The Oxford American Dictionary (the electronic version that came with my Mac) says:

fellowship |ˈfelōˌ sh ip| noun
1. friendly association, esp. with people who share one’s interests : they valued fun and good fellowship as the cement of the community.
• a group of people meeting to pursue a shared interest or aim.
• a guild or corporation.
2. an endowment established or a sum of money awarded to support a scholar or student engaged in advanced research in a particular field : a four-year postdoctoral fellowship.
• the status of a fellow of a college or society : she held the Faulkner fellowship.

This morning I spoke at the Lake Minnetonka – Excelsior Morning Rotary Club. They meet every Wednesday morning at Maynard’s in Excelsior. I like speaking at service organization meetings. They are always very welcoming and are founded on a mission of service.

As I watched the group interact this morning it reminded me of the importance of fellowship in our spiritual lives. I look at personal faith practices, meditation, prayer, reflection, all as important spiritual fitness exercises and routines. But if I had to choose just one spiritual fitness exercise, I’d have to choose the practice of fellowship. It is important to feel like a part of something that is bigger than yourself. To feel like a part of something where you are accepted as who you are, imperfections and all, because of a “common interest, value or purpose”.

I think that is why there is such a tight bond and culture among public safety professionals, we accept each other (as well as hold each other accountable) because of our common mission, we protect. And we actually enjoy each other’s company, just as these rotary members clearly do.

So to the Lake Minnetonka – Excelsior Morning Rotary Club, thank you for the opportunity to share my message on spiritual fitness, and thank you for the fellowship we shared.

Question for the day: “Where do you share the fellowship experience?”

Last week I received a question on the “Spiritual Fitness” definition.

Chris wrote: “OK. What are the essential spiritual functions of a public safety officer? How do you define that? I can’t come hear you speak so I am going to need it via this weblog!”

The origin of “essential spiritual functions” comes from my work with physical fitness programs that started more than 15 years ago. The Americans with Disabilities Act impacted how we could conduct physical fitness training and specifically physical fitness evaluations. We could only evaluate the performance of essential functions of the job, and since we were dealing with physical fitness, we could evaluate essential “physical” functions.

Therefore we could evaluate the ability to chase someone, handcuff them, wrestle with them. We could evaluate the ability to drive a car, shoot a gun, give verbal commands and the countless other physical skills needed to perform the job. We could not evaluate the number of push-ups or sit-ups a person could perform. These exercises measured strength and endurance but not the specific essential functions that officers performed.

So, again I draw the physical /spiritual fitness comparison. Essential spiritual functions of police work are not prayer, faith, religion, meditation (push-ups, sit-ups, etc). Essential spiritual functions that police officers must perform are things like applying fairness in enforcement, being compassionate with victims as well as suspects, being ethical, not abusing authority, applying the spirit of the law, honesty, integrity and the countless other spiritual skills needed to perform the job. One of the most demanding spiritual functions of this job is the ability to manage personal emotions. Officers need the ability to turn off personal emotions in the numerous traumatic situations they encounter. More importantly they need to know how to turn those emotions back on.

But we need to remember, spiritual fitness is job performance. We cannot forget that spiritual exercises, like those listed above, are critical elements in effective spiritual fitness training program.

Yesterday morning I had the opportunity to tell the story of Public Safety Ministries and the concept of Spiritual Fitness with the Eden Prairie A.M. Rotary Club. I’ve shared stories with the group a few time in the past and I always enjoy the opportunity to get together with this wonderful service oranization.

After the meeting one of my friends gave me a few suggestions on my presentation. One suggestion was that I come up with a one sentence definition of Spiritual Fitness that people could take with them. I’ve made several attempts at a simple definition, but it always ended up with more words that I’d like, so I’ve avoided writing it down. But in the spirit of Monday’s Post, and Bob’s suggestion I came up with the following definition:

Spiritual Fitness in the Public Safety Professions

The ability to perform the essential functions of a public safety professional’s duties and responsibilities that require specific spiritual capabilities and aptitudes.

or a shorter (giving up excess words for Lent) version:

The ability to perform the essential spiritual functions of a public safety occupation.

I could, and proably will, eventually give you more background to the reasoning behind choosing these words. But again, in the spirit of Mondays post, I’ll stop right here.