Barry is a young man who has spent most of his life as a believer in God. He went to church as a child, his mother taking him every Sunday and even dropping him off on Wednesday evenings while she ran errands or had an occasional meal with a friend while he was attending the church’s children’s program. One day, Barry came to the point of receiving Christ. He meant it. It was real. He was expecting big things because everyone told him how wonderful it was to be a Christian. He felt renewed, alive, and hopeful that his new life would exceed anything he expected.
As he grew up, Barry made sure to travel on the annual youth retreat. There were always good times and cute girls on those trips. He attended Sunday school occasionally and showed up to the church’s youth group now and then. With all he had going on in school and extra-curricular activities, it seemed difficult to attend regularly. When he did show up, the question, “Where have you been?” was usually the first thing he heard. This made it awkward, and Barry came less and less.
As a young adult, Barry moved away from home and attended college. There, church was less emphasized and even ridiculed by some. The going theory being taught was that God was fiction and to believe faithfully in fiction was ridiculous. Barry did not know how to refute this. Somewhere, deep down, he knew his conversion from atheist to belief in God was real, but hearing it challenged and ridiculed made him wonder – then he stopped wondering. He simply stopped. Some called it backsliding, some said he was never “saved,” and others called it deconstructing. Whatever it was, Barry felt far from God, whom he began to doubt even existed.
This story is repeated with variations tens or hundreds of thousands of times in twenty-first century America. Men and women become discouraged and frustrated, finally abandoning the faith. They arrive at a point where Christianity somehow did not live up to their expectations. Their childlike understanding of the hope in Christ becomes jaded and the hope fades away. Despite the reasons for this digression, what can be done to help prevent it in our children and grandchildren?
Last spring, I was privileged to teach a class called Effective Disciple-Making. In August I preached a series of messages based on one of the books utilized in that class. The book is entitled 4 Chair Discipleship by Dan Spader. Without going too deeply into the book’s contents, it has spurred me to reexamine truths in my family’s life and in the lives of many of our church members. Perhaps you can relate to them.
Many people we know and love arrive at a church and eventually believe and embrace the good news of forgiveness, crossing the bar from unbelief to belief in salvation through Jesus Christ, alone. This is literally a movement from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive. This is becoming a Christian. It has promise and hope. It has joy. A person was headed toward eternal darkness and is now bound for eternal light. This person is now “saved.” Good. So then what?
I cannot accurately represent statistics, but many, many people believe that is the end of the process. They are now God’s children but mature slowly and minimally if more mature believers do not embrace them and teach them how to live their new lives. Analogous to newborns, they need love and guidance from those that have gone further down the road. How would a newborn know how to eat, put on clothing, speak, socially interact, or clean up after themselves? Simply put, they cannot do any of those things without loving guidance; without someone to help them grow.
Instead of guidance, though, sometimes new Christians receive criticism for not knowing how to live their new lives. Somehow, they are expected to do the right things, say the right things, attend the right things, and be perfected in an instant. Can you imagine chastising a newborn for not being able to feed himself or change his diaper? Why then, do we sometimes offer critique without first having given loving guidance?
What do newly churched folks, new believers, our children, and our grandchildren need? They need mature believers, perhaps you and me, to befriend them and help them move toward maturity. They need opportunity to spend time with us, following our examples, becoming involved in groups with others seeking to live out the faith, and learning joy through service and ministry.
Unfortunately, we church people sometimes inadvertently teach that the ultimate goal of the faith is believing, then sitting down. We may not intend to teach it, but we find it difficult to intentionally pour time and effort into helping people grow. Accidentally, another year goes by, and our children and grandchildren have sat in church, although less and less, and are beginning to lose hope. The joy they had upon salvation has stifled. “Is this all there is?” becomes a real question in their lives.
Can you make a difference? Yes, you can. You can find that person in your church who needs your loving guidance. Perhaps he is a child or grandchild of yours, or perhaps not, but you can intentionally invest in him. You can choose to reach down, as God reached down to us, to help him grow in his walk with the Lord. Oh, what a difference you will make.
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