Snippet: Do You Want Spiritual Growth?

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

Here’s one on making disciples from “Deliberate Discipleship in a Frantic World,” an article by John Biegel and Kevin Kompelien (our denomination’s president):

“While the world continues its frantic, avalanche-like bid for peoples’ attention through breaking-news chyrons and relentless notifications, constantly moving from one supposedly urgent issue to another, we need a patient commitment to practices as a church that root and form people in the gospel over the long haul. We need more glacier-like ministry.  

“And so perhaps the way for us to best engage in this war, in the Spirit’s power, is what has been called the ordinary means of grace: the regular preaching of the Word, corporate worship, prayer, fellowship, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, things that have characterized the Church since its inception. What appears ordinary to us is actually quite extraordinary, because it's how God, in His grace, has appointed to make and mature disciples of Jesus.”  

Do you want to grow in your relationship with God?

Are you concerned with the spiritual formation of the next generation?

Yes to both?

Then don’t neglect to participate in “the regular preaching of the Word, corporate worship, prayer, fellowship, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper” that “root and form people to the gospel over the long haul.”

If asked about our strategy for disciple-making, I wonder how many of us pastors would begin here, with the “ordinary means of grace”?

And how about non-pastors, if asked how they grow their faith or pursue spiritual form as a family, would begin here?

This is not all that goes into spiritual formation, but I do believe it is the foundation for all the other ways we grow, including growth through serving, personal Bible reading and reflection, participating in ministries of compassion and justice, sharing our faith, etc.).

Photo by Josue Michel on Unsplash