What;s Right With the Church, What's Wrong With It, and How to Fix it

The other night, I attended a banquet where the featured speaker was a well known local radio personality,  who is on a one-man crusade against the organized church.  Although a committed Christian,  he has been so burned by the organized church that he rails against it on a regular, weekly basis. 

After the banquet we fell into a long conversation.  To my surprise I found myself agreeing with most  of what he had to say.  Although my experiences have been slightly more positive than his,  much of what he says is true.  Christ's church has ceased to be an organism and has become an organization,  with all the political and material demands of being an organization.  The church as it exists on earth has to deal with money,  power,  and appearances, which means it is continually falling into corruption, greed, and power politics.  It has become for many a bureaucracy of the soul,  a Department of Motor Vehicles with better music.

If you are reading this and saying "Yes, that is true for the church down the street, but not mine." Think it over.  Who says that a small church cannot be just as impersonal and  vain as a big one, or that a church which flees the trappings of traditional spirituality cannot get caught up in the same machinations that sapped the life out of the medieval church? Do we really think Presbyterians or Baptists are so pure of heart that they cannot forget why they rebelled against the Catholics in the first place, and become like them in Spirit if not in appearance?  American churches often remind me of soccer clubs in other countries,  voluntary organizations which seem to exist to compete against other organizations for bragging rights to the city.  For the truly lost and truly hurting, the church is often just one more building on the street, between the bar and the Walmart.

But for all its faults, the church has got a lot of things right, and we need to acknowledge it.  

First of all it has God on its side.  The church is still the only organization dedicated to getting out God's Word and leading people into a relationship to Him.  Can you think of another organization capable of leading people to a better life?   I can't.  Winston Churchill once said that democracy was a very bad form of government, but that all the others are so much worse.  The same can be said of the church.  Education,  entertainment,  publishing, mass media and all the other institutions that form modern society are infinitely worse, and every bit as hypocritical.   How does  government (for example) have the gall to say "we're here to help you," when everyone knows they are here to buy votes, so our elected officials can have great influence and get fat pensions.  Or how does the news  media--any news media-- have the nerve to say they are here just to report the news objectively? 

No, all of human society is corrupt, to one degree or another.  Where there is the potential for corruption, corrupt people will go. But that is a long way from saying that churches are only here to be corrupt.   A horse has a purpose and it has flies, but it does not exist for the flies.  Churches are sinful and corrupt as well, but they do not exist for that purpose alone.  When we scrape away the dirt of the world,   underneath there are still congregations of ordinary people who love God and one another, read the Bible,  and do the best they can to live clean in a dirty world.  Like a dirty child, underneath that disheveled mess  is something  beautiful and worthy of praise,  which the world cannot fully drive way, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against.

But my friend is right.  The church is deeply flawed, mainly because if has forgotten it's initial purpose.  What went wrong with the church is that it forgets that we are not of this world, and  relies on worldly programs rather than heavenly realities.  We lose our focus on heaven and  look after earthly things. Then we become obsessed with keeping our institutions running.  We pay big money for things we do not need, in order to put  on an attractive and prosperous image.  Then we must maintain that image at all cost, and we lose our passion for God.  We are a real Body of Christ though--we just act phony.

Look at the architecture of a typical church.  They are designed to create the illusion of  transcendence--high ceilings,  high pulpits,  and stained glass windows that are intended to make us look holy and grand.  If a person  dressed with such grandiloquence, we would call them pompous.  Modern churches who deliberately avoid such "churchy" designs do the same thing with  lighting tricks,  video screens and smoke machines.  All this is intended to fool the eye, and make it seem as if God were there, whether He is or not.  When you think about it, it isn't much different from a witch doctor putting on a wicker mask and dancing around a village.  We pretend to a greater intimacy with God than we actually have.

Ultimately, there is no cure for the institutional church. Those who try, wind up recreating it in some other form somewhere else.  There is, however a cure for those who are inside it.

First, we  can stop being phonies.  Let us admit that we do not have all the answers, that we are still looking for God's will, struggling to live out our faith as best we can.  There is no point in condemning our leaders, just as there is no point in following them blindly.   Let's all just be honest and open to the Spirit.  We don't know all there is to know about God, but we can seek Him.

 Second, we can quit substituting programs, which do not work, for relationships.  Jesus taught his disciples to love the lost, not develop marketing strategies. 

Third, we can love one another.  Jesus told Peter to tend His sheep, not fleece them.  Let's care more about one another as people rather than what they can do for the church.  Then maybe we'll actually start looking and acting like Jesus' church.

The Best Use of Time

I've been reading  Donald Whitner's book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.  Overall, It's  a very good book, and I would recommend it.  However, as with any book provokes thought, there are times  when I want to take issue with it.  This morning was one of those times.

This morning he was talking about stewardship as a spiritual discipline.  A very good and astute observation.  Discipline is what disciples do, and stewardship is one of the disciplines that we are definitely called to do.  Whitner talks about stewardship mainly in terms of time and money.  I have no problem with what he says about money, but the time part, I think requires some further thinking.

