Five Practices of Fruitful
Congregations – Week 3
Intentional Faith Development
October 14, 2012
BMC- Deut. 6:4-9 & Lk. 10:27
Introduction: ODP Soccer
As you all know this, last summer
London served as the host of the Olympic games.
There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into making the Olympic
games happen every four years. A large
part of that falls on the host nation to prepare the venue for all of the
athletes and their competitions as well as the spectators that come to be a
part of the experience.
But the other side of preparation
involves the participating countries preparing their athletes for the
competitions. There are hours of
practice and training that go into a country’s athletes. For many sports there is conditioning and
choosing the right nutrition to prepare their bodies to enter into this level
of competition. But all of that happens
after the athletes have been chosen to be on the team. Before they are even chosen, there is a
tremendous level of intentionality that goes into skill development and
selection.
For instance in the world of soccer,
the US has the ODP which stands for Olympic Development Program. Online there is a six-page article entitled
“What It Takes to be Successful in the US Youth Soccer Olympic Development
Program.”[1] The organization has a philosophy that
states, “To identify players of the highest caliber on a continuing and
consistent basis, which will lead to increased success for the U.S. National
Teams in the international arena.”[2]
Additionally they have a purpose
statement which says, “to identify a pool of players in each age group from
which a National Team will be selected for international competition; to
provide high-level training to benefit and enhance the development of players
at all levels; and, through the use of carefully selected and licensed coaches,
develop a mechanism for the exchange of ideas and curriculum to improve all
levels of coaching.”[3]
Furthermore, “Players are evaluated
on the four components that make up a soccer player:
1. Technique
2. Tactics
3. Fitness and Athletic Ability
4. Psychological Component (attitude)”[4]
1. Technique
2. Tactics
3. Fitness and Athletic Ability
4. Psychological Component (attitude)”[4]
But why start out this morning by
talking about the US soccer ODP? What
does that have to do with us? Well this
morning as we come to the third of our Five Practices of Fruitful
Congregations, I hope that we can see the intentionality with which this
program approaches their program and the skill development of their
participants.
Today our topic fits into Christian
nurture at Bethel, but our author identifies this area as intentional faith
development. This soccer program is extremely
intentional about skill development. I
wonder what it would mean for us to be as intentional about faith development?
Gather ‘Round scripture basis
Some of you
are aware that our children’s department uses the Gather ‘Round Sunday school
curriculum with our children. This is an
Anabaptist curriculum that was developed a few years ago with intentionality
about learning style and about facilitating learning beyond the classroom
setting.
The
curriculum is designed to incorporate the 8 intelligences, which are our
learning styles. People learn
differently and each week’s activities offer a number of ideas that draw on
various learning styles. The curriculum
also offers an adult component that my Sunday School class uses and offers at
home activities throughout the week.
This allows us to go home on a Sunday afternoon and continue the
discussion about the text for the day around the dinner table or throughout the
week. We have all interacted with the
same story that morning and so we can each share from our age appropriate
learning.
It offers intentionality
about our faith development, but what you may not know is that this curriculum
uses our texts for this morning as the foundation for its work. Deut. 6:4-9 tells us, “Hear,
O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress
them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk
along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind
them on your foreheads. Write them on
the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”Then in Luke 10:27 Jesus echoes these words saying, “He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
These are the greatest
commandments and we are to impress them on our hearts and on the hearts of our
children. We are to be so intentional
about this work that we are to talk about them when we sit at home and when we
walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. We are to bind them to our bodies and fix
them on our homes.
Doing this
requires a profound amount of internationality on our part. Too often however, it seems to me that our
faith development is one of those things that most of us would affirm as being
an important part of life; but that many of us lack intentionality about
applying. Part of this internationality
comes when we notice where these verses suggest that faith development takes
place.
Where Faith Development Happens
I fear that we have a tendency to
relegate the bulk of our faith development to Sunday morning when we gather in
the church building. And certainly, our
times of Sunday school for children and adults are important parts of our faith
development in our lives. And our times
of worship together are also significant times to be nurtured in our faith.
But it seems to me that if we are
truly going to be intentional about our faith development, we need to be
intentional about practicing this in our homes as well. And that is what the passage in Deuteronomy
suggests. In fact, this passage does not
even mention faith development in the tabernacle or at a temple or synagogue
which the people of Israel did not yet have.
This passage relies on faith development happening in the homes.
We need to be spending time in
personal devotions and family devotions.
As individual believers, we need to spend time doing devotions by
reading scripture or devotional materials and praying. As families, we should be spending time
together in the word and talking about matters of faith. This both draws us closer to God and to each
other.
