The Secret to Spiritual Growth

I have never met a long term Christian who has not experienced the ebb and flow of spiritual growth.

Most of us experienced a surge of spiritual growth when we first became a Christian. The excitement of learning, the joy we felt in worship, the warmth of Christian fellowship; it was all exhilarating!

Over time the feelings fade. There aren't as many "new truths" to be learned. We discover that some of the saints aren't all that "warm," and worship doesn't seem as moving as it used to.

In other words, the honeymoon is over.

Suddenly, growing in our faith isn't as easy as it once was. In the earliest stages of spiritual development, our growth was gauged mostly by our level of participation in church activities. All we had to do was show up in order to grow up.

But over time that growth tactic becomes less and less effective.

We need growth catalysts that will carry us year after year all the way home.

That's why, every fall we do what's called a spiritual growth campaign. A focused season of accelerated growth meant to challenge every member to take meaningful spiritual steps.

We combine a themed sermon series targeting the most needed of the five biblical purposes (Worship| Fellowship | Discipleship | Ministry | Evangelism) for our people at this time.

This year, we felt that our people needed a boost in their commitment to personal evangelism. Therefore, we planned a spiritual growth campaign entitled BLESS: 5 Everyday Ways to Love Your Neighbor and Change the World based on the book by Dave & Jon Ferguson.

After laying out the weekend messages, we created customized small group materials that coincide with the weekend sermon series. For our BLESS series we created our own small group discussion guide that also contains lots of extra material for application.

We then planned focused spiritual growth steps aimed at our crowd. For example, during the BLESS series we will run 4 opportunities for folks to take our personal evangelism class called HOME. We will challenge members who are not serving to volunteer in our kids ministry where they can really be a blessing. Small groups will choose a BLESS project that focuses on a people group instead of tasks (like visiting a nursing home instead of cleaning the roadside, etc.). We will also host a special night of prayer and worship and then end the 7-week series with Baptism Sunday where we'll celebrate changed lives!

We've been doing spiritual growth campaigns for over 25 years and have seen thousands of lives changed for God's glory through this process. It's a lot of work but so worth it when you see people growing!

The bottom line: Growth doesn't just happen. Real spiritual growth has to have a plan.