By Robert Hendrickson

One of the things I love about RenewalWorks is that it sits at the intersection of individual discipleship and parish identity. Jesus asks us the question, “Who do you say that I am?”. That sits at the heart of our individual spiritual lives and at the heart of our congregational vitality.  

RenewalWorks measures responses that point toward the heart of the leader. Of course, it is meant to provide some objective way to measure the subjective experience of parishioners encountering the expressed and lived Christian commitment of parish leaders.  

The heart of the leader is not at the center of parish life—but it is at the center of the call to new life.  

Parish life can be centered around many things. Some of our parishes are centered around vibrant visions of the future. Some are centered around a vivid nostalgia, too. Some are focused more on activities. Some are focused more on prayer. Some are focused on just making it week to week. 

What a parish focuses on and centers its life around depends on the heart of the leader. And if their heart is not fixed and focused on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, then all else will prove empty.

For a while, the busyness of meeting budgets or launching new programs will seem sufficient. Ultimately, though, all that we do serves one purpose and one master.  

That is discipleship.  

For the parish, for the congregant, and for the leader, discipleship is the striving and stumbling attempt to answer Jesus’s question: Who do you say that I am?  

The hearts of our leaders must beat together in the race to answer that question. Parishes will center their lives on many things—too many to list here.  

But all of what we might offer or say or do are competitive goods. They are all good things. They are all fed by one thing. They are goods competing for our attention but demanding our focus and our focus must be on Christ alone.  

These good things all find their source and summit in Christ. So, we have to tend the heart of it all. We must tend the deep-to-deep connection that spans the ages and quiets the anxieties of the day.  

The heart of the leader is not one that has all the right answers. It is not one that prepares all the right curricula. It is not one that is charting the perfect path.  

The heart of the leader is simply one that beats for Jesus.  

The heart of the leader is simply one that finds its rhythm in the steady, deep, gently thundering love of Christ. Our lives point toward the Center, and we can thank God that we’re not the heart of anything at all except a movement that steadily offers Christ as the way.  

That steadiness is not the product of endless attempts to feed the consumer demands of the day. That steadiness is the hope of hours and days and years and decades and even centuries spent in prayer. That steadiness is the work of making our journey and our lives a living answer to Jesus’s question.  

Who do you say that I am? 

Jesus asks the question. Our people look to their leaders to model an answer. The truest work of biblical scholarship we will offer them is how we live. In our prayerfulness, charity, honesty, joy, and mercy they will see our answer translated as clearly as can be.  

Who do you say that I am?  

How will we answer? 

There our discipleship begins.  

There new life might ever and still be found. 

The Rev. Robert Hendrickson is Chief of Discipleship Initiatives at Forward Movement and a member of the Cedar team.