6 Things Christians Must Do to Be Effective

The number six (Photo credit: Digitalnative)

In the past ten years, more and more people have talked about what “The Church” must do in order to survive in coming years. There are videos about the Death Tsunami. There are blog posts about the impending doom of a marginalized “mainstream protestantism.”

But that’s not at all important unless your goal is to preserve an institution. My bishop is much more concerned with how we focus on mission instead of institutional survival.

While our leaders are working on that task, I think it is time for us to think about preparing for that mission by focusing on the discipleship taught by Jesus Christ.

So here are six things Christians must do to be effective. While this isn’t at all an exhaustive list, I think these are the lessons that we need to relearn if we hope to make a difference in the world.

Practice Christian Spiritual Disciplines

Prayer Space (Photo credit: bhsher)

No, I don’t believe in works righteousness. I believe that your good works in the world will come about as a result of God working within you to make you righteous.

I do believe in “free will.” You get to choose if you are selfish or selfless. Christian spiritual disciplines foster and promote selflessness and help to quell selfishness to a great extent.

Before we can live for Christ, we must die to ourselves. In other words, we must lay aside our agendas, our wants, and our desires. This allows us to focus on our own needs and on the needs of others.

Read up on Christian Spiritual Disciplines in Richard Foster‘s Celebration of Discipline. The inward Disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study create opportunities to promote selfless core values. The outward Disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service encourage a transformative life that casts selfishness aside. The corporate Disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration bring us into community with God and others.

Know and Tell Your GodStory

In the last fifty years, poorly trained evangelicals have turned the time-honored practice of “sharing your testimony” into a horror-inspiring phrase for much of the western world. Most people make a people-shaped door through the nearest wall when someone offers to share their testimony.

The main reason it doesn’t work anymore is because a testimony quickly leads into a sermon about how bad the listener’s life happens to be.

But if you stick to your story of grace and tell briefly how God makes a difference in your life, you can avoid terrifying most people. I also find that people are actually attracted to the term “GodStory.” What is a GodStory? A GodStory is any narrative you might tell about your life. In short, it’s a memory. But the difference is that when you tell a story about you, you are the main character. When you tell your GodStory, God is the main character.

Think of it as a chance to brag on what God did in your life.

A little story-telling advice:

Keep it short
Keep it simple
Tell what happened
Don’t feel like you have to explain everything

That last one is important. Theology is boring to the average person. Good stories aren’t boring. And while a GodStory doesn’t have to be flashy, you can’t bog down in the abstract. Stick to the narrative.

If you’d like to find out how to discover your GodStory and tell it well, visit www.God-Story.org.

Read the Bible

One of many Bibles (Photo credit: knowhimonline)

Whoa. What’s this doing at “number three?”

I’m purposely demoting the importance of Scripture because it can be overused. While we argue about whether or not it is a perfect document or set of documents, we can agree on one thing: It hasn’t been wielded perfectly by Christians in past years, maybe ever. I’d go so far as to say that your handy-dandy Bible doesn’t have to be whipped out in every social setting.

Jesus used the Scriptures to explain so many things. But he operated out of his relationship with God and his understanding of Scripture.

If I had to choose between a relationship with God and a perfect understanding of the Bible, I would choose the former every time. The Bible is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

That said, we should be reading our Bibles, and reading them often. Let the wisdom of the Scriptures impact your thinking and actions on a regular basis. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that just reading it will change you. You have to engage the concepts, challenge your beliefs, and explore the meanings.

Please don’t use it as a weapon. Thanks.

Interact with Christians

We are designed and built to operate in community. Humans are capable of many different things. But it is in the power of community that we find our strength. We tend to make up for one another’s weakness. This also applies to our spirituality.

One of the chief causes of our cultural movement away from Christianity is our cultural movement toward cocooning and refraining from social interaction on a personal and physical basis. For more on this phenomenon, see Faith Popcorn’s seminal work on the subject, starting at her website.

Solo Christianity, hermit-like monks aside, is a really bad idea. Unless God is calling you to a full-time discipline of solitude, you should be considering the ideas of other Christians so you can compare and contrast them with your own.

Following Christian Bloggers like me isn’t a bad place to start, but it is a lousy place to finish.

Find a group of active Christians and start learning from each other. Discuss that book I mentioned in the last section — you know, the Bible? Apply the premises you picked up there and the fruits of your disciplines from section one. Let your friends learn from you. And get busy learning from them.

Also, while you are together, think about taking on some kind of project, preferably one that is too big for any of you to handle alone. Projects that we choose because they are fun or easy may not actually serve the Kingdom.

Christians should be more about discernment than deciding. Let God lead.

Commit to a Covenant

small group work (Photo credit: Susan NYC)

Most folks want to live and let live. It is far easier to “seem” rather than to “be.” What would happen if you shared your intentions and goals as a disciple with other disciples? What if you chose to tell them about your failures and your fears?

Would you spend more time in authentic discipleship? Would your behavior be more honest, whether you succeed or fail?

That’s what covenant discipleship is all about. Not a contract, a covenant is an agreement to which you bind yourself regardless of the the faithfulness of the other participants. The covenant is with God, who is ever-faithful.

But your accountability is to God in the presence of one another. Your discipleship gets a lot more authentic when you are living it in true community.

Change the World

Students participate in organizations like Habitat for Humanity to facilitate service learning. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sound impossible? Actually, I’m not asking you to come up with a Middle East Peace plan or your own solutions to world hunger. I’m asking you to make peace in your own home. Or maybe find a solution to someone who is hungry in your world, just down the street from your house.

If you are following Jesus, you are listening to his gospel of good news for the poor, the weak, the outcast. You should be recognizing that the world is a place where the poor are ignored or vilified. The weak are used up by the strong. The old and the sick are often abandoned by those who find it incovenient to fill their needs.

So make a difference. Serve them. Schedule time on a regular basis to serve the needs of others.

After all: That’s the point of this entire Christian discipleship endeavor. We live to see the kingdom made real “on earth as it is in heaven.”