Within a year of graduating from seminary, I saw Doug Hall's cartoon (right) in Leadership. I'd already had enough experience in ministry to identify with that pastor.
As a church staff, we'd lamented the gap between church activity and the spiritual progress we longed to see. Leadership contributor Roger Judd quoted a pastor who, looking at his church's multiple ministries and cluttered calendar, said, "Our philosophy of ministry is "
Spiritual maturity is what we're after, and that doesn't happen automatically, even for those people we manage to woo into the church. What does it take?
It helps to understand what we seek. America loves stories of "changed lives." Andrew Carnegie the pauper becomes Carnegie the industrialist and philanthropist. Michael Jordan, cut from his junior high basketball team, rises to become "His Airness." Bill Gates the computer nerd becomes Bill Gates, the world's wealthiest man.
Then there's Jared Fogle, who weighed 425 pounds until a diet of two low-fat sandwiches per day and a daily 1.5-mile walk helped him lose 245 pounds, shrink his waist from 60 inches to 34, and made him a national celebrity when he became Subway's spokesperson. Changed lives all. Impressive changes. But is that the kind of transformation we're called to seek?
Leadership's parent company, Christianity Today International, has as its mission statement: "To engage, encourage, and equip the church worldwide, sharing the depth and transforming power of the gospel, as it permeates all spheres of life."
What kind of transforming power does the gospel carry? Looking at Scripture, I see little of the kinds of change found in the inspiring stories of Gates and Fogle. It isn't about self-improvement; it's about being made brand new, inside and out.
 "This is my fourth sermon on the transforming power of the gospel. Why do you look like the same old bunch?" |
St. Paul describes this as a mysterious dying and a whole new life: "Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. … And since we died with Christ, we know we will also share his new life" (Rom. 6:6-8, NLT). This is not self-fulfillment but embracing God's reason for our existence.
Peter puts it this way: "Now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God—who chose you to be his children—is holy. For he himself has said, "You must be holy because I am holy" (1 Pet. 1:16-17). How can we possibly be holy like God? Many of us find that a fearsome, even impossible prospect.
It helps to remember that holy here means "set apart," devoted to one thing—God's purposes in this world. In Romans 12 Paul explains how that happens: "Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Then he gets specific about elements of this transformed life: not thinking of yourself more highly than you ought, using gifts generously, resisting evil, loving good …
This issue of Leadership is full of stories, not of self-made ministries, but of churches that are encouraging spiritual transformations.
Marshall Shelley is editor of Leadership
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