Spiritual Growth under j2

Not meaning to be a pain, but this raises more questions for me:
What is the gospel?
What is spiritual growth?
What practices foster spiritual growth?

Stealing a term invented by a friend of mine: I envision "fractal church" where our DNA is clearly visible and lived out whether you zoom way in to see the micro-level, or way out to see the macro-level.

In other words, Connect-Build-Serve is woven into our macro gathering.
Now let's go extreme micro: The individual. Can you see connect-build-serve in individuals?
What do we have in between? LTGs are, as I understand it, 3-4 people. Are they practicing connect-build-serve?
What about 2-3 groups of LTGs? That's 6-12 people, a "small group."
What about 2-3 small groups? That's 12-36 people, let's call it a "sub-zone" for lack of a better word.
And so on: 2-3 sub-zones is 24-108 people, a "zone."

In its most rigid form, I am describing the traditional "cell church" structure. But I don't think it has to be rigid, and I'm not trying to emphasize structure. (Hierarchical structures are passé. Today, we live in peer-to-peer networks.) I am saying that our DNA should permeate every level, every network. Different practices are easier at certain sizes, harder at others, but Connect-Build-Serve should be evident everywhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

You're only being a little bit of a pain! But you questions are fair.
The Gospel I thought was self-explanatory: The story of Jesus's life, his Lordship, and how we can be saved from sin, through his death on the cross. The story of how to get to Heaven and how to become a Christ-follower. (This is a quick and dirty explanation.)
Spiritual growth has many facets, but I would say growth in faith, knowledge (Biblical and through experience), obedience, and submission to God (I'm sure I left many things out).
As for what fosters this, I'm open. Serving, giving, worship, prayer, study just to name a few.
I guess I would have to turn it around; how would you define these terms? Furthermore, how should growth be fostered?

Nigel-

Hey John, that way we can play "Fraction Anthem" in celebration of the fractal church, like we did at the men's retreat!

We'll change it to "Fractal Anthem".

To reiterate: I am not proposing a small-group structure. I'm just using that to envision "zooming in" and "zooming out". The zooming asks two sets of questions:

- what are the intermediate networks
- how do we live the mission of God in each network

I'm only being a little? Just because I'm short…!

I will skip over the "what is the gospel" question for now, although I think it is extremely important. I just don't want to get kicked out of this church. Yet. :-)

Let's even skip over "what is spiritual growth" for now, and focus on specific practices. We can "foster" a lot by referring to Richard Foster's book. Take meditation, for instance -- I loved the way it was introduced on Sunday! Now how do we live that, instead of making it a one-shot deal? One way might be to set up a system which lets you specify your cell phone number, and a time of day. Then every day, you get a text message with a suggestion for how to meditate: an exercise, a Scripture, a prayer, etc. For some time, I just set my own phone with an alarm at 10:02 to pray Luke 10:2, see http://jonreid.blogs.com/oneanother/2006/09/1002_pra...

What about the practice of sharing food together? And while we eat together, let's share communion.

I guess I got excited by the whole spiritual disciplines series, and think that it should be incorporated into our lifeblood somehow.

Hey Brian,

is that Your book? Is it in print? Can I buy a copy and will you sign it?
So cool that you are an author :)

it is - but not out till nov and you can't buy it because I will give you one. I loaded that photo because I can't seem to load a photo of myself...

Not to be harsh, but trying to be a good missionary:
"How we can be saved from sin."
"How to get to Heaven."
"How to become a Christ-follower."
None of my friends are asking those questions. Maybe they don't make sense in our context?

In marketing, we learn to talk in the language of our audience.
Likewise, we too should think in terms in what's on the minds and hearts of our friends and family.

This is what I've heard:
I want to know real love, healing and friendship.
I want to meet/feel/connect with God.
I don't like religion, but I'm very spiritual.

What have you heard?

Tanya Reynolds
http://www.tanyamreynolds.com
http://tanyareynolds.blogspot.com

I can always count on Jon to make me get specific!
Quick question: What context were you speaking of?
But back to the original thrust of my post: All of the ideas we have to be relevant and "edgy" are designed to get people to come to the Journey.
My question is what do we do with them then?
Most of the unsaved think that they are "good" people, already going to Heaven. The idea that they are a sinner in need of a savior will offend them.
Many also will hold a subjective view of truth; so our claim of Jesus as the only way to Heaven will further push them away.
How do we overcome these (and many more) obstacles to mature them to Fully Developed Followers of Christ?

