Reflections on Intentional Faith Development

The purpose of intentional faith development is to mature in the faith. In the letter to the Hebrews, Paul writes: “We have much to say, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” The message is clear. It was Paul’s expectation that Christians train themselves constantly, to grow and mature in the faith, so that they can gain a deeper understanding of the truth. We are to move beyond spiritual milk to spiritual meat. And this maturing process happens through intentional faith development. I think we all know this and have a desire to grow in our faith, not just intellectually but also in our hearts. We want to become more like Christ. We want to have an ever more maturing faith that is richer, deeper, more solid. And we know that this maturing of our faith must be done with intentionality.
Faith development happens in community. As we read the gospels, we see that Jesus primarily taught in a communal setting. Either Jesus was teaching publicly before a crowd, or Jesus was teaching his disciples in a small group setting. Very rarely does Jesus offer one-on-one instruction. Another thing we see is that when Jesus is teaching in public, he often teaches in parables, or in ways that cause the people to want to repent or make some kind of decision about how they are living their lives. But when Jesus was with his disciples in a smaller setting, he would explain the parables. He gave them instruction that was not offered to the crowd. It was at a deeper level. So, in Christ, we see a format for intentional faith development. There is the public teaching and preaching that is evocative and stirs people to make decisions about the kind of life they are living. And there is teaching reserved for a smaller group that provides more content and depth of instruction. In both cases, the teaching takes place in community.
John Wesley followed this pattern in his ministry. He understood the importance of public preaching. He looked for and empowered people to go and preach. Wesley was willing, although it was beyond his comfort zone, to preach out in the fields. There are accounts of Wesley going to coal mines to preach to the miners. His sermons have great content. They are very well thought out. And they lead the hearers to reflect on their lives and make some kind of commitment. Wesley’s sermons and preaching were clearly evangelistic. However, John Wesley also insisted on the critical need for those who want to grow in their faith to be engaged in some kind of small group. These class meetings were designed to hold one another accountable in their daily living, so that personal faith can mature. So, John Wesley, in the formation of what became the Wesleyan movement within the Church of England, was designed to provide connections of small groups, or bands, so that when people are moved to dedicate their lives to Christ as a response to public preaching can have a format in which their desire for faith development can take place. All of this, the public preaching and the class meetings are forms of community. There were no correspondence courses or a guided reading list in John Wesley’s program. For Wesley, faith formation is a communal activity and not an individual pursuit.
Why is community a consistent aspect of intentional faith development, as we see it with Jesus, with the apostles, with John Wesley, and others? There are two reasons why community is important in faith development. One is that community allows for accountability. Again, this is primarily why John Wesley encouraged people who were moved through his preaching to be more intentional in their faith to join a small group. It is in the small group that accountability can take place. We need this accountability in our faith development for a few reasons. One is that when we are reflecting on our lives and on the teachings of Christ and the Scriptures, our ideas or insights can be tested by others. This can help us, that we don’t go too far off the mark when we reflect on our lives and the things of God. Testing our insights with others, or reflecting on our life and on the scripture with others, can guard us from being deluded. It is risky to limit our reading and reflection on scripture and our lives alone. Scripture study and reflection is best done with others.
Not only is it good to study scripture and reflect on your life in community so that you don’t delude yourself, but also because in a group, different perspectives can be brought forward. Various perspectives, and the testing of these perspectives, regarding living the Christian life, can be very rich. Because each of us is unique, we gain different insights on life. We all have something to share which can be of benefit for others. So, faith development in community allows for broader perspectives that can produce a more wholesome faith development.
Another aspect of accountability we get in a small group setting is the support we get to keep with it. Some of us are self-starters and highly disciplined. But for many of us, it is hard to keep working on something if we don’t have others who are counting on us to be there. For example, it is easier to stick with your goal of going to the gym when you have a friend that is going to meet you there and who will call you and ask you where you were if you don’t show up. Just so, intentional faith development, whatever our plan is to make that happen, will be more consistent if we have some others who are going to be checking on us to see if we are doing what we said we would do and will motivate us to keep working at it when the desire to grow in our faith wanes. We all know what it’s like to have an early burst of energy and zeal when we start some process for spiritual growth. But after awhile, the energy subsides and we need a bit more motivation to keep at it. If we don’t have anyone cheering us on, it’s easy to just drop it. But if we are in a group that cares about us, we have a better shot of keeping it up when the motivation wanes.
