Deep and Wide

Even as I strike the keys for that title, a smile comes to my face.  I can recall the hilarity and craziness of singing "Deep and Wide" with exaggerated motions and pure enthusiasm as a young churchgoer. 

An elder of my church said to me the other day, "We are a deep church, but we need more people."  Agreeing with him, I couldn't get the image out of my head.  We often critique churches for being "a mile wide and an inch deep," but shouldn't we also be concerned about being "a mile deep and an inch wide." 

The cover of the Outreach Magazine November/December 2012 issue stares at me on my desk.  The title is "What ever happened to Evangelism?"  I haven't read it, but I already feel guilty.  I don't know what happened to it, but it certainly seems hard to find these days.  The current focus upon discipleship isn't wrong, but it is incomplete.

"Deep and Wide" may be an apt slogan for the church.  We are to disciple people to deep relationships with Jesus.  We are to cast the net wide upon the whole of humanity.   

When you read many writers and listen to other speakers, a false dichotomy (at least in my mind) is often conveyed about these two issues.  Evangelism is what we do with the mass of pagans while discipleship is what we do with the righteous saved.  While I cannot disagree with these assertions, I must say that our particular way of talking about this issue seems unbalanced.  Acting as though the two practices are disconnected or competing is, in my way of thinking , an unproductive way to talk about the way people come to God and grow in relation to Him.

For me, discipleship is all about becoming more like Jesus.  Not just in a Charles Sheldon-ish " WWJD?" schema of moral action nor philoso-spiritual intellectualism nor merit badges for the holy. 
I mean an ontological change where it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.  Not an imitation of Jesus but a surrender of self to the One who is to be my life.

For me, evangelism is merely the part of the journey where we get people on that road to becoming like Jesus.  While we often parse the two into different camps and personalities and gifts, the truth is that they work together like planting a seed and tending the crops.  A farmer would never imagine planting as sufficient activity for the entire season.  Also, that farmer would never imagine tending what he did not first sow.  There is no reaping without planting. 

As we spread the Seed upon the ground, can't we see the harvest coming in the distance?  As we harvest can we not see the future seed for the next season?  We may split them into categories, but they are part of the same process.

I think I am going to shoot for "a mile deep and two inches wide" in 2013.  I might even use that as my last sermon of this year. 

December 30, 2012, at Kenwood Church "A Mile Deep and Two Inches Wide: An honest goal for the New Year" an integrated sermon preached by Todd Lackie.