In my last blog post, I wrote about the pathway to membership, but as I mentioned, I prefer the word community. Now I turn to the important topic of an intentional path to discipleship.
Remember that Jesus called us to follow him as disciples. The concept of discipleship is often lost in an emphasis on evangelism only as conversion and often presented as a decision. Many evangelical churches make their single focus on getting people to confess their sins and accept Jesus as their savior. Jesus’ own emphasis was on following him by learning his teachings - his way, his truth, and his life.
However, this is important. Studies on multiple congregations in a wide range of denominations have shown that individual spiritual growth often has no relationship to the activities of people’s local congregation. In other words, spiritual growth happens when you are in the right place at the right time. A person who merely attended church could be in the same congregation for years but remain spiritually stuck while a new member sees an announcement about a special retreat, decides to attend, and experiences a remarkable amount of spiritual growth and insight from it.
When I became the Dean of the Cathedral in Dallas, I found a typical pattern that exists in many Episcopal Congregations. Adult Education amounted to random classes based on clergy or lay leaders’ interests. I call them the Theology 401 classes. These assume that members are ready for advance information. I lamented to our staff the lack of any 101 classes on the basics of Prayer Book liturgy, the different forms of prayer, finding a daily devotion, understanding the basic doctrines, or how to read and interpret scripture. A better approach is to focus on Christian Formation. Christian education often aims at information while formation aims at integration of information to behavior feeding our minds, bodies, and spirits.
One of my favorite preachers and teachers was Pastor Bruce Theilmann of First Presbyterian Church Pittsburgh. He once noted that churches where members carried bibles to church and attended classes only on passages of the bible often produced Christian Pharisees not big-hearted loving disciples of Jesus, people who reflected Christian maturity. Tragically, this has proven true on many occasions.
What needs to be done to correct this information only approach? Congregational leaders, and especially their clergy, need think about the steps our people need to take to move from seeker or nominal church member toward fully devoted followers of Christ. While each member is unique, spiritual directors have long understood that there is a path all disciples take. So, think about what activities we should systematically offer that will move members on this path of Christian maturity. My understanding of spiritual growth followed a classical model of 7 steps:
1.
People
of whim
2.
People
of law
3.
People
of Grace
4.
Discipleship
5.
Journey
to the Cross
6.
Death
to self
7. The resurrected life
W What we did at the Cathedral was to create two tools, The Cathedral Core Curriculum and A Cathedral Way of Life.
W We then asked all members to take the first four core classes aimed at a clear understanding of discipleship even if they had been members of the Cathedral for years. These were:
1.
Christian Believing using the Baptismal Covenant as an
outline.
2.
How to Read and Understand Holy Scripture.
3.
Anglican Spirituality, introduction to
the Prayer Book as a guide.
4. Your Call to Ministry in the Body of Christ, an introduction to vocation and spiritual gifts for ministry.
We communicated that all four were important and that it did not matter the order people took these. We also created opportunities for retreats and/or days of reflection aligned with the Church year to introduce the deeper life of the last three steps. We encouraged people to experience these steps, and the core curriculum was also our path to baptism and confirmation. We knew that people needed to proceed at their own pace often this depended on life’s circumstances. When I left the Cathedral over 50% of our members, old and new, had taken the core courses and over 50% were following the Way of Life that we offered. It was one of the most significant achievements of my ministry of 42 years! I can send you an outline of these if you email me, deankevinmartin@gmail.com.
Of course, there are other models of Christian growth and other steps that clergy have created for their congregation. While I was working on my evangelism series, a good colleague of mine, Paul Fielder, sent me the text of his new book to review. The title is Living the Transformed Life. It is being published and should be available in the next few months. I will send notice when it is available. Thinking like a Spiritual Director and acting on his pastoral experience, Paul gives a series of spiritual exercises that begins with a guided spiritual retreat done over several days or weeks if one needs a slower pace. His chapters move people along this path of “Transformation.” These exercises aim at deepening believers’ relationship with God, and they can be done individually or in small groups.
There are other ways to do this too. In my opinion, The Alpha Program starts people on the path of Discipleship. Cursillo has often been a weekend that transforms members into disciples. My former boss, Bishop Claude Payne, attended a Cursillo and started asking why this is not offered at the front door of a parish rather than allowing years of membership before attending one. He introduced this at his home parish in retirement and the lay people have embraced it. It has become the method for membership connected to baptism, confirmation, and reception.
Does your congregation have an intentional path toward discipleship? Remember that believing people can just attend church and eventually they will catch discipleship is like believing that putting them into a chicken coop once a week and hoping that at some point they will lay eggs. Discipleship is spiritual transformation. It was for the first 3 centuries of Christianity. It has been in every revival and movement from Benedict to Francis to Wesley. It is the primary work of Jesus, disciples making disciples that continues the Jesus Movement up to this day.
Create
an intentional path of discipleship and watch the transformation of your
congregation from members to disciple!
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