Is your church experiencing spiritual growth?
“Sometimes people get locked into a position of jumping into church activities, to some extent, because they are unaware that there are other stages of spiritual maturity out there.
“They believe the activities are creating a faith, however, it remains more shallow than it could be because they aren’t engaging in the types of things that really would advance their journey, like personal spiritual practices.”
What does spiritual development look like? Cally Parkinson encourages church leaders and congregations to understand the main pathways of spiritual growth and maturity. She shares 4 stages of spiritual development in the church:
1. Exploring Christ.
2. Growing in Christ.
3. Close to Christ.
4. Christ-centered.
Christians often spend too much time wading in the shallow waters of the growing in Christ stage unaware of the depth, joy and relationship available in later stages.
“The growing in Christ is kind of the new believer who might say, ‘I’m involved in all these church activities, I raise my hand and I get involved in all this stuff, but when I walk out the door I’m not that confident in my faith. I don’t talk about my faith; I don’t live into my faith, I’m more much more confident in this nice self-contained church community that I have.’”
The loudest voice in most churches is that of the growing in Christ. This can create the a misconception of the spiritual growth in the church. Cally elaborates,
“That growing in Christ voice sometimes lulls pastors into thinking that there is more spiritual development going on than there is. What they see is see people lining up to get into all the church activities, and that means that they’re going to turn into followers of Christ.”
Cally shares her experience working in a church leadership role,
“I was in church work for years and I love that, these next steps, we want them to turn into disciples of Christ. We think that these activities will help them, but the truth is sometimes the activities blur us or keep us from seeing that the hearts really are not being transformed.
“The behaviors might look great, but the heart isn’t going in the direction we want to go.”
It is the responsibility of church leaders and members to encourage and create opportunities for further and deeper spiritual growth. How can you encourage those who are still growing in Christ in your church community to draw closer to Him.
