For a while now I've been on a mission to push for deeper teaching in our churches. Occasionally I'll encounter someone who says that most Christians have enough intellectual knowledge and simply need to be "out there" doing something with it. On the surface this sounds good and right. After all, our churches are full of people who hear sermon after sermon week after week and never really do anything with it. There is no real change. The answer has to be that they are overfed right? Not necessarily.
Think of it this way: There is a major problem with obesity in this country. According to the CDC, roughly one-third (35.7%) of the adults in the U.S. are obese. However, doctors and other health professionals do not recommend a strict regiment of exercise with no eating. Why not? They have clearly eaten enough. Now they need to get out there and work some of it off.
No--starvation and exercise do not go very well together. We would quickly grow weak because our fat supplies cannot be immediately turned into energy. The answer to getting healthier is both diet and exercise. Incidentally, I get so frustrated with many Christians' seeming inability to think in term of both/and rather than either/or. Merely taking away junk food is not enough--you must replace it with good food...and, yes, exercise too.
The problem is: I'm not sure if the American Church is obese or starved. You see, just because people are being fed regularly doesn't mean that they are getting the proper nutrients. Maybe the reason we don't see the Church working enough is that they are subsisting on gruel rather than wholesome food.
In the Letter to the Hebrews, the writer says it this way:
"In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still and infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." (Hebrews 5:12-14)
In and of itself this passage does not speak directly to the issue I have raised. Here the writer is merely saying that these people should be further along in the process than they are. They should have grown up by now. They are still drinking milk rather than eating meat. The problem can be seen more clearly when we ask ourselves the question of what are we serving in our churches--milk or meat? Some people want to eliminate both!
What would we consider to be meat today? Think that one over for a moment before you read on, because it is a question well worth pondering.
The writer continues:
"Therefore, let us move beyond the elementary teachings (milk) about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again (milk) the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment." (Heb. 6:1-2)
Do you catch what he's saying? Repentance of sin and faith in God, baptism, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead (eschatology), and eternal judgment (seemingly heaven and hell) are kids' stuff...Christianity 101. But when I look at this list, I can't help thinking that if many of the churches I have been in over the years were to preach on these topics, people would think it was incredibly deep.
I don't think our food is too rich. I think we are living on skim milk. The answer isn't to cut people off and send them out the doors to change the world. They will die on the side of the road. I believe the answer is that we need to be offering something more substantial--more nutritional--at church.
I have been in the church my whole life, but it wasn't until I experienced deeper teaching and richer reading through seminary that I was actually motivated to impact the world. There has to be something to back the enterprise, so to speak. When our people are asked to give a defense for what they believe, they should be able to give one. The trendy solution of "just get out there and serve" doesn't cut it. Service is essential. But transformed hearts come from transformed minds (Rom. 12:2). The church must be a place of transformation and growth. If our people are fat and lazy or if they are starved and languishing, the answer is more good food and less filler--not less food altogether.
I saw this book while I was taking a discipleship class in my last year at seminary and thought that it might be a good source for my final paper. It would have been had I actually read it during that time, but required readings, a pinched nerve, and the birth of my first daughter cut this from my reading schedule until seminary was over.
Going Deep is the second book of this type that Gordon MacDonald has written--a non-fiction message in novel form (the first was Who Stole My Church?, which is the same setting for this novel). In this book MacDonald (a.k.a GMac) and his wife Gail are the pastors of a mid-sized church in New England who become obsessed with a "great idea" that leads to a two-year journey in forming a fourteen person discipleship group that will reproduce itself in the coming years. The "great idea" slowly but surely becomes this pastor's all-consuming mission--his most important job in ministry is Cultivating Deep People (CDP). From the perspective of Gordon's first person narrative, readers have an inside look at how ministries like CDP come to into being, starting with conversations in parking lots, e-mails, phone calls, and board meetings. This book takes you from the inception of "the great idea" to end of the...well, you'll have to read the book for yourself to see how it ends.
The material in Going Deep is great stuff. I couldn't agree more with MacDonald's message that the Church needs to be making spiritually deepening people. The method that he presents for how to get this done is also excellent. Information-wise this book gets 4 or 5 stars in my book. When I first started this novel, I was intrigued with the style of seeing what the day-in/day-out of this type of ministry might look like; however, this is the very aspect that soon wore thin. The problem is: fiction drama really requires conflict or tension to keep it moving. Nobody wants to hear a story about Mr. A trying to get to X and actually getting there on time with no problems...they want to read about Mr. A trying to get to point X but having to overcome between 1-10 obstacles in the process. GMac must be a idealist because everything goes smoothly for 255 pages before they hit their first snag. I've been involved in ministry long enough to know that there are plenty of opportunities for drama and conflict within the span of a year and a half, but seemingly not in the magical land of New England. Every idea meets with unanimous approval by all leaders and key members of the congregation. If you've ever worked in ministry this should seem like the Twilight Zone. The story element of the first 2/3 would get 2 stars in my rating.
Consequently, since there were no obstacles, mystery or tension, I had very little motivation to keep reading (other than writing this review). But something happened around page 255--I started to care. The characters became real. I wanted to know what happened. A bit of tension found its way into the story. So I would rate the last 125 pages 4 stars. All in all, a great message that is important and needs to be heard, but lacks in terms of the elements of fiction. Overall I would give it 3 stars.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com [...] book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255 [...] : "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."
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Yesterday I sat down in a pastor's office to discuss his thoughts on discipleship. From the church website I could see that it was a big deal to him and the life of his church, so I wanted to meet with him and find out what that looks like. When he sat on his couch, kicked off his shoes and propped his feet up on a chair I knew this guy was comfortable in his own skin and was going to be real with me. If I were to write all of what we talked about, it would fill a whole string of blog posts, but I'll share with you one important insight from our time together.
Pastors should focus on making disciples. Too often we try to develop servants or givers or people who will share the Gospel. We may succeed in developing all those things in our people without ever really making disciples. A person can be a giver without being a true follower of Jesus. A person could serve the needs of the community without being a disciple. Someone can even witness to others without being truly a disciple of Jesus. How do we know this? Just think of what people in our churches would do if we took away the nursery, the youth group time, the padded seating, the flashy lights and rock star worship performances...what about the air conditioning or heat? True disciples are there for Jesus--not for any of these other reasons. True disciples are consumed with Jesus (what a novel idea!). However, if we spend our time growing and cultivating disciples, then we will have churches filled with givers, servants, evangelists, teachers, etc. etc. because true disciples do all of those things.
This is an interesting thought that rings true. We often get consumed with getting the fruits on the tree and we spend our time on the fruit rather than cultivating and feeding the tree itself. Can you imagine someone going throughout an orchard stapling apples to sick or dead trees?
"Why is this fruit rotting on the tree?"
"Wake up and smell the coffee, Einstein, the tree is dead. Start growing trees that bear fruit in keeping with repentance."
So let me finish by asking some logical questions:
Why are many (if not most) of our churches focusing on life enhancement, like some late night infomercial, rather than getting to the core of discipleship?
Why do we work so hard to attract people to our churches based on self-gratification and materialistic pyrotechnics, when following Jesus (you know...the Guy who said to people who thought they were ready to jump on the band wagon, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head," or, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.") is ultimately to lead them in the opposite direction? How many people would still show up to church if they knew that they might be arrested?
Why are we building our houses on the sand of feel-good-
fluff and superficial community? (Matt 7:26-27).
Why shouldn't discipleship be every pastor's number one priority?
