What does it mean to be a practicing Christian?
I sat in a meeting recently where a fellow church member said that the Church has to acknowledge that we've failed. She was speaking in terms of youth ministry and the Church's inability to keep up with the times, but I thought her statement was more profound than that. Rather than closing the door on the conversation (Well, good try folks, but oh well!), she was using failure as an opening ... an opening to try again, to try harder, to do better.
Being a Christian isn't like riding a bike; it isn't something you can pick up and do just as well as the last time you tried. It's something that takes practice. I've heard that term a lot: practicing Christian. Every time I've heard it, it's been used to mean, "I am a Christian. I go to Church. I believe in Jesus."
But I think the phrase practicing Christian can have a beauty that we aren't fully realizing. We are going to screw this whole thing up. We have screwed this whole thing up. Over and over and over. But we're practicing. We're still trying.
So yes, we've failed. Now let's try again.