“Only the trying:” A Review of Leap of Faith

The last time I posted here, I shared my review of Pulitzer-prizewinning journalist Eliza Griswold’s recent book, Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church, her deeply researched study of a progressive church’s sad, ugly unraveling.

Today, I want to commend to you a new documentary releasing tomorrow (October 4) in select cities: Leap of Faith. The movie is directed by Nicolas Ma and produced by Morgan Neville, both of whom were involved in making the wonderful 2018 documentary on Mr Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Here I’ll also shout out Neville’s incredible 2013 documentary, 20 Feet from Stardom, which won that year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary. That film, examining the lives and careers of several women back-up singers, remains one of the best examinations of vocation and success I have ever seen).

I bring up Griswold’s book because, as I watched Leap of Faith at its Grand Rapids’ premiere on Monday night, it struck me again and again that the film shared important commonalities with Griswold’s, even as the movie ends up as a kind of anti-Circle of Hope. But taken together, the two narratives provide such critical insight on the fraught times we are trying to negotiate as citizens, as people of faith, as friends and family, as neighbors–and perhaps as enemies.

Ma began thinking about the idea for the film after reading a Wall Street Journal article featuring the work of Grand Rapids’ own Colossian Forum, led by Rev. Michael Gulker. This is how the Colossian Forum characterizes its essentials on its website:

Our Mission: We equip Christians to think, act, and lead more like Jesus in the midst of conflict in their families, communities, churches, and institutions.

Our Vision: We yearn to see communities reliably transformed and united through the self-giving love of Christ, in whom all things hold together.

Our Promise: We promise to promote mindsets and habits where different perspectives can be heard, love can be fostered, and people can grow together.

Some of the key words here are “conflict” and “Jesus,” “mindsets and habits” and “different perspectives.” In other words, what needs to be done to develop ways for Christ-followers, who have multiple perspectives on any range of issues, theological and otherwise, to face inevitable conflict well, especially when division and divisiveness are the norm?

Ma was intrigued by these commitments and by the conversations already ongoing. The film that resulted follows a group of 12 Grand Rapids clergy–men and women from a variety of ethnicities and Protestant traditions–as they progress through a year-long series “of boundary-breaking retreats…. Brought together by Michael Gulker of The Colossian Forum, five women and seven men struggle with some of today’s most contentious issues. The divisions between them become apparent and test both their common belief in the universal importance of love and kindness and the bonds they build over the course of a year” (leapoffaithmovie.com).

Put another way, the film, at its heart examines the question: “how do we exhibit integrity around our beliefs and exhibit the self-emptying love of Christ with each other?” Over the course of the movie, with a kind of exceptionally risky vulnerability rarely seen on film, the gathered participants (including Gulker himself as moderator) meet together and share what they really believe and who they really are.

It’s all exceptionally difficult. There is real injury and real pain. There is “rupture and repair.” There is frustration and disappointments, and there is also friendship and conversation and honesty. And something that I don’t think I was expecting to hear: lots and lots of talk about the Spirit and the Spirit’s work. But you don’t get too far into the movie, even as things grow tense and hard, when you are not absolutely clear that these are all people–every one–who are seeking to know and love God more and who are really making an effort to be “people of peace” with one another. They want to follow God seriously. It’s moving and a little breath-taking all at once.

In my larger thinking about narrative and the way that stories form or deform us, nourish or poison us, I often lament that there is a dearth of narratives that model a kingdom hope. That in the quest for “normal” or “nice” or “uncontroversial” or whatever our Midwestern affliction, we tend to stories that water down difference into a mealy pablum or ask us to give up theological distinctives or lapse into some type of tepid sentimentality. Without spoiling it, that’s not what this film is asking. It is asking, instead, for us to consider what the body of Christ looks like with its diversity of thought and its commitment to the essentials of the gospel both intact.

And does it in a compelling and inspiring way. (Also: I just want to add that the film is beautifully shot–and Grand Rapids looks amazing). That’s an exceedingly rare combo–but witnessing (and I do mean that in all its theological richness) the struggles of this small community is very instructive as to why this group of ministers succeeds where the Circle of Hope’s can’t seem to. In the same way that reading through Griswold’s book made me think about all the ways that good-hearted people misstep and falter, this film gave me a different narrative–a different way of imagining–even as these people of God misstepped, too.

The film is very provocative–and I imagine when you complete it, you may have some questions you’d like to investigate. The Colossian Forum provides a fine FAQ here for a whole range of those questions. It provides some good answers–but it also has resources to do what the film (and the Colossian Forum itself) advocates: be in good conversation with each other in order to come to love God and neighbor more fully. To that end, there is both a discussion guide and conversation starters. Whatever else, I’ve already been thinking about how the film might be used pedagogically to help my students see what authenticity and vulnerability and honesty and real conversation can yield as we seek to love God and build up someone who may seem enemy, but is in fact neighbor and might even, by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit, be friend.

In addition, because the film is a very trim 90 minutes (out of 300 hours of footage captured), all sorts of conversations and perspectives couldn’t be captured. I was delighted I can hear more from each of the pastors (and Colossian Forum president, Michael Gulker, the moderator of the pastors’ ongoing conversation) in a podcast.

As I was driving home from the movie, I thought of the lines from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets where his speaker is reflecting on success, and after a wrestle, he finally comes to the conclusion: “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” Why? Because our call is only (only! small claim) to the faithful life, to the commitment to begin again and again in the pursuit of sanctification. Like these good men and women of Grand Rapids, there is nobility in the “trying” and edification in seeing it pursued. And everything else (including the lovely pun of “rest”) is not up to us anyway, but the Spirit who animates each new try and leads us to love each other ever more fully.