The argument he makes  is that as Christians we ought to  make the most of our time,  use every bit of it to God's glory.   He uses the well-known verses from Ephesians 5:15-16  "Be very careful, then, how you live-not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. "

Okay, okay, I get  it.  We are a nation of lazy time-wasters.  Telling people in our television-soaked society  to quit wasting time is like telling fat people that they should stop eating.  It's just too easy.  Of course we waste time at times. But if we worried every minute whether or not we were wasting time,  we would all be nervous wrecks.   What Whitner means, of course is that we waste time not doing the Lord's work, and he is right, of course. We could all do more for Him.  But it does disturb me that the disciplines that we preachers preach about most are the ones that benefit us the most.  We preach about people evangelizing, and our churches get bigger.  We preach about tithing and our churches get richer. We preach about redeeming the time and --well, you get the idea.  Meanwhile,  the spiritual disciplines which do not benefit the church quite so much,  prayer and fasting for example, or meditation, simplicity, and solitude, get less attention.

I have a problem with the way Ephesians 5  is interpreted.  Paul is not saying that days are evil.  Time is neither good nor evil.  It's how you use it.  The evil days that Paul mentions are evil because of what men were doing in them. 

Paul's day was evil, at least for the majority of humankind.  Life was  mean and short for most people.  A third of the world was in slavery, most of the rest were subsistence farmers.    It was a mean cruel time to be alive.  Paul is telling us to make the most of the time we have, to savor the moments we have, not to waste them in meaningless drudgery or pointless semi-pleasures.  Drunkenness is not fun, not really,  neither are sexual pleasures which steal our souls and give nothing in return. 

Contrast this with Ecclesiastes 2:24-26

 "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?  To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. "

When we eat and drink, and find satisfaction in our work,  we are not wasting time.  In fact, according to Ecclesiastes, it is the only time we are not. 

Here's the thing.  We Christians, especially those of us weaned on the Calvinist work ethic, have somehow got the impression that an idle moment is a wasted moment. We were created to work, work,work.

But we were also created to enjoy the world He gave us.  Time and the world around us have value, even if they are not used "productively."  A moment closing our eyes, enjoying the wind on our faces, or listening to the singing of birds and the laughter of children, is not wasted.  Neither is a prayer wasted when we are not asking God for anything, nor are we wasting paint to paint a picture of a sunrise. These moments have intrinsic value in themselves, and need no excuse. 

In my fifty-eight years of life,  I have "wasted" a great deal of tiem. Some of it I am sorry for, Some of it I am not.  I do not regret a moment that I have enjoyed.  I do regret many moments of worry and regret over the things I have not done. 

It seems to me that the real  use of time is to enjoy God, not to work  out of drudgery and duty.  Time is not for using,  but for enjoying.  Living now, in the moment,  is how we glorify God and enjoy Him forever. 

Some time ago, when I was going through a difficult time in my life,  a friend of mine gave me a little book called The Precious Present  about a man who sought to find the the greatest present ever given.  In the end, he discovered that the most precious present was--the precious present.  It is now. 

If we really seek God, and want do to His will, and if we realize the value of our moments and days,  then we will not waste time. We will not want to waste time,  because doing the worthwhile thing  will be our joy, and we will find satisfaction in our work.

Some people hate their jobs.  They watch the clock all day,  waiting for the moment they can go home. Other people love their job. The moment's fly by and they look forward to going back to work,  resting  only to satisfy their bodies  long enough to get back into it. 

Some people see serving God as a duty.  They give Him what they must, but watch the clock and wait for the time when they can get back to their "real" jobs.  Other people find satisfaction in serving God,  and cannot wait for more opportunities to do it.  The stewardship of time is a natural result of understanding our relationship to Him.  If we enjoy doing what God wants us to do, it is not a burden. 

I once had  friend who was doing seven jobs in the church.  I called him on it,  suggesting that more people should be working, and that he needed more time off.  He laughed and put his arm around me.  "Bill," he said,  "Some men play golf. Others fish,  others garden. That their hobby.  My hobby is church work.  Don't take my hobby from me."

If our heart is in the Lord, then serving Him is joy.   We don't have to be told to do it.

What it takes to tell the Good News

I've been reading several books on spiritual disciplines. In one of them, I came across a chapter on evangelism as a spiritual discipline.   In it, the author was arguing that evangelism was everyone's duty, and that everyone was expected to be sharing their faith with all their friends. 

I agree essentially, but it seems like an exercise in futility.  No  matter how much we encourage people to evangelize they will not evangelize.

The author put his finger on the reason why in a quote form Donald Barna.  Nine times out of ten, when we share our faith with a non-believer, the answer is going to be "no."  Most people are not used to an exercise where nine times out of ten,  they will fail.  His answer seemed to be that either we weren't trained to do it right, or that we were not doing it "in the Spirit."  

