The Journey

I'm at home enjoying a rare day off. It's nice.

A while back someone asked me to do a "What I believe" post (or series of posts.) This is a short devotional I did at yesterday's Administrative Council meeting. I guess this can be What I Believe: Episode 1. To my non-church going readers, be fore-warned - this is a churchy post. I hope you won't let that stop you from reading.

This morning in Sunday School we talked about baptism, and it got me thinking about my baptism. I was baptized when I was 16 years old in the swimming pool of one of our church members. We went over after church one summer Sunday night and had a party. Lots of food. Lots of laughs. There were a few of us who were baptized that night. Emily Rhodes was one of them also. After a while we went into the pool one by one to be baptized. Our pastor told me to put my hands over my face. He placed one hand on my back and the other on my head, leaned me backward, and plunged me into the water.

Water immediately went under my hands and into my nose. I remember thinking, “Oh Lord, I’m going to drown.” It felt like I was under that water for days. Not because I was savoring the moment, but because my head was filling with water and my lungs were next. I thought, “When is he going to let me up out of this water?”

I finally came up from the water and…well there I was in a swimming pool. No bright lights from heaven. No dove descending onto my head. Except for the water sloshing around my sinuses and ears, I didn’t really feel any different than I did before I was baptized.

I don’t know what I expected. But I know I expected to feel different. I expected to think differently. I expected the world to look a little different. It didn’t. I didn’t. I had seen this baptism as the penultimate moment. This was the end of the journey I’d started just a few months before. At least that’s what I thought.

I believed that “giving my heart to Jesus” and getting baptized was the goal. My soul was saved and that was that. The end. I win!

I was wrong. I wasn’t at the end of my journey. I was at the beginning. Initially, I was a little disappointed. Eventually I learned that salvation is a journey. Not a destination. I learned that following Jesus was not a onetime event. It is a lifetime commitment.

I think we forget this as a church, also. Jesus didn’t say go “win souls.” Go and find new church members. Go and find butts to fill the pews.

Matthew 28:16-20

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

Jesus said “Go and make disciples.” “Teach them.”

Getting people in the door is important. “Winning souls” or converts or whatever term you want to use, is important. Getting butts in the pews is important. But those are steps in the process. Those help us reach the goal, but they are not the goal itself.

That’s what we need to do today. How is Edgemont making disciples? What are we doing? What do we need to start doing? How can we get people into the pews? Then how can we get them from the pews to discipleship?

A little follow up after the fact: Discipleship is an ongoing, twofold process:teaching and learning. We are called to make disciples. To teach others what it means to follow Jesus. But we should never stop learning. We should never stop striving toward discipleship. Through prayer and personal Bible Study, but also through community. In conversation with others my faith and understanding of the nature of God grows at least as much as in personal study. That is discipleship. To teach and to learn. It's a journey, not a destination.