Prodigal Son Returns

So it has been a long time since I was last able to post.  Sorry fair readers, my levity was lacking, but it has all been in service to my country.  Honestly, I haven't been having a great many deep thoughts in the last few months.  Recently I have been experiencing a little bit of a personal revival in the Biblical lands that Abram once escaped in search of the promised land.

Typically, I haven't had much time on deployment to attend any kind of worship service.  This tour has afforded some of those opportunities that I have missed in the past, and currently the group that I am worshiping with is working their way through the book of Mark.

The passage that precipitated this discussion was Mark 6: 1-6, but oddly enough it isn't this passage that has been eating away at me this evening.  After the service, some of us were discussing various things, including a project by Willow Creek where they tried to answer the question of what "church" really means Biblically speaking.  What they found in their surveys, was something any involved church member could have told them.  Most of the work in the church gets done by relatively few of the members.  The conclusion of the study was apparently that church is supposed to be a place where believers go to get fed, not used up, therefore we need to begin to cut away the extranious stuff of church and stop putting people to work.  They found that these active members were getting burnt out, so they rightly concluded that they needed to stop encouraging all believers to be ministers.

In fairness, I haven't seen this study, and apparently some really good things came of it, including a sort of Seminary program run by the church to enable believers to continue to grow beyond the basics.  But what bothered me was the idea that the problem was the work of the ministry and the expectation that all believers are ministers.  I said so.  In fact, my belief is that believers often suffer a lacking in their spiritual lives because they aren't in the fight. 

This thought brought about all kinds of objections, accusations of legalism and the like.  I'm sure I don't have this down, but I still say that one of the dynamic tensions in the Bible is the balance between salvation and works.  Now, I'm a once saved by the grace of God, always saved.  But the tension in my mind is that fruit will follow.  Whether that fruit is recognized or not may be up for debate, but the fact of growth and resulting fruit should be self evident, and in my mind that growth comes with the expectation of personal effort empowered by the power of the Spirit.  Surely the numerous passages such as Romans 6, 8, 12 and James reflect this.

In spite of these arguments, the disagreement still exists.  I say Salvation is not the work of man, but spiritual growth after the point of Salvation requires effort on the part of the believer.  Still, my friends insist that growth is the result of God's work and not my own, and therefore no effort is required or expected on my part.  What do you all think?

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