Discipleship Academy Foreword--Every Christian Education 08262022

Foreword to the Discipleship Academy: Every Christian Education Copyright (c) 2015 by Floyd Knight. All Rights Reserved. God has called us to be mature in our faith--in our Christianity. While we are all told to "grow in our faith," how do we objectively determine what level of growth is the minimal standard for being a mature Christian and what levels are solely between God and the individual? Why is this question important? It gets to the heart of accountability in the community of God. How do we choose lay and pastoral leaders if we don't have or don't know what the explicit Biblical standards are? How do we know if an individual can give mature advice and directions if we don't know what Spiritual maturity looks like from a Scriptural perspective? In the natural world, a peach tree, banana tree, apple tree, macadamia tree, and grape vines, for example, all have different maturation and growth processes. They don't all produce fruit at the same time, at the same rate, and for the same number of years. Some mature earlier or later than others. The same can be said for the spiritual world; individual Christians have different maturation processes and growth rates. Some of us take longer to grow than others. Some of us have had good social and relational environments in which to grow, while others will have had bad social and relational environments (social and relational weed-infested or rocky and nutrient-starved soil) in which to grow. Many Christians believe that we must leave individuals' maturations up to those individuals and God. I agree; however, this is only half of the answer. While all individuals have their own unique maturation, the Bible does describe how we will know who are still immature and who have passed beyond their immaturity stage(s). While none of us will reach final maturity (that is, a vine-ripened state) until Jesus returns and we are transformed, the Bible describes those who are sufficiently mature to pluck for lay leadership--and not just ministerial leadership--in the church. Lay members do not get a pass! Does the Bible give us explicit means of discerning whether someone is being disobedient or "spiritually lazy" regarding their growth in faith? A piece of fruit can be considered ripe (mature) or unripe (immature) based on its size, appearance, texture, firmness, mass, color, and smell. Can Christians likewise determine whether someone is "acting" or "exhibiting" Christian and Spiritual maturity or immaturity? Are Christians able to turn to the Bible and point to descriptions and indicators that will lead us to determine whether someone is mature or immature and, therefore, ready or not ready for being a lay leader, teacher, and/or ministry or committee chair? The answer is an unequivocal yes! The Bible does let us know what constitutes someone being mature in their faith versus being immature. These passages provide content base criteria. Is there a general guide for growth and development that lists stages of growth? In the Bible, there isn't a growth chart listing predictable stages of growth. Fortunately, God has made available, through the social sciences, a process-based understanding of how people grow to become mature disciples. We also know what the most effective catalysts are for growing mature disciples. The resources to which I speak are as follows: Christian Formation and Discipleship Bibliography 1. Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson's (a) Move: What 1,000 Churches Reveal about Spiritual Growth (2016). 2. Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson's (b) Follow Me: What's Next for You? (2008). 3. Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson's (c) Reveal Where Are You? (2007). 4. Henry Cloud and John Townsend's How People Grow: What the Bible Reveals about Personal Growth. 5. Dallas Willard's (a) The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. 6. Dallas Willard's (b) Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ. 7. Dallas Willard's (c) The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus' Essential Teachings on Discipleship. 8. Dallas Willard's (d) The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. 9. Gary Chapman's The Family You've Always Wanted: Five Ways You Can Make It Happen. 10. John Ortberg and Ruth Haley Barton, "Spiritual Pathway Assessment," in An Ordinary Day with Jesus: Participant Guide, Willow Creek Association, 2001), 67-72. 11. Lifeway, Spiritual Growth Assessment Process, https://blog.lifeway.com/growingdisciples/files/2013/08/Spiritual_Growth_Assessment.pdf. 12. Randy Frazee, Christian Life Profile Assessment Workbook Updated Edition: Developing Your Personal Plan to Think, Act, and Be Like Jesus, Harper Christian Resources, 2015. 13. Frazee, R., & Lucado, M. (2013). The Connecting church 2.0: Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 14. Renovaré Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation: https://renovare.org/institute/overview 15. Richard Foster, The Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, Special Anniversary Edition, HarperCollins, 2018 (1978). 