Seems like we have a problem.  We are being asked to accept the idea that doing something that will fail nine times out of ten regularly, as a spiritual exercise, but if it doesn't work, it's our fault. 

There's something self serving in the church's call for evangelism at times. The organized church seems to get more excited about spiritual disciplines that produce results of growing numbers or bringing in finances than about the ones that merely grow the individual--like quiet times and individual Bible study, for example. 

Is evangelism for everyone?  Yes and no.  Evangelism is part of the Great Commission, the marching orders of the church.  But it is also listed in Ephesians 4 as a particular gift for particular people.    We are all part of the evangelism process, but we are not evangelists, per se. 

Lets try breaking down evangelism just a little bit into three elements. 

First, there is compassion.  God wants us to think less of ourselves and more of others.  One problem I've noticed with most of our talk about evangelism is that it vague and general.  It doesn't seem to talk about real people, but people in abstract.  We need to remember that these people who were are set to "evangelize" are people with broken homes,  addiction problems,  and lonely, lonely lives. If we've got something better, we ought to have enough caring for others to share what we have. 

Empathy, not compassion is the discipline we lack.  We ought to practice meditating more on the lives of others if we are going to talk with them.  We should actually care about them.

Second,  there is testimony.  We need to put into words our own stories, for our own sake, as well as for Christians and  non-Christians.  Most of us never actually tell anyone our testimonies.  In fact, many of us have been taught not to talk about religion at all.  But if we do not express our faith to someone,  it does not seem real to us. 

Knowing our own personal history and how God relates to it is a basic function of faith in our lives.  When we do not put into words the things God does for us,  they do not become a vital part of our story.  That is one of the reasons Journaling is such a powerful spiritual discipline. 

The third aspect is the leadership of the Holy Spirit.  Learning to meditate in prayer, and listen to His voice is also a basic skill of being spiritual.  We are not effective in evangelism because we  do not listen to his voice.

If we seek these three disciplines, then we will be evangelists.   But if we just talk about evangelism without compassion,  learning to open up about our testimony, and being led by the Spirit, it seems to me that it will always be frustrating and ineffective. 

A Church or a Chapel?

The word “chapel” was believed to have derived from a holy relic—the capa or capella of St. Martin of Tours.  This relic was carried into battle by the French army as a token of God’s favor. The priests who carried the relic were called capellians, or in modern vernacular chaplains. Later, other holy relics went with them.  When these totems were not employed in battle, they were stored in a reliquary called a chapel.  In time, these reliquaries became the main place of worship for the noble families.  The keepers of the reliquaries performed religious services for the benefit of the nobles who owned the buildings, doing their weddings, baptisms, funerals, and other services.  In time these priests, called chaplains, became very powerful.

Chapels, were not churches, though.  In fact, in many ways they were the opposite of churches.  The Greek word for church—ecclesia-- means a group of people called by God to meet together, to seek Him and do His will.  God brought His people together without regard to race, status, education or background.  In the early church, anyone who wanted to could come together and seek Him.  Farmers and lords met together on equal footing.  Not only that, but they also had an equal calling to do God’s work. The early church was called the Body of Christ, an organic structure in which God distributed His spiritual gifts and divine personality,  for the purpose of furthering His kingdom on earth.   The people who met together were not related by blood or nationality, but by faith and love. It was an army, not a hospital, dedicated to doing and finding His will together.

Chapels in the medieval context were not for all people—but for the private use of the royal family. The blessings of the chapel were not for everyone, but only for those who the royal family said ought to be blessed.  Power and authority did not flow from God to the king, but from the king to God, or at least to the representative of God’s house who he commanded to be there.  The chapel existed for the king’s benefit. The church exists for God’s.

Now for the big question--which churches are churches and which are chapels?

Looking at the religious landscape there are churches on every corner==many having only one or two families attending.  Most of their people have the same last names.  Many have less than seventy attendees on a Sunday. 

Big churches are not really that different. They may have more last names on the role, but there are usually a few influential leaders who have real power.  Often, it is a single, lordly pastor who controls everything.  On paper, they exist for lofty goals—winning people to Christ, transforming lives, feeding the poor and the hungry, but practically they are institutions whose real goal is to stay alive as institutions, supporting big preachers, big programs, and a big organization, that must constantly be fed with people and money to stay alive for the purpose of being whatever the lords of the church want it to be. 

Before we can decide whether a church is a chapel or a church, we need to ask what conditions are necessary for a church to be a chapel.

Before a church can be a chapel, there has to be the assumption among its leaders that there is nothing unique about it. If we think we are the only true church in town, it is harder to be a chapel. Our consciences would convict us that we had better open our doors for anyone, because there is no one else who will.  However, if we think we are just one of a hundred other churches, who have no unique message, then we can assume that some other group will take care of the rest.  Like the segregated churches of the old South, we can assume that someone else will minister to the inferior people, and we do not have to do it.

