I remember the day in fifth grade when we got to choose what
band instrument we wanted to play. To this day I’m not sure why I did it, but I
passed up all the shiny brass instruments, the woodwinds with their many keys,
and gravitated instead toward the drums. Well, not exactly drums.
On the table there was no drum, just a pair of thick sticks
and a rubber pad. Maybe it was in my Scots-Irish DNA to want to play something
loud and obnoxious and since bagpipes weren’t available, this would have to do.
Those first lessons were not very exciting. Here’s your pad, which makes
virtually no sound (which our parents were no doubt thankful for at this point)
and all we want you to do is make the sticks bounce. Do that for 30 to 60
minutes every day. I didn’t see drummers on TV like Keith Moon or Ringo Starr
just bouncing the sticks, but, ok. After a few weeks of just bouncing, then we
began to learn rudiments, which were basically just more organized bouncing.
Those we spent a few months on—paradiddles, flams, five
stroke, nine stroke, and 13 stroke rolls, ratamacues—dozens of different
combinations, played over and over again on that same old rubber pad.
At this point, many of the other would-be drummers dropped
out and gravitated to sports or girls, which were a lot less boring than
tapping a pad. By the time we got to sixth grade there were only about seven of
us left from all the elementary schools. But in sixth grade, we got to actually
hit the snare drum and play with a band. About the same time, my mom bought me
a drum set for $10 from a friend’s family—their high school-aged son having
given up the drums for football. Now this was more like it—and mom got me
private lessons to boot.
I showed up for the first lesson with a guy named Randy
Roth, who was widely considered to be the best drummer in town, and I thought,
“Here we go—rock stardom in ten easy lessons!” When I went into the studio,
however, there was just—a set of practice pads, and we played more
rudiments—hours and hours of rudiments.
Eventually, though, we started to transfer the rudiments to
the drum kit, adding more drums and both feet. It was then that I started to
understand what was going on—that the hours of tapping out rudiments had
created a kind of muscle memory, and hitting all those combinations of drums
was really just expanding the rudiments. I started listening and playing along
to and being influenced by the technique of other drummers—I started with my
parents’ old 8 tracks of the Ray Conniff Singers, then progressed to the jazz greats like Buddy Rich and Gene
Krupa, and rock legends Stewart Copeland of the Police and, my favorite, Neil
Peart of Rush. Hours and hours practice in the basement, on the steering wheel,
on my lap, with pencils, you name it, forming the muscle memory of a drummer.
What was once the drudgery of rudiments and the pad has become a lifelong love
affair with drums—and I still find great joy sitting behind a kit, even for
practice. It’s the one place in the world where I feel like I kind of know what
I’m doing, but always knowing there is so much more to learn!
Many of you have similar stories, whether it’s about an
instrument, or a sport, or an art, or a profession. Many people have the
potential to be great at what they do. Some are born with innate talents and
abilities, some are born into families with the means to help them toward
success, but the real difference between those who have potential and those who
actually achieve success is—practice! How much practice? Well, according to
Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, it
takes about 10,000 hours of practice!
Gladwell cites
several examples in his book of how the 10,000-Hour Rule applies to success.
The Beatles, for example, were a struggling high school rock band that had
already been together for three years in 1960 when they were invited to play in
Hamburg, Germany, where the club scene was very different and more demanding.
John Lennon described the difference Hamburg made for the band: “In
Liverpool, we’d only done one hour sessions, and we’d just do our best numbers,
the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours, so we
really had to find a new way of playing.”
Eight hours a night, seven days a week. By the
time The Beatles had their first real commercial success in 1964, they had
performed live an estimated 1,200 times. Most bands don’t perform 1,200 times
in their whole careers. Phillip Norman, the band’s biographer, said this:
“They were no good onstage when they went there and they were very good
when they came back. … They weren’t disciplined onstage at all before that.
But when they came back they sounded like no one else. It was the making of
them.”
It took Mozart 20 years of composing before he
produced his greatest work. It took Bobby Fischer 10 years to become a chess
grandmaster. Bill Gates programmed computers virtually nonstop for seven
consecutive years as a high school and college student. What’s it take to be
truly great at something? About 10,000 hours.
The disciples of Jesus followed him around for
three years, and if you do the math, that comes to more than 10,000 hours of
practical experience in discipleship. Paul urges the churches to take what
they’ve learned from him and others and start practicing as well. Indeed, in
this passage in Ephesians, Paul seems to be offering them a practice schedule
of spiritual rudiments they should work on if they’re going to be successful
disciples themselves.
First, Paul says, disciples should practice telling the truth to one
another. Truth-telling is the glue that
holds a community together and enables people to deal honestly and forthrightly
with each other. Falsehood or lying, on the other hand, creates a constant
cloud of suspicion and secrecy. Practice telling the truth in love, says Paul,
and after 10,000 hours of doing so you’ll have a healthy community.
Coupled with truth-telling is the
practice of dealing honestly with anger (4:26).