16. Richella Parham, A Spiritual Formation Primer, Renovaré, 2013. In the secular world of the "Learning Disciplines," especially Disciplinary Literacy and Developmental Literacy, researchers are working to increase undergraduates' retention and graduation rates. The first major finding is that retention and graduation rates increases with the guided pathway model. The second major finding is the use of dual or tri-registration where (a) developmental coursework in English and Math whose credits don't count towards graduation are paired with (b) the traditional general educational coursework in English and Math whose credits count towards graduation and with (c) student success courses (mandatory tutoring sessions or classes) whose credits can be used towards electives and graduation. Why is this important? Since only 42% of US citizens are college graduates (those who have obtained an Associate or Baccalaureate degree), most individuals and most Christians will not be prepared to use textbooks and resources published for Bible College and Religious Studies undergraduate students nor for masters and seminary students in the areas of Bible, Spiritual Formation, and Discipleship. This is even more of a problem when one considers that most college bound students are also not college ready whether they come from the suburbs or from inner city and poor rural school districts. According to the ACT, of the students who took the ACT in 2010, only 24% were college ready in all subjects: 56% were college ready in English, 52% were college ready in Reading, 43% were college ready in Mathematics, and 29% in Science. Given these realities, Christian Education leaders and pastors should be aware that when teaching Biblical, Spiritual Formation, and Discipleship courses, many Christians (with and without a college education) will find resources that are written for secondary students more suitable for Bible Study curriculum. This means that pastors and church education leaders must modify or find suitable substitutes for the resources that they may have used. Secular Resources on Disciplinary and Developmental Literacy 1. Charlene Atkins, "A Corequisite Pathway for Mathematics: Pairing a Developmental Lab with a Gateway Course." Ph.D. Dissertation, Kansas State University, 2016. 2. Thomas Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins, Redesigning America's Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2015). 3. Thomas Bailey, "Guided Pathways at Community Colleges: From Theory to Practice," in Diversity and Democracy¸ Fall 2017, Vol. 20, No. 4. 4. Tristan Denley, ed., Tennessee Board of Regents Technical Brief No. 3: Co-requisite Remediation Full Implementation 2015-16. 5. Thomas Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins, "What We Are Learning about Guided Pathways," from Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, April 2018: https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/what-we-are-learning-guided-pathways.html 6. Cynthia Hynd, Jodi Patrick Holschuh, and Betty P. Hubbard, "Thinking Like a Historian: College Students' Reading of Multiple Historical Documents," Journal of Literacy Research, 36.2. 2004, pp. 141-176. 7. Samuel Wineburg, "Historical Problem Solving: A Study of the Cognitive Processes Used in the Evaluation of Documentary and Pictorial Evidence," in Journal of Educational Psychology, 83.1, 1991, pp. 73-87. 8. Samuel Wineburg, "On the Reading of Historical Texts: Notes on the Breach between School and Academy," in American Educational Research Journal, 28.3, 1991, pp. 495-519. 9. Samuel Wineburg and Abby Reisman, "Disciplinary Literacy in History: A Toolkit for Digital Citizenship," in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 58.8, 2015, pp. 636-639. 10. Timothy Shanahan and Cynthia Shanahan, "What Is Disciplinary Literacy and Why Does It Matter," Topics in Language Disorders, 32.1, 2012, pp. 7-18. 11. Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan, "A Disciplinary Literacy Bibliography," (June 7, 2015): https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/a-disciplinary-literacy-bibliography. Lay and ministerial church leaders must be just as intentional as higher education researchers are about ushering their students from matriculation (new birth) to graduation and beyond (sanctification and spiritual formation). Church leaders should offer a guided pathway for church members to progress through the various courses, programs, and experiences to know Christ intimately, to know more about God's character and will, to integrate the truths of Scripture, nature, and of nature's God, to grow and to become more Christlikeness deeply and widely in their person, and to further the work of discipleship. There should be "normal" curriculum pathways (plural) for making Disciples that are explicit, transparent, public, and easily accessible. The curriculum should be (a) scaffolded developmentally and (b) reversed engineered; (c) cross-listed with other relevant courses; (d) involve apprenticeship/experiential/experimental methods and approaches, and (e) relationally oriented, that is there should be an explicit effort to create natural or structured cohorts whether those cohorts are based on affinity relationships, matriculation relationships, or purposeful and directed formations of small groups. Church leaders should also help members to revisit their