A church can have sound, faithful Bible teaching week after week, and people who come regularly and sincerely want to grow. Yet looking back over several years, its leaders may sense that the church as a whole is not much further along spiritually than it was. People know more than they did. The deeper growth in maturity that everyone hoped for has been slow to come.
When the teaching is sound, the teaching is not the problem. Good teaching is essential, and growth depends on it. But spiritual maturity takes more than hearing good teaching. Scripture describes growth as walking in what has been received: living it out in the whole of a person’s life. A church can do the receiving well and still find that the walking has received far less attention.
Receiving Is Where Growth Begins
Paul wrote to a church that had been well taught:
“As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.”
Colossians 2:6–7, NKJV
Paul affirms what they had been taught. Their faith was established “as you have been taught.” Teaching had laid the foundation. But his instruction moves from what they received to how they live: “so walk in Him.” What the Colossians had received was Christ Himself, and Paul was calling them to continue living in Him.
Where Growth Slows
Much of a church’s shared life naturally centers on receiving: worship services, sermons, classes and studies. Those are good and necessary. But the walking Paul describes happens mostly somewhere else: in how people spend their time, how they treat their families, and the countless ordinary choices of a week.
When a church gives most of its attention to the receiving, the walking can go largely unattended. People keep receiving good teaching, but little in the church’s life helps them walk in it. Over time, growth across the church slows, even while the teaching stays strong.
A Question for Your Discipleship Strategy
That makes a useful question for any church thinking about its discipleship strategy. Alongside “What are we teaching?” it is worth asking, “How are we helping people walk in it?” The first question is about what people receive. The second is about where spiritual growth actually takes place.
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Before Adding More Teaching
When growth seems slow, a natural response is to add more teaching: another class, another series, another study. Those can be good. But before adding more, it helps to understand why information on its own does not produce spiritual growth, even when it is true and well taught.
That is the question Why Information Alone Doesn’t Produce Spiritual Growth takes up.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
