Snippet: A Profoundly Simple Definition of Spiritual Maturity

Snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

This one is from Chip Stam, quoted by Mike Cosper:

“A mature believer is easily edified.”

Cosper is the guy behind “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast. The podcast (12 total episodes) chronicles the rise and fall of a very influential church in Seattle from the late 90’s to its demise in 2014, weeks after its founding pastor (Mark Driscoll) resigned.

Driscoll was a uniquely powerful communicator who hated listening to most other preachers because they didn’t keep his attention.

His models for preaching included shock jocks and comedians like Chris Rock.

But early in the article, Cosper points out that Rock would test his material in small venues before using it on the big stage. But he was always concerned that his celebrity and personality would draw the laughter, so he would test his content using the most deadpan voice and personality he could muster.

The snippet from Chip Spam follows this in Cosper’s article:

“It turns out, though, that [Driscoll] missed the deeper ethic of Rock’s craft: that the substance of the material was more important than the presentation. It had to work without him.”

We can spend a lot of time talking about and thinking about the problem of building a church around a celebrity pastor’s personality.

Or we can spend more time asking whether we need star power and entertainment to engage with God and his Word and to worship him. And if so, why? And what can we do to grow past that?

All that said, as I think about this, I want to keep a few things in mind.

First, I’ve spent some time pondering the fact that some pastors can’t help being stars. If you’ve experienced Francis Chan, for example, I don’t think he can help it. And he’s spent a good part of his ministry running away from being made into a celebrity.

Second, Old Testament worship called for a lot of pageantry and would have been highly entertaining in that day. The reason you may not see that in the New Testament could be that the churches were small and met in homes.

Third, I’ve attended services led by people who tried to keep it simple and wanted to be the antithesis of the big mega-church style of worship. In some ways this describes Five Oaks. But the “simple style” can be and often is just a different way of being stylish.

In the end, maybe what we need to ask is, whatever type of church we attend, can we connect with God in quietness and aloneness? Can we still hear from God when the preacher is having an off week? Can we still sing praises from our hearts when we don’t particularly like the song or the song leader is struggling with some of the notes?

Am I easily edified?

And as a pastor and church leader, I know we at least have these twin responsibilities—to equip our folks to connect with God outside of our weekend services, in the mundane of everyday life, and to make sure that the substance of what we share works without us.

Photo by Rachel Coyne on Unsplash