Secrets, lies and rumors lead to false assumptions. Anger is often the
byproduct of a failure to deal openly and honestly in the community and makes
“room for the devil” to exploit the lies we believe about others and
ourselves (vv. 26-27). Practicing the principle of dealing with your anger
quickly and thoughtfully before the sun goes down leads to a greater sense of
self-control, enables forgiveness of others and the self, and leads to the
restoration of community. Work for 10,000 intentional hours at controlling
anger and you’ll be a different person altogether!
Work is the thing that most people practice on a
daily basis, but what if our approach to work weren’t just about earning a
paycheck? We may not be active “thieves,” but can steal time from our
employers and coworkers by doing less than our best. Paul urges the Ephesians
to practice seeing their work as an opportunity for service to
those in need (v. 28). When we’re
practicing disciples, all of those work hours — no matter what we do — can be
seen as a means toward the goal of advancing God’s kingdom.
We need to practice our speech as
well. Loose and evil talk seems to be the
norm in our culture, and it’s easy for even Christians to get caught up in it.
Just witness, for example, the vitriol that gets poured out during political
campaigns by people who claim to follow Christ. But what would happen if,
instead, we practiced saying nothing but “words that give grace to those
who hear?” (v. 29). Successful disciples engage in the daily practice of
disciplining our speech to reflect the building up of others rather than
tearing them down. Practice that for 10,000 hours (which equals roughly 416
days — more than a year) and you’ll sound like a generous genius!
Next, Paul warns against grieving
the Holy Spirit, which seems to be another
way of saying we violate our baptism and our role in building up the community
in holiness (see 4:5-6). If baptism is the mark of the Holy Spirit on us
(4:30), then we need to be reminded daily that our conduct and thought life
should reflect the Spirit’s presence in our lives. Gladwell’s principle
certainly applies here: We can’t merely settle for the privilege of grace we
receive in baptism, we have to practice it and demonstrate it every day.
In verses 31-32, Paul sums up the argument by
saying that if we’re really practicing Christians, then things like bitterness,
wrath, anger, arguments, slander and malice will eventually be “put
away” and replaced with kindness, tenderheartedness and forgiveness. That
will only happen through the discipline of practice.
The true gauge of success for Christians, according
to Paul, is that their character mirrors God in the way that a child mirrors a
parent. The ultimate example of that kind of success is Jesus, who should be
our greatest influence and model (5:1-2). But think about this: Jesus spent 30
years or so practicing on his own before he launched his public ministry, which
is far more than 10,000 hours. Yes, he had the privilege of being God’s own
Son, and was born with a divine nature, but even the Son of God knew that the
success of his earthly ministry depended on years of practice!
It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that following
Jesus involves practice as well as a community of fellow practitioners and
teachers to help us and hold us accountable. Remember, as Paul said in 4:1-16,
we are “members of one another” and it is our practicing together that makes
the difference between a church with potential and a church that is functioning
as the Body of Christ. We were made for relationship with one another, to
practice together. There are no lone ranger Christians for, as John Wesley put
it, “The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.” The rudiments we learn in
the Body of Christ are lived out and performed in our relationships with
others, starting with our closest relationships.
In 5:21, Paul
talks about marriage and how husbands and wives should practice mutual respect
and love for one another under the example of Christ. Too often this passage
has been used to subjugate the role of women, but read it closely—it’s really
about sacrificial love. Paul commands husbands to give themselves up for their
wives as Christ gave himself up for the church. That kind of love takes daily
practice, more than 10,000 hours of it. In 6:1, Paul urges children to practice
obedience to their parents and parents to practice treating their children
fairly. In 6:5, Paul talks about slaves and masters (to modernize it, employers
and employees?) and urges them to practice life under the Lordship of Christ.
How do you get to
Carnegie Hall? Practice. How do you become a Christian who reflects the
fullness of the measure of Christ? Practice!
Our goal as a
church is to provide you the means, the tools, the teachers, and the
encouragers to help you practice the way of Christ and his kingdom. Methodism
is all about practice. As we teach in the Blueprint for Discipleship Class, the
most effective disciples of Jesus are those who practice their faith in both
public and private, and who live out their faith in both acts of piety and acts
of mercy. This graphic of the Rule of Discipleship helps us see that practice
plan visually.
When Methodists
meet together, we have traditionally asked each other, like my drum teacher
used to ask me, if we’ve been practicing these rudimentary acts of discipleship.
Randy never chastised me for missing practice, but always encouraged me to do a
little more the following week. In
the same way, we as a church want to encourage, to build up, to spur one
another on to success for Christ and his kingdom. We want to be a church that
practices what it preaches on a daily basis—to invest our time and energy in
practicing the presence of God and then living out that practice in our
relationships with the world every day. If we only practice by attending church
an hour a week, every week for the rest of your life, it would take just over
192 years to reach 10,000 hours. If we practice daily, on the other hand, we
will begin to be proficient much sooner, even if we will never be completely
perfect!
The more we
practice, the more that practice begins to turn into love. I love the drums,
but I want to love Christ much more. I want him to be my greatest influence, to
imitate him and live in love as Christ loved us.
How about you?
Are you ready to practice?
