What are we doing here? Thinking about the church’s mission of religious/spiritual Christian Formation--Part 1

In my last post about the current Pew Research report on religious life in America, I begged for some more intelligent conversation about what it means to talk about "religion." So I'll have to take my own medicine and offer up some starting comments.

The Pew Research study of our changing religious landscape in America is still generating lots of commentary.  See here for example, or here for the full report.  The results of the study were stunning: the number of people who claim no religious affiliation has grown nearly 7 percentage points in the seven years since the previous Pew report to a whopping 22.8% of the population.  Both mainline and Roman Catholic churches show significant decline in numbers.  Many interpretations are being bandied about.  The only thing that the interpreters appear to say in common is that someone ought to be paying attention to just what the mission of the church is, if it is not “making disciples.” Matthew [28: 19]  Do the numbers and their trend mean we are failing?

The 'little church with a big mission' has a mission statement that's more than 40 years old. It's our reason for being.  It said, in part, “We are committed to Christ…To this end we commit ourselves to call people to discipleship…” A few years ago, our governing board undertook a bit of self-examination to see if the Mission Statement seemed adequate.  After a few months of word-smithing and good discussion, it seemed that the old mission statement would serve just fine.  A little tweaking here or there probably wouldn’t improve it much.  So “calling people to discipleship” it is.

But just what is that?  Getting people to recite a list of beliefs about Jesus?  Making them attend church on Sunday?  Turning people into “good citizens?”  For too long, the church has been hampered by narrow understandings of what “discipleship following Jesus Christ” means, so I think that the discussion about dying religion(s) in the US has been impoverished.  I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that we deserve better.  I want to have better conversations and thinking about this topic, so I’m going to offer some of my own ideas in the next several blog posts.  I really welcome your feedback.  Ready...