I have been reflecting on a recent comment from a previous post in which Rhonda wrote: "It’s very difficult to leave an institutional church. There are so many facets to the process and it took me over 2 years to do it. I look at the whole thing as more of growth than the IC being a sin."
Her point is that we are all in a state of imperfection, whether we are in or not in an "IC." The real question is, starting with where we are, are we continuing to to grow? Are we growing up? Are we maturing? Church does not do it for us… We each have the responsibility for starting where we are today… and continuing to grow.
At the same time, I want to affirm that the process of de-institutionalizing my Christian life has, in fact, provoked a challenging, and exciting growth process in me. It is not simply changing one form of church for another, it is being challenged to trade in passivism for healthy activism and to trade in letting-others-do-it for a healthy self-responsibility.
As I think about this maturing process that has taken place in my life since moving out of the institutional world I see certain points of growth that I have gone through (and that I have watched others go through). I am talking about a blossoming that takes places as we move:
- FROM CONSUMER/SPECTATOR TO PLAYER/PARTICIPANT
- FROM INVOLVEMENT IN WEEKLY OR BI-WEEKLY SACRED EVENTS TO LIVING A SACRED LIFESTYLE (HIS PRESENCE EVERYWHERE I GO)
- FROM DRINKING MILK PREPARED BY OTHERS TO LEARNING TO FEED FROM HIS WORD FOR OUR SELF
- FROM RELIGIOUS ROUTINES TO SPIRITUAL ADVENTURE
- FROM RELIANCE ON EXTERNAL PROGRAMS FOR OUR SPIRITUAL GROWTH TO DEVELOPING AN INNER DISCIPLINE
- FROM CONFORMITY TO OTHERS TO DISCOVERING A NEW CREATIVITY BASED ON OUR OWN UNIQUE CALLING, PASSION, AND GIFTS
- FROM “MY CHURCH” TO “WE THE CHURCH”
- FROM HANGING OUT IN THE CHRISTIAN GHETTO TO SHARING HIS LIFE OUT IN THE WORLD
- FROM MISSIONAL PROJECTS TO MISSIONAL LIVING
- FROM PROJECT PLANNING TO PRAYER MOVEMENTS
- FROM FINDING MY IDENTITY IN "MY" CHURCH, "MY" MINISTRY, OR "MY" MOVEMENT TO FINDING MY FULL IDENTITY IN SIMPLY BEING HIS–HIS CHILD–HIS BELOVED
Perhaps the best way to provoke others to grow from where they are to where they can be is to continue to grow ourselves. It is, after all, this maturing process that truly leads us to greater peace, joy, freedom, love, and fruitfulness. Obviously, if we are demonstrating more and more of these qualities, others will want something more for themselves as well!
Comments
8 responses to “Growing Up”
WOW…These thoughts are some of the most insightful I have found anywhere. Thanks for the manna.
Good post. As you say above, I think the key to all the blossoming is to understand it as a process. These things don’t happen overnight. I know in my own life I am at various stages in the overall process of going from one extreme on the left to the other on the right. For me real life tends to be somewhere in between the poles–a journey. For example, I may not be as much into “religious routines” as I used to, but honesty keeps me from calling my current experiences a “spiritual adventure.” Some of these things will take years before they are fully experienced. This shouldn’t discourage us from taking the journey–I wouldn’t trade it for anything!
Thank you John for what you wrote above. I especially loved the part where you wrote: I am talking about a blossoming that takes places as we move…And then you mentioned some ideas of tranformation. Excellent. I’ll be looking at these for a while to spur my thinking onto more prayer and action.
God bless you.
Rhonda
Sojourner,
Let is a really great post and does give clear distinctions between the Institutional Church and other wineskins God is working in these days. I appreciate the clear differences you have drawn.
I want to keep encouraging you to keep sharing new wineskin ideas. America is losing ground with our Americanized version of Christianity and we need to recapture the heart od New Testament teaching or America will be lost much like Europe is today.
Thanks for a great article. http://theplanter.blogspot.com
This is at the heart of it Roger. Good to see you’re still in the center! I especially like “trading passivism for healthy activism…and healthy self-responsibility”. Let’s stop living other people’s lives and pulling principles out of chicken scratch. Only by wrestling with our faith, confronting ourselves and our God can we come to any true bearing on our own standing, our needs, deficiencies and strengths. And when you’ve done all these, stand.
Thanks for this great article! I found it very interesting.
Aaron | http://www.newlifesf.com
I just ran across your blog through a friend of mine. Great content! My wife and I got the “left foot of fellowship” from a mainline IC more than 14 years ago and though that, decided to start meeting at home. Within 2 weeks or so, another friend of mine invited us and another couple to start meeting with them.
We have been meeting like this ever since and now have 5 or 6 houses in our “association” that meet on a typical Sunday, a youth group, a young adults group, a food ministry, and over 14 missions we support on a regular basis.
In the last 13 years, because we have no building payments, pastor’s salaries, or any of the typical overhead of the IC, we have been able to pour over $1 Million of our tithes and oferings back into our community in the form of missions and benevolence.
I write about home church sometimes on my blog, Beer, Barbecue, and Bible Study,(paulythebull.blogspot.com) and we have a website at Association of Home Churches (associationofhomechurches.com).
Jesus said………”Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” The problem with many churches is that you dont learn how to follow Jesus……you learn how to follow other men. It is empire building and not Kingdom building.