Accelerated Spiritual Growth
The way of service as the path to discipleship is usually not emphasized in our American church culture. Making a big deal out of loving our neighbors might be reserved for a special emphasis every now and then, but everyday discipleship is mostly cast as a personal quest for God through various kinds of personal spiritual practices. The consumption of spiritual goods—whether it is worship, Bible study, prayer, fasting, giving—is mostly engaged in a congregational setting or as part of a church program. Discipleship has come to be measured as faithful participation in these church activities. Good works done for others in arenas outside the church are not celebrated much as part of the path to discipleship. As a result, people don’t see all of life as a discipling platform.
This compartmentalized view of discipleship paints spiritual development as an activity pursued apart from normal life. Truth is, if our spiritual growth doesn’t show up in how we relate to others, run our businesses, treat our schoolmates and deal with our neighbors, then it’s not very spiritual. Spiritual development does not occur in some kind of vacuum. It works its way out in these relationships that are part of everyday life.
Here’s an example of what I mean. A few years back, Cathy, my wife, was heavily involved in helping a mother of quintuplets (in addition to the 1-year-old and 7-year-old sons this woman already had). Helping, in this case, meant whatever needed to be done, from rounding up food and baby equipment to remodeling a house to create enough room for the family. This was all on top of providing emotional and spiritual support to this overwhelmed and poverty-challenged young mom.
One day Cathy got a phone call from a well-meaning church lady who offered to begin mentoring the woman. She proposed coming by the home one day a week and taking Susan, the mom, out for a few hours’ break and doing a Bible study with her. Cathy’s immediate response was, “Why don’t you come over and fold clothes and change diapers?” Then she added, “When Susan and I are doing laundry together, we talk about everything.” The church lady’s response to spiritual formation was to create an artificial environment, study some curriculum and send Susan back to “plug and play” with whatever insights had been generated. Her motive was good, but her idea was inadequate because most people don’t learn that way. Cathy’s approach, on the other hand, involved relational and life-focused dynamics, anchored in normal life routines.
Serving other people is the quickest way to grow spiritually. It is the path to discipleship applauded by Jesus in his command that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.
Finding God
A knock on my office door one Sunday morning was followed by the entrance of a man I had come to know in my brief time as interim pastor of a congregation near my home.
“Can we talk a minute?” he asked as he sat down. “I need your help.”
“Of course,” I replied, wondering what might be the problem. Curiously, he began with a litany of his service to the church—serving on important committees, giving leadership as an elder, teaching adult Bible classes; the list went on and on. It was an impeccable résumé in terms of church member involvement and support. I thought he was providing this historical information as background. As it turned out, it was part of the problem. He summed up his dilemma this way: despite having done all these things for years, he said, “I’m missing something somewhere.”
“Could it be God that you’re missing?” I responded. I then pointed out to him that not one time in his description of his church life had he even mentioned God or Jesus! My observation shocked him, but he quickly agreed. He admitted that he didn’t feel particularly close to God. And that’s really what he was after.
Maybe, like him, you are one of the millions of churchgoers who keep wondering what’s missing in their life. You have attended services, tithed, given to the building campaign, served on committees, worked with young people and gone beyond the call of duty by serving as chaperone for middle school summer camp! Yet you have this nagging sense of unfulfillment. You are wondering when this abundant life that you were promised—if you would just participate more in church stuff—is going to kick in.
Unfortunately, you got the message that the church is Jesus’s preferred hangout and that the world is a spiritually hostile wasteland. Predictably, then, you centered your search for God in church activities and church real estate. It seemed church was God’s favorite place, where he loved to show off in the stained glass, the music, the liturgy and the sermon. Hanging out with church people was the secret to becoming less and less like the world and more and more like Jesus.
It seems to me we’ve had it backwards. The world has always been God’s playground. The only question has been whether or not he is welcome at church! Jesus didn’t drive money-changers out of the streets, after all. It was the temple they had corrupted. The temple had been overrun by religious programming and institutional operating concerns. Jesus was really ticked that a place where people were supposed to be able to find God had become a venue for temple marketing and income, obscuring God’s face and derailing the chance to engage him.
So here’s my suggestion for you in your search for God: get outside more. Get in the streets. You might or might not meet God at church, but you are guaranteed to run into him where people need him desperately. Mother Teresa used to speak of seeing the face of God in the faces of the poor of Calcutta. But you don’t have to go to India to see him. You will find God in hospital emergency rooms, school cafeterias, homeless shelters, battered women’s homes, soup kitchen lines, the unemployment office, bus stops—wherever people are hurting.
When we look after the welfare of others, we promote and participate in God’s kingdom work. When we engage ourselves with a kingdom agenda, we are brought into contact with the King! People who help their neighbors are positioned to see God.
And when it comes to being good to yourself, it doesn’t get any better than hanging out with God!
