We love our institutions – we love starting them, feeding them, and growing them. ย But how do institutions relate to our spiritual formation? ย What role do local church institutions play in our deep discipleship? ย We are personal, relational beings who long to be known – can institutions “know” us? ย Let’s take a sober-minded look at our love of large churches and institutions to determine how they do or do not help us uncover the hidden ideas in our hearts and grow to be more like Christ. For more resources, check out the Soil and Roots website. ย
TRANSCRIPT
Supersize Me
Welcome to the Soil and Roots podcast: journeying together into deep discipleship. Iโm Brian Fisher.
This is Episode 12: Supersize Me
Today, weโre going to look at the role of the institutional church in our spiritual formation. This includes local churches, denominations, and associations, as well as related institutions such as Christian schools and colleges.
In the last episode, we compared our modern local church experience to other deeply formative experiences and determined that, in general, the local church today is not the center of our spiritual formation. Compared to other formative experiences, such as early childhood, college, the military, marriage, or the early church, the typical American lifestyle conflicts with and works against our spiritual formation, leaving the local church unable to play a more central role, even if it wants to.
So instead of being immersed in a local Christian culture whose specific purpose is to form each of us into the likeness of Jesus, the local church tends to be a place of pieces and parts: corporate worship, group instruction, some socialization, and opportunities to serve our local communities.
Is that bad? Whatโs โbadโ is that the average modern Christian isnโt intentionally or purposefully being formed into the image of Jesus. We arenโt experiencing the deep end of discipleship.
Integrated Beings in an Integrated World
We are integrated creatures living in an integrated world. Just as our minds, hearts, and bodies are woven together in one unified human being, we exist in an integrated reality.
In our current environment, we attempt to fragment and segment ourselves, and we attempt to segment and fragment creation and culture. For example, we think we can sleep with whomever we want and assume itโs only an act of the body. Thatโs impossible. The entire being (including the body, the mind, and the heart) is engaged in any intimate encounter. There is no such thing as the so-called โbody/mind dualism.โ
We may talk about the separation of church and state, or how we should keep our business life separate from our personal life. Neither is possible in the human heart. We are integrated beings living in an integrated world.
Yet whether weโre conscious of it or not, we segment our โChristian activitiesโ from the rest of our lives. Because we typically donโt create and live in a culture of spiritual formation, our discipleship comes in fits and starts, and we struggle to understand how our spiritual formation impacts the rest of our lives.
Instead of approaching our spiritual formation with the intention and passion of, say, raising a child or becoming a successful college graduate, we struggle to find the time to do โChristian things.โ And then we feel guilty about it.
So instead of living lives ordered around deep discipleship, our lives are ordered around other things (or perhaps nothing), and we gravitate towards events and one-off experiences to help us grow: Marriage retreats, parenting seminars, summer camps, different types of revivals, womenโs or menโs conferences. These types of events are fairly modern inventions.
They can be very good and, in some cases, now necessary, but still temporary substitutes for living lives of spiritual formation.
Welcome to the Kingdom! Hereโs a book.
Plus, if we are intentional about our spiritual formation, we often make two wrong assumptions:
1. That the modern church is the cultural center of our formation
2. That our formation happens solely through our minds
We arenโt primarily thinkers or even believers. We are creatures of desire. We are lovers. Our roots are our hearts.
Iโm certainly not arguing against Bible reading, scripture memory, preaching, or teaching. On the contrary. Certainly, the Word of God is formative โ supernaturally and uniquely so. The Bible forms our hearts like no other book in human history.
But why would we conclude that instruction is the sole or even primary driver of our spiritual formation? A childโs heart isnโt only formed through instruction. A marriage isnโt grown only through instruction. Even many college graduates will tell you they donโt remember much about what they learned in class. Their formation happened through a combination of factors, including relationships and experiences. Why would our journey into deep discipleship be any different?
If we still donโt believe that modern Christianity unconsciously assumes that spiritual formation is largely an academic, intellectual exercise, consider what many churches do as a next step once someone decides to follow Jesus.
