This Saturday marks the 55th anniversary of my confirmation. There won’t be a confirmation reunion because the church where I grew up closed nearly 20 years ago. How did a 500 member church dwindle away? I saw it happen with my peers. Many of the young people confirmed with me quickly disappeared from the church. That was expected. “They’ll be back when they have kids,” was the popular wisdom. Most of them never did come back, and of course their kids were never involved in church. You can see how that leads to the current situation of many of our churches being partly filled with aging members and few children.

What went wrong? Part of the problem was our society changed, but the church couldn’t keep up with the changes. A bigger part of the problem was much more deep-seated. Somehow we thought it was enough to get people to become church members rather than disciples of Jesus Christ. A disciple is literally one who learns from a teacher. Our teacher is Jesus. We are to learn from him.

I am convinced that learning from Jesus is a lifelong process. It was there in my confirmation. Pastor prayed that all of us would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit “to thy strengthening in faith, to thy growth in grace.” We hear the Good News and receive God’s grace. We become disciples of Jesus constantly seeking to grow in faith and to share the Good News with others.

Our churches might be very different if we concentrated on discipleship.

Read Matthew 11:1 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne

Matthew 11:1 After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee.