my decisions and I was most vulnerable before sleeping at night and when I first woke up in the morning. So I decided that in order to address the envy, I would adopt a practice of writing 10 things I was grateful for each day. I would also, spend the last 10 minutes before I went to sleep and the first 10 minutes when I woke up reading scripture, starting with the major and minor prophets. As I spent time evaluating how I spend my time and talents, I realized that I’d spent more time comparing myself to others and feeling badly than doing some life-giving activities that I enjoy, so as part of the experiment, I included that once a week I would make art in response to the things I was receiving in Scripture or themes I was noticing in gratitude.

In addition to identifying the thing you’d like to change and the new practice to adopt, the experiment invites people to share their experiments with a a partner and a small group that they check in with regularly. I have been blessed to be paired with a few staff colleagues for accountability. I’ve enjoyed hearing their updates, and sharing the things I have been seeing and receiving.

I’m now close to 30 days into the experiment, I will continue this experiment for 47 days (40 days after the end of the second MARKcentral week), so that I can be checking in and sending updates to participants in both weeks. As time goes on, I’m eager to see and hear stories of how others are fairing with their challenges, and at the end of the experiment, I’ll post an update with images of the artwork I’ve created.