“This is really beginning to aggravate me,” I told Derrick with fire in my eyes at an early breakfast meeting. I rarely got angry with a church member but this subject was creating a sore spot.
“I think it’s time for you to stop being spoon-fed and grab a spoon yourself. You need to be feeding others instead of expecting to be fed all of the time.”
The thirty-something year-old church member looked confused.
“You and your wife are mature Christians, “ I continued. “You’ve been walking with Christ your whole life. You need to take some of the new believers in our church and the less mature and help them grow up in the faith. What good is it for you to go deeper when we have scores of people who need help wading into the water?”
It has been a source of frustration for me as well as the rest of the staff of our contemporary church. Like many churches, we have spent years focusing on being seeker-friendly on Sunday mornings and believer-focused during the mid-week service. Most of our Sunday sermon series are topical and culturally relevant. There is plenty of milk for new followers and an adequate helping of meat for the seasoned saints. We’ve been pretty successful with it. We’ve grown to be one of the larger churches in our mid-sized city with approximately two-thirds of our attendees under the age of thirty. But we’ve paid a price lately. Some of the mature followers have abandoned our philosophy of ministry for a Sunday morning service that is “deeper.”
Deeper. I get sick when I hear that word. “We want something deeper,” they say.
I’m finding that many of our mature believers over the age of thirty are not willing to take a leadership role in helping disciple the younger believers in our church. They want to be fed instead. Amy Grant sang about them a long time ago. They want to become “Fat Babies,” i.e., always taking information in but doing nothing with it. The consumer attitude of “What’s in it for me?” is killing our churches.
Why is this happening? I have a couple of theories. Consider Derrick’s church experience. Derrick grew up in a Christian home and has attended church his entire life. From the crib to college, his church provided age-related ministries exclusively designed for him and his stage of life. After college, he joined the singles ministry where he fellowshipped and studied with others like him. When he married, a group designed for newlyweds welcomed the new couple into their fold for a few years. For the first thirty years of Derrick’s journey as a believer, he was spoon-fed a steady diet of Bible knowledge and spiritual insight chosen especially for him. Now Derrick and his wife are in a small group with other thirty-somethings with young children learning Biblical parenting skills and money management principles. The spoon-feeding continues.
Now this is not to say that Derrick hasn’t served well over the years. He has led groups, classes, and retreats. He has served on boards and service teams. He is a generous contributor to the ministry. His family is a model Christian family. But somehow the Church has failed to get him to focus on the mission of the church, i.e., bringing people to faith in Christ and making disciples. Instead of rejoicing in the success we’ve had in reaching the unchurched and lost, he wants the Sunday service to reach him almost exclusively. Have we accommodated his needs too well by spoon-feeding him during his entire life?
Another reason why faithful followers get caught in the “What’s in it for me?” trap is a spiritual one. We are selfish. It’s the sinful nature. We want our needs to be met over the needs of others. Derrick is a normal Christian. He never experienced the “big” sins. He’s never been drunk or high. He doesn’t cuss or smoke. He never had premarital sex nor is he tempted to have an affair. He’s mastered the gross sins but he struggles with the base sin that haunts us all – selfishness.
Derrick understands the need to serve. He can quote the Great Commission. He even supports missionaries in foreign lands. But in Derrick’s mind, his needs come first. Missions and evangelism should come after he learns more or has more time to mature in the faith. When his knowledge pool is full, then he’ll wade in the water to help a few fellow strugglers, he thinks.
It’s completely normal for us to seek self first. Why do you think Jesus’ first qualification of a follower was to deny self? “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). We have to get our focus off of self and on the needs of others.
“It’s like this,” I continued with Derrick. “Suppose a ship is sinking in the middle of the ocean and there are two people already in the water, a scuba diver and a man in a lifeboat. The scuba diver is two hundred feet below the surface enjoying God’s underwater creations. The man in the lifeboat is on the water’s surface rescuing victims of the catastrophe as fast as he can. Who is doing the greater work?”
“The guy in the lifeboat,” Derrick replied.
“Do you want to be a scuba diver or a life saver, Derrick? Because if you’re just going to sit around and enjoy getting deep from the pew, you’re not helping us fulfill our mission.”
“We have to get our minds off of ourselves,” I continued. “There comes a time when we have to stop asking, ‘What can God do for me?’ and ask instead, ‘What can I do for God?’”
Derrick wasn’t convinced. He stammered and stuttered and said something about his desire for more Greek words in the sermons and his love for expository preaching.
“I love that too,” I agreed. “I love to teach and preach that way but I also know that there are other ways to communicate the gospel. Let’s use as many of them as we can to rescue as many people as possible.”
I continued telling Derrick that to only want to be fed on Sunday mornings is wrong. It’s selfish. It’s the essence of our sinful nature. The mature disciples are responsible for feeding the young believers and helping them grow up as fully devoted Christ-followers.
“Derrick, you say you want to go deeper? Here’s something deep: obey. Jesus said, ‘If you love me, you’ll obey me.’ I promise you that when you start obeying Christ and making disciples it will get deep. When you start digging into the word answering a young Christian’s questions, you’ll be so deep you won’t know which way is up! If you want deep, get in and help us make disciples in this church. Grab a spoon and start shoveling what you know into the mouths of those who desperately need it.”
How do you encourage believers like Derrick to grab a spoon? Derrick needs to understand that the church is more than a lecture hall. It is intended to be a growing movement of disciples who purposely reach out and help others mature in the faith. Second, Derrick needs to realize that the church is about people not programs. He wants to be fed more on Sunday mornings instead of on Wednesday nights. Our schedule doesn’t accommodate his schedule. Henry Blackaby teaches that disciples should adjust to what God is doing. Shouldn’t Derrick arrange his life in such a way that he can be involved in what God is blessing?
Derrick also needs to understand that going deeper is for ministry training not personal enrichment. Of course, there is fulfillment and spiritual growth in learning more and diving deep into the Word. But Jesus made disciples so that they could do ministry and reproduce themselves. We go deep in the Word so that we can distribute it as the Spirit gives us opportunities. Finally, Derrick needs to grasp the concept of Ephesians 4:11-12. The pastor’s job is to equip him to do the work of the ministry. It is not to fill him with Bible trivia, Greek words, and alliterated points. He gets that, of course, during the journey. But his job is to help the church continue its forward path by grabbing a spoon and feeding others along the way.
We left the restaurant that morning unchanged. Derrick is still on the verge of leaving our church in search of one that will feed him on his terms. I continue to seek disciplers who are willing to grab a spoon and feed their young brothers and sisters in Christ.
