Question: What is more important than a good question? Answer: An important quote about the importance of good questions! What do you think of these?

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” – James Thurber
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” – Eugene Ionesco
“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” – Naguib Mahfouz
“There are no right answers to wrong questions.” – Ursula K. LeGuin

Let me be honest, this whole series has been in response to two questions I found in Dallas Willard’s book, The Great Omission. He wrote:

“Since making disciples is the main task of the church, every church ought to be able to answer two questions: What is our plan for making disciples? Is our plan working?”

Now, the session has to answer the first two questions. First, is making disciples the main task of our church or is it just a secondary activity? Second, is our plan for making disciples sufficient? In other words, are we paying enough attention in our church to making disciples? Those are our questions, but you have to answer the remaining question: Is our plan working?

This is a crucial question, for sure. We believe we have a good plan, and we hope it is both meaningful and helpful to you. At River’s Edge, we want to use our eight core strengths to measure our spiritual maturity. Remember what Scot McKnight said: “A local church determines what the Christian life looks like for the people in that church.” Since this is true and since each church uniquely defines for its own body what it means to be spiritual, we have chosen these eight distinctives as our markers for what it means to be spiritually formed. To further explain how these core strengths are to work themselves out in the real world, we have added six practical descriptions. Together, these six statements combine to define what we mean by each core strength. We have asked you to survey these six items prayerfully to see how you are doing in each area. We then asked you to select one item that you feel God is calling you to work on. Having committed yourself to this one item, we asked that you go out into your world looking for opportunities to put this core strength into practice. We want you to detect those good works that God has prepared in advance for you to do and to step out in faith to do them. The goal is not just to see where you might apply this item, but to actually embody these core strengths out in the real world. Our eight core values are these:

    1. To be spiritually formed is to driven by grace.
    2. To be spiritual formed means we are to love one another.
    3. To be spiritually formed is to believe that lost people matter to God and, therefore, they should also matter to us.
    4. To be spiritually formed is to recognize that we are called to grow.
    5. To be spiritually formed is to understand that we only grow as we give ourselves away.
    6. To be spiritually formed is to be committed to being authentic, honest and transparent.
    7. To be spiritually formed, we must be relevant and engage our culture.
    8. To be spiritually formed means we will invest ourselves in prayer.

But you know all of this. For the last eight weeks, you have gone through this process and have tried to live out these core strengths in practical ways. Some (like those from the earlier weeks), you have been working on for some time now. Others (like being relevant and prayer), you have not spent much time on at all. Our plan says that now you should have eight different items, one from each core strength, that you are working on. But as of today, this series is finished. I am hoping you are asking, “What’s the plan moving forward?” Since we are talking about good questions today, let me just say that you’ve asked a really good question!

I would like to encourage you to keep doing what you are doing. Always keep your eight items in the foreground and seek to put them into practice each week and do this for another three months. Here’s why. Studies on how to form a habit have proposed a 3-3-3 plan. The research suggests that it takes only 3 days to introduce a new habit into your life. After three consecutive days of implementing your new habit, you have established a new neurological pathway that your mind will recognize as a new pattern. This is the basis to form a new habit; and without these three consecutive days, you will never develop a habit. But three days is not enough for that habit to take root. We need another 3—in this case, three weeks. We need three weeks of repeated action for our habit to take root and begin to grow so that it is not easily forgotten. Regular practice of an act for three weeks solidifies it. And yet, to turn a routine into a permanent change, we need yet another 3. In this case, three months. Three months of continual practice establishes a clear change of lifestyle and sets you off on a new habit. And there it is: 3 days. 3 weeks. 3 months.

If we want our plan to work, we need to embody and embrace our core strengths out in the real world over a minimum period of three months. Each day, we need to rehearse what eight items we want to put into practice. Each day, we need to give our eight items over to God so that he will lead us into opportunities for us to implement them. Each day, we need to have these eight items on the top of our “to do” list as God gives us the opportunity.

And yet, working on the same eight items for the next three months sounds like it might become rote and boring, so let me offer a few suggestions. First, it only gets boring if you aren’t having any opportunities to actually do them. Our plan works only when you are out and about, see the opportunities God has prepared for you and willingly step out in faith and do them. Having these eight items on your list, but never getting around to doing them would be terribly boring. So, if you are getting bored, try to find situations for you actually to take these steps.

Second, if you need a change of pace, switch your eight items with eight other items from the list. The goal is to put the core strength into practice. If you have been working on item 1 from our category of prayer (I am spending sufficient time in prayer, solitude and in listening to God speak through his Word), and want to switch to item 2 (I find myself often praying the prayers in the Psalms and in the New Testament to remind myself of what is really important in prayer), go for it. Keep your focus on the core strength, not on the specific item that helps us define it. If you can stay with the same item for all three months, that is great! But if you want to switch it up, please feel free.

Third, if you want to rotate through all six items in a particular week (a different item each day of the week), go for it. Or if you want to choose a particular core strength and take one item per week for the next six weeks, that’s fine, too. Let God direct you here. Our goal is to get these core strengths off of the page and into our lives, however you want to do that. Now that we have completed this series, you are free to do so. Or if you just want to take the eight categories (without the defining items that go with them) and just want to focus on putting them into practice, go ahead. We are not adamant that you follow our plan, only that you embody these eight core strengths. Take whatever path will get you there, and we will all be delighted.

Albert Einstein said: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” That’s good advice, but let me paraphrase it for our context. We want to say, “Learn what works for you, strive to grow each day, and hope for a closer walk with Christ in the future. The important thing is to never stop trying to grow.”

Thanks for reading.