When considering life in Christ we come to another tricky, sticky issue.
In coming in touch with Jesus there is a quandary about now that you’ve met Him, what do you do? Being brought up in church, after my first personal encounter with Christ that lead to my baptism, I fell into the comfortable routine of attending church meetings carrying out church duties and complying with church social norms. As someone who didn’t shriek ‘rebel’ or ‘deviant’, there was little in the way of checking how I was getting on with following Christ.
If asked about my welfare, I took it as a superficial enquiry which was backed up by the fact that there was no follow up after the question. There was no further investigation of prayer life, school challenges, understanding of the Word, growing in grace and knowledge of Jesus, expressing my gifts and having a character moulded into Christ’s. None of that, and I wouldn’t have know what to do if I was challenged at that stage. I was more than content to conform to what everyone else was doing as far as I could tell, and what I did in private … well that was between me and God, or more accurately just between me and me.
Of course my experience isn’t the only one of what happens when you have a close encounter of the Christ Kind. Some people attend a course like The Alpha Course and explore some of the basics of mainstream Christianity. Through that they make a decision or elect to give the following Jesus bit a go. Sometimes there are follow up courses to attend and the house groups and the like to reinforce what’s been learnt at the start and hopefully help someone along the way.
Even in these cases, though, the whole bit of following Jesus can come across as rather formulaic or worse still academic – read these bits, memorise them, recite them, be able to explain them and voila you’ve nailed Jesus! (Well not literally, obviously.) The group studies and home groups etc. can still lack a depth of engaging with Christ and again leave certain deeper questions of genuine growth.
Something that helps in the ‘leave them alone’ kind of approach is the role of the Holy Spirit. After all, the same Spirit that rose Jesus from the dead is the same Spirit that convinces, convicts and converts (brilliant phrase). We are not to construct man-made procedures around this as such or else what tends to happen is we depend on the constructs and relegate the Holy Spirit to cameo appearances.
It’s not too unlike what’s happened with church services, church roles and that kinda stuff which with the best will in the world we’ve reduced to formulas, statements, formats and the such which kinda leaves little to no room for the Holy Spirit to breathe the life of God in those following Jesus.
So the tricky and sticky bit is this. It is a great neglect of Christian responsibility to see new believers and literally just leave them to it assuming that regular attendance and no sign of abnormality indicates that it is well with their soul and their walk with God. On the other hand neither can we get a stack of books, courses, videos/DVD’s etc and inform the newbie that as long as they jump these hoops it is well with their soul and their walk with God.
The organic model – as in the reference to plant-life, etc – offers a great deal of help with what role we as a community can play in the life of a new believer. We can water occasionally through support, prayer, regular contact with meaningful interaction and the beauty of shared life. We can do that bit. Part of that process is encouraging relationship with the same Holy Spirit that brought Jesus to the attention in the first place. From there the increase comes from God, growth is seen in God doing the work on the inside that can be seen from time to time (indeed in the fullness of time) on the outside.
That should not be read as DMCD’s Quick & Easy Answer for the new believer. The courses can be a great help and there’s nothing wrong with a structured approach as long as it’s Spirit-led. All this post encourages is great sensitivity to the plight of the new believer and to remember that just because your experience went well it does not mean everyone will have it so good.
Even as a ‘veteran’ remembering that same humble need for help from God’s family as we depend completely on Him allows us to keep a compassionate to fellow-travellers at whatever stage of the journey.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
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