Like so many other households, my family spent most of our early August nights watching the Olympics. Ritual pervades every aspect of my life, and the Paris Games were no exception. I found a smart television on sale and hung it on the wall on our screened back porch. Every evening, I cooked dinner, made my wife a Cosmopolitan, and we luxuriously dined on wicker chairs surrounded by the romantic glow of citronella candles as we watched the world’s greatest athletes compete. I am certain this is exactly how the ancient Greeks did it.
The ritual I most enjoyed was the nightly commentary from my children. I have a daughter, 20, who is a collegiate athlete, and two sons, 16 and 12. They each had their favorite sport and their take on the day’s events and trending news. I noticed that, unlike previous Games, the athletes that were trending on back porches and social media were not necessarily the ones who broke records. For instance, I remember Flo Jo and Greg Louganis from the ’80s and ’90s. I remember Carl Lewis. I also remember the buildup in 1992 around Dan and Dave, two American decathletes. Of late, we have Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, and God bless Simone Biles. These were all athletes who surpassed the elite level to a pantheon that would feel right at home on Mt. Olympus.
My children, however, talked about three athletes in particular: Pommel Horse Guy, the Turkish Shooter, and the Australian Breakdancer. Pommel Horse Guy is Stephen Nedoroscik, a 25-year-old American gymnast who specializes in the pommel horse and won the bronze medal for the event. The Turkish Shooter is Yusuf Dikec, a 51-year-old silver medalist in air pistol shooting from Turkey. The Australian Breakdancer, I imagine we all know by now, is the 36-year-old academic Dr. Rachael Gunn, who did not earn a single point in the competition.
Pommel Horse Guy and the Turkish Shooter won my children over. Nedoroscik is a self-described nerd who wears glasses except when he’s on the horse. When he takes them off, he squints toward the platform as if he’s looking for a Rite I liturgy at a diocesan event. Dikec is the Gen-X hero with a “whatever” attitude, casually walking to the event without any special equipment or clothing. He wears a T-shirt, specs from LensCrafters, and aims like a latchkey kid who played a few hours of Duck Hunt on the Nintendo in 1987.
Their authenticity was a breath of fresh air. One got the impression that is exactly who they are with no filter and no influencer strategy. It was not lost on me that my children focused on this. Every new generation becomes the most marketed-to generation in history. I thought I grew up with a lot of commercials, but my children have grown up with advertisements generated toward their browsing history, their shopping habits, and even (you can’t convince me otherwise) conversations had within earshot of the phone. The result is they are, for the most part, quite savvy to things being sold to them.
Rachel Gunn seems to be a different story. I honestly don’t wish to pile on to what is already a pretty heft pile of criticism. Her breaking routine was curiously bad, so bad that many have speculated her Olympic debut was really a cover for academic research or some other, non-athletic, motive. However pure her intentions or rigorous her Olympic preparation might have been, her routine felt affected and contrived. One might even argue that it was, to some degree, disrespectful. In short, it seemed to lack authenticity.
I think there is a lesson for the Church in all this. I think we need more of Stephen Nedoroscik and Yusuf Dikec, confidence to be exactly who we are. Neither of them entered the Olympics to procure business deals or to grow their brands. Rather they came to win the medal. That singular commitment, along with the fact that they didn’t necessarily fit the perceived mold of Olympic athlete, grabbed our attention and subsequent admiration. According to an article in The Guardian, Rachel Gunn admitted that she couldn’t beat the other performers based “on what they do best, the dynamic and power moves.” Instead, she thought she had to be creative and artistic. Fair enough, and I defend her on this. However, the result did not look like breakdancing.
I am afraid the Church in all its structures — General Convention, diocesan, and parish — feels it cannot compete for the attention and allegiance of the people, so it tries to be unnecessarily creative and artistic. The result is that it often doesn’t look or feel like faith, much less authentic Christianity. The real challenge is that within those structures, we may have forgotten what authentic Christian practice is. In some cases, many decades may have passed since it was last modeled. If the Church were to be Pommel Horse Steve or Turkish Shooter, we would simply focus on why we are here: to glorify Jesus Christ through a transformed life.
We don’t have to be creative or artistic to grab the attention of our communities. Saying prayers daily and publicly and in person will be radical enough. Our sanctoral calendar is so messed up, likely in part because very few communicates actually live by them, preferring to post on social media the day’s feast or saint instead of remembering them at the altar.
When Stephen Nedoroscik took off his glasses, he didn’t need to see the pommel horse. He had been around it so much, he could feel his routine and the space around him. We should be like Yusuf Dikec, and just walk up to the challenges in our culture and pull the spiritual arrows from our quiver, knowing that our accuracy is not based on resources or other accoutrement, but fidelity.
We should be the same with our Christian disciplines and prayers. Amid the noise and anger around us, we should be able to find refuge in the movement and beauty of the Christian at prayer. Doing all of this will make us stand out. We may not like the attention we receive, and it will most definitely come with opposition, but no one would be able to accuse us of trying to be what we are not. The Church should rightfully be concerned about the staggering rise of the “nones” and young adults who are running away from faith. If my children are a fair sample of their peers, what they would find refreshing and inviting is for the Church to do what the Church is supposed to do and be what the Church is supposed to be.
I cannot help but give a hearty Amen to this because it is the song I sang all through my 32-year active ministry and continue to do so in retirement. If we were to ever consistently live out the ideals implicit in our own Prayer Book, the surrounding culture would either hate us or join us, but they would not ignore us.