Closing the Gap

We live in an information age and in many ways it is a blessing. With the click of a button, we can download sermons, order great theological books and end up on blogs [like the one you are reading right now]. All of these tools can be helpful as they give us more information, more insight in the Christian life that we are called to live. But James 1:22 warns us of the problem that can happen when we simply become information gatherers

"But be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves."

So what are we to do? How do we avoid being hearers only. Well, one thing we do at church is provide the context called care groups. Care groups are a mid-week meeting that allows us the opportunity to digest and walk through the sermon together. And really, this is how I would describe the care group context, it is helping us close the gap between theology and practice. Because again being in an information age, the problem is not more information. No, instead it is learning in community to apply what we already know and in doing, help us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only.

Because as Iain H. Murray in describing John Calvin's [which is really James 1:22 at work] understanding of doctrine said,

"Truth is only rightly believed to the extent that it is embodied in life." taken from John Calvin, A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine and Doxology, xvi

Or again as Calvin said himself in his Institutes,

"We have given the first place to the doctrine in which our religion is contained, since our salvation begins with it. But it must enter into our hearts and pass into our daily conduct and so transform us into itself so as not to prove unfruitful." [Instititues 3.6.4]

Care groups are simply one of those contexts that help doctrine pass into daily conduct and close that gap from information to practice.