Growing Deeper with Jesus
THE REV. TERRY MCGUGAN
Two years ago, we gathered in Barnes Hall for our annual meeting after the banner year of 2019 in which Christ Church found itself growing in attendance, membership, and finances. All indicators were pointing up and to the right. As you may remember, the vestry called for a sabbatical of sorts. A time for the parish to step back, take stock, and discern God’s desire and will for Christ Church for the next seven years. The vestry, staff, leadership, and the members of the parish were going to enter into a structured season of discernment in 2020 for the future vision for Christ Church. And then it was like someone pulled the emergency brake on a car going 80 miles an hour. COVID brought all our plans to a screeching halt. Suddenly we were thrust into an environment we had never faced before, a pandemic. The church was closed and we quickly pivoted to an online format for worship and all of our other ministries. Systems were set up for the care of our parishioners and particularly our elderly and at risk. Hats off to the leadership and the staff for such a quick response to the crisis. Thankfully, we lost no members to COVID and Christ Church found itself rising to the occasion with great grace and poise.
As we settled in for the long haul, the vestry took up again the important business of discernment of a vision for the future of Christ Church. Some of what happened in the first year of COVID informed the discernment process. During the initial nine months of COVID, we tried to stand up regional gatherings of members of Christ Church. The hope was to leverage our circumstances by grouping families in their local contexts, and begin to create community outside the walls of Christ Church. We thought COVID had allowed us to boldly move into this new space of regional gatherings and eventually a series of home churches spread out across the metro Denver area. We believed the conditions were right to launch such an expansion. But the results were less than what we expected. There were some successes, but overall the plan did not move beyond step one or two. We analyzed why it did not succeed, and the easy answer was to blame it on COVID. After looking deeper, we discerned that the vast majority of people were not ready for a decentralized church model. Most folks didn’t see the need or possess the desire to create these regional communities. We began to scratch our heads and ask the question why? Why had the plan floundered? Why did people not see the value in local expressions of Christ Church where the unchurched could be invited into a non-threatening Christian community? The reality was the vision never caught on.
“We were not providing deep spiritual nurture for hearts, souls, and lives which would result in transformative change.”
As we reflected, we realized we were not really where we thought we were. We thought Christ Church was poised to break outside its walls and expand the church through the city. But the reality was we were not ready. The next question was; “why weren’t we ready?” The short analysis is that we had grown wider over the last couple of years but we had not grown deeper. There were lots of people streaming through the doors, but they were not taking advantage of our Christian Formation offerings and therefore not being adequately formed as disciples. We were offering them a good worship experience on Sunday but not providing deep spiritual nurture for their hearts, souls, and lives which would result in transformative change.
The vestry and staff spent months praying and contemplating the reality of COVID and its impact on the church and the failure of the regional church structure. They thought and prayed about how our church will look and function on the other side of COVID. What will the sacramental liturgical church look like in the future? What began to emerge was a vision for our church community to go deeper. To be a church that was completely and totally focused upon forming deeply committed whole-life disciples of Jesus for the world. A people whose whole lives, their work, family, community, and social lives, all reflected their faith with greater clarity and conviction. Not a people divided by the world but rather unified for and with Christ for the benefit of the world. What we came to understand is this it is only through deeply committed disciples, whose lives have been transformed by the power and truth of the gospel and a real and compelling relationship with the living God, that God can and will change behaviors, lives, relationships, families, neighborhoods, cities and the world.
Our discernment revealed that we would need a prolonged season to retool Christ Church to be a discipling Church forming deeply committed whole-life disciples of Jesus for the world. “For the world” means our faith has to be bigger than our lives, bigger than Christ Church, bigger than our neighborhoods or city. The only way for us to be equipped, empowered, and motivated to go out into the world with the gospel is to have the gospel deeply embedded in our lives. And the way for the Gospel to be inextricably fused to our lives is for us to go deeper.
In the spring of 2021, we began a visioning process by inviting all the members of the parish to participate through small group listening sessions and parish-wide surveys. Over the summer of 2021, the rough draft of the vision was honed and refined by working groups that consisted of lay leaders, the vestry, and staff. In the fall, the vision became real and solid for the vestry. Christ Church is forming deeply committed whole-life disciples of Jesus for the world.
The next step was to ask the question “how?” How do we form deeply committed whole-life disciples of Jesus? What does that look like in someone’s life? We shared our personal experiences of growing in faith and discipleship. We looked at the scriptures. We found other resource materials. What we began to see was a pattern emerging. A pattern which is clearly revealed in Jesus' relationship with his disciples in the gospels. First, the disciples were with Jesus twenty-four hours a day seven days a week for nearly three years. There is a sense in which you cannot be a disciple of Jesus if you are not spending significant time with him, learning to BE WITH Jesus and inviting him into all aspects of our lives. We invite him into our work, our marriages, homes, families, social and recreational lives. We have to learn again or perhaps for the first time to BE WITH Jesus, through prayer, the study of scripture, worship, silence and reflection, thus creating space and time in our lives just to BE WITH Jesus. And in being with Jesus, like the disciples, we start to BECOME LIKE Jesus. The goal of the disciple or apprentice is to BECOME LIKE the teacher in character, ability, vision, and person. To be a disciple of Jesus is to BECOME LIKE Jesus. It is the transformation of our characters into the character and likeness of Jesus. The goal is that we become more like Jesus each day by seeing the world and others as Jesus sees them, choosing to be a blessing to others in every circumstance in our lives, and aligning our interior and exterior lives with the teachings and kingdom values of Jesus. When we learn to BE WITH Jesus then we start to BECOME LIKE Jesus and in turn, we begin to LIVE LIKE Jesus lived, by being agents of grace, truth, mercy, and love in the world. We begin to live sacrificially, mercifully, gracefully just as Jesus lived.
“Christ Church is forming deeply committed whole-life disciples of Jesus for the world.”
For Christ Church to be forming deeply committed whole-life disciples of Jesus for the world, we must be going deeper by teaching people to BE WITH, BECOME LIKE, and LIVE LIKE JESUS. So how do we do that? First, we communicate the vision and invite people to go deeper. Invite people to evaluate their faith and ask themselves if they feel they need to go deeper. Do they want to be fused with, made one with, live in communion with Jesus in every aspect of their lives? Are they willing to change, lay some things down and pick up others? Are they willing to re-evaluate where and how they spend their time, their money, their attention? For many, the price will be too high or the timing wrong. For others this will be what they have been looking for— a Church that is taking Jesus and discipleship seriously and inviting people to offer their whole lives to loving God.
The first questions we must ask ourselves are; “Do I want more of Jesus in my life?”, “Am I content with how my marriage, my career, my social life reflects my faith?” and “Am I content with my character, my choices, my legacy?” If you desire more Jesus, to go deeper, then join us on this Journey of forming deeply committed whole-life disciples of Jesus for the world starting with yourself. If you want to go deeper and desire this life, WITH Jesus where we BECOME LIKE Jesus and LIVE LIKE Jesus in the world with greater intentionality and purpose, then join us on this journey toward a new culture of discipleship for Christ Church. Today begins a new journey. Join us and see what God can do in your life, our church, and the world.
Respectfully Submitted,
Fr. Terry McGugan