If youโve ever been to an evangelical church service and the speaker invites the congregation to accept Christ, or follow Jesus, or pray a prayer, what do they do next? Itโs common for the church to welcome new believers into the family of Jesus by…giving them a book.
Thatโs right. Someone has just made the decision to join the Kingdom of God, which means they are a whole new person, in a whole new family, and a new citizen of a vibrant and conquering Kingdom. Their soul has just undergone the most radical metamorphosisโฆ and we hand them a book.
Is this how new members are welcomed into the other formative experiences?
How is a new child welcomed into the world? If born into a healthy family, theyโre ushered into a culture of constant love, affection, nurturing, and care. Theyโre immersed in a brand-new environment. Their arrival prompts the entire community to celebrate and rearrange their lives in preparation for the childโs formation.
If you went to college, chances are you were part of some sort of week-long freshman orientation program. Colleges immerse incoming freshmen into their institution’s culture. After you were acclimated, you were constantly surrounded by faculty, staff, other students, and a variety of experiences that shaped you into a successful graduate.
What about the military? Boot camp. You are immediately immersed in a culture that is designed to strip away civilian life and strongly encourage you to assume the characteristics the military wants to instill in you. If you survive boot camp, you are off to other training and service. You are immersed in military culture for the duration of your service.
Marriage? I suppose wives would look strangely at their new husbands if, after they said, โI do,โ the husband handed his wife an instruction book on how to be married. In New Testament times, it was common for a husband and wife to take a year off to build their marriage and lay a solid foundation for their life together in their local community. Society granted the new couple time, new habits, community, and intimacy so that the marriage was formed properly.
Today we normally take honeymoons, a week or so alone together to enjoy the togetherness of being married. But in healthy marriages, even after the honeymoon, each spouse makes substantial changes to their own lives to create the time, habits, intimacy, and community needed to build a successful marriage together. In a healthy marriage, we purposefully create a culture of formation so that husband and wife grow together as one and foster an environment where children can flourish.
But in many churches, when new converts are welcomed into the family of God, they are given a book and maybe a welcome phone call. I think this habit tells us a whole lot about how the institutional church sees itself, its focus on making converts versus making disciples, and very wrong assumptions about how our hearts are formed.
Institutions
Which brings us to the topic of institutions. America is a land of institutions. We experience them every day in one form or another.
A simple definition of an institution is โa society or organization founded for a religious, educational, social, or similar purpose.โ[1] So, your local Wal-Mart isnโt really an institution in this sense, but your local community college is, as are daycares, schools, some non-profits, and some government agencies. We generally consider an institution to be an organization or group designed to contribute to our formation, whether character, educational, or social.
Marriage is an institution (itโs the smallest one). It involves just two people. The family is an institution of various sizes.
Sometimes we use the word โinstitutionโ to refer to other types of organizations that provide some sort of service or benefit. Your bank is an institution, as is your mortgage lender. We call them โfinancial institutions.โ Your local DMV is an institution within an institution, within another institution. The federal government is an institution with seemingly endless internal institutions.
We love our institutions. We love starting them, feeding them, and growing them.
And especially in Christian circles, institutional growth is very, very important to us. We โSupersizeโ many of our Christian institutions. If we arenโt supersizing them, we assume something is wrong.
But considering the limited role the local church can play in our spiritual formation, the lack of clarity about discipleship, and the strong evidence of a culture of malformed Christians, we need to take a very careful look at our beloved institutions.
Institution Challenges
Here are five challenges every institution faces, including those identifying with Christianity.
Challenge #1: Institutions tend to drift from their original purpose and values as they age.
According to Dr. Roger Schultz, Harvard began as an overtly Christian school:
โPuritans established Harvard College in 1636, shortly after arriving in Massachusetts Bay. Harvardโs mission statement, given in 1642, was clearly evangelical: โEveryone shall consider as the main end of his life and studies, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life (John 17:3).โ
The Harvard motto, from 1650, emphasized its core Christian commitment: โIn Christi Gloriamโ (โFor the glory of Christ).โ Over long decades, conservative Puritan ministers served as Harvardโs presidents.โ[2]
It would be difficult to consider Harvard a bastion of Christian formation today. Many other Ivy League and older American universities were started with orthodox Biblical beliefs, but have drifted in various directions as theyโve aged.