Nigel-

For me, my primary context is my friends: Silicon Valley 20-30-somethings. Well-educated. Techies. Gamers. Movie buffs. Living together. Musicians. Going to lots of rock shows. Up for outdoor adventure. Into nature photography. Caring. Knit together in closer friendships than I've seen in most churches. Always up for coffee. Ready to volunteer for a cause. Not interested in any sort of "church service" no matter how you sex it up -- and certainly not going to spend a valuable Sunday morning going to some place where they'll feel weird for an hour. (Visiting an unknown church is daunting for committed Christ-followers!) But it's not unusual for them to ask me questions about Christians, churches and Jesus.

the questions i get are: what's the deal with jesus/church? what do you get out of it?

i agree with tanya's other questions. the first one, especially, is one that can't be answered in a 3 point alliterative sermon, though, it has to be real.

but not really.

i totally agree that one should be able to see the dna at all levels in the church, starting with the individual and expanding to the church as a whole. the individual has to bleed the dna, if they don't, the whole structure breaks down. if you have individual buy-in/ownership, everything else in the church will reflect that dna, just like in a living creature's dna.

which brings me to why i agree with nigel's question, "what do we do with people?" people come to church because they want answers, they want "something" that they feel is missing. those people need what they are seeking & that happens in <i>intentional</i> relationships, with God and with other people.

and our relationship with people seeking spiritual truth will have the most impact when we [as christ followers] have transformed lives, the dna change. i'm all for discipleship programs because i think it leads to journey dna being a part of someone at his/her core.

i'm not advocating necessarily telling them, "thus-and-such is the 'proper' interpretation of this passage", but giving people the tools [& permission, since people often assume it's the pastor's job] with which to really wrestle with hard questions.

Better?

Love the pic, Jon. :-)

Tanya Reynolds
http://www.tanyamreynolds.com
http://tanyareynolds.blogspot.com

Consider:

The kingdom of heaven is like…
… yeast used by a woman making bread. Even though she used a large amount of flour, the yeast permeated every part of the dough.

… a mustard seed planted in a field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of garden plants and grows into a tree where birds can come and find shelter in its branches.

… a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field � and to get the treasure, too!

and so on.

The kingdom of heaven is something qualitative not quantitative.

In 2 Sa 24 and 1 Ch 21, there is a story about David taking a census of Israel, which he was not supposed to do. I think the census was prohibited because of the danger of pride at the size of David’s kingdom. The quantification of David’s kingdom appealed to pride; the qualification of the kingdom (1 Ch 27:23) was that the people of Israel would be as numerous as the stars of heaven, which was nearly identical to the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 17.

But David’s census brought judgment against Israel and the nature of this judgment is muddled a bit by references to Satan. But there was a direct causal relationship between numbering the people and judgment.

As we have seen from the comments already, defining and assessing spiritual growth is ambiguous and somewhat slippery. Evasive if you will. It’s hard to define in terms of behaviors, though many churches nonetheless resort to measuring conformance to the prescribed list of Do These and Don’t Do Those. But even measuring behaviors becomes subjective, murky and often, political.

The modern western mind tends to not like being unable to quantify important things. After all, that was the whole point of the Renaissance: mankind emerged from myth and superstition into a world of measurable laws and principles. And while quantification and the scientific method have brough unimaginable benefit to the world, it is still lacking in its ability to adequately describe what is truly important.

Which is why post-modernism is open to the ambiguous, the subjective and the qualitative. There’s not a rejection of the quantifiable in post-modernism but there is a recognition that numbers do not describe all the important things in life.

What does the organic nature of the kingdom (as illustrated by Jesus’ comments, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”) have to do with the census of Israel, if anything?

I wonder if, when we correlate those two stories, we might be able to see that there are risks associated with quantifying the kingdom. Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit as a wind that moved without apparent cause. He spoke of the kingdom as an organic mystery.

So if there is mystery in spiritual growth, how then do we know if it is happening?

The modern mind wants to answer that question with some sort of metric. Churches often measure growth in terms of regular attenders or members. Of course, the fallacy of that metric is that numerical growth in bodies occupying pews has no tenable relationship to the spiritual vitality and maturity of the body as a whole nor of individuals.

Journey takes what I think is a unique slant on quantification by looking at the number of baptisms. I’m not a huge fan of quantifying spiritual growth in churches but I think tracking baptisms is an interesting starting point. But I don’t think a tally of new baptisms is complete.

So, what do we add to it?

Stories.

