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My Personal Next Step Toward Spiritual Maturity
Brian Mashburn
September 17, 2017
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Your Personal Maturity
As we continue our annual ReGroup campaign - where we launch small groups and help folks without groups find one - I've been enjoying reading through the four short letters of Paul to the churches in Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, and Colossi. They are so useful in setting the stage for us as we begin operating under the new annual theme that our leadership has discerned for us, called Next Steps: Moving Towards Spiritual Maturity.
There is in our world today an arm-wrestling match between two ideas that set against each other as enemies. In one corner is the idea of personal responsibility. In the other is the idea of communal care for each other. You see this very distinctly, depressingly so, in our politics today. In the extreme, I guess, communal care could totally sabotage and render unnecessary people taking personal responsibility. Likewise, I guess, personal responsibility could create a callousness where people only take care of themselves and neglect the needy.
This arm wrestling match has, unsurprisingly, found its way into Christendom as well.
If we will turn off Fox News and CNN for a moment, and open our Bibles, we will quickly see that communal care and personal responsibility are not enemies. This is true in our nation (despite politicians trying to score points for one at the expense of the other). And this is most certainly true in our Christian faith (even if your church history has emphasized on more than the other). Why am I talking about all of this?
Well, today, we allow Galatians to speak to us of our personal maturity (that which we can do in spite of others), and then next week, we will let Ephesians speak of our communal maturity (that which we can not do without others). So I say all of this for you listen maturely, as a peacemaker between these ideas. They do not arm wrestle. They hold hands.