Finding the Way

Restarting Your Journey with Jesus

McNab

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781621896937
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Life is a complex journey, and each of us must find our own way. But sometimes we take a wrong turn and get lost. When that happens we have to backtrack and begin again. We are living in a time when many young adults who dropped out of church in high school or college are seeking to reconnect with their faith, while older Christians are feeling a need to turn their own lives around. Finding the Way offers help for all Christians who are hungry for an intimate relationship with God and want to restart their spiritual journey on a path they can see clearly, explain simply, follow faithfully, and share with others. This is a book for those who want to practice Christian faith as a way of life, not merely accept it as a system of doctrine. We are not lost in a trackless, twenty-first-century spiritual wasteland. There is a Way that can lead us home to God. We have companions on the journey, and the Good Shepherd himself will guide us. Finding the Way calls us to brave the steep, upward journey with Jesus--to rededicate ourselves boldly to the imitation of Christ.

Chapter 1

Deciding to Follow Jesus

After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

—John 6:66–69

Young adults returning to church after years of absence are looking for a religious experience that feels personally relevant and more spiritually vital than what they recall from the church of their childhood, and older people who want to restart their spiritual journey no longer care to participate in the same old ecclesiastical “business as usual.” Returnees and restarts alike are attracted to the person of Jesus, but their confirmation classes (if they had any) were twenty years ago or more, and they’ve had no significant experience of Christian formation since. They are eager to learn, hungry for inspiration, looking for spiritual community, and hoping to begin experiencing Christianity as a way of life for themselves and their children, rather than merely as a formal belief system to which they are asked to give intellectual assent. Both groups want a deeper, more personal and less dogmatic meaning to their identity as Christians, but neither have much interest in the institutional church.

If returnees and restarts choose to follow Jesus afresh as their guide on life’s journey, what shape will that new way of life take—especially for young adults absorbed by the daily preoccupations typical of their generation? What specific practices are likely to help neophyte disciples stick with their guide and not be deterred by the inevitable frustrations and distractions that will arise to hinder their progress on the trail? To borrow a metaphor from rock climbing, about which I have learned a little from our two teenage Montana grandsons: Are there secure finger- and toe-holds I might, from personal experience, point out to those who are starting up this steep rock face which is the way that leads to Life?

I’m aware that the younger adults I see returning to church are only a small fraction of the total number that drifted away. Many people in America raised in a church have abandoned it completely and show little interest in coming back. Church membership and attendance is in slow decline, even though a Gallup Poll taken in May 2011 showed that more than nine out of ten still say yes when asked the basic question, Do you believe in God? (That ratio is down only slightly from 1944, the dark days of World War II.)12 It’s important to recognize that abandonment of a church denomination is not the same thing as rejection of Jesus Christ, although it does mean rejection of, or at least disillusionment with, “organized Christianity”—that is, the institutional church. A 2009 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that

Rather than leaving religion over a loss of belief, most of the formerly religious were responding to what it calls “disenchantment with people and institutions.” For instance, more than half of Americans who were raised Roman Catholic or Protestant but have left the faith say that religious people are judgmental, hypocritical, or insincere and cite that as a major reason for leaving. Among that same group, almost half complain that religious organizations focus on rules at the expense of spirituality. And roughly 40 percent of unaffiliated former Catholics and Protestants said their spiritual needs weren’t being met. The fact that so many of the religiously unaffiliated say they have spiritual needs makes it difficult to see them as poster children for a booming secular class. Indeed, the Pew survey finds that only a third of former Catholics and Protestants who are now unaffiliated say that modern science proves that religion is superstition. Roughly 4 in 10 of the unaffiliated, meanwhile, say that religion is still at least somewhat important to their lives. And roughly a third of those who were raised Catholic or Protestant but are now unaffiliated say they have just not found the right religion yet.13

My unscientific assessment is that there are countless younger church returnees and older restarts who want to experience a fresh religious encounter, have a spiritual center for their daily lives, and possess a faith they can embrace and share. But many who are attracted to Jesus and interested in the Christian way also feel hindered by aspects of their daily lives. These hindrances range from vocational and economic distractions (just making a living and paying the bills is a huge task) to the legitimate demands of child-rearing (children consume a lot of their time and energy), negative fixations with entertainment or personal appearance (everybody wants to have some fun, and looking good often makes us feel good), and a fundamental lack of self-discipline (few of us are taught how to say no to our appetites or ambitions). As children, most were not taught the Bible, with its themes of creation, sin, judgment, repentance, regeneration, and new life. Certainly they were not taught it the way my Bible-soaked generation was, back in the middle of the last century. And no one has yet given them the pastoral nurture, inspiration, or encouragement that helps in surmounting these obstacles.

The essential first step for an earnest returnee or restart, a “wannabe” disciple of Jesus, is a personal statement of commitment (or recommitment) to follow Jesus in the journey of life. I’m not referring to a church event like a confirmation service, but rather a quiet, simple declaration in the presence of at least one other person, such as a pastor or Christian friend. This needs to be an unpressured, voluntary act, witnessed by someone else. Such an initial commitment need not include affirmation of a creed or any other formal statement of doctrine. For the sake of integrity, any theological declaration more complex than “I have decided to follow Jesus” probably should wait for later. I don’t say this because I think that what we understand about God or how we describe the person and work of Christ is unimportant; on the contrary, I think they are vitally significant. But newly committed disciples should spend time following Jesus on the journey and reflecting on that experience, reading Scripture, worshiping with the church, praying alone and with friends, and allowing the Spirit of God to work in their lives before putting their beliefs into an intellectual, propositional form, either using their own words or one of the historic creeds of the church.