We often hear about โmainlineโ denominations in America. The term generally refers to seven historical denominations in America, such as the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church USA. One article at the Gospel Coalition suggests that, although they are often accused of moving in a theologically liberal direction, it may be better to say they have adopted a pluralistic view, meaning they accept many different views that may or may not align with Biblical orthodoxy.[3]
I wouldnโt bother making the distinction between pluralism and liberalism. Either way, mainline denominations have departed from their original roots, which has led to various splits and the formation of new denominations over the years. I donโt track denominations all that closely, but Iโm aware of at least three older and sizeable denominations or associations that are right now considering splits over doctrinal and cultural issues.
Lots of other notable institutions have abandoned their original Christian roots, such as the YMCA and the Red Cross. Though they still do work reflective of the Kingdom, they no longer recognize the Kingdom as the reason they do their work.
Institutions tend to bow to social or cultural pressure over time, even if it means departing from their initial ideas. So new institutions split off or are created to conserve those initial core ideas, and the cycle starts all over again. Sometimes it takes just one generation for the drift to occur; sometimes it takes longer. But the cycle is clear and predictable.
Challenge #2: The larger the institution, the less personal it becomes.
Iโm a Gen Xer, and Gen Xers tend to exhibit certain characteristics, including a sense of independence and healthy skepticism.
Iโm skeptical of institutions in general. My bank is a large, well-known financial institution. Iโm skeptical of my bank. They send me all sorts of emails telling me how glad they are that Iโm a customer and that they treat me like a valued, local friend. Thatโs ridiculous.
I trust them not to lose my savings, but I donโt trust them to keep my personal information secure. Iโve been sent four or five new debit cards in the mail over the last several years because a bank employee left their laptop at Starbucks, or because they experienced another data breach.
I donโt have a personal relationship with anyone at my bank. Every time I walk into my branch, thereโs a new manager and new staff. If I were wealthy, Iโm sure the bank would work quite hard to have a relationship with me, but as it stands, Iโm not a person to my bank. I am a very small piece of business.
We refinanced our home a while back, and I asked the mortgage broker whether the lender that gave us the loan would service the loan. Meaning, would I be able to establish a relationship with this new institution? My broker assured me the bank would be my long-term partner. Less than sixty days later, they sold my loan to another bank. I am not a person to the lender. I am a digit on a balance sheet.
In the U.S., the largest institution is the federal government. I shouldnโt be baffled, but I am constantly amazed at the number of people who worship their federal governments. They want their government to feed them, clothe them, satisfy all their needs and desires, protect them from every possible harm, and make them happy. They put their faith and trust in their government. They worship their government.
I donโt think you could find a worse candidate for a god than a centralized government. You and I are, literally, nothing but a nine-digit number to them. We are a piece of data.
We have the triune God on one hand, who creates us, knows the number of hairs on our heads, and promises to care for us more intimately and carefully than any human could. On the other hand, we have huge government institutions that donโt know our names, donโt know our stories, and canโt possibly get to know us on any sort of relational level. And yet we want the impersonal institution to satisfy our whims and desires.
What about large Christian institutions? What about mega churches? Is bigger always better? We love supersizing our evangelical institutions, but is this helpful in our spiritual formation?
How can a Christian institution with hundreds or thousands of members spiritually form each individual?
The solution to this quandary was the small group. I like small groups. Jess and I have been in them and led them for over twenty-five years. But just as we need to understand what the local church is and isnโt, we need to look carefully at small groups.
As America became increasingly attracted to large churches and the mega-church experience, something had to be done to cultivate relationships among members. After all, showing up for a worship service and sermon when youโre one of a few thousand people makes it hard to build relationships. So, the small group movement took off. This is where community, accountability, and discipleship are supposed to develop.
Iโve always found this setup a little odd.
American protestants love our celebrity pastors. In large and mega-churches, some pastors are paid just to teach and preach. And our celebrity pastors have their Internet channels, their TV shows, their radio programs. They have their books and their speaking circuits.
