“Some things you just can’t hold a measuring stick to.”

Mamaw understood that baptism was just the beginning

I cry at baptisms. My favorite kind? Rough-looking old farmers with a line of family on the sidelines, looking on as Papaw— who has never surrendered anything to anybody— finally gives it all to Jesus. Or skinny, skittish-looking women with gaps in their smile, covered in tattoos, arms lined with the memories of blades and needles. I cannot hold back the tears when I hear voices crack as they recount their story of before and enter into the after. Baptism wrings me out emotionally, plunges me into despair for the depravity of man but then lifts my arms to praise the holiness of God.

I love baptisms.

Churches love baptisms, too. The little country church where I first sang “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder” had a board behind the piano the pastor’s wife played, and on it was listed a running total of that year’s baptismal count. It grew slowly throughout the year, never topping more than 24 as I can remember. That was a banner year because Mrs. Dooley Walker was in charge of coordinating the menu for a particularly spectacular homecoming and word got out that she was smoking a whole hog and had arranged for all of the women’s Sunday School classes to run a banana pudding contest at the same time. I don’t know exactly how many people refilling their styrofoam plates that evening were unsaved, but I guess some were, because the numbers were never that high again.

Larger churches aren’t immune to keeping tally. Attend any Sunday following a VBS week and you’ll be asked to applaud X number of confessions and watch as a line of nervous children are marched through the baptistry in their camp t-shirts. There might be river baptisms, or any other sort of event that ties together fellowship and ordinance, where mass immersions are celebrated simply for the fact that there are, indeed, so many.

And lest you think liturgical traditions are immune, I’ll remind you that they’re not. The annual report of every church body will include a baptismal count, whether that number represents parents initiating the process, or those asking for themselves.

Those annual reports are important, because churches are businesses. They have budgets and federal filing requirements and the oversight of governing bodies who want to know what work is being done. They also have members who expect that their tithe checks are doing the things they ought— and one of those things is expanding the Kingdom of Heaven with new believers. We do that, of course, because Jesus told us to.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”—Matthew 28: 18-20

A very newbie Christian can tell you the gist of Matthew 28 even if he can’t cite chapter and verse. Jesus said to go. And He gave a framework:

1-Baptize in the name of the Father and the Son

and

2-Teach them how to walk as new creations in Christ

We’re pretty good at the first part. We keep a count, we push for it, we love to see it. But when it comes to the second point, well…

We’re not always so hot at that.

Mamaw also loved baptisms. I can remember being hushed once when I decided I really, really needed her attention just as someone took the pastor’s hand to take those two steps down into the cold water that had been carried to the baptistry in the back of the church via a long green garden hose. She kept hankies in her purse for times such as this, and she was almost always the owner of one of the loudest amens when the reborn believer’s head broke water on the way back up.

But Mamaw understood that point two was every bit as important as point one when we’re talking about— and even with her 8th grade education, she knew the two primary reasons we favored baptisms over discipleship. The first is that baptism is a moment, an event, a singular, 3-minute act whereas discipleship requires putting your feet to a long, uneven, and often messy road again and again. The second is that discipleship isn’t quantifiable.

Now, to my knowledge, Mamaw did not have the word “quantifiable” in her apron pocket. But she understood it full well. “Some things,” she told me more than once, “you just can’t hold a measuring stick to.” This was how she approached the idea of character and maturity and other matters of the heart. It was also how she looked at discipleship.

See, back in Mamaw’s day, things were quite as program-centered as they are now. A believer could attend a Sunday School class before church, and attend additional services on Sunday and Wednesday nights. There were committees, naturally, but those were the kind of things people involved themselves in to serve, not to be fed. You joined the Finance Committee to help write the budget, and the Welcoming Committee to make the rounds to visit with new members. But discipleship was not seen as the purview of the church body; it was the work of an individual believer, the stated job of everyone who filled the pews. Parents discipled their own children, yes. But older women were to speak into the lives of the younger ones, teaching them how to fit Bible study into their daily routine with the babies. Men married four decades pulled new husbands aside and explained how to pray with your wife. The load of discipleship was meant to be evenly distributed.

But that’s not how it looks today, and I posit that we are not the better for it. We have taken the unquantifiable and sought to fasten a number to it through the mass marketing of plans and programs that have ripped the responsibility of discipleship from the hands sitting in the pews. We have Life Groups and Prayer Ministries and a hundred other items on the calendar designed to allow members to “plug in.” We offer classes and courses and encouraging emails and all manner of resources.

What we don’t offer is ourselves.

Because in the rush to fill in a number on a spreadsheet to be submitted for approval by the powers that be, or meet a goal set by a board or well-meaning pastor, we’ve forgotten what Mamaw said:

“Some things you just can’t hold a measuring stick to.”

I don’t expect that the trend in modern churches will shift back to a more personal touch in discipleship. I am under no illusion that two generations who cut their teeth on a Gospel shared through catchy songs and pre-recorded study videos will rebel and take up the mantel of walking alongside one another with no ministry tags attached. But friends, we have lost something. We are still baptizing, yes. We are offering new believers the chance to declare their faith in public. But what then? What will they do with it? Are we willing to actively disciple? And even if we are, are we prepared?

Some things you can’t measure. And the kind of discipleship Jesus commanded us to embrace… it’s one of those things.

In Christ,

Heather