It seems like many churches may struggle to just get people to have a surface level commitment, like come to worship weekly, and so the culture of a church can cater to the least common denominator, and forget about creating an environment that facilitates growth in grace and an expectation that we are on a journey closer to the presence of God.

Thanks for sharing this. It has helped me think what the church is and should be.

I do not think that the book implied that the church is not a very important part of people becoming deeply committed. It is an important part of that process – particularly at the beginning when individuals are just introduced to faith or beginning to understand what it means and living as a disciple.

I think that the implication is for those who would consider themselves deeply committed or on the way there (always on a journey toward Christian perfection) the local church activities become less important for deeper growth. I think that the local church can and should continue to be an important part of spiritual growth, but not the same type of catalyst for growth as a disciple for people at all places in their journey.

As one moves toward living as a deeply committed Christian, I think the church could do a better job of equipping and teaching tools for individuals to use for continued spiritual growth. This might mean teaching around the spiritual disciplines, a mentoring structure, deeper level accountability (i.e. band groups or similiar), or other things.

To use worship as an example – I think that for someone starting the journey of faith the weekly worship service can be a catalyst for great growth in spiritual maturity. However, as one continues in the journey, I do not think that the weekly worship service will continue to be the same type of catalyst or encourage the same rate of growth in discipleship.

I think that some of this also points toward the responsibility of the individual for one’s own spiritual development. It is not the responsibility of the pastor or leadership for everyone to be spiritually growing in the church. The pastor and leadership can be intentional and very active in creating the environment in which spiritual growth and increased discipleship can happen, but the major portion of responsibility lies on the individual for continued growth.

Does that provide any clarification?

What do they do about these findings? The activities and programs revelation isn’t all that shocking to me. But the second one isn’t just shocking – to me it says a lot about the church. Are we serving up superficial baby food in our congregations so that people have to find the “solid food” Paul speaks of on their own?

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying they found, but if the church is not an indispensable tool in helping people to become deeply committed Christians, isn’t that a major warning sign that it is missing the mark?

I would be very interested to hear you say more about this.