Typically, these folks are professionally trained โ theyโve been to seminary, and maybe they have PhDs. American Protestants place an extraordinarily high value on the sermon as a part of our Christian experience, and weโll pay for it, provided the pastor is an effective speaker and has the right credentials.
Weโve somehow come to assume that the pinnacle of our spiritual formation is a weekly thirty-minute monologue. We wouldnโt assume that about any other type of formative experience, but thatโs the underlying idea in the hearts of modern Christians.
But when it comes to small groups (where relationships, accountability, and discipleship are supposed to happen), these groups are somewhat organic, not particularly organized, and volunteer-driven. Sometimes the church provides training for small groups, sometimes not. Sometimes thereโs a pastor or church leader with oversight of small groups, and sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes the church determines what material is covered in small groups, sometimes not.
American Protestants place a very high value on a winsome speaker and a thirty-minute Sunday morning sermon, but we donโt seem to place the same sort of expectations or value on small groups, even though that is where โrealโ relationships are supposed to be fostered.
We tend to value the institutions and their representatives (even when they are large and impersonal) over the small group, where we should be experiencing the delights of dialogue, interpersonal relationships, and closeness. Yet the small-group effort in some churches doesnโt receive much attention, resources, or organizational focus. Thatโs because the larger the institution, the less personal it becomes.
So, the church basically outsources its most formative efforts to volunteers. Volunteer ministries are great. Iโm just noting that we arenโt formed only through sermons and instruction. We are formed through a combination of key elements that are highly dependent on community, relationships, and experience.
Thatโs not where institutional churches tend to put their time or their money. Many churches put much of their energy into the event of a Sunday morning worship service and assume that a 30-minute monologue will be the key driver of peopleโs spiritual formation.
Thatโs highly unlikely.
Challenge #3: Institutions tend to prioritize their own survival and growth over their members.
This has everything to do with Ideas of Power. As institutions grow and accumulate power, the elites who run them prioritize that power, even if the institution is failing in its mission or harming its members. In particular, men who accumulate power have a rather grim habit of becoming addicted to that power. And Christian elites certainly arenโt immune to that addiction.
When the sexual abuse crisis in the Southern Baptist Convention came to light, I reviewed the public report, which detailed some twenty years of abuses in the Convention. The report showed there was a concerted effort on behalf of the elites to protect the institution and its power โ even if it meant disregarding or mistreating the victims.
Russell Moore, writing for Christianity Today, said
โThe conclusions of the report are so massive as to almost defy summation. It corroborates and details charges of deception, stonewalling, and intimidation of victims and those calling for reform. It includes written conversations among top Executive Committee staff and their lawyers that display the sort of inhumanity one could hardly have scripted for villains in a television crime drama. It documents callous cover-ups by some SBC leaders and credible allegations of sexually predatory behavior by some leaders themselves…โ[4]
The SBC isnโt alone, of course. The Catholic Church is dealing with a decades-long history of abuses, and several other Christian institutions and groups have had major moral issues come to light over the past several years. I expect weโll see more reports from various institutions in the coming months and years, but Iโm also sure there are numerous examples of power-grabbing, lawyering up, intimidation, and executive cover-ups that weโll never hear about.
The SBC and other groups are taking steps to heal and to prevent these types of abuses in the future, and thatโs good. But as is the case with the SBC, the normal institutional response to institutional abuse isโฆ you guessed itโฆ more institutions. More policies, more corporations, more committees, more agencies, more oversight.
Is this really a matter of needing more governance, more accountability, and more bureaucracy? Is there some dire shortage of systems, policies, and agencies to keep Christian institutions in line?
Just consider the authority structures here.
In a local church, there are typically staff members who run and manage the day-to-day operations. In a small church, this may just be the pastor. In a larger church, the staff can run into the hundreds. Either way, they form an authority structure.
Then there is some type of elder board or governing group. Whether itโs a church or other non-profit, there are certain expectations and requirements for this type of board. In some form or fashion, they oversee the staff. This is another form of governance. If the elder board is full of humble, godly people who put the congregation first, thatโs a healthy setup. If the elder board is the pastorโs golfing buddiesโฆgood luck.