Second, we have to assume that the reason our church exists is for our comfort.  It exists for the same reason our living room exists, for a place we can relax, be ourselves and do whatever we want.  Our living room is not for refugees or for the homeless, but so that we can feel comfortable at home.  We can say “this is mine, and I’ll do whatever I want here.”  Only if we think of the church as our own private property can we think that we can get away with keeping outsiders out.

Third, we have to assume we should have nothing to do with the rest of the world except to impose our will upon it. When St. Francis of Assisi had the audacity to go preach to the Muslims instead of killing them during the height of the Crusades, the church in general was highly displeased.  The only time the medieval priests went forth was to wage war on their neighbors. Then they would trot out their holy relics as a sign that God was on their side, not the enemy’s.  Others were the enemy, not the mission field.  It is not much different from churches who march against abortion and gays, but otherwise stay within their walls.

Finally, in order for a church to be a chapel, the flow of power has to be from the church to God, not God to the church.  In other words, there must be a higher source of power in the church than the Bible and the Holy Spirit.  In a chapel, there is always a king or noblemen who wields the real power, while the other peons sit back and let them. 

The church is God’s instrument for doing His will on the earth. The chapel is an instrument for legitimizing our work in the eyes of God.  Maybe we need to ask whether the place where we worship is a church or a chapel. 

The Evolution of Stupid

Some men are born stupid, others have stupidity thrust upon them.

How (you may ask) can stupidity be thrust upon us?  When  we give portions of our brains away, and what we are left with is only part of a brain. What we are left with is stupid.

Take, for example the case from the New York Daily News:

"Police and firefighters stood on a California beach and watched as a suicidal man waded into the San Francisco Bay and drowned in the surf.

The body of Raymond Zack was finally pulled from the 54-degree water by a passerby as local fire officials blamed budget cuts for their inability to save the man."

Did you see that?  Budget cuts.  The man drowned because of budget cuts.  Firefighters and policemen stayed out of the water and did not rescue a man who took almost an hour to drown due to budget cuts. 

The article tells us:

'Police and firefighters were brought to Robert Crown Memorial State Beach by a 911 call, authorities said.

Fire officials said the department's water rescue program disappeared with its funding in 2009. And an overtime cutback prevented firefighters from logging sufficient training hours for water rescues."

Ah, now it is clear.  Budget cuts caused the policemen and firefighters not to be trained to walk out into cold water and pull a man to shore.  That makes some kind of sense.

But the article indicates that there were more than one policeman there, and more than one firefighter.  If one firefighter could not prevent the man from walking slowly out into the water,  might two or three firefighters  working together have figured out a way to do it?  If they could not,  then might the firefighters call upon the policemen watching  idly from the shore?  Could some of the civilian bystanders be recruited to form a human chain to pull that man out of the water?  Apparently not--and here's the reason why.  

"The incident was deeply regrettable," said Alameda Fire Chief Mike D'Orazi. "But I can also see it from our firefighters' perspective. They're standing there wanting to do something, but they are handcuffed by policy."

What they are saying in effect is that they cannot think of saving a drowning man, because policy forbids it.  They  cannot move unless some rule tells them it is okay.  Thinking for themselves is not in their job description. 

Who can blame them?  They were once fully functioning human beings, capable of thinking and acting tor themselves,  Off-duty, they may still be fully functioning human beings.  But now they work for the government, whose cardinal virtue is not  intelligence but obedience.

If the man had wandered out into the surf after five o'clock, and those same men were standing around on the shore out of uniform, that man might be alive today. After all,  the article never mentions that they did not have the necessary skills to save him, only that they had not logged in sufficient training hours to make them free of liability if they did.   These men, possessed with the life saving skills they had, might have been able to save him, but they were not allowed to even think of doing it, because of policy. 

There is a word to this. It is called stupid. The decision-making portions of their brains  were surrendered to a higher power, the government.  For all intents and purposes, these otherwise intelligent men had all become functionally stupid.

Such stupidity doesn't happen easily, or all at once.  It takes a certain level of cultural sophistication to produce this level of stupidity.  Hunter-gatherers of the African plain would not have done this. If hunter Oog, saw gatherer Moog about to be crushed by a giant mammoth he would no doubt have gathered his friends to save him.   The builders of the pyramids would have at least let down a rope to save one of them from being crushed by a runaway stone. But then, they did not face the level of bureaucracy  we do today, which apparently insists that the saving of a life can only occur the rescuers had logged sufficient hours in mammoth evading or stone stopping skills, or if public policy allowed it.  These primitives had not yet reached the level of division of labor necessary to convince one person that they were not able to rescue another simply out of policy.  It requires a full, triple-tiered level of sophistication to produce this level of stupidity.

First, you must have someone who makes the policy.  This person isn't stupid, just not omniscient.  No one who makes the rules can possibly know every possible way a policy can be interpreted.  No matter how hard we try to write all-inclusive rules, we will never produce a single policy that will always be practical and efficient.  In many cases, the people making policy know that and expect that people will exercise good judgment when applying them.

