Escaping the Assembly Line: The Tools to Notice (and Power to Change) the Discipleship Defaults that are Killing Your Faith

The Christian Church is captive to our own assumptions. The way we imagine faith and following is shaped at least as much by our culture as it is by the Scriptures, with the result that what seems obvious and natural to us is often exactly what gets in the way.

Award-wining author Rev. Dr. Justin Rossow takes us through an adventure of discovery, where our knee-jerk reactions and default assumptions are brought into the light. When we can talk about what goes without saying, we will find that following Jesus can be more meaningful (and more fun) than we ever imagined.

What if you could shift your church's default values from efficiency, standardization, and professionalization to curiosity, exploration, and delight? What if you could move from an Assembly Line approach to "discipleship" to something much closer to Adventure? What if "passing on the faith" felt less like a Relay Race, where you do your part and then get relegated to the sidelines, and more like a Rope Team, where we're all in this together?

There's no reason we have to imagine faith and following like we do; our default settings have been stuck on a way of doing outreach that is more Bank Vault than Banquet, more Pitched Battle than Pitched Tent. But the power of the Spirit at work in the Word opens us up to Jesus' invitation to change how we see (and therefore how we think, feel, and act in relationship to) the world around us.

Whether you are a pastor or church worker, a lay leader or small group host, a life-long Christian or a recent convert, the way you most naturally imagine your faith walk will determine how you think, how you act, what you hope for, and how you pray. The defaults we have adopted in the Church without even realizing it are shaping the kind of people we are trying to be. And it's not going well.

But there is a more biblical (and more beautiful) way of living as people who trust and follow Jesus. You can notice, and even begin to change, the default settings that are sucking the life out of your faith. You can escape the pressure of performance and learn new dependence on Jesus. You can expand your options and renew your sense of curiosity and even delight.