People can make a commitment to follow Jesus even when they’re still struggling with distractions and obstacles of the sort I listed above. A friend of mine who’s a forty-something husband and father of two describes his personal history of frustrations and challenges this way: a parent dying of cancer, loss of several jobs, the time squeeze that goes with working and raising kids, marriage problems, debt issues, the struggle to feel personal worth in the face of painful defeats, wonder about life’s larger meaning and purpose, frustration that he might never help others if he can’t even help himself, and sadness at being apparently stuck, never catching that “one big break.” In spite of all these things, however, he has committed to let Jesus guide him on the rest of his life’s journey. It is not necessary to wait until all our problems are solved before we choose to entrust the future to God and let Jesus be our teacher and guide. If we have to wait for every issue of life to be settled, we’ll still be waiting when we’re eighty.

Jesus invited ordinary people to follow him and become his disciples. In the beginning, when he called four Galilean fishermen to leave their boats and nets and come with him, he didn’t identify any preconditions and he didn’t say exactly where the journey would take them, except that it would connect them with other people. He only said, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Mark 1:17 NRSV). Following Jesus was an unpredictable adventure. Some who were invited went with him eagerly; others said, No, thanks. Some who went stayed with Jesus for a while—for months or even years—but ultimately abandoned him. Perhaps those who first went with him but later deserted him were scandalized by his behavior or his claims or his language.14 Others remained with him for the rest of his life and all of their own. The affirmation of Simon Peter, printed at the heading of this chapter, expresses the conviction of the disciples whose confidence in Jesus had become complete: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68–69).

From the New Testament it appears that people were regarded as disciples as soon as they began to follow Jesus. But it also shows there were different circles within the larger group of disciples, some who were actually uncommitted or opportunistic, like the ones who eventually abandoned him, and others who were utterly serious. As best we can tell, in the context of rabbinical practice in Jesus’ day, every true disciple was dedicated to reproducing the life of his master. The connection between disciple and teacher was regarded as closer than the bond between parent and child. Such disciples were not merely fans or admirers, nor were they only “students” in the way we generally use the word. Disciples wanted to imitate their teacher and pattern their lives on his as closely as possible.

It’s important for those who are coming back to church and those who want to renew their commitment to Christ to understand that the challenges of authentic discipleship (as opposed to nominal church membership) have not changed since Jesus invited the fishermen to leave their boats and nets and come with him. To persevere in following Jesus with sincerity today, just as two thousand years ago, means ultimately to commit oneself to imitating a man whose destiny was to lay down his life for his friends, and who said to those friends, after they had been with him for a while, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24 NRSV). Eugene Peterson, in The Message, paraphrases those words of Jesus this way: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how.” That was a tall order in AD 29, and it is no less so today.

Clearly there are many people of every age in our churches today who don’t take such a lofty and serious view of discipleship. Traditional, nominal church membership feels just fine for them. But I think those who return to the church after a long absence are looking for something of greater seriousness and substance. They want to be more than just church members. And I trust that people who have stuck with the church but now recognize the need to restart their personal journey with Jesus are looking for something beyond the lowest common denominator of church life. Only brave idealists are likely to respond to the invitation to imitate Christ. Those who choose this way of life need to recognize at the outset that the journey to which Jesus invites us, which he once described as the narrow and difficult way that leads to life (see Matt 7:12–14), is not always going to feel like cruising in a new BMW convertible on a sunny, wide-open highway beside the blue Pacific. Instead, it’s sometimes going to feel like navigating Manhattan traffic at 4:30 on a rainy Friday afternoon in a Winnebago. Disciples should have no illusions about this way of life or imagine that it promises health, prosperity, success, a lovable spouse, perfect children, and a contented old age. Consider the course of Jesus’ own life, or read the lives of the saints of old, or even of the twentieth century. Should we expect something different?

It’s important also for returnees and restarts to be fully aware that if they truly seek to follow Jesus rather than simply be church members, they will not progress in just a few months or even a few years from being “beginners” to being “spiritual masters” (to borrow a term from eastern religions). Those who imagine they have become Christian spiritual masters are only demonstrating a form of beginner behavior. One does, indeed, make progress on the Christian path; following Jesus is not a treadmill. But spiritual progress in Christ is not a linear movement from A to B to C; and although there are many well-written and inspirational books available for those who want to keep learning, there is no book—certainly not this one—that can provide perfect guidance for everyone and define exactly what should be done next. Each of us is unique; the right next move for one might not be right for someone else. There’s no YouTube video to illustrate three or six or even ten simple steps to a fulfilled and happy Christian life, and there’s no course available at the local community college (or the megachurch across town) that will make the journey to union with God easier.

Following Christ on the upward way is a slow process. It’s true that we can read about saints of long ago who achieved holiness in what seems like double-quick time (including many in early...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Prologue: The Disciples’ Journey
• Chapter 1: Deciding to Follow Jesus
• Chapter 2: Discovering the Bible
• Chapter 3: Experiencing God’s Love
• Chapter 4: Responding to God’s Love: Worship
• Chapter 5: Responding to God’s Love: Prayer
• Chapter 6: Responding to God’s Love: Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself
• Chapter 7: Living with a Purpose
• Chapter 8: Finding a Church
• Chapter 9: Putting It All Together: Christianity as a Way of Life
• Epilogue: Jesus Is Looking for Disciples, Not Admirers
• Appendix A: Bibles and Bible Reading
• Appendix B: Recommended Books
• Bibliography