In churches, the congregation is often its own authority. They vote on bigger church matters, they approve elders, they approve budgets, that sort of thing. So, many churches have three authority structures just within their walls: the staff, the board, and the congregation.
Churches and non-profits have to file certain paperwork with the IRS each year. Thatโs another institutional governance structure.
Some churches are part of denominations. These come in all shapes and sizes, but to some degree, a denominational church has some responsibility and accountability to its denomination. Another institutional governance structure.
Then there are watchdog organizations, such as the Evangelical Council for Fiscal Accountability, Ministry Watch, or Charity Navigator. These are organizations that developed to provide additional layers of accountability and transparency to the public by imposing requirements on churches and non-profits, either through membership or a rating system. If you want to attract larger donors, you need to be a member of these groups or work to meet their standards so you get a high rating.
How are the watchdog organizations managed? It depends on their structure, but they have executive staff, boards of some sort, and their own policies and procedures.
The next ironic question is, โWhere are the watchdog organizations to hold the watchdog organizations accountable?โ
You get the point. There are already all sorts of systems and institutions in place to hold Christian organizations accountable. But as anyone with a two-year-old knows, if someone wants to abuse their power, theyโre going to figure out a way to do it and to hide it, regardless of how many systems are in place to prevent it. Human beings are highly inventive.
And all these examples of institutional abuse have the same thing in common. The ruling people (the elites) go to varying lengths to protect the institution and their power, even at the expense of the individual. And this happens in Christian organizations all the time.
Challenge #4: Institutions are slow to adapt and generally disinterested in doing so
Years ago, I had dinner with a Christian leader who was, at the time, a household name among many evangelicals. He was involved in a parachurch ministry that communicated and worked with hundreds (if not thousands) of churches across denominational lines.
In the middle of our meal, I looked at him and said, โIโm just curious. In all your years of ministry working with churches across the country, give me one example of a church that took your message and your ministry to heart. Just one example of a church that reformed the way they served their congregation based on the tremendous effectiveness of your ministry.โ
Without pausing, he replied, โI canโt give you an example because there isnโt one.โ
I said, โNot one? Why not?โ
He said, โBecause churches have become a type of business, and the senior pastor is the CEO of that business. If they fear that some sort of reform or change may negatively impact their business, they arenโt going to do it. Itโs a matter of self-preservation.โ
The larger the institution, the more there is for leadership to protect. The more there is to protect, the less likely they are to introduce risk or change into the church.
Even as the world around us changes at a breakneck pace due to technology, cultural trends, and rapid shifts in core ideas, Christian institutions are painfully slow to adapt. Iโm not talking about watering down the Gospel or changing doctrine โ Iโm talking about adapting to the social and cultural realities around us.
Challenge #5: Large and Mega churches exist and are driven by celebrity culture. And celebrities donโt mingle with us common folk.
If you go to a megachurch, just ask yourself where the senior pastorโs office is.
Over my career, Iโve sat in a number of large churches, and the majority of senior pastor offices are buried in the guts of the church or off-site. They are intentionally hard to reach, and there are layers of administrative assistants, schedules, and other important matters that keep most of us out.
If youโre wealthy and give large checks to your church, you can probably get lunch next week. Otherwise, itโs going to be hard to get on the senior pastorโs schedule.
I did have a good laugh on this point recently. I read an article about a high-profile celebrity mega-church pastor and author of several โpurposefulโ books. He stood up to deliver a speech and claimed that he had trained no fewer than 1.1 million pastors, a figure he told the group was โThatโs more than all the seminaries put together.โ[5] Thatโs quite an accomplishment.
So, perhaps some mega-church pastors are more accessible than I thought. Perhaps they can disciple more than twelve people at a time.
But in this age of celebrity worship, the Christian church tends to foster celebrities instead of pausing to ask why weโre doing this. We create new Christian icons out of pastors, apologists, and musicians. We have our own award shows to compete with those โsecular Hollywood types.โ Instead of the Grammys, we have the Dove Awards. Instead of the Peopleโs Choice Awards, we have the K-Love Fan Awards. Instead of the Oscars, we have the MovieGuide awards.
Many years ago, I worked in Christian radio in Pittsburgh and hosted a weekend music show. So, I had the chance to meet and interview many Christian bands and speakers.
