Two Crucial Reminders for Discipleship
Is it hard to imagine the 28-year-old, first-time father in your congregation becoming a Sunday School teacher? How about a Deacon?
Is it hard to imagine that the 76-year-old sage, who hasn’t missed a service in 20 years, used to be rather inconsistent and immature?
Our lack of imagination concerning these two members results from a simple, but crucial error that we often make in discipleship and, more particularly, in leadership development: people don’t always stay where they are, and people haven’t always been where they now are.
Three varied experiences have made me think about this truism in recent years.
First, I remember being so zealous for people’s spiritual maturity when I was a new seminary student, and fresh to serving on a church staff. I was a Christian Education Pastor, aspiring to be a Lead Pastor. I can remember being in a meeting with the Senior Pastor, Eddie Moody. Naturally, I knew I could learn from him, but sometimes those lessons came in unexpected ways. I was complaining about the spiritual laziness of one of our church members, to which he calmly but deliberately said, “The thing is, you need to realize where they started from, and where they are now relative to where they started.” He held his hand out, palm-down, and gradually slanted his hand upward, visually illustrating their spiritual progress.
By then Moody had been serving the church close to a decade. He’d walked among the people. He was responsible for many of them having come to know Christ, and/or becoming church members. He knew their stories. He knew their progress. He knew that looks could be deceiving, even discouraging to the one passionate about others’ discipleship.
Second, I serve on our State’s General Board, and regularly listen to reports from our ministry board chairmen. For years I’ve heard our Senior Adult Ministries/Retiree Board Chairman speak repeatedly about the effectiveness of senior adults, encouraging the pastors present not to neglect them. Then, with a chuckle, he always reminds us that they are paying most of the church’s bills.
There’s data, anecdotal and otherwise, to support this claim. But it obscures at least one important truth: the elderly haven’t always been elderly. They haven’t always had the same level of commitment as they do now. Some of them only started reading their Bibles seriously in their 50s or 60s. And certainly some haven’t always been as financially secure and/or financially generous as they are now. What happened? They grew. They matured. They learned the grace of giving.
Finally, having pastored the same congregation for over a decade now has given me an even clearer window into how and why some people grow, and how and why some people shrink. We’ve had many older saints step down from roles after decades of faithfulness, and some have gone on to their eternal reward. Our church has been blessed to see dozens of members step into new ministries, whether as volunteers or coordinators. I always delight at when I speak to a former member who’s relocated or a former staff member and get to report how a particular brother or sister is doing. I love the occasional look of surprise and delight.
It isn’t theologically revolutionary to say that Christians don’t remain where they are. After all, Scripture says that healthy Christians are rooted deeply in Christ, and accordingly, they bear fruit. In one sense it’s miraculous that God changes sinners. But if we accept the basic truths and promise of the Gospel, then it’s not surprising that the Spirit is bringing the church to His intended destination: sanctification and glorification.
On the other hand, it’s revolutionary for many disciple-makers to remember the progressive nature of spiritual maturity. It lengthens our patience. It chastens our frustration. It heightens our hope, knowing that God is up to something, even when our programs and plans seem stunted and ineffective.
Believing that people don’t always stay where they are and haven’t always been where they are now doesn’t make us lazy. God has ordained that we also be agents of change in His people’s lives, relying together on His Word and Spirit.
This principle works negatively also. The person who may be spiritually strong today may not be spiritually strong tomorrow. To paraphrase the children’s church song, if you fail to do what God would have you to do, “you’ll shrink, shrink, shrink.”
Could it be that impatience and frustration are making us lean away from people we need to lean into? Or could it be that presumption and laziness are causing us to stop nurturing people who are starting to shrink behind the scenes?
The key to being faithful in either scenario is a healthy grasp of what Gospel maturity is, a personal commitment to that maturity, and the love and virtue that it produces in us as we try to see all of Christ’s people as disciples in development.
For Further Reading:
How People Change by Timothy Lane and Paul Tripp
How Does Sanctification Work? by David Powlison