Next, there needs to be an enforcement level.   The enforcement of policy is carried out by someone other than the ones who make the policy.  This person is not stupid either, just intent upon doing a good job for the policy makers.  The enforcers, out of fear or ambition,  do their job zealously, and believe intently in "the law" in abstract. They therefore refrain from judging the law which they serve, and are unwilling to bend from it.

Finally, there are those  who actually carry out the policy.  Again,  they would act like reasonable people, if they felt free to do so. But they are not free. They see themselves as slaves of others, and so they cannot use their own minds. 

Voila,  stupid.

Fortunately there is a cure for stupid.  It is to go back to the beginning, back to what God gave us,  to something that is not complicated or hard, but is in fact very easy. It's called common sense.  It is that right we have,  even if we are slaves or employees, to think for ourselves, and realize that there are things more important than what we do for a living, or even living, for that matter. It is doing the right thing in the right way. 

Sometimes, we have to forget policy, and do what's right. 

Or, we can just stay  stupid. 

Modern versions of Proverbs

Trust In the Lord, but back up your computer

Do not ride on the bus if the driver has a white cane.

There will always be a hard drive crash.

The wise man keeps his tank above empty. The fool pushes below the E.

Make your boss happy and he will make you happy.

Do not ever trust a commercial.

Guard your mouth when you go to an all-you -can-eat buffet.

A wise man reads the directions

A fool tries to figure it out for himself

A slothful man never drives his car

Because he is afraid of an accident.

The fear of the Lord is greater than wikipedia

A wise man fills his IRA

A fool fills his home with junk.

It is better to live in a refrigerator box

Than with a Kardassian

Winning a friend

Is better than winning the powerball jackpot.

You have a neat house if you do not have a business

But you do not have any money either. 

When a policeman pulls you over

Do not flip him off

But hold your tongue and take the ticket.

Meat and Milk: Spiritual formation in Mature Believers, Part 3

The Function of Faith

So how do we maintain spiritual health throughout our lives, in the face of opposition?

Faith is the key—not an idle or casual faith, the kind Bonheoffer called “cheap grace,” but faith that is foundational to our existence, our reason to be.  If we are to grow past the point of spiritual reproduction, we must grow in our experience of Christ through faith.

Faith performs eight basic functions:

1. intellectual challenge;

2. emotional engagement;

3. behavioral reinforcement

4. supportive relationships;

5. higher authority;

6. life interpretation;

7. connection to history;

8. and a realistic hope.

A healthy faith system will involve all eight of these functions in a consistent, interrelated whole.  Many people, believer and nonbeliever alike, derive these eight functions from more than one source.  They may, for example, intellectually accept the doctrines of Christianity, but receive their emotional engagement from music, sports or entertainment.  They might experience an emotional high, but separate their faith from their intellectual life, becoming emotionally Christian, but intellectually brain dead.  Or to give another example, they may seek their community in worldly friendships, while going through the motions of Christian ritual.  When these eight functions are divided, we become practical polytheists, looking to a pantheon of worldly gods to cover up the deficiencies in our relationship to the true God.  Sooner or later, however, we will discover we cannot serve two masters.  In a time of crisis, divided faith cannot stand.

Let us look at these eight tasks of faith one by one.

(1)Intellectual challenge.

  There is a mistaken assumption that just listening to preaching or going to Sunday school will give the mature Christian all the spiritual answers he or she needs.  We may have the answers, but the questions keep coming.  If we rely on simplified versions of spiritual answers, and do not exercise our minds, we will be ill equipped to respond to the new situations life constantly puts before us.

Not all Christians are intellectuals, but all Christians are sometimes expected to justify and rejustify what they know to be true.  Every mature believer should be challenged to understand theological issues and have a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible.  Without these, the mature believer becomes ineffective in his own self-examination and in discerning how to counsel others.  Most Sunday schools and cell groups are not intended for this kind of study but for fellowship, worship, and many other things.  Christian churches need to rethink their curricula when it comes to the needs of mature believers.

(2) Emotional Engagement. 

David Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence points out that emotional sensitivity rather than intellectual abilities are the best predictors of success.[22]  Goleman writes that the portion of the brain governing our emotions is much larger than the portion devoted to reason, that the path from the intellect to the emotion is like a cow path while the path from the emotions to the intellect is like a four lane highway.[23]  The heart influences the head more than the head influences the heart.  It does little good to strengthen our faith intellectually unless we concurrently deepen our passion for God.  Just as a relationship between a husband and wife becomes complacent, so does our relationship with Christ.  We need to be challenged to deepen our emotions toward God, just as we must with our spouses.

One only has to read the writings of the great intellectuals of the faith such as Luther, Calvin, the Puritans, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas to see that these men were as passionate in their writings on God as the wildest Pentecostal or Charismatic.  The deeper our emotional attachment the greater our intellectual understanding is likely to become.

(3) Behavioral reinforcement. 