spiritual first steps as children or adolescent believers. Those early experiences must often be reevaluated and accommodated to the individual member's current adult state of intellectual and faith development. The age and the stage of cognitive, ethical, and faith development from which an individual may have made his or her initial commitment to Christ may no longer be adequate for understanding their faith and relationship with God as an adult. This will require those individuals to reexamine their faith periodically to grow in their understanding of the same. Why? We all progress cyclically through the four cognitive, ethical, and faith developmental stages. We start life in stage one where we are motivated by pain or pleasure. We then move cyclically through the "good boy" and "good girl" or "good citizen" stage of familial and communal affirmation or public shaming, shunning, ignoring, or negative labeling: e.g., bad boy, bad girl, delinquent, troublemaker, black sheep. The third stage that we cycle through is the rule-based/game-based/law and order understanding of our moral, familial, and communal relationships and responsibilities. In the fourth stage, we learn to live by principles and to determine whether specific laws and rules lead to concepts of justice, fairness, liberty, responsibility, grace, mercy, and love. This last and fourth stage that we cycle through is often something younger children and adolescents are not able to experience. It is from this fourth stage that Jesus gives us his two overarching principles. Jesus said all the 600-something laws and commandments recorded in the Torah and in the prophets hang on (1) our love for God and (2) our love for others. In this last or fourth stage, the principle stage, we learn to rebalance or to balance rightly competing principles and to recognize and incorporate all the other three lower stages as tools or means for living out our understandings of God's character, will, principles and purposes. It should be noted that our progression through the various stages is more cyclical than linear. Sometimes in one context, our motivations, feelings, and thinking are more aligned with the first or second stages of development, and sometimes in another, they are more aligned with the third or fourth stages. We rarely grow or transit in a straight line through these stages. We cycle our way through them. Why is this important? Children see the Gospel differently than mature adults. Suppose a child accepts Jesus at a young, elementary age; in that case, the child may see the Gospel and entry into the kingdom of God out of a stage one perspective, that is as a way to avoid pain (e.g., as a way to avoid going to hell) or to ensure a future pleasure (e.g., as a way to see, play, and to hug their mommy or daddy again in heaven when the child dies). While this is an appropriate understanding of the Gospel as a child, it is an incomplete picture of the Gospel as an adult. Suppose a child accepts Jesus out of a stage two perspective, they may see salvation as a lifestyle choice, as a positive affiliation or identification, or to gain acceptance and affirmation (e.g., I'm a Christian or a "good person" or "good citizen" as opposed to being unsaved, a heathen, atheist, "bad person," or irresponsible citizen). Again, while this perspective and understanding is appropriate for a child, it is inappropriate and too reductionistic for an adult understanding. If it is out of a stage three perspective-the law-and-order stage, the child or adolescent may see the Gospel and salvation as being earned. They are reserved for them based on merit or works or because they choose to play by the God's religious rules. Heaven, salvation, and citizenship in the kingdom is seen as being reserved for those who "live by God's rules" while "hell and damnation" are reserved for those who violate God's rules. Again, while this may be an appropriate level of understanding for a child or an adolescent, it is less than adequate for an adult because "a half truth is always a whole lie." While there is nothing wrong with a child processing the Gospel or Salvation based on the cognitive stages in which they first accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior, there is something wrong when those same individuals carry into adulthood an understanding of the Gospel, Salvation, and God's Kingdom based on a childish understanding of the faith. "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me" (1 Cor. 13:11 NIV). Adults should have a stage four understanding of the Gospel and their conversion. Consequently, we must help members who came to Christ at an earlier age and in an earlier cognitive developmental stage translate their earlier experiences in a more developed and adult-like manner with a deeper understanding of the principles and the process of spiritual transformation. This can be done by revisiting our transformational stories of conversion and by reexamining the Gospel and Jesus' life, ministry, death, and resurrection with a mentor or spiritual coach or facilitator. Our goal is to reach a 2nd Naivete understanding of the Gospel and own our faith as an adult rather than as a child. We are more likely to own our faith authentically when we understand the same based