Bigger Christians, Not Bigger Churches

My wife and I recently put out the big bucks for a month's membership at the local YMCA. We've talked for a long time about the need to be healthier, but had yet to do the necessary things to make it happen. We had to be at the Y for something last week, and that did it for us. Unfortunately that was a week and a half ago, and I still haven't gone to work out. Obviously I was there on the day we signed up, so that should count as a visit even though I didn't do any exercise while we were there. When they gave us a tour, it was hard not to feel a bit out of place. I'm in the worst shape I've ever been in, not having done anything competitive in a decade. Yet walking around the Y, there were plenty of people sweating profusely and enjoying it, as well as guys lifting weights so heavy that when the bar went back on the rack, I could feel the floor shaking. (Sure, there were also plenty of people there in a physical condition much closer to mine, but I didn't take as much notice of them.)

While it felt intimidating in a way, there was also certainly a sense of it being right. If we had walked around the Y without seeing anyone who looked healthy, there would be a serious problem. Health clubs don't exist just to get people to sign up; they're there to help people get healthy.

Pause those thoughts about a health club for a moment and think about a church. The focus in churches often comes down to how many people are there. Or, broader than numbers of people, churches easily focus on the "ABCs of church growth": attendance, buildings, and cash.

I need to preface the remainder of my remarks with admitting that for most of my life, I've had an anti-large church bias. I'm not sure what to attribute that to, except the fact that I had always been in small churches, and I guess we all like to think we're doing things better than everyone else. I've gotten rid of the bias during the last two years, which has been very convenient in timing as I've been on staff at a large church for the first time.

Giving up my bias, and experiencing some of the goodness of a large church has helped me to realize something simple about small churches: there is some reason that they are small. It's possible that the reason is that they're in a rural area and have already reached and discipled everyone within driving distance, but I've yet to come across such a church (although there are some great churches in small towns). More likely causes for a church remaining small could be disfunction among members, no interest in engaging the world around them, a lack of leadership ability, a refusal to accept change, etc., etc., etc. Generally, if we are communicating the message that Jesus preached and have any serious roadblocks out of the way, churches will grow. This is my disclaimer to establish that I am no longer a Christian with an anti-large church bias, which some of you may need to keep in mind in the rest of what I write in this post.

I once heard Dallas Willard say, "We need to stop counting the people who come to our churches and start weighing them." Obviously he wasn't advocating that we place scales around our churches and start singing, "O Jesus, Lord of My Girth" (all credit to Stu Smith for the hymn title). Rather, he was making the point that the number of people who come is only relevant if they are reliably becoming more like Christ in the substance of who they are. Or, back to the health club, the number of members is irrelevant if no one there is getting healthy. Although health clubs would probably go out of business if it was a rarity to have members become and stay healthy, it is highly possible to have a very large church whose people do not naturally become any more Christlike as time passes. We can work hard, do everything with "excellence," be extremely well-organized with strong leadership at all levels, and if those components are in place, chances are that a church in our culture will not have trouble drawing a crowd. But those characteristics in themselves say nothing about whether or not people in the church are naturally growing in their love for God and others.

Another way of looking at what we're aiming for, which I've also heard Dallas Willard and James Bryan Smith talk about, is that rather than aiming at building bigger churches, we should aim at building bigger Christians. Surely some health clubs get this right. They exist to help people get fit, and if they do that extremely well, I doubt they have trouble finding business. If I were a health club director, my primary goal would be to get as many people as possible onto a reliable path to getting and staying fit. So, as a pastor, that means that my primary goal is to help those under my influence to enter ever more fully into "the life that really is life" (1 Tim. 6:19), leading them in the kind of lifestyle that will naturally produce the love, joy, and peace of Christ deep within them as they learn to rely on God's grace.

Also as a pastor, it means that I have to be experiencing the kind of life I'm promoting to others. I suppose that health clubs can run successfully as businesses without fit directors, but that seems difficult. Pastors can certainly build big churches without having had their characters transformed to be very significantly like that of Jesus, but it's very difficult to build "big" Christians without doing so. In fact, without Christ's character growing in us through God's grace, we likely won't even know what it would mean to make "bigger Christians" and may not even realize it if we met one. Because we naturally lead people to become like us, building bigger Christians requires those in Christian leadership themselves to be apprentices of Jesus, learning to do everything he taught us. (See my earlier post, "Is Leadership Overrated?")

Maybe I'm giving health clubs too much credit. I'm sure they also occasionally fall into the trap of focusing on expanding their customer base without giving the needed attention to how effectively they're helping the people already there become healthy. If that's true, the largest health club in your town is not necessarily the one most likely to help you get in shape. And the largest church may not be the place that can most effectively help you experience Jesus' kind of life. Size is not the point. The point is bigger Christians, not bigger churches.

A Parable of Churchville

[This is one of a series of posts related to the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey. To see the others, click here.] Welcome to Churchville, Population 10. (Generally very good and likeable people.)

An exciting opportunity has come to Churchville, as electricity has become available to the residents.

