Elders do not best serve the church by merely telling people to grow. Ministry does not happen merely by instructing members to minister. Pastors serve the church by ordering its life according to healthy practices, week after week, year after year, and practically showing members how to do the work.

Most pastors agree on what spiritual health looks like. Christians should grow in holiness, love God’s Word, participate in the life of the church, give generously, serve faithfully, share the gospel, and invest in one another. The difficulty is not defining the goal, but ordering the life of the church so that members actually pursue and achieve it.

Too often, maturing as a Christian is framed as a process to be completed: steps to finish, stages to pass through, or courses to graduate from. You might even see this baked into a church’s tagline—something like, “Belong, Worship, Grow, Go.” In reality, Christian growth doesn’t work that way. Growing as a disciple of Jesus is less like completing a program and more like adopting a healthy lifestyle—a set of ordinary practices embraced together and sustained over time. No one ever “finishes” healthy eating or “graduates” from exercise. Physical health is cultivated through ordinary habits practiced consistently: eating right, exercising regularly, and resting appropriately. Progress is usually slow and sustained by making healthy choices over and over again.

Christian growth follows a similar pattern. Believers don’t complete worship and move on to discipleship, or finish discipleship before beginning service. From the beginning of the Christian life, believers are called to practice all the ordinary means of grace—imperfectly but persistently—within the life of the local church. Elders best serve the flock when they frame growing in Christ as a sustainable rhythm of faithfulness, not a sequence of milestones.

Elders as Trainers, Not Performers

A good personal trainer does not exercise for someone else. If the trainer did all the work, it would defeat the purpose. Instead, the trainer defines what health looks like, identifies the most beneficial exercises, models them as an example to be emulated, and creates an environment where consistency is possible. The trainer walks you over to a machine, shows you how to use it correctly, and spots you as you exercise.

Similarly, pastors do not produce maturity in others. Growth is the work of the Spirit. But elders are responsible to clearly define spiritual health and organize church life around the practices God uses to produce it. Elders must carefully consider the “diet” and “training” the church regularly receives—not in terms of novelty, but in terms