Can I share with you this morning something about the way we do church in contemporary America that has always troubled me? My trouble has to do with the way we, who are charged as leaders in church, equip saints for ministry. In the average church in America, equipping ministry is often accidental; there is not an intentional strategy to move converts from the point of conversion to the point of maturity into Christlikeness. Sure, we teach the Word, but the very nature of doing what the Word says, in holiness to be transformed into the character and way of Jesus, is often on auto-pilot.

I just finished off an excellent read, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives by one of my favorite writers, Dallas Willard. In chapter 7 entitled "St. Paul's Psychology of Redemption," Willard combats this automatic, accidental approach to equipping head-on.

"Paul understood redemption as a progressive sequence of real human and divine actions and events that resulted in the transformation of the body and the mind. For him these were actions -- events -- real experiences we humans have, real parts of our lives, so real we cannot ignore them.

Some of the greatest literature in the English language has contributed to the loss of biblical realism. The great works of writers such as Milton and Bunyan have had the effect of wholly allegorizing the battle between good and evil as well as the Christian's struggle to follow the Lord. This is true to such an extent that generations of readers have emerged with a head full of images, but no idea of what to do in their own individual 'pilgrim's progress' or 'paradise regained.' Worse still, the impression is conveyed that this progress will somehow automatically take place through the normal course of life, if only the pilgrim holds on to certain beliefs.

Certainly I do not attack this literature in its own right as literature. But it has entered into a fatal combination with the general Protestant overreaction against (spiritual) disciplinary practices. A 'head trip' of mental assent to doctrine and the enoyment of pleasant imagery and imagination is quietly substituted for a rigorous practice of discipleship that would bring a true transformation of character.

But the new life in Christ simply is not an inner life of belief and imagination, even if spiritually inspired. It is a life of the whole embodied person in the social context. Peter's great revelation of Jesus being the Christ was genuine. But subsequent events proved that it alone did not transform his life. What he lived through did that, as was also the case even with our Lord, who 'learned obedience by the things he suffered' (Heb 5.8-9). An adequate psychology of redemption must make much of this crucial point, and Paul's writings, as well as the rest of the Bible, must be read in light of it" (111-112).