Perhaps the greatest contribution behavioral psychology has given to the world is to demonstrate the link between action and emotion.  We do not just smile when we are happy; smiling makes us happy.  We do not just react angrily when we are upset; shouting gets us more upset.  The things we do and the rituals we follow reinforce our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  The church’s emphasis on the “means of grace” helps us to deepen and enhance our relationship to God.  As James wrote “faith without works is dead.”[25]  Inward faith without outward behavior quickly disappears.   

Behavioral reinforcement of spiritual beliefs take three forms—inner disciplines, outer rituals, and the practice of a Christian lifestyle.

Inner disciplines include prayer, fasting, Bible study, confessing, meditating, praising, and silence.  Donald Whitner says “God’s people have always been a spiritual people.  . . . I have never known a man or woman who came to spiritual maturity except through spiritual discipline.”[27]

Outer rituals are practiced publicly in God’s house among God’s people.  The early church devised a wide variety of corporate disciplines—morning prayers, evening prayers, regular times of fasting, the Eucharist, confession, weekly worship, prayers before meals, family devotions, liturgy, litanies, and benedictions.  They enable us to fulfill the Scriptural command to “pray without ceasing”—not prayer every moment of every day, but prayer regularly performed throughout the days, weeks, and years.

Rituals and spiritual disciplines though are meaningless without a Christian lifestyle.  A Christian lifestyle is not defined so much by what we do not do, but by what we do.  Refraining from sexual immorality, intoxicants, gluttony, greed and sloth may fulfill the commandments of the Old Covenant, but it does not rise to the level of the New.  Loving others, feeding the poor, sharing our faith, showing compassion for our neighbor and turning the other cheek are the heavier duties that Christ called His disciples to perform.  Ethical Christian behavior is absolutely necessary for Christian maturity.

(4) Supportive Relationships. 

If there is one overwhelming deficiency in our cybernetic world, it is for intimate community.  We need a community that stirs us each to deeper spiritual expression.  Mature believers need to be with people who can nourish and encourage them while they in turn encourage others.  As Bonheoffer famously said, “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. . . . Let him who cannot be in community beware of being alone.”[28]

Being in a church, even serving in a church, is not the same as being in community.  Many of us serve on boards and committees so pointless and soporific that St. Peter himself would no doubt repeat his weakness at Gethsemane and once again fall asleep.  Churches are often the worst place to discuss struggles.  Even in churches with a well-functioning small group ministry, only a portion of the church are involved in small groups.

(5) Life interpretation. 

Faith equips us to interpret our life story.  Whether our lives are on an upward slope or a downward slide depends entirely on which direction is up or down.  Whether our history is the work of a benevolent God working all things for good or whether it is a random accident determines our life course in the future.

The only way to know and interpret our story is to tell that story.  We must put it into words.  The simple act of talking or writing about events helps us to come to terms with them.

In 1 Samuel 7:12, after God routed a Philistine army bent on Israel’s destruction, the people of Israel erected a stone monument to the occasion, calling it “Ebenezer”—“thus far has the Lord helped us.”  A testimony is a similar memorial in our hearts, reminding us of the goodness of God in the past, which He has promised will continue in the future.  Mature believers should be encouraged to remember their personal past, so they may remain steady in the future.

(6) Connection to history.

The church that ignores the past also cuts itself off from the present.  The church may be faithful to the Scriptures (which is a product of the past), but its understanding has become disconnected and disjointed from the great thinkers of the past.  It need not hide from history by concealing denominational connections, or throwing out every tradition.  Believers need to understand their roots so they can understand where they belong.

We stand on the shoulders of giants, Sir Isaac Newton once famously observed. Connecting to history is a primary task of faith.  We need to understand how we fit into the historic continuum.  History assures us of our place in the universe.

Older believers are often upset by the rapid change in society.  We should not be—change is a part of life.  But if change does not help us reinterpret the past, it will be involuntary and unwelcome.  Taking time to provide mature believers with a historical perspective will make change more palatable and manageable.

(7) Unquestioned authority. 

For us to build and maintain a personal world view, we must have some authority we deem to be true.  Faith gives us something to believe and follow without question or compromise.

The rapid decline of the mainline church is not due to its unwillingness to change, but to its denial of its past authority.  The church must stand firm on what it believes, and stick by it.

The real issue is not authority so much as submission.  Christ gave us an example of voluntary submission.  He submitted Himself to the Father willingly and joyfully.  He submitted out of love.  Paul submitted himself to the corrupt authorities of the Roman empire and the Jewish establishment by choice, not by force.  In Romans 13, he encouraged Christians to submit to the Roman empire out of choice.

It is counter intuitive but nevertheless accurate to say that only unquestioned authority allows us to freely pursue what is greatest in life.  Scientists cannot do research without believing in empirical evidence.  A high court cannot question the standards of a lower court without some basis in constitutional law.  A grammarian cannot grade papers unless she regards dictionaries and grammar textbooks as authoritative.  The constitution may need changing and grammar textbooks may need to be rewritten, but until they are we need them.  We could not function without authoritative standards.  A church which does not speak with authority cannot provide a solid foundation for individual faith development in its members.

