Editorial: Summer 2010

The congregation in which I grew up held periodic testimony meetings. Like clockwork, Brother Amos would always tell his conversion story—one of those "I once was lost but now I'm found" accounts. On the way home from those testimony meetings my family would just as predictably chuckle about Brother Amos's encore performance. And someone would ask, "Hasn't anything happened in his faith since his conversion?"

Faith, like anything organic, grows or dies; it can't remain stagnant for long. And faith, like the rest of our lives, goes through stages. Children typically have a "borrowed faith" they've received without question from their parents and other significant adults in their lives. Eventually, if this faith is to become their own—which is not inevitable—youth will typically go through a stage of testing the faith, asking tough questions about its veracity or practicality. Their questions are often unsettling to adults who don't realize this questioning stage is normal and necessary.

A number of articles in this issue of Leader use faith development models to explicate the stages of faith through which we go, from birth to death. While useful, these models don't tell the whole story. One size doesn't fit all. Each one of us has a unique story to tell about coming to faith and growing in it, just as each person has a unique story to tell about falling in and maturing in love.

I am particularly intrigued by faith stories told by adults who grew up in a totally secular environment. They often confess to having had spiritual longings already as a child. But those longings are never cultivated, and they only come to life through some kind of encounter with Christ and the church later in life. And then they discover, as St. Augustine did long ago, that their hearts were restless until they find their rest in God.

It is instructive to think about the language we use for faith initiation and development. A few years ago I asked a prominent evangelical theologian in a room full of evangelicals: "When did the language of 'accepting Jesus Christ as personal Savior' come into the Protestant vocabulary?" He said he wasn't exactly sure, but he suspected it came from the Keswick movement, a late nineteenth century holiness movement in Great Britain and the United States. He added that he was certain that the two greatest evangelical preachers of the 19th century in his opinion—Spurgeon and Moody—never used that kind of language. The other evangelicals in the room were stunned. They must have thought this language of accepting Jesus as personal Savior went back to Jesus himself.

Some Mennonites have also used this kind of evangelical language, although "accepting Jesus as Lord" was usually added to the formula. But through a recovery of the Anabaptist vision in the mid-twentieth-century, our faith talk for a time was dominated more by discipleship language, of following Jesus daily in all of life. Strangely, though, discipleship talk among Mennonites has waned in recent years. What emerged in its place was the language of spirituality, a language which slipped off the tongue of many Mennonites with ease, having used similar language in earlier pietist and revivalist stages. This time the language of spirituality had a new twist. Like other Protestants around us we were learning the old Catholic language of "spiritual formation," which draws upon the medieval contemplative tradition.

I suspect discipleship language waned in time because it tended to focus more on what we do (follow Jesus) rather that what God in Christ has already done for us. Faith as following Jesus in everyday life became a grit-your-teeth, dogged determinism to do the right thing, rather than a joy-filled response to God's forgiving grace made possible by the Holy Spirit's enabling grace. Discipleship viewed this way eventually wears you down.

The Bible itself has many images for faith formation: rebirth, regeneration, growing in Christlikeness, being in Christ. Whatever language we use, the reality itself is a gift. We know we can't go it alone, that we need the love of God, the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and the empowerment of the Spirit in our lives. As Simon Tugwell says, "It is really only the poor in spirit who can, actually, have anything, because they are the ones who know how to receive gifts. For them everything is a gift."

Maybe Brother Amos had it right after all. He knew he had received a gift. And he knew he had to share it with others—again and again.

—Richard A. Kauffman

* Ellen F. Davis, "Surprised by Wisdom: Preaching Proverbs," Interpretation, Vol. 63, No. 3 (July 2009) 264-77. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs: Westminster Bible Companion (Westminster John Knox Press) 2000.