Last night I was organizing and filing away all my papers and lesson plans from my second tour of duty in college. There is some great stuff there, but who needs the papers that I wrote, with all the professor's red marks and comments? Not me. So I was throwing away a bunch of stuff and glancing through notes I made to see if there was anything of value, when I came across this quote, "The Church of Christ is gone forever, all we have left are museums." In my usual meticulous fashion I didn't write down the author of the quote, but I wondered what had led him/her to that conclusion? I think we have all had days where we would agree, but as I pondered this quote a couple of things came to my mind.
I'm currently in a group that is doing the preliminary work of visiting with men who have a desire to serve as elders/shepherds/spiritual leaders of the congregation where we are attending. The group developed a set of questions and the one that I always get to ask is, "As one who will be responsible for the spiritual development of the members, what does that look like? What are the ingredients of that process?" Ummm, let's see, ummm. Wow, what a good question. Does it not bother anyone else that we don't even think in those terms? Shouldn't a spiritual leader be able to articulate a process? These men have all raised children to adult believers, wasn't there some reflection on what this looks like? Shouldn't we all have an internal process that we can articulate about our own development? This lack of focus bothers me.
If we don't have men leading us who have a clear concept of spiritual formation, how can we develop a community of faith that exhibits "informed judgement"? You see, I think the church should be a community of people who see things as they truly are and can articulate the truth, both ancient and modern. Instead, we have men and women who are stuck in a particular theological spot, and seem quite happy to stay there. Consequently we have churches that seem to settle back instead of being a continuing force in the world around them. I used to think that the reason the christian movement has lost its' way is because we have lost the desire to evangelize. In reality, I think the words of a preacher friend of mine captures the real problem, "I'd rather catch 'em, than clean 'em" Spiritual development is hard work, it is long-term, and it frequently is disappointing. So we would rather develop programs than people, we would rather build an organization than feed an organism.
It would do my heart a lot of good, if someone would spend 20 minutes explaining to me the ideas they have about spiritual formation, and have to be cut off at that. I think this is the very reason that very small groups work so well. A lot of spiritual formation is mentor/protege, mature leading immature along the path, You can't do this with 75 people, or even 30. And if you want to develop leaders it is almost a one-on-one deal. Spiritual formation is not a 4-year degree, it is a life long journey, pulling along those that follow.
If you have thoughts about this, I would love to hear them. I have a fairly developed view of this, but am always looking to add to the arsenal.
Museums tend to be visited a lot, but not habitat ed. Could this be what the author meant? Could it be that because we don't see the true value of spiritually forming people that the church has become a collection of ancient and quaint ideas and doctrines? Are we now in a spot where the true church is a "remnant" rather than a community? Questions on questions.
Godspeed, let me know.
Don
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