For some of us, we also bring faith
development into the home by hosting or participating in a small group of the
church. As we gather to fellowship and
discuss matters of faith, we are intentional about our faith development and we
move it beyond the church building into our daily lives.
But our passage doesn’t end with
the home either does it? The
intentionality of this faith development goes beyond the home to when they are
walking along the road. If we are truly
intentional about our faith development, it moves beyond the church building
and the home into the marketplace. Faith
development is more than internalizing the truth of scripture. It is also applying scripture to our lives
and testifying to what we know.
RAT: Receive, Apply, Testify
To be intentional about our faith
development, it must move beyond the church building into our homes and
everyday lives. But it also must move
beyond simply receiving or “being fed.”
Receiving knowledge of the gospel is an important first step and being
fed by the word is an important ongoing discipline. We need to receive, but we also need to
apply.
Faith is not just about learning a
set of doctrinal truths and being able to recite them on demand. It is also about internalizing them to the
point that they affect the choices that we make in life. Beyond receiving for faith development, we
must also apply. Applying our faith is
an important step because through application we not only put what we have
learned to use, but we also develop further in our faith.
In applying what we know, we come
to know these things more deeply and we come to learn them more fully. It’s kind of like on the job training. There’s only so much that one can learn from
studying a book or sitting in a classroom.
Eventually, one reaches a point in which one applies what has been
learned and in the process of using what was learned, one learns even more.
Intentional Faith Development is
about receiving and applying but it is also about testifying. It’s about telling others about the faith
that you have found and helping them to see the ways that God may also be
moving in their lives. Now those of you
who have looked ahead in our study may say, “’Risk-Taking Mission and Service’
is next week, Dave. You’re getting ahead
of yourself here.” But I don’t think I
am and here’s why.
Any of you who have taught a Sunday
school class, led a discussion on something about faith, or preached a sermon
know that in the process of preparing to teach others, you learn more yourself. And even more than that, in the process of
teaching others, you often come to learn more from them than what you did in
your preparation. The act of
articulating our faith deepens the understanding and the learning within
us. Therefore, a piece of intentional
faith development needs to be the work of articulating what we have learned and
experienced.
There is just something about
saying things out loud that makes them more real to us and etches them more
deeply into our being. Therefore, I
would suggest to you that Intentional faith development is made up of
receiving, applying, and testifying.
That’s RAT for short. Perhaps not
the best acronym I’ve ever come up with, but until Donna or someone else gives
me a better one, that’s what I’ve got.
The Purpose is Transformation: Purposeful PlanNow back to the US soccer Olympic Development Program for a moment. I shared with you that they were intentional about their skill development. But I also shared with you that they had a purpose for being intentional. They weren’t intentionally developing talented soccer players simply for the fun of it. They have a particular purpose in mind. They are trying to increase the success of the U.S. National Teams in the international arena. That is the whole purpose of what they are doing.
Part of being intentional requires us to be clear about what our goal for faith development is. Why do we need to be intentional about this? Why can’t we just sit back and allow it to happen naturally?
Well in the first place like athletic skills, faith will only develop so far without intentional effort to take things to the next level. In the second place, we focus on faith development because it is about being transformed into the likeness of Christ. It is about moving beyond our humanness and becoming more like Jesus.
Last week, I referenced our denomination’s Purposeful Plan, a document that contains seven items for us to focus on. The first of these seven is Christian Formation, another name for faith development. This priority states, “This first and highest priority commits us to fashion and mold our lives after that of Jesus Christ.”[5] In a world of sin and hate, Christ likeness is our goal and it is through Intentional Faith Development and the work of the Holy Spirit that we can move in this direction.
Moreover, our congregational purpose statement is “to experience and extend the gracious rule of God.” Our faith development is key both to us experiencing God’s gracious rule and to extending it.
Conclusion
For most of
us, the idea of faith development probably seems like a natural component of
our life together. But how are we doing
about taking it with us beyond these walls?
How intentional are we about developing our faith? How well do we do about moving beyond simply
receiving to also applying and even to testifying? Are we experiencing God’s transforming power
in our lives and are we living out our purpose to experience and extend the
gracious rule of God? May God guide us
in our continued discernment.
Amen
[1]http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/news/what_it_takes_to_be_successful_in_the_us_youth_soccer_olympic_development_program/
[2]
http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/programs/OlympicDevelopmentProgram/
[3]
http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/programs/OlympicDevelopmentProgram/
[4]
http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/programs/OlympicDevelopmentProgram/
[5] “Our
Purposeful Plan” Feb 2012 lines 151-152
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