Apprentice 09: The Disciple
Personal-Spiritual Life:
The Apprentice survey allows us to look more closely at people's perspectives on discipleship. Participants were asked to identify the principle issues they have faced in their personal-spiritual life over the last 12 months.
It is notable that the principle issues affecting the individual's personal-spiritual life are around fatigue (55%) and time pressure (also 55%). This means that life is proving a challenge for Christians beyond issues of practice, such as prayer (39%) and Bible reading (42%), although these remain substantial issues of concern. This is a significant area for churches to grapple with, how are we helping people create the spaces in their lives to encounter God when they are experiencing such high levels of exhaustion? Can we discover new and creative responses?
Comparatively, traditional areas of concern appear relatively minor. Doubt, for example, is an issue for only 15% of people, whilst suffering and ethical issues are a concern for 14% and 16% of people respectively.
So, how do people feel the church is equipping them for these challenges?
In this area, the majority of people feel that the church is helping them, 56% of people say that the church is helping them quite a bit or a lot. Yet this still leaves 44% of people that say the church is helping them only a little.
Growth & Maturity:
Beyond issues that people are grappling with in their personal-spiritual lives, the survey also reveals much about the nature of growth in discipleship.
A couple of figures are quite striking. As the chart below demonstrates, the length of time someone has been a Christian does not seem to impact significantly on an individual's capacity to cope with issues they are facing:
Significantly, people who have been a Christian for longer are finding no context any less challenging as a disciple. Indeed interestingly, the church becomes a progressively more difficult context (from 3% to 9% to 11%).
The same picture is reflected in the personal-spiritual sphere. Breaking these results down by Christian experience shows the following:
As can be seen, fatigue and time pressures become greater issues affecting an individual's personal-spiritual life the longer someone has been a Christian. Prayer and Bible reading remain consistent issues. However, two areas see a distinct decline: firstly, the issue of suffering and doubt diminish. Secondly, the issue of applying faith to daily life. Although this could be seen in a positive light, that people find it easier to apply their faith to life, as the previous chart demonstrates this is clearly not the case, daily life remains challenging. What this response suggests is that applying faith to daily life becomes a decreasing issue for people the longer they have been a Christian, in other words, they may be less concerned about this issue.
Although it is hard to confirm from this survey alone, this decrease coupled with the decline in concern about suffering and doubt may indicate that people become more 'comfortable' as Christian the longer they are a believer, but less challenged in living their faith out and that complex questions are allowed to fade into the background.
So, are there any indications of growth and maturity? The survey seems to indicate that it is age that brings growth. Looking again at the issues, this time divided by age, it is clear that in many cases the issues reduce with age:
As is quickly apparent, people who are older seem to be struggling less with issues in their personal-spiritual life. There seems to be a picture of more general confidence, particularly in terms of Bible reading and prayer (although there may be a generational implication here). However, doubt and issues of guidance gernally decrease with age. People also feel less constrained by circumstances - note the decrease in concern about time pressure and fatigue. Instead, the issues of concern are more likely to be orientated externally and not inward - suffering, ethical issues and being a witness come to the fore instead. In very general terms, the concern is not so much about the self, but about others and the wider context in which we live.
The question however remains does the increased confidence felt by people who are older reflect generational differences, for example those from older generation were given the skills for Bible reading etc. from a young age that today's generations lack, or is there a more general trend that suggests that people become more confident as they age? Which is the case cannot be determined on the basis of these results alone.
Read more from Apprentice 09: Issues for Church
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