There was one moment that stood out for me.
Because of my role, I was often asked to open up concerts by introducing the Christian musicians to the audience right before the show. This also meant that Jessica and I were allowed backstage to meet and greet the artists, which was a lot of fun.
Normally, this process works like a cattle call. The musicianโs handlers take a group of people wearing VIP badges, line them up in some sort of backstage area, and we sit and wait. When the artist is ready, they enter the room with other handlers and walk through the group of fans one by one, signing autographs and taking pictures. At the appropriate time, the handlers grab the artist and rush them out of the room in order to get ready for the show.
One time, I was asked to open a concert by introducing the main act, a musician named Michael Card. Some of you might know his music. He wrote the song โEl Shaddai,โ which Amy Grant turned into a huge hit.
But this experience was entirely different. Jessica and I wandered backstage to say hello to the band before the show, and Michael was sitting at a folding table finishing dinner with some of the other musicians. They had no idea who we were, but Michael saw us, stood up, came over, shook our hands, and asked, โDo you guys want some dessert? How about some apple pie?โ He then grabbed a knife, went over to the food table, and cut us both slices of apple pie. We chit-chatted for a little bit, and then he left to get ready for his show.
This experience stands out because it was so out of character for Christian institutions, which churn out content for us to consume rather than relationships for us to enjoy. That was the only time I met Michael Card, and I havenโt spoken to him or seen him since. But for that five-minute period, he was a normal guy, asking a normal couple if they wanted some apple pie.
How very unlike a Christian celebrity.
Outsourcing our Formation
Based on these five challenges, itโs a bit surprising that we continue to outsource our formation to these institutions.
Public school is a great example. My wife and I are both products of the public school system. Both of our sons went to public schools. I would have loved to send them to a Christian school, but I would have had to mortgage my soul.
Many of us outsource our childrenโs formative education to public schools. In some cases, we have to even when we donโt want to. We take the risk knowingly. We know that weโre placing our kids in a culture where most of their time, habits, relationships, and community may not reflect the Ideas of the Kingdom. And we hope and trust that our kids have been formed enough at home to navigate the public-school waters.
As I mentioned in the last episode, some Christian parents then pay to send their kids to colleges and universities that donโt hold to the ideas of the Kingdom of Light. This one is a bit harder for me to understand because we usually have more choices in higher education than we do in primary education. Either way, some parents pay to have their kids sit in a highly formative culture that, in many cases, is intentionally unwinding the formative culture they created at home. Go figure.
Unfortunately, many marriages are being outsourced in the sense that the couple isnโt intentionally creating a formative culture at home: a culture of time, life-giving habits, intimacy, in a healthy community, while growing in the knowledge of each other. If we donโt create a formative culture at home in our marriages, someone else will. Guaranteed.
Americans love our institutions, and we generally outsource our heart formation to them without a second thought.
Consumer Christians
This presents a great irony about so-called โChristian Consumerism.โ
Christian institutions often make that charge against people who come to church simply to consume a thirty-minute sermon, experience a weekend service, and take spiritual instruction without giving themselves to the work of the church.
But if you look at the modern philosophy of evangelism, the tremendous time, money, and value placed on a weekly event with a thirty-minute monologue, and the lack of emphasis most churches put on immersive spiritual formation, โChristian Consumerismโ is what the modern church is actually promoting.
Then they condemn the people who are buying what theyโre selling.
Summing Up
Letโs draw two conclusions from the last two episodes and talk about where we go from here.
1. The average American lifestyle competes with and works against the immersive spiritual formation we need to become more like Jesus. In general, the local church is not the center of our spiritual formation, though it attempts to contribute to it in piecemeal ways. Most of us really donโt have a community focused on deep discipleship.
2. Current Christian institutions are struggling in both numbers and, in some cases, character. The larger they get, the less personal they are, and the more concerned they become with their own protection. Instead of honoring, supporting, and discipling the individual, many modern churches have become institutions focused on hosting events and intentionally growing crowds.
Where do we go from here?