One reason we do intentional faith development in community is because of the need for accountability. The other reason it is done in community and not alone is because the faith can best be learned in community. We can’t learn forgiveness unless we have an opportunity to forgive other people and be forgiven. We can’t experience grace unless we receive it from others or offer it to others. We can’t love alone, but in community. We can’t grow in our patience unless we are with those who try our patience. We can’t become more humble unless we have the opportunity to practice humility among others. The fruits of faithful living are manifested in community. So, this is why Jesus, the apostles, and our ancestors in the faith designed faith development to happen in community, because it is in community that faith is most effectively developed.
We know what the purpose of faith development is. We know that it is to be done in community and not alone. What is our responsibility as a church in practicing intentional faith development?
A fruitful church offers a variety of high-quality opportunities to gather in community to learn about and practice the faith through caring and nurturing relationships. These could be Sunday school classes. They can be fellowship groups or ministry groups, like United Methodist Men and United Methodist Women, as well as a mission committee, and even the finance committee and the Trustees. They can be short-term studies. In other words, every group in the church, whatever its purpose or responsibility, can be a faith forming group if it is seen that way. Yes, even the finance committee, if we understand that those of us on that committee are practicing our faith and nurturing our faith as we reflect on the financial need of this congregation and discuss together what we must do to bring about financial health to the church. It is a primary responsibility of the church to provide small group settings for intentional faith development. Every group in the church can be that opportunity if those in that group understand it that way. Every group in the church provides an opportunity to develop our faith.
And so, there are many ways to intentionally develop our faith. Again, we turn to John Wesley, who was committed to intentional faith development. He had a list that gives us a good foundation for our faith development. Wesley required all who would be a part of the Methodist movement, to do the following things: attend public worship, hear the scriptures read and preached, receive Holy Communion, have family and private prayer, study the scriptures, and practice fasting or abstinence. All of these activities, that we as United Methodists are called to maintain, are to be done in supportive community. As I said earlier, John Wesley insisted that members of the Methodist movement must be in a class, a small group, whose purpose was to check on each other, to make sure each person is still actively working to grow in their faith. In these meetings, each person was asked to respond to the question, “How is it with your soul?” This is the intentionality that we need so we can develop our faith. As Bishop Schnase says, “By joining a Bible study or class, we place ourselves in the circumstances that are most advantageous for growth in faith.”
I also want to say one quick thing about the groups that we participate in for faith development. Whatever faith development activities we participate in are not primarily about self-improvement. The purpose of these activities is to open oneself up to be shaped and transformed by Truth. Faith development is not about self-improvement. It is about self-transformation, to leave behind the old and become new creatures in Christ, with a renewed mind and a purified and transformed heart.
So, our church as a whole has the responsibility to create many high-quality opportunities for spiritual development. We have individual responsibility as well. It is the individual responsibility of every one of us to connect with a small group for faith formation, and through this, to connect with God so one can be healed. If you are not in some kind of group where you can develop your faith, it is your responsibility to get in one. It is my responsibility, and that of our education team, to try different ways to provide more opportunities for faith formation. There is mutual responsibility, myself and others to provide small group opportunities, and yours to be in a group. What ideas do you have? Perhaps you could start a new group? My goal is that every person in this church be in a small group for intentional faith development. We will produce much more fruit, as each of us intentionally develop our faith, maturing in our commitment, and becoming more and more like God, a people formed in the living Truth revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
Let us pray. We recall in our mind, O God, that scene, when Mary and the others gathered around Jesus to hear his teaching. And Martha, who was busy with other things, asked Jesus to tell her sister to come and help her. And Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are busy with many things. Mary has chosen the better part.” We gather here, and in many other settings, to sit before you, our Teacher. Teach us, O Lord. Continue to send us the Holy Spirit, Who leads us into all Truth. By your grace, renew our minds, strengthen our faith, enable us to receive spiritual meat, so that we might be mature and strong Christian men and women, that we might be fruitful servants, for your glory, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.