To improve, or not to improve, part 2

There is a church in Little Grove, Tennessee, that to most outside observers is a pretty robust, active church. The church has been around for a few decades and most people in the community have heard of the church and its pastor. It has several hundred members. It has a sixty person choir, a praise band, a sizeable youth group, several Sunday School classes, and lots of programs for the children. Oh, and lest we forget, Little Grove Church has “fellowship”—which is code for a seemingly endless stream of events involving the consumption of much food.

Now, is there anything wrong with what is going on at Little Grove church? Maybe yes, maybe no. You see, the thing is, if we were to look at things there five years ago, we would give a very similar description of the church and its ministries. Its membership has not substantially changed since 2005. Neither has the size of the choir or youth group or most Sunday School classes. But looking at the situation in terms of numbers is merely an exercise in bean counting. What is of greater concern is whether the spiritual atmosphere at Little Grove has improved at all in the past five years. Sadly, at Little Grove, and at many churches in America, one year goes by . . . three years go by . . . five years go by . . . and there is often not a lot of discernable spiritual growth or improvement. Why is this?

Well, I think that some of the reasons are similar to those I mentioned last time pertaining to my lack of improvement in running 5k and 10k races. You will recall that I made three observations about myself. First, I have periodic surges in enthusiasm that quickly wane. Second, running just isn’t a high enough priority in my life. And third, the training that I do is inadequate to achieve results that would show marked improvement.

Little Grove Church has periodic surges of enthusiasm. Every summer they have “revival week.” Every so often they have campaigns to invite more people into the choir, or give more in the offering plate. But these initiatives rarely result in lasting or continual improvement.

Also, at Little Grove, though it’s tough to admit, many don’t hold church life and spiritual growth as a real priority in life. Many of the kids have AAU baseball tournaments on Sundays, others stay home from church to work on house projects they didn’t get done on Saturday. And during the week, people are involved in numerous activities—many of them very worthy endeavors—that preclude hard study of the Bible or developing more intimate relationships with other believers. Other priorities tend to crowd out the time that it would take to make great strides in spiritual growth.

In short, like my 5k and 10k races, Little Grove Church does much of the same stuff year after year, and gets the same results. My question is, is this how a church should be? Should a church be content to be the same today as it was five years ago? And by extension, should a Christian be content to be the same today is he or she was five years ago?

As you might guess, my conviction is that of all people, Christians—those who have a real, personal relationship with the God of this entire universe—should not be stagnant in their spiritual growth. This is not to say that there are not hills and valleys in one’s spiritual journey, or times of exponential growth as opposed to relative plateaus. But in general, I think that Christians—individually and corporately as the church—ought to be actively, discernably improving. I should not be the same Christian that I was five years ago. And Little Grove Church should not be the same church that it was five years ago.

At this point, some additional legitimate questions can be raised, such as why I think that these assertions about Christian living are true, and how best to implement them in one’s life (and the life of a church). I will take up these questions and finish up this mini-series in Part 3.