(Please forgive the scrunched paragraphs below. I tried to fix the spacing, but my technological savvy clearly fails me.)
The United Methodist Church, after significant collective soul-searching, has developed a list of markers for vital congregations.
1. People engaging in energetic, Spirit-filled worship
2. People professing faith in Christ
3. People growing in their faith (usually through small groups)
4. People engaged in mission
5. People supporting this mission financially.
This list captures essential practices, but it also makes me think of perhaps the deepest, most pressing, concern that haunted John Wesley: formal, conventional, outward religion. Every one of these markers can be quantified. They’re good markers, but the temptation to focus on what we can easily observe always lurks close by. If we see growing numbers, for example, we quickly assume that all the necessary inward work is happening and we can feel satisfaction. If we succumb, we will have missed the point.
In Discourse II on the Sermon on the Mount, Mr. Wesley offers this characteristic observation about conventional versus vital religion:
The religion of the world implies three things: (1.) The doing no harm, the abstaining from outward sin…(2.) The doing good, the relieving the poor; the being charitable, as it is called: (3.) The using the means of grace; at least the going to church and to the Lord’s Supper. He [sic] in whom these three marks are found is termed by the world a religious [read Christian] man. But will this satisfy him who hungers after God? No: It is not food for the soul.
About Stephen Rankin
Steve, I have been reading your blogs faithfully and they always inspire me. I don’t usually comment because I always want to say more than I have time to write at the moment. But I think I can make this a short comment. Yes, young people say they classify themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” That troubles many of us. But what I find even more troubling is that I suspect a number of older people, or at least those who have been in formal religion for a long time, would classify themselves as “religious, but not spiritual.” Actually had a D.S. say something like that to me one time about himself. So I think you are right on track with the questions you raise and the insights that you offer. If we will ask “What kind of Christian are we trying to become and to help others grow into?” we might be able to be both spiritual AND religious. Thanks and blessings, Martha
Thank you, Martha. I think the “religious, but not spiritual” observation is especially telling. The crazy thing is that paying attention to the kind of Christians we are is not mysterious or complicated. But it seems like the one thing we almost always overlook when talking about what we need to do to “fix” the United Methodist Church.
Paying attention to the kind of Christian we are isn’t mysterious or complicated, but it does take a willingness to look honestly at what might be wrong with us and a willingness to change in response to a will outside our own. Hmm, I think that in churchy terms that would be confessing our sins and repenting of them, while allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us. And THAT is never comfortable!