End Spiritual Infant Mortality

Pictured at the right is an incubator. If it looks like it's made of car parts, that's because it is. It was designed by a company that specializes in appropriate and sustainable technologies for developing countries, many of which have access to a steady stream of reliable car parts (such as the headlights that provide the heat and the car battery that powers it) and almost zero access to the specialized parts that most other companies use for such devices.

Result: more incubators that work longer and are easy to repair means a greatly reduced rate of infant mortality. Indeed, estimates are that incubators alone could cut infant mortality in many of these countries in half.

John Wesley was noted for his exceptional passion and commitment to proclaiming and leading people to experience the new birth, the dawning of justifying grace in their lives.

But he was even more interested in ensuring that those newly born in Christ had everything necessary to get out of spiritual infancy alive! He was witness in his own day to too many others also preaching the new birth and stopping there, with the result that there was a very high rate of those being "converted" either becoming frozen at a level of spiritual infancy or, more frightening, regressing to spiritual death once again. 

Wesley resolved to have no part in contributing to the rise of "spiritual infant mortality" in his day. So he would not do field preaching where there was not an active Methodist society and a trial class meeting to refer those who responded. The trial class meetings were like spiritual incubators, constructed of others who were similarly responding to the gospel and leaders who would make sure they were actually growing rather than, as babies left to their own devices in adverse circumstances, failing to thrive. 

This is why for Wesleyan Christians it is not enough that we try to increase attendance in services of worship or even have more "professing members" or even more small groups in our congregations. There are too many ways to do all of those things that have nothing to do with the new birth or actual growth in holiness of heart and life-- and they are being tried successfully-- if your metrics of success are increases in attendance, membership and the number of small groups. 

But our earnest passion and the striving of our souls and bodies is not simply for significant spiritual encounters or pledges of institutional allegiance or places of belonging. All of these may be related in some way to the new birth, but none of them necessarily so. We, too, live in a hostile environment where there are way too many cases of infant spiritual mortality. Witness the "churn" noted in Willow Creek's Reveal study a few years ago, and found to be commonplace in many "growing" congregations in the US in the past several decades.

Congregations today as in Wesley's day are not equipped to prevent those newly born from failing to thrive. The "black box" we call congregations with their internal systems do NOT generate the outcome of discipleship at anything like an acceptable rate. Indeed, they tend to generate the opposite result-- at least if you follow the findings of Willow Creek.
 

It's time to end spiritual infant mortality in our own day.

It's time to start building more incubators-- lots of them.

These incubators aren't black boxes. We know what's inside them. And we know how and why they work. And we know they do work-- at a far higher rate of success than congregations do. 

The parts are all around you-- but you may need to look beyond folks just in your congregation to find them and assemble them into a working incubator.

Covenant Discipleship groups can be such incubators. So can others. But I mention Covenant Discipleship here because I know what it's doing for me. Through it the Spirit is truly working. I am growing and being challenged and supported to grow further in holiness of heart and life. I'm more aware of my own failings to do so, but also more aware of the grace of God empowering me to do so. And that seems to be the experience of all of us in the group I'm part of.

Parts needed-- 5-7 people willing to covenant together to watch over one another in love to live the way of Jesus by supporting and holding each other accountable for the ways they will engage in acts of mercy (personal compassion and social justice) and acts of piety (personal devotion and public worship).

Get in one of these yourself-- or a group like it-- if you aren't already.

Then go invite others to do the same.

And then watch as fewer infants in Christ fail to thrive, and more of them grow into the full stature of Christ because they have the support systems they need to live as his disciples on his mission in the world.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

For more about this incubator and how it is also a great example of how innovation normally works-- by using what's already available and connecting it in a new way-- watch Steven Johnson's TED Talk, "Where Good Ideas Come From."

One Cause of the Inefficacy of Christianity

John Meunier has some wonderful words in a recent blog post, Wesley's Call to Action, about the Methodist tradition of examining ourselves and exploring how to become more effective. It was a topic that Wesley frequently raised for discussion, and we still do this.

My favorite: I remember Wesley lamenting the future of Methodism should the 5 am preaching ever be abandoned.

In my garage I have a portable power saw and other tools that I bought to do home repairs years ago and which I haven't used for over 15 years. Well made, I suspect they would work fine if I decided to use them for the purpose for which they were made.

Our Wesleyan system is also a well made, well designed method of making excellent disciples. It was crafted for the purpose of evangelism, for maturing new Christians through stages of growth to likewise learn how to partner in evangelism and maturing new disciples. Indeed, we "have nothing to do but to save souls..."

In the 5 am preaching, the circuit rider would position his horse on the road men took to the mines, sing a hymn to draw a crowd, and then preach. Methodist laymen would stop and those with whom they had influence would stand with them and hear a sermon; in the following days the laity would, through conversation with those friends, expand the influence of that brief message. In the centuries since, the role of the preacher in that process has been emphasized while the action of the early Methodist laity as disciple makers has been neglected or even ignored.

I have a great tool in my garage, a Craftsman power saw, and Methodism has a great tool for making disciples. You can examine the tool all day long, oil it, improve it and expound upon its value. It is right to say "This is a great tool!" The problem is not with the tool at all; the problem is that the tool needs to be applied to wood to do its work. The tool of Methodist disciple making needs to be applied to the wood of people who need faith. And the way the tool of disciple making works is through many small conversations that build a relationship with a person who is not-yet-fully-Christian and how those conversations eventually become conversations about faith.

You can no longer stand on a street, sing a hymn and draw a crowd; preaching to the lost doesn't work in our culture as it did in Wesley's culture. But the work God does through the conversations laity have is still as effective as it ever was.

It's good to emphasize Wesley's system of sanctifying grace, keeping God's laws and emphasizing holiness. It's a great system, a great tool for making good disciples into better disciples.

The problem to me, however, is that it is a command of Jesus Christ to each Christian to go, make disciples, baptize them, and teach/train them to obey all the commands of Christ, including the command for them to go, make disciples, baptize them, and teach/train them to obey all the commands of Christ ... and on and on. Our 2008 Book of Discipline, P. 126, now understands working at the Great Commission clearly as a ministry of the laity.

We ask "Why is there so much wickedness abroad?" and consider soberly the causes of the inefficacy of Christianity. It is a good answer to say that the lack of spiritual discipline and self-denial within us is the problem, but that is the saw sitting on the shelf, ready to work, but not cutting wood.

When I consider the focus of holiness over the past three centuries and its current revival through a new understanding of the General Rules, I believe we continue to miss the point - the idea that we are pursuing is that what is needed are disciplined Christians more able to achieve a definition of holiness which omits obedience to the Great Commission. We focus on making better and better disciples who somehow never become disciple makers.

Look over all the exhortations to holiness over the recent centuries - what sin have we not addressed that would account for the growing inefficacy of Christianity?

The understanding of holiness that is needed for the church to be effective is that, if it is a sin to disobey a command of Christ, then it is a sin for a person to not make disciples (Mt 28:19) and it is a sin to not teach those new disciples to become disciple makers (Mt 28:20), and it is a sin for a church not to teach the laity how to fulfill the Great Commission.