Just over a year ago, following last year’s Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, I posted a review of Reveal, a book which contained research showing that most churches were ineffective at producing fully committed disciples of Jesus. This year, Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson have produced a follow-up book, Follow Me: What’s Next for You? which describes the results of their research into what catalyses spiritual growth.
Spiritual growth is not linear or predictable, but there are patterns of similarity between different people. At the early stage of spiritual growth, when a person is moving from the “exploring Christ” to the “growing in Christ” stage, the most significant catalyst of spiritual growth was found to be belief in salvation by grace. At the most advanced stage of spiritual growth, the most significant catalyst of spiritual growth was found to be an attitude of “giving away my life”.
I felt considerable resonance with the findings presented in the book. There is too much of a gap between the experience of Christianity as provided by most churches and the experience of Christianity as described in the New Testament and as embodied in the life of Jesus. I highly recommend the book as an important contribution to the question of how we can be more effective in producing true disciples.