Church Disciplines…for a Church 1

For a few years I have occasionally pondered devoting research and writing time to a project on the spiritual disciplines for a local church. Nearly every study on spiritual disciplines I’ve seen are devoted 100% to individuals doing things along — praying, solitude, contemplation, fasting, etc.. While some of these can be done with others, the discipline itself is done by an individual.

What are the “church” spiritual disciplines?

James Bryan Smith’s newest book, in my estimation, is the best book I’ve seen on this topic though Im’ not sure he calls them “church spiritual disciplines”: The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love (The Apprentice Series). I want to drill down a little more to focus on this issue: We need to think more — together — on the “spiritual disciplines” a church is to do and a church is to grow into and to which a church wants to hold itself accountable. We focus on what individuals do, but what should churches do?

What are those disciplines? Which ones stand out at the top in your list? Say, the top three for you?

The first characteristic, or discipline, James Smith examines is that the church is to be a peculiar community. Yes, the word “peculiar” might just be seen as peculiar when it comes to “church disciplines,” but it’s a good old word from the KJV of 1 Peter 2:9, where the church is called a “peculiar people.”

Here’s his big claim: “Christians are not always different, but they ought to be, and often are.” That’s the theme: Christians, because they follow Jesus, ought to create a people that just isn’t the norm, that isn’t the way the world is, and that is peculiar and different — in a good way.

No one can write about this without quoting The Epistle of Diognetus, and I won’t quote it but you probably know it. The report is that Christians were both just like everyone else — ordinary — but so different in important ways: love, compassion, justice, and they lived together in ways that were so different than the rest of the Roman empire. Smith thinks the famous numbers of Rodney Stark of the growth of the church is best explained by the difference the Christian communities were.

AD 40: 1,000; AD 100: 7530; AD 200: 217,195; AD 250: 1,171,356; AD 300: 6,299,832; AD 350: 33,882,008. (Wow.)

The anchor of the “peculiar” community is the “peculiar” God. Smith ties ecclesiology to theology proper: we are called to be like God. If God is love, we are to love (1John 4:7-12). God was so peculiar in the Roman empire’s conceptions of God.

Peculiar people in the church: St Francis, Catherine of Genoa, Billy Graham, John Woolman, and he gets into George Fox and William Penn — Smith’s a Quaker, we can forgive him (he’ll forgive us).