The church and the issue of rampant spiritual immaturity …

While strolling through a local park yesterday, I was suddenly captivated by the sight of a pre-school boy throwing a baseball.

I’m not talking about an uncontrolled, wild lob into the air, only to thud on the ground maybe three or four feet away.

This kid caused me to freeze in my tracks because of his ability to THROW that baseball, and I do mean throw! The boy had a mitt on his left hand and was throwing the ball to his father who was — my best guess — around 20 feet away.

I couldn’t help but comment to the dad, “He’s amazing! He can really throw that ball!”

The dad thanked me and said, “Yeah, he’s four years old and he’s already on a team.”

On a team!

At four years old!

That’s because this kid could throw the ball with some speed and it never lost height before the dad snatched it out of the air with his mitt.

What was so unusual was to see a boy of that age whose motor skills were so well-developed (mature) to enable him to handle a baseball the way he did. Average motor skill development more commonly means kids between the ages of 4 and 7 would begin any activity in baseball by playing tee ball. But because this boy had matured his motor skills for his age, he was able to perform physically beyond what the average boy his age does.

I couldn’t help think to myself, “That’s what maturity looks like.”

Not that the boy was mature, but that his motor skills were mature for a four-year-old.

We don’t see a lot of maturity these days, including (perhaps especially) in the church.

What a sad statement that is, but it’s true.

When you measure the level of biblical illiteracy found in most local church congregations, and how common it is to see people who have been in the same Sunday school class or small Bible study group for years or even decades, and they are nearly as spiritually immature now as they were when they started, then you can begin to see the scope of the problem of spiritual immaturity in the church.

It’s not something new. The Apostle Paul had to address it:

“Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world?” 1 Corinthians 3:1-3.

The writer of Hebrews also faced the issue of spiritual immaturity in the church:

“There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen. You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong,” Hebrews 5:11-14.

But that, itself, is a point — Paul and the writer to the Hebrews did address the issue of spiritual immaturity. Most church leaders today don’t.

Too many shepherds of local congregations don’t do the work of assessing the spiritual maturity of their flocks. And most church leaders today don’t have a well-prayed out, well thought-through plan for the spiritual maturing of the spiritually immature believers in their congregations. Wouldn’t it follow that if the leaders of a local church were serious about addressing the spiritual immaturity among their members that they would have a plan to help their church members grow to maturity?

A process of maturing spiritually is vital to the end goal of our spiritual development, something Paul famously described when writing to the Ephesians:

“Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ,” Ephesians 4:11-13.

When was the last time the leaders in your church made an honest, sober assessment of the spiritual maturity (or lack thereof) of each member of the congregation? What specific plan is in place in your church to disciple believers to the real kind of spiritual maturity as described by Paul?

Scotty