When I was a junior at UConn, I co-led a small group Bible study with my friend Jen.  It was a great group, full of spiritually growing underclassmen that seemed poised to have thriving, lifelong relationships with Jesus.  At the end of the year, the group disbanded, and new groups were formed the following fall.  I distinctly remember watching that winter as a few of my ex-group members ceased participating in their new small groups.  When I asked one of the girls why she had stopped going, she said “It’s just not like Eric and Jen’s group.”  After I stopped patting myself on the back for apparently being the best small group leader ever, I realized that something was seriously wrong.  If all I was doing was leaving people dependent on me for their spiritual growth, what long-term good had I done?  If these students were going to cease pursuing God because nothing else compared to our small group, where had I gone wrong?

The crucial lesson I learned that winter was that is that part of making a disciple is teaching someone to be a “self-feeder”.  A central aspect of discipleship is helping someone take responsibility for their own spiritual growth by teaching them how to pray and listen to God, how to read the Bible and respond to it, and how to use their time, talents, and gifts in service to God.  In other words, discipling someone means teaching them to become less dependent on the church or spiritual leaders for their spiritual growth, and more dependent on Jesus.

However, isn’t there some sense in which this feels wrong?  After all, isn’t it the church’s job to help people grow spiritually?  Yes – but only to a point.  When the church assumes too much responsibility for someone’s spiritual growth, they end up producing spiritual children who are forever dependent on their mother church to feed them.  At some point, all children need to grow up and learn how to feed themselves – physically and spiritually.  After all, there are few things sadder than a sixty year-old still waiting for Mommy to feed him.

Think about it – how many mature Christians have you heard leave a church because they’re “not being fed”?  How many believers leave a worship service complaining that the worship wasn’t good today, or the sermon didn’t speak to them?  How many believers who have been churchgoers for years end up restless church-hoppers, dissatisfied with how little they feel challenged or inspired by their church, stalled in their walks with God?  Perhaps the church has not done a good enough job training Christians to be self-feeders.

I was reminded of this important lesson this week as I read about a study that Willow Creek Church in Illinois is doing called Reveal.  Willow Creek is one of the largest churches in the America, with approximately 23,500 people in attendance each week.  They are a church that is passionate about helping people who are far from God become fully devoted followers of Jesus – people with an increasing love for God and an increasing love for others.  By all accounts, they have been very successful at doing just that.  As a church, they have created many different programs, services, classes, and ministries in order to challenge people to go deeper with God.  However, a few years ago, they began to wonder whether the money they were spending and programs they were creating were really achieving their goal of creating fully devoted followers of Jesus.  They decided to do a large-scale survey of their church, and eventually thirty other churches (and 20,000 people) in the Willow Creek Association.  The leaders of Willow Creek were startled by their findings, but the results make sense in the light of what I described above.

The survey revealed that those who were still exploring their faith or were new followers of Jesus rated their church’s programs and ministries very highly.  They loved the programs, the services, and the opportunities, and found them all very helpful in developing a closer relationship with God.  However, those who considered themselves mature believers, living “close to Christ” or “Christ-centered” lives, felt that not much the church was doing was helping them grow.  Often, the evaluation was, “I’m not being fed.”  The survey revealed that increased level of participation in programs did not correlate with an increased love for God or others.  In fact, 25% of the people they surveyed considered themselves “stalled Christians” in their faith.

While Willow Creek is still in the process of discerning just what this survey will mean as far as how they do church, one of the most important conclusions they came to was that as Christians mature, they need to be taught to become self-feeders – to engage in spiritual practices in a way that will lead to spiritual growth.  They have even talked about employing “personal spiritual trainers” who would do for a person’s spiritual life what a physical trainer would do for the physical life.  A personal spiritual trainer (sounds like a fancy word for a discipler) would help someone develop a personalized plan for spiritual growth that would help them continue to go deeper in their relationship with God.

While I think we need to be cautious about getting too individualistic about our faith, since certainly the church and community are high values to God, the main lesson is worth meditating on.  How dependent are you on the church or spiritual leaders for your spiritual growth?  Do you find yourself depending on pastors to “feed” you from the Word, and worship leaders to bring you deeper with God, while doing nothing on your own between Sundays to feed yourself and deepen your own walk with God?  Are you able to listen to the word preached or songs sung and recognize that it’s not just a spectator sport, but that you are called by God to bring your worship, your whole mind, heart, and body before Him, ready to respond as He speaks to you? 

Be challenged today that ultimately, you are responsible for your own spiritual growth.  May we all take the responsibility to seek God ourselves with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind. 
 
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.  For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 1:3-8

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