Time passes, and a very interesting thing happens. Half of the residents of Churchville take advantage of the availability of electricity by bringing it into their homes. One of these comes to believe so strongly in the benefits of electricity that he (upper left) is willing to give anything for the sake of electricity and deeply desires for all of his neighbors to come to experience it as he has. The four others who have connected to electricity are also enthusiastic about it. It has dramatically changed how they live their everyday lives. This "connected" half of Churchville's population all exhibit a love of electricity and a high degree of hospitality toward and concern for their neighbors.

But half of our residents of Churchville have never chosen to connect their homes to the available electric current, and they have varying reasons. One of them simply isn't convinced that electricity exists. He says that his neighbors who claim to have electricity in their homes are just fooling themselves with wishful thinking. Yet, even though he thinks these five neighbors of his are living under a delusion, he remains in Churchville rather than leaving, because it's a good place to be.

The other four of our non-electric residents are a bit more of a puzzle. They believe in electricity, but for whatever reason still have yet to make the appropriate arrangements for it to come into their home. The most notable thing, though, was three of these four seem to be unaware that they are living without electricity! They talk and often act as if they have it in their homes, even to the point of occasionally buying an appliance or sending the electric company money for the bill they think they owe. (One of them even volunteers to serve on the board of the electric company.) Yet these three continue to go on with their electricity-less lives, with no realization that they could be living any differently.

Only one of the non-electric residents notices the gap between how she is living and what her life would be like with electricity. One of the "connected" neighbors gave her a light bulb, and she really wants more light in her house. Neighbors and electric company workers are confident that she will make the necessary arrangements and become connected soon.

So what's the point of the parable? I am a big fan of the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey for churches. It seeks to give church leaders a measurable way of looking at how effectively they help people grow. Our church participated almost two years ago, and will take our second survey this fall to see how we have improved.

Our results indicate that somewhere close to 1/2 of our people have yet to significantly arrange their lives in ways that would make growth in their love for God and others natural. Also, of these, only about 1 in 5 recognize that things should be different.

Of all of the things that are presented to church leaders as worthy of our time and energy, nothing is more essential than this: modeling and communicating how profoundly good it is to live our lives fully in the kingdom of God, so that any others who desire to do so will know how, and that others will have a more accurate understanding of what it is they're being invited to in the Christian life.

"Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news: 'It's time. The kingdom of God is now available. Change your mind and direction and believe the good news." (Mark 1:15, paraphrase)

The Best Thing I do in Ministry

Being in ministry in a situation like mine requires doing a wide variety of things (often with opportunities to dabble in new areas of my incompetence), but among the things that I do, there is one that stands out to me above the rest as

• being the most enjoyable,
• helping me become more the kind of person I want to be,
• making the biggest difference in others' lives,
• developing good and needed personal friendships with others,
• and responding the best way that I can to the invitation from God that I've sensed for a long time to help others mature in their love for God and for others.

I remember writing in my journal years ago that I wanted to shape my life around two simple things: being a disciple of Jesus, and helping others to do so. This opportunity in ministry has helped me to do both of those things more effectively than anything else in the decade that I've been doing this kind of thing full-time, and it's nothing unique to me or my situation. Whether you're in ministry or not, you can easily be involved in the same thing I'm talking about: being part of a group of people going through The Apprentice Series by James Bryan Smith.

Because of the nature of the roles that I have had in ministry, I usually stay pretty familiar with a good deal of the curriculum available to churches. There is a multitude of good stuff out there, but I have never used or seen anything else like Apprentice. It is the only material I am aware of that does such an effective job at helping us to think about God in a way that is consistent with the scriptures, arrange our lives in a way that gives God room to work in us, and connect with others in the relationships that we must have for Jesus' kind of life to keep growing in us. Or, as one of my heroes, Dallas Willard, describes it, it is "the best practice of Christian spiritual formation that [he has] seen."

Apprentice isn't exactly a book study, but it is based around three books, all by James Bryan Smith: The Good and Beautiful God, The Good and Beautiful Life, and The Good and Beautiful Community. A leaders' guide and other very helpful resources are available for free at www.apprenticeofjesus.org.

We've greatly enjoyed going through the first two books with a group of friends at our church, and will begin the third book in a couple of weeks. One of the things we have enjoyed most is the mix of people in our group: from people who were very new to church and Christianity to others who have probably averaged being in church 3.5 times per week for their entire lives. It has made a difference for all of us. We love the relationships with one another, and those friendships have been an important part of how Apprentice teaches us overall to shape our lives in a way that we are Jesus' apprentices in how to live life in the kingdom of God.

I remember a specific time as a teenager, after I had committed my life to Christ. I wanted to learn to live my life as God wanted me to, but was having trouble figuring out how to do so. I was in church, I prayed and read my Bible, but I still wanted to know, "what's my life supposed to be like from now on?" I went to a Christian bookstore, hoping to find something with a title like, How to Live as a Christian, but I didn't have any such luck. That was almost 20 years ago, and I have kept looking hard for that answer, with some very good help along the way. If that is a question you have in your life now, the Apprentice series is the first place that I would point you. Find out if anyone in your church is going through this, and if not, get a group of friends together (who can be very committed to it) and start.

If you're someone who goes to First Methodist of Midland with us (or if you're anyone else locally), and this sounds interesting, there will be two chances to jump in during the coming months: one group will start in September on Wednesday nights, and another will start in January on Tuesday nights. Email me for more details.