I am trying to get back into the habit of blogging again after a 18 month hiatus. The last year and a half were much busier than expected, mostly because I charged head-first into the requirements to be an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church. It was a great experience, but much more work than I thought it would be.

One of the requirements for ordination is a graduate level class on the history of the Evangelical Covenant. Most people tend to think history is really boring, but I enjoy history. My enthusiasm for history is certainly not unlimited, but I enjoy listening to stories, marking the journeys of people or events, and making connections with other parts of history or psychology or spirituality.

The history class was quite good and I made plans to share some of the things I had learned with my church in the adult education class I teach on Sunday mornings. When I invited and encouraged people to come, a few of them were very blunt with me. They made it clear they didn’t want to sit through six weeks of church history and I love the fact they were honest with me. I absolutely can’t fix what I don’t know about, but I also can’t deny I was a bit disappointed by the lack of interest in exploring some really cool people and events in the history of the Covenant.

History has gotten a bad reputation, and at times, that reputation is well-deserved. One of the books required for the history class was almost 700 pages. It was so tightly packed with details and switched between different time periods so frequently, it was almost impossible to see the big picture of the story and that made it difficult to make any connections to the present day. To be fair, it was a book meant for scholars, but it took the uncomplicated job of describing the journey of a small, relatively obscure denomination and made it very complicated.

But let us not confuse history with history books.

History, at its core, is the telling and retelling of our story and our journey in life. We do this every single day when we tell someone about the events of the day. My wife and I are very intentional about sharing with each other how the day unfolded. We have taken to calling it “processing” because it allows us to not only talk about the events of the day, but we can also talk about the emotional and spiritual connections that come with the events.

By telling and retelling our stories, we remember the people and events that shaped our experience. The more we share, the more we remember and the more patterns we begin recognize…and the deeper those lessons we learned are deposited inside of us. We can’t help but reflect and learn new things when we are sharing our story and journey with another person.

Few things will form a stronger bond than life experiences that are shared together. Remember that epic celebration? What about that colossal fail? How about the times you lent a helping hand or maybe the times you needed a hand yourself? History can and should be lived and not just read.

Go share some history with someone, will ya?