Ironically, all this analysis presents some really, really good news. As culture continues to suffer terrible confusion and desperation, the body of Christ is wonderfully positioned to be โset apartโ and to bear witness to our King in ways weโve struggled to do for a few generations. But to do that, we do need to take a very careful look at how our lives are ordered and at the role Christian institutions play in our formation.
Thatโs pretty simple to do. We just evaluate our spiritual formation in light of the Five Key Elements weโve been exploring.
Time: How much of our time is spent intentionally becoming more like Jesus? If itโs a small amount, we shouldnโt be all that surprised if we arenโt growing to be more like Him. Every other formative experience we looked at places the formation itself as the top time priority. Can the average American Christian reorder their lives so that spiritual formation becomes their top time priority? Sure, but not at the cost of sacrificing other things that consume our time.
Does this mean we all need to quit our jobs and become monks? No. We live in an integrated world. Our careers are not segmented from our spiritual formation. They are part of our spiritual formation.
Habits: When we think of discipleship, we tend to think of our โchurchโ habits like corporate worship, prayer, Bible reading, and devotions. But what about the rest of our habits? Are the rest of our daily habits ordered around our spiritual formation?
Do we have a habit of looking for God in His second book, the book of creation? Are we intentionally looking for His character and His passion for us in a sunrise, in the rain, in a pet, or in flowers and plants? Are we habitually meeting with family and friends for spiritual formation? Are we looking at our mundane daily habits not just as mundane daily habits, but as opportunities to see God at work, to hear from Him, and to experience Him? To have our ideas of darkness formed into ideas of light?
Do we have a habit of contemplation? Do we regularly and intentionally think? Are we exploring our own stories, our hidden ideas, and our deepest desires?
Intimacy: Based on what we learn in the Gospels, Jesus was constantly working to help people understand their hearts. He was consistently inviting people to dig under the surface, to uncover their true desires and point them to Himself. He showed the rich young ruler what he really worshiped. He led the woman at the well to a far deeper understanding of her own identity. Jesus pressed Nicodemus far past his shallow, legalistic view of religion into a conversation about the heart, new life, and relationships.
Is this how we build relationships? Do we invite people into our story, and do we invite them to share theirs? We live in a culture that very intentionally lives above the surface. Do we look for opportunities to go deeper and to build appropriate intimacy โ with transparency and vulnerability?
Community: If our local churches arenโt set up to be our primary communities of formation, how do we build them? Certainly, our families are essential to our formation, but a community is larger than just one family. How do we build a community of spiritual formation in a culture that works against it? Should we take a second look at geography? Is it important that we are physically located near our community? Can our local churches play a deeper role in this community?
Should we look at โrugged American individualismโ and how that philosophy has seeped into our hearts and minds? Perhaps we can build a better community with creativity, sacrifice, and intention.
Instruction: Are we embracing milk or meat? Are we content to hear the same instruction repeatedly, or are we intentionally moving forward into more complex ideas? Christianity is filled with paradoxes and mysteries. In some ways, the Gospel is simple. In other way,s it is anything but. The more confused our culture gets, the more important it is that apprentices of Jesus are plowing ahead together into the deeper things of the faith. If this intentional progression isnโt happening at church, where and how may we progress together?
Simpler and Smaller
As Iโve wrestled with all of this, two themes come to mind: simpler and smaller. How can we simplify our lives and form much smaller communities of formation?
If weโre going to make spiritual formation our priority, we need to free up time, reform some habits, find people who want to delve into our stories in trusted relationships, and form tight-knit communities that figure out how to โlive lifeโ together. Supersizing isnโt working โ in fact, itโs hurting us as individuals, and itโs hurting Christianity. And itโs driving some very wrong ideas about anthropology, the Gospel, and what it means to be Christian.
Al Mohler often talks about the Principle of Subsidiarity. His comments are well worth repeating here.
โThe doctrine of subsidiarityโwhich emerged out of natural law theoryโteaches that meaning, truth, and authority reside in the smallest meaningful unit possible. Subsidiarity is found in Scripture where the family unit is honored as the most basic unit of society. Essentially, subsidiarity shows that the family bond is the most basic societal bond.
If the family unit is deficient, no government can meet the need of its citizens.