See, numbers are great cuz you can put them in spreadsheets and newsletters to let people know how good your church is doing. Numbers are very efficient: they give a high-level view of the dynamics of the church. The only problem is that numbers can only quantify what is tangible, what is quantifiable, what is measureable. Butts in pews is quantifiable. Spiritual growth is not.

Stories, however, do a much better job of expressing the qualitative nature of the organic mystery of the kingdom. The problem with stories is that they aren’t very efficient. You have to listen to a lot of them to get a sense of the overall picture. It’s harder to see trend lines with stories. You can’t just ignore the outlying, fringe stories because those stories are about people; whereas when an outlying data point skews the data in a spreadsheet, you just throw it out or hope it gets averaged in with all the other data.

Numbers are great for the high-level, quantifiable stuff. Stories are best for the low-level stuff of life.

So, if we wanted to get a feel for spiritual growth, we need to consider the various contexts for stories:

Marriages
Friendships
LTGs
Bible Studies
Ministry Teams
Community Outreach
etc.

And so as we tell stories to each other, we get a feel for how things are going. If we told stories about changes we see in ourselves — both good and bad (and remember: the good stuff only has credibility when the bad stuff is part of the story) — and in the other people we relate with.

We tell stories with honesty about how things are going … and that means we need to be a people who value honesty and treat confession and openness as a holy thing, as a sacred part of being priests to one another. We tell stories in ways that protect identities when needed but ultimately, what we say about ourselves and one another in our stories will point us to how we are doing as a church.

So, I think that if we want to know how things are going, we talk in church. We tell stories about how we are doing. We look for early adopters who will be willing to risk personal disclosure appropriate to a group context to set the pace. We value honesty and balance. We honor transparency with acceptance and love (which, as we know, is hardly easy).

I think with enough stories in our marriages, friendships, small groups and our church, we will have a good sense of how we are doing. We wont be able to put it in a powerpoint preso or an Excel sheet but we will know. And as time goes on, we will probably develop a flexible framework for discussing spiritual growth and how we are doing as a church and as individuals.

I believe in God because every once in a while, I hear a voice that says, “You’re my favorite.”

You'd be able to get that picture to load properly...

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I believe in God because every once in a while, I hear a voice that says, "You're my favorite."

The question of what spiritual formation is and how it comes about is HUGE. There are no simple answers. There will be a price to pay if we pursue this seriously! And by price, I include $$$ of people leaving The Journey. Trust me, I'm not wanting to push people away. But simply changing locations will mean a drop in attendance (and thus giving).
I believe there are rich rewards for those willing to wrestle with God. "I will not let you go, until you bless me!"

thank you. :-)

seriously, i love stories.

God loves me so much, that He isn't letting my photo load properly because he is trying to teach me something through this. I wonder what that is...

Hey Dave, did you take that photo with your right hand whilst holding the wheel with your left?

i totally agree about involvement being a sign of internal change. it's kind of a chicken or the egg argument, since to a point they feed into one another. serving helps spolidfy your beliefs, draws you in.

i believe that the bottom line is that if service doesn't stem from internal transformation, we've reduced following christ to a list of dos and don'ts (just like the pharisees did with judaism).

I love this conversation that is going on. Spiritual growth is as you said Dave--more than attenders--more than numbers--more than involvement. I believe we sometimes go about it the wrong way. We say that if people get involved then they will grow--yes--to a point. But it is actually the other way around---involvement comes out, as basically second nature, when there is spiritual growth and maturity.

I just started reading the book REVEAL--Where Are You? Rcommended at the Summit. Like Bill Hybels said, "Once you start reading it--you won't want to put it down." (Which I just did to write this.) :) And it really makes one think about "WHERE ARE WE?". I'm only a third of the way through but I see this as an important tool that we can use.

you go girl... you nailed it... those things aren't just for our friends and family... Those simple points sum it up for me... those are what I am looking for in a church community.

I think spiritual growth can only be determined for each person by how much the Holy Spirit is operating in their lives. The gold standard is the New Testament church in Acts. Repentance and baptism is only the first step. Perhaps a simple survey can help answer the question such as this:

How large of an influence does the Holy Spirit have in your life?

A. None
B. A little
C. A lot
D. total control

When you lose all sense of self and are acting completely under the guidance of the Holy Spirit then you can say that you are saved. I definately have not reached that point. I know that’s a pretty hard standard to reach, but I think that is what the life journey is all about.

You said it well… That is the target I am aiming for… I fall far short… I do have moments when I feel I can hit that level but I drop down again.