on God's principles of love and grace. I have tried to create a skeletal outline for a lay academy structure with a clear, transparent, and guided pathway. Congregations can use "off-the-shelf" resources that are readily available so that they can assist the Holy Spirit in making and GROWING disciples by teaching them all that our Lord has commanded us to teach in word and action that touches the heart, mind, and soul of each Christian. Every church (every local community of believers) has two responsibilities or mandates of its own that Christ has given. The first is to point out to individuals in their congregation those places in the Scriptures that define, describe, and illustrate what Christian maturity looks like. Second, each congregation is responsible for employing those definitions and criteria of spiritual maturity and for demanding visible pieces of evidence for those criteria in all individuals: (1) those who are to be considered for congregational leadership positions (e.g., pastors, teachers, evangelists, deacons and deaconesses (i.e. trustees, financial personnel, community service and outreach leaders, ushers, servers, and property management and building and grounds workers), and worship servants (i.e. worship leaders, musicians, singers, liturgists, readers, announcers) and (2) those who have not been called to a specific spiritual or ecclesiastical office but have (i) a spiritual gift (which the Spirit gives to everyone) and (ii) a general calling (which applies to every Christian individual) to make disciples. Congregations must have a vetting process that is transparent and open. (We are children of the light and do all things in the light.) Congregations should have an objective selection process for all volunteers and paid staff members: from the Sunday School Teachers and Growth Group Leaders, from Auxiliary Groups' and Departments' Chairs and Vice-Chairs to their Trustees, Deacons, Elders, and Ministers. The selection or nominating committee or group should also be accountable and transparent. They should list the scoring instruments and their rationale and method of selection. These should be available to all for inspection and distribution. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (John 3:16-21) This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:5-10) The following draft of my proposed Discipleship Academy for lay members gives the explicit and implicit Biblical texts that address this issue. Again, while all individuals have their own unique maturation process and schedule for growth, the Bible does let us know when someone is acting mature and behaving maturely and when someone else is acting immature and behaving immaturely. While we all misbehave and sin from time to time; however, admitting that everyone sins and need grace does not eliminate the need for discernment and accountability. We are not looking for perfection, but consistency over time. The church should discern and know which individuals are displaying and exhibiting signs of maturity and which individuals are not. This is not to judge or put down others, but to help all individuals become the person that God wants them to become. (Like a coach and a team reviewing films from their previous game, studying what went well and what didn't are done for the purpose of growth, not for shaming someone or making them feel guilty.) Our purpose is to nurture, assist, and encourage one another to grow more each day into Christlikeness. The first three pages of my Discipleship Academy proposal are content based. It gives the Biblical descriptions or indicators for sizing up the "fruit" or "maturity" of Christians. The Hawkins and Parkinson's resources provide a process or developmental guide for employing various content resources to help Christians grow and develop through various predictable stages. My Discipleship Academy is a work in progress, and I am still working on identifying, modifying, and/or creating the required resources to implement this vision of every Christian education plan. Whether you are beginning your journey towards growth and/or want to determine where you are on that journey, you can discover where you are and how to identify those resources that are catalytic for your growth to the next stage in your journey. See the resources listed above. I have also included a sermon that shows that the Biblical position is for PARENTS to be the primary teachers of the faith in their families--not the Sr. Pastor, Youth Pastor, elders, deacons, or Sunday School teachers. Sending our children and teenagers (or our adult children) to anyone else when parents have the means to teach the basics of the faith is not appropriate. Unless there is a learning or mental impediment, all adult Christians should be able to cover the basics-that is, what I have listed as level 100 and 200 courses in my Discipleship Academy or alternately what the Bible listed as being the basic teachings that all Christians should know. (Those are listed on page three, where the Bible verses are cited.) It is ignorance, disobedience, or laziness if individual parents have been Christians for more than three years. May God find all Christians as faithful as the Bereans described in Acts 17:5-15. Foreword to Discipleship Academy 2