How Do We Grow?

During the last couple of months (as you will have gathered from my last post) I've been thinking about how it is that people grow, what is that they need to be changed into the likeness of Christ? I've come to the conclusion that there are three things needed if a person is to come to maturity in the faith.
The first is EDUCATION. We all need to learn about what it means to follow God and to keep on learning all of our lives. God is too big and the adventure of following him too expansive for us to get to know all that we can in one lifetime. I've used the word education rather than teaching. 'Teaching' puts the emphasis on the teacher, education puts more of an emphasis on the learner. We each have the responsibility to discover for ourselves the riches of Christ's grace. This is not about getting to know the Bible better, although it is part of it. When Jesus gave the great commission he said "Go and make disciples of all nations....teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you". The whole point of learning more is about the transformation of our character and behaviour. If what we learn doesn't transform us in some way then it is a pointless exercise.
There are three things here that I have been thinking about. The first is how we encourage people to 'feed' themselves and to take responsibility for their own growth. In all the conversations I've had with people from church it is clear that few actually do that. They will ocassionally read the scriptures, but not in a regular systematic way, perhaps never read a christian book and very rarely attend any christian event, apart from sunday worship (and then not every week), where there may be life transforming teaching.
The other thing is about the responsibility of those who teach in church to teach well and to seek to accommodate those who learn in different ways. Not everyone learns well by simply sitting listen to a sermon, not matter how good it is. I'd like us to work harder at making sermons and other teaching events more interactive, visual and relevant. This is an incredibly difficult thing to do well, as anyone who has seen our different attempts up until now, will testify. However, we have to keep working on it more and more. James 3:1 says that those of us who teach will be judged more strictly than others. This is not just about being doctrinally or biblically correct in our teaching but also in the character of the teachers and the way in which the teaching is presented.
The last thing is what other ways can we provide for teaching on certain subjects and what should those subjects be. For a person to grow in their faith I have, after a lot of thought, concluded that there are certain things that we need to provide teaching on for basic discipleship. They are; how to learn, spiritual disciplines, overview of the Bible, who we are in Christ, discovering your gifts/strengths/purpose, how to develop a supernatural lifestyle and understanding evangelism/our mission. It's a bit of a list and I'm sure that other could suggest other subjects, but these are I believe the ones that we need to work on. How they will be delivered though is another question (and yes I have thoughts on that as well).
The next two blogs will cover the other aspects of what is needed to grow in discipleship.