(8) A realistic hope.

The eighth work of faith is to assure us of a worthwhile future, making the struggles and privations of this world capable of being borne.  Without positive hope, positive change is not possible.  If we cannot expect a positive outcome for our labors, we will cease to labor.

Hope does not have to be a positive outcome for us personally.  A terrorist may blow himself up out of hope for seventy virgins in heaven, or he may do it out of hope of starting a political movement that will usher in a new Communist state.  A philanthropist may give money to be rewarded in heaven, or to make the future world better.  Either way, we do what we do for hope of something better.

For Christians to be balanced and healthy spiritually, we must take into consideration all eight of these works of faith in our lives.  As a church, we must make sure to meet these needs and to equip Christians to meet these needs for themselves.  If we want the church to be healthy, then believers of all stages—new, young, and old,—must be equipped for a lifetime of Spiritual growth and development.

Summary

The track of an individual Christian’s spiritual life is unique, but there are common stages along the way.  Seekers are new believers, who have just come to trust Jesus.  Learners or catechumens are those who are developing as believers, discovering their spiritual gifts, and discovering God’s direction for their lives.  Mature believers are Christians who have a sense of God’s vision for their lives, and are seeking to follow Him in a complicated, challenging world.

Historically the evangelical church has done a better job with the discipleship of new believers than they have with maintaining the spiritual health of mature ones.  By treating all believers the same, the church may either fail to reach new people, or sustain the old ones.  Christian discipleship programs aimed at leading new believers into maturity leave the mature believer desiring more.

Mature believers need to be challenged to go deeper into the faith, instead of repeating the same teachings again and again.  This challenge needs to come through eight aspects of faith—intellectual challenge, emotional expression, rituals and habits, intimate community, life interpretation, a connection to history, definite authority, and a realistic hope.

Clearly, maintaining our spiritual lives in maturity cannot be forced from without; it must be pursued individually with all zeal.  Nevertheless, the church must provide opportunities for continued spiritual growth, while not forsaking the lost, or ignoring the discipleship of the young.  The church must have a multi-leveled approach to discipleship.  Though this may be difficult, with God’s grace and the Spirit’s help it can be done.

[1] I John 2:12-15.  All Biblical quotations will be from the NIV unless otherwise noted.)

[2] I John 2:1,2:28,  3:18, 4:4, and 5:21.

[3] Jameson, Faucett, and Brown Commentary, electronic database, copyright 1997 by Biblesoft.

[4] (Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright (c) 1994, Biblesoft and International Bible Translators, Inc.)

[5] Ibid.

[6] I Cor 3:1-4 NKJV

[7] Strongs, op. cit.

[8] Author, Mapping the Christian Life, (RevPress, Bilouxi, Mississsippi), 2008, pp.  ix-xi.

[9] Geoffrey J Cuming  Hippolytus:  A Text For Students: (Grove Books, LTD.,Bramcote, Nottingham,England,1987), p. 16.  

[10] Ibid.

[11] The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. By E. M. Blaiklock, (Thomas Nelson,Nashville, Tnn.) 1986, pp. 220-221.

[12] Hipplolytus, p 18.

[13] This is the probable beginning of the tradition of Lent.

[14] Hippolytus, op. cit. p. 19.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church, (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Mi.) 1995, p. 130.

[17] Adapted from Marks of a Disciple, by Lorne C. Sanny, © 1975 by The Navigators. The complete booklet is available from NavPress at: www.navpress.com

[18] http://www.campuscrusade.com/catalog/Transferable-Concepts-Bible-Study-Series.html

[19] Billygrahambookstore.org

[20] Matthew 28:19-20

[21] James Sire, Habits of the Mind (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill) 2000, p. 27-28.

[22] Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books, New York, 1997, p. 35.

[23] Ibid.  p. 19

[24] Peter Scazzero The Emotionally Healthy Church, (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Mi.) 2003,  P. 19.

[25] James 2:20

[26] Richard Foster The Celebration of Discipline (Harper One, New York) 1978, p. 7. 

[27] Donald Whitner Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Navpress, Colorado Springs, Col.) 1991, p. 17.

[28] Dietrich Bonhoeffer Life Together (Harper & Row, New York) 1954, p. 77.

[29] Michael W. Foss Power Surge (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, Minn.) 2000, p. 146.

[30] C. S. Lewis Surprised by Joy (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, New York) 1955, p. 7.

Meat and Milk: Spiritual Formation in Mature Believers, Part 2

This is the second part of a three part post taken from a lecture in the Voices of New Life Series.  If you haven't seen the first one, you might look at it before reading this one. 

