To what standard?

Yesterday I asked on Facebook "To what standard are we to hold Christians? And how high is too high?" 

As you can imagine I got a myriad of answers. Many said "Grace is the standard." Yet others said "Love thy neighbor as thyself" and others still "maybe if Christians held themselves to higher standards we wouldn't be asking such things." What no one knew was my reason for asking the question. 

So to shed some light on why I was asking. Last Saturday I attended the funeral of a 16 year old young man who died from injuries sustained in a car accident. Upon arriving at the church, someone who knows only half the story of my past (not my side, I may add) decided to start talking and calling me various names, in hopes that I would leave the funeral. I will be the first person to tell you that I have a past, I have made mistakes I am not proud of, I have done stupid things; and in some way or another I have paid dearly for those mistakes. And yes, I expect that because of the mistakes the people on the receiving end of those mistakes have told their friends--in fact I know at least one has because the woman from the funeral, was caught taking my picture while I was sitting in my car. 

However, despite all of that, I have decided to hold myself to a high standard. I don't want to be the reason why anyone doesn't attend church or walks away from faith or stumbles in their faith. Through this experience, I have come to look at the way we help new Christians form their faith. 

Spiritual formation used to be a serious matter after you became a Christian; yet in today's church I am finding that it's just enough to pray, and be baptized with hopes that you "finally get it" at some point. So what is spiritual formation? Spiritual formation is a process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others.” (M. Robert Mulholland Jr., Invitation to a Journey) Yet a more intimate definition is The process that changes a person’s inner and outer life. Jesus was always more interested in what was going on in the inside of people than he was with mere outward activity. He talked of cleaning the inside of the cup first and then the outside will become clean as well (Matt. 23:26). Spiritual formation is about having the inner recesses of our lives touched by God’s Spirit.

One of folks that I asked my original question of stated "I don't think we can hold all Christians to the same standard because we are all at different places." While I knew that answer, it helped me to put into perspective that the woman who was deriding me to her friends, probably isn't in the same spiritual place I am. Now, I don't say this to make myself sound "better than," rather to let people know that I am no better than she was because at one time I may have found myself doing the same thing. 

Yet spiritual formation is hugely important if we are going to continue calling people to follow Christ.  It is God’s desire for every follower of Christ. People sometimes think that spiritual formation is just for the “really committed, you know, those who are really into discipleship.” Nothing could be further from the truth. God’s intention is that the process of spiritual formation would be an ongoing part of every believer’s life. 

Even Paul wrote in Romans 12:2, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Equally he wrote about the negative side of not being transformed in 1 Corinthians 13:1-2 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 

In Ephesians 4:12-13, we read that the goal of ministry in the church is "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ," or to be conformed to the likeness of Christ (Rom. 8:29, NIV). Maturity in Christ or becoming like Jesus or spiritual formation in Christ is therefore the ultimate goal of a local church. Just as a baby is born into a family and experiences safety and structure for growing from infancy to childhood to adolescence to adulthood, so we as Christians grow towards adulthood in our spiritual family. Certainly children sometimes survive outside of healthy families but human growth and development is usually stunted; it is the same with growth in Christian maturity. Perhaps a Christian can survive without a spiritual family but certainly their spiritual growth and development will be stunted and they will not flourish.

So where does the local church fit in? The spiritual formation of church members should be the very impetus of the church's vision and mission to glorify the Lord Jesus and to be the heart, hands, and feet of Christ in the world. Without members being spiritually formed, the church becomes more like a social club than the very body of Christ, wavering through various winds of change and remaining immature and impotent (Eph. 4:14)

In the end, I realize that maybe it's not the individual that I need to be worried about in how they spiritually stack up, instead, maybe we need to take a look at the standard to which we hold the church and it's ability to help new Christians, and spiritual infants grow in Christ.