Hebrews 5

When my kids were babies, I realized that my husband had a special gift. He could feed them baby food without getting any on their faces, their hands, the highchair, anywhere but in their mouths. He was a terrific feeder. It really was amazing to watch. Any rejected carrots that ended up on their chins got neatly scooped right back in with the next bite. He took each feeding as a personal challenge.

When our third child, Evangeline, was in daycare, her teacher did things differently. She set the food in front of her, put a spoon in her hand, and gently caught her other crazily careening hand and pushed it back down in her lap if she tried to use it. Then, she held her tiny hand clasped around the spoon and helped her guide food to her mouth. It was a terrific mess. I was actually pretty perturbed by the whole thing. To me the objective was to get food down her efficiently so I thought it was a cop out, and kind of mean, for her teacher not to just feed her. But you know what? Evie learned to feed herself.

When I read this chapter, I see this same picture right there at the end. I cannot count the times I've heard Christians talking about needing to be fed or not being fed or even not liking what they're being fed. When I hear the words "get fed" I can only picture Brannon neatly spooning food down our babies' mouths. Is that really what Christians need? To be fed forever? I think having food flying at me like an airplane would get old after I was too big for the high chair.

At our church, we talk about our purpose as a church being "Bring In, Build Up, Train, Send Out." That's really discipleship broken down into steps in modern language. Bring In and Send Out are easy to define. But think about building and training. In building, it's the builder who's holding the tools and doing all the work. But in training, the trainer isn't the one who's sweaty. It's the one getting trained. The part we stall at is in between those two steps. That's because there's a point where we're supposed to hand off the spoon.

If efficiently and neatly passing on faith knowledge is our objective, then feeding the newcomers is a good method and it is the right thing to do for babies. But if our objective is to make disciples that can feed themselves, we're going to have to train. We're going to have to cheer them on while they squeeze out one more rep. Spot for them when they think they can't lift one more time. And make sure they are the ones building muscle while we guide and support them.

Of course that's way messier. But I think that discipleship is a mess worth making.