Modern Stages of the Christian Life

Modern discipleship differs from that of the ancient church in two significant places.  First, baptism is either performed in infancy or at conversion, not after an extended period of catechesis.  Because catechesis is performed either before baptism or not at all, many are baptized who never grasp the full significance of the faith, or the duties that are connected to the faith.  Second, when actual training is done, it is presumed to be complete in a relatively short period of time.  The contemporary church has programs for study and enrichment, but they are generally without a formal goal or direction.  Seekers, learners, and disciples learn together with the same material.  As a result, the seekers often are at a loss to understand what is happening, while the mature believers find it difficult to stay alert.  It is a “one-size-fits-all” approach to discipleship.

Modern church discipleship, when it is attempted at all, is a relatively short-term process, aimed at developing productive believers who serve the institutional church We hurry disciples though the steps at a pace the early church would consider insanely fast, turning out like-minded believers like cars off an assembly line.

One of the best and most effective examples of modern Christian discipleship comes from Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church.[16]  Warren uses a baseball diamond model to illustrate his church’s disciple making process.  The bases represent knowing Christ, growing in Christ, Serving Christ, and Sharing Christ.  Moving through these four stages usually takes about two years.  Sharing Christ is the final stage and the apex of spiritual maturity.  At the end, the mature Christians are expected to evangelize and disciple others, and keep the chain going.

The Navigators, perhaps the best known and the most effective discipleship ministry in the contemporary church, has a wide variety of excellent materials for discipleship and Bible study.  Fruitfulness, in the form of making disciples, is generally considered the end of the discipleship road.  Lorne Sandy, former president of the Navigators, listed the three stages of Christian discipleship as Identified with Christ, Obedient to Christ, and Fruitful in Christ.[17]

Campus Crusade for Christ, founded by Bill Bright in 1951, uses eleven “transferable concepts”—“How to be sure you are a Christian,” “Experience God’s Love and Forgiveness,” “Be filled with the Spirit,” “Walk in the Spirit,” “Be a fruitful witness,” “Introduce others to Christ,” “Fulfill the Great Commission,” “Love by faith,” “Pray with Confidence,” “Experience the joy of giving,” and “Study the Bible effectively.”  Two transferrable concepts deal with assurance of salvation, two with the Holy Spirit, three with sharing, two with prayer and Bible study, one with love and one with stewardship.[18]  Each book is intended to be used in one or two weeks, for a total of between eleven and twenty-two weeks of discipleship—about six months.

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has a four week Christian life and Witness course.  The final lesson of this course focuses on sharing the faith. [19]

Let us put Warren et. al. into the same rubric as the others.

Table 5.  Stages of Christian life with contemporary examples

	Repentance	New Birth		Eternity
1 John 2	Children	Young Men		Fathers
1 Cor 3	Carnal			Spiritual
Mapping	Seeker	Servant		Settler
3rd C. Church	Seeker	Learner	Kneeler	Disciple
Warren et. al.	Knowing	Growing	Serving	Sharing

The last line of the chart demonstrates the difference between the modern evangelical understanding of Christian discipleship and the Biblical/historic/traditional understanding of discipleship.  Generally speaking, the discipleship of the evangelical church is directed at training people to share Christ and build up the immature believer.  Looking it in human terms, it would be like saying that the purpose of human existence is to have more babies.  While this is certainly a part of why we are here, that cannot be all.

This modern formula of spiritual formation is reflexive—that is, it is focused backwards upon itself.  We are not just called to make more disciples, but to make better ones.  If we only focus on the process of making more, and do not focus also on the process of making better disciples, then the quality of Christian discipleship will necessarily erode over time, and the church becomes more shallow and less effective.

The ancient church apparently believed that something more was necessary.  The mature disciples were trained in ways that were not even shared with the young.  Something was being passed down from mature believer to mature believer that was not part of the process of sharing.

This statement is not intended to suggest that the early church did not evangelize, or that we should not evangelize.  On the contrary we most emphatically should!  Nor am I suggesting that programs such as Warren’s, Billy Graham’s, and the Navigators’ are wrong or need to be corrected in their discipleship of new believers.  If there is a deficiency today, it is in the church’s deficiency to fully consider what mature discipleship entails.  It requires more than faith sharing, more tithing, more even than becoming good church members.  True discipleship means a whole life change and the maintenance of spiritual health for a lifetime.

The irony of our modern emphasis on making new members is that it has not worked.  No matter how much effort we put into evangelistic methods, the majority of our people never spiritually reproduce.  Even a highly effective evangelistic church draws more believers than unbelievers.  Christians who are supposed to be mature still cannot and do not share Christ.

The reason for our failure is not that we have not been told to share Christ, but that we have been told little else.  God requires Christians to press on to a deeper maturity.  In the Great Commission Jesus said:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."[20]

Going, making disciples, and baptizing are the first three stages of a four-stage process which also involves teaching people to behave like Jesus.  Our goal is not simply to produce new disciples but to produce better disciples—fully incorporated into the Body of Christ, trained to live as Christians, aware of the presence of God in their lives and capable of standing until the end of their age.