When the family is strong, government can be small. When the family is weak, however, the government must compensate for the loss. More involved fathers means less need for policemen. More two-parent homes, family stability, and marital fidelity means less need for a massive welfare system. These issues cannot be resolved unless the basic family unit God instituted for the perpetuation of human community is honored and respected. Subsidiarity reminds us that the intervention that matters most and is most effective is the one closest to us. Solving the problem requires us to get as close to the problem as we can. That means focusing on the family. By focusing on the family, we respect and better the community.โ[6]
Simple and small. If the family is the building block of all society and the initial culture of spiritual formation, then Christians should look to lifestyles and institutions that provide immersive cultures of formation within the smallest units possible.
I was recently introduced to a man who is an elder at what used to be a large, fast-growing mega church in Texas. The pastor of this church is a Christian celebrity. His sermons are heard worldwide, and the church has its own social media channels. The church used to be multi-site, a popular church growth model in which the senior pastor broadcasts to church buildings in different parts of the state or country.
I was aware that this church had decided several years ago to move from a controlled to an independent model. They systematically transferred all their satellite locations to become independent churches. That was a radical move and the opposite of supersizing.
As I chit-chatted with the elder, I asked him how things were going at the church now. He said, โWeโre the fastest-shrinking mega-church in the country.โ That was the best news I had heard from a church official in a very long time. Simpler and smaller.
Forming Community
Iโll close with this story. Jessica and I are friends with a couple who recently made some pretty dramatic life changes. I asked them if I could sit down with them and listen to their story. I wondered if this family had consciously or unconsciously come to the same conclusions weโve come to hear about American life, the institution of the church, and the Supersizing of modern Christianity.
Years ago, our friends decided to homeschool their kids. Thatโs a pretty radical change. That didnโt start off so well, so they got together with a few other families and built their own co-op. That way, the kids were still homeschooled, but the parents could work together to provide the best formative experience for their children.
They had a traditional classroom setting, but also spent quite a bit of time outdoors. The kids loved it, learned to connect their faith with Godโs second book, and developed some practical skills that most of us in suburbia have long forgotten.
For the next few years, our friends prayed through several other life changes so they could make things simpler and smaller. Last year, they found some farmland about an hour outside of town, and they bought it. They sold their wonderful home in a great suburban neighborhood a few months ago and moved their family onto their land in a quieter, smaller community. They just moved in and are learning to be farmers. Their three kids are now learning to take care of the land along with their parents.
They used to attend a mega-church with a celebrity pastor they didnโt know, but they traded it in for a small-town congregation with a pastor who already knows their names and their story. It sounds like they are some of the youngest people in church on Sunday, but they love that their kids are developing relationships with folks from older generations. The church doesnโt have many programs and not much of a budget, but everyone lives within a few miles of the church building, and they intentionally get together to talk about spiritual formation, the challenges in American culture, and the value of being known.
Educational formation at home. Moving to a farm. Leaving the megachurch for a group of people getting together to help each other grow to look more like Jesus. Simpler and smaller.
Can everyone homeschool? No. Should everyone move to a small community and start farming? I would go broke and hungry if I tried that. Thatโs not the point. The point is, our friends realized that spiritual formation is immersion in a culture that is designed for that purpose. Our friends realized that wasnโt the life they were living or the church they were attending, so they changed both. Was it easy? No. Their journey has had ups and downs. Careers were put on hold, conveniences were left behind, and not everyone understood or even agreed with their decisions.
But they have no regrets, and they are forming their own culture of time, habit, intimacy, community, and instruction designed to help them all intentionally grow to be more like Jesus.
Thanks for listening! For more information, check out soilandroots.org. And weโd love to hear from you! So, email us at fish@soilandroots.org. Weโll see you next time.
[1] Oxford Language Dictionary via Google search
[2] https://www.liberty.edu/journal/article/christianity-and-the-american-university/
[3] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/know-mainline-protestantism/
[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/russell-moore-sbc/619122/
[5] https://www.9marks.org/article/sbc22/
[6] https://equip.sbts.edu/publications/journals/journal-of-theology/economics-and-the-christian-worldview-12-theses/
