Growing Up In The Faith

Written by Ed Kauffman

February 6, 2011

While we were gone, I had the privilege of participating in the Parent-Child Dedication of my new granddaughter, Eliza Joy.  I didn’t know I would have that privilege, although I knew the dedication was taking place, so was surprised and pleased to be invited to join in.  Thankfully, I have done enough dedications that I could pull the sentence out of my head that I usually use on such occasions, which includes the phrase, “May all the resources of home, family, and church nurture you and support you toward your own full faith in Jesus Christ.”

We want our children to grow, and we expect them to grow and change.  If they don’t, we think there’s something wrong.  But sometimes, in relation to our faith, we act as though once a person has made a commitment to Christ and been baptized, then we have arrived and nothing more needs to happen.  I hear that a lot from my Lutheran friends who complain that kids come to church until they are confirmed, and then they never see them again. 

Back in the 1980s there was a study project called Faith Development in the Adult Life Cycle.  It was a project that involved a lot of different denominations, including Mennonites, and I attended one of the summative conferences at the end of the project.  One of the debates I remember was whether, in fact, faith did develop in adults.  For some, faith was a noun, and you either had it, or you didn’t.  It was a given, a gift from God that you got sort of in a lump sum.  To talk about faith development for those persons was an oxymoron, the two words simply didn’t go together.

But the project was based on an assumption that faith was a verb, an active, changing dynamic in a person’s life and that as adults went through the various developmental stages of their lives, their faith also changed and hopefully developed. So for example, a person’s questions about faith and God might be different as a 30 year old in the midst of raising a family and developing a career, than the questions that a 70 year old might be asking as they come to terms with aging and the end of a career.

Another way of stating it is, “Are you asking questions of God now that you never asked before?”  My experience of pastoring people of all ages would suggest that people do experience change in their faith.  And our text this morning would also seem to suggest that faith is a dynamic, growing thing.  Paul urges the Ephesians to “grow up into maturity, into the fullness of Jesus Christ.”  We don’t start out as mature Christians.

I have always been somewhat amazed how, when some famous or infamous person becomes a Christian, usually in a very public way, they all of a sudden are seen by many as experts on Christianity and immediately become speakers and teachers about the faith, as though they suddenly know everything there is to know.  Quite frankly, I don’t think it happens like that. 

Numerous places throughout the New Testament, we are told of the importance of growing in the faith.  In the passage we read Paul says the Ephesians must no longer be children, but rather grow up in the faith.  Elsewhere people are scolded for still just drinking milk, and not having progressed to the solid meat of the Gospel.   That is a process that takes time and some deliberate effort.  It doesn’t mean everyone needs to go to seminary and learn Greek and Hebrew, but it does mean movement toward a goal, named by Paul as “Until all of us come to the unity of the faith and to the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” V.13

That is the goal toward which Spiritual Formation points us.  Spiritual Formation refers to anything that moves us toward that goal.  And next Sunday our Future Looking Committee discussion is about Spiritual Formation, and asks the question, what will move us toward that goal of Christlikeness.  Richard Foster, who wrote a number of books about Spiritual Formation notes that Spiritual Formation is not a “toolkit” for fixing our culture or our churches, or even ourselves.  Rather it is Kingdom work, it is part of what we are to be about as Christians, both for our own good and for the good of others.  Paul says in Ephesians that the Spirit gives us gifts so that we all can be built up and attain that “measure of the fullness of Christ.” 

So if that is our goal, if that is what we are striving for, and let me assert that it is always something we are striving for, not something that we attain.  If that is our goal, what are some principles that we might keep in mind to move us in that direction.  What are some principles to keep in mind for our discussion next week?  Let me offer a few.

First of all, there is no one path that is right for everyone toward spiritual maturity.  It is clear, both from Scripture and from experience that no one method or plan is right for everyone.  The Spirit works as it will, we are given different gifts, the body is made up of many parts.  And we could go on.  For some the classic spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation, journaling, and so forth are important.  For others, liturgy and worship are the most important, while for still others nature and silence are important elements.  We are all different and so there is no one way to spiritual maturity. We can’t say to someone, “This is the way I experience God best, so that is the way you should experience God too.”  I have often said that my week of canoeing is one of the most spiritually uplifting things I do in a year.  But for some other people it’s just hard work and mosquitos.

 Having said that, one of the things that helps us grow is stretching ourselves, trying new things.  So if we only practice the spiritual disciplines that we are most comfortable with, we will not stretch ourselves as we might.  Trying new things, experiencing God in new ways is one of the things that helps us mature in the faith.  Worshiping in a different way would be one example of that.

