The Christian Life

A faithful member catches you after worship, a little sheepish, and says: I've been coming here for eleven years, and shouldn't I feel further along by now? Underneath the question is a picture she carries of the Christian life as a straight line, a course you complete, and by that picture eleven years should have covered more distance. Every discipleship program the church runs quietly answers her question one way or another, and most answer it badly, because they inherit the straight-line picture too: classes with graduations and studies with completions, and a vague implication that mature Christians eventually finish. Part V of this book is about forming disciples, and it opens with a better picture of what a disciple's life actually looks like.

Followers of the Way

Before anyone called them Christians, the people who gave their lives to Jesus were known as followers of the Way (Acts 9:2), and that older name tells the truth the straight line hides: faith is an ongoing act of trust and movement, a road walked rather than a course completed. The framework this chapter teaches, written by Rev. Michael Precht, gives the Way an ancient image, the labyrinth, a single winding path to a center and back that Christians have walked and traced as an aid to prayer for most of the church's history. The oldest known Christian labyrinth was built around the year 324 and survives in a church in Algeria, and the most famous was laid into the floor of Chartres Cathedral around 1200. The image earns its long tenure because three things are true of a labyrinth that are also true of a life with God.

Now give the framework to the sheepish member, because it answers her exactly. She is not behind, because the Way has no behind; there is only the next step, and the feeling of being far from the center is a report about the path's current turn, not about her progress. The seasons when God felt close and the seasons when God felt absent were not advance and relapse; they were the thin places and the far stretches of a path that was carrying her forward the whole time. And the new believer in her Sunday school class is not eleven years behind her; the labyrinth's turns have put them shoulder to shoulder, which is why the new believer's questions keep blessing her. This picture will do more for your congregation's spiritual health than a shelf of programs, and it costs one sermon to teach.

The five practices

A path still needs a way of walking, and the framework maps the disciplines that shape a Christian's life, the same five the membership vows of chapter 18 promise: prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. These are not five programs; they are five practices that draw us near to God and each other, with witness at the heart of everything. Prayers is the inner life of chapter 4, scaled to every member. Presence is the discipline of showing up, to worship and to one another, in a culture that treats attendance as optional everywhere. Gifts is generosity of money and of the abilities God distributed. Service is the kitchen of chapter 6, faith working outward. And witness is a life that points past itself, in words when asked and in shape always.

The practices give a church its formation curriculum and its measurement. Map every ministry you run onto the five, and you will usually find two practices over-served and one nearly abandoned, the same audit logic as the Church House, applied to formation. Measure members' walks by practices rather than attendance alone, because a member can attend for decades without ever praying at home or serving anywhere, and the church that only counts presence will call that discipleship. The chapters after this one furnish the practices by age and stage: children and youth in chapter 21, adults and small groups in chapter 22, confirmation and the milestones in chapter 23.

Putting the framework to work

1. Teach the Way to the whole church. One sermon or a short series on the labyrinth and the five practices, so the congregation shares a picture of the Christian life before you build anything on it. The framework document below is ready to hand out alongside.
2. Map your ministries onto the five practices. With your leaders, place every class, group, and ministry under the practice it mainly forms. Note the crowded practices and the abandoned one; that gap is your next year's formation agenda.
3. Build a next-step culture. Train leaders to end every study, class, and season by asking each person one question: what is your next step on the Way? Small and concrete and theirs. A congregation that expects a next step stops treating discipleship as a spectator's subject.
4. Use the framework at the doorways. The visitor class of chapter 18, the confirmation class of chapter 23, and the baptism conversations of chapter 13 are where people first learn what your church thinks the Christian life is. Put the labyrinth and the five practices in all three, and the vows people take will have a picture attached.
5. Revisit annually. Once a year, in leadership planning, re-run the mapping of step two and ask what the past year actually formed. Formation drifts like everything else, and the framework is the instrument you re-tune by.