Why am I doing this?

From the beginning of my time as a minister I noticed among my colleagues in ministry that there seemed to be a very cynical attitude about the concept of becoming Christ-like, which in theological terms we call sanctification. We are so adamant that the world recognize that we are saved by the grace of God alone that perhaps we are afraid to even hint that we might need to do some work as followers of Christ. “No! We are not saved by our works!!” But a work begins when the grace so freely given is so freely received in our hearts, and it is an arduous work.

No, it is not our work alone. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, the Church, and our own effort and willingness. It is something of a cooperative effort that leads us deeper into the life of Christ and further toward the way of Christ. It is the work of cultivation of souls; ourselves and others. We are all in the this together. We can’t make the fruit of the Holy Spirit spring forth from our souls but I do believe we participate with the Spirit in making ourselves ready for what God seeks to do in us. This is called discipleship or making disciples. It’s the primary work of the Church and every church. We can and we must undertake this work or the world will never hear the message we have been entrusted with to share. They need to see the message pouring out of our lives.

Coming from the business world before ministry, I cannot help to think of the old maxim “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” How can we improve our spiritual lives without some way to measure our progress or diagnose our current condition? Well, I am sure we do and can, but I think that a little help would be helpful! What I have desired is to create is a spiritual assessment tool that is both biblically grounded and psychometrically sound. It would seek to measure (imperfectly, of course) the depth of our spiritual lives: our relationship with God, our selves, and our neighbors. It is my belief that our spiritual lives are measured in the quality of our relationships. It is through these relationships that our inner selves are on display. We were made for relationship and it is this that I think Christ was most concerned about.
The assessment could be used in seminaries, regional ecclesiastical bodies, for ministry professionals, for lay leaders, and for discipleship within churches as a way to help us to gain awareness of where we are in our spiritual lives and challenge us to go deeper and further in our walk with Christ.

Much of the church has focused on leading people to Christ, but it seems to me that the church has struggled to lead people into Christ-likeness. I will go a step further and say that in my own view the Church has spent an enormous amount of energy trying to get people in the door and keep them happy. This amounts to so much advertising and consumer satisfaction, but has little to do with Christ and becoming like him.
My desire in ministry is invite people into a deeper relationship with God and to help people take steps of faith into becoming the person God is leading them to be.

In faith,

Paul Burns