Secondly, growing in the faith doesn’t happen instantaneously or without some effort on our part.  If we are going to grow in Christlikeness, we have to know something of who Christ is.  We have to spend time with God and with the Scripture.  When we want our children to mature and learn, we teach them.  If we want to get better at playing the piano, we know it takes time for practice.  And so it is with our spiritual lives.  Hans Denk, an early Anabaptist,  said, “No one can know Christ unless they follow him in life, and no one can truly follow unless they know him.”  Spiritual Formation takes time and practice in our lives.  Again, Foster says one of the reasons we don’t grow in the faith is because we are all infected with “hurry sickness”.  We just don’t have the time for it.  How can we make time for God?

Thirdly, spiritual formation happens best in the context of community.  Now clearly, there are many spiritual practices, disciplines, that are individual. Having one’s own private devotional time is important.  But the church is made up of all the members of the body and we are all given different gifts for building up the body.  So clearly the community is important for spiritual growth as we learn from and share with each other.  We do not become Christians in isolation and we do not remain Christians in isolation.   As one commentator put it

The church is re-formed and always re-forming. And if my heart and soul and mind and spirit are being reformed—if I am longing to know Jesus and follow Jesus and serve Jesus and be formed into the image of Jesus—then I am powerfully drawn toward anyone and everyone who is seeking to know Jesus and follow Jesus and serve Jesus and be formed into the image of Jesus. A person filled with the beauty of Jesus has fellowship gathering power. Others are drawn irresistibly toward such a person.

Another reason that the community is important is because our spiritual formation is strengthened by mentors.  We have often seen mentors as important for our children and youth, and they are, but one of the findings of the study on spiritual formation in adults was the importance of mentors in our lives as adults.  All of us need and have mentors, persons we look to as models and teachers for our lives.  We might have those persons in our family life, or our professional life, but we also need them in our spiritual lives.  All of us are on this journey of faith at different places, and so it is helpful to have persons in our lives who are further along the journey than we are.  They might be older, but not necessarily since spiritual maturity is not directly related to age.  So one might ask, how do we develop spiritual mentors in the church?

One of the more interesting findings of the spiritual development study was that we grow in our spiritual maturity as we are open to questions and even experience conflict.  One of the things that was noted was that it is all too easy to become complacent, comfortable with where we are at and when we do, we tend to stop growing in our spiritual life. 

It reminds me of a comparison that a friend of mine used to make between a strong faith and a well-defended faith.  Many people, he said, have a well-defended faith.  Its walls are built high and the arguments are well rehearsed, but it can tolerate no questions.  It is tightly constructed, like a solid wall.  But all you construction people know that a solid wall can’t take much flexing.  A strong faith, on the other hand, is open to new ideas, other opinions and questions.  It is confident in what it believes yet is always open to consider other views, and even to change.  Howard Charles, who was my NT professor and someone whose faith I greatly admired, noted one day that if we are clear on the essentials of the faith, everything else can be up for discussion and questioning.  A strong faith recognizes that God can take our questions.   What we want to build is strong faith, not just a well-defended faith.

So one of the things we might ask is, how do we allow people to ask questions, or perhaps even do we allow people to ask questions.  Are we open to questions and do we honestly engage persons who ask some tough questions, or do we simply dismiss them?  And do we provide safe opportunities for people to ask faith questions.   I don’t think we necessarily want to create conflict in order for spiritual growth to happen, but we should recognize that conflict is not necessarily detrimental to growth, if it is creative and well-handled conflict.  After all, we have the images of Jacob wrestling with God, or Jesus being tempted in the wilderness as examples of serious questioning, and many examples of the early church where the faith was advanced through conflict.  Is our faith open to questions, and do we allow those who question among us?

In all of this, we should remember that what we do is not so much creating spiritual growth, but rather providing those conditions and opportunities for the Spirit to work within each of us to produce growth.  It is the Spirit that moves us toward the goal of Christ-likeness, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.  We can either help the Spirit and nurture persons in faith or we can set up roadblocks and hinder a persons growth.

 Some of the ideas that have been suggested are to provide training in the spiritual disciplines, set up a mentor system, provide retreats, and so forth.  Since Spiritual formation is also communal, worship is another component that we can think about and ask how our worship does or does not promote Spiritual Formation.  But you may have other ideas that we haven’t even thought of.  I find time in the wilderness as important for my spiritual growth, so maybe we should sponsor some wilderness retreats.

Throughout this week, I encourage you to think about what First Mennonite can do to encourage your Spiritual Formation, and to encourage the Spiritual Formation of all the people who call First Mennonite home.  And then come with your ideas next Sunday morning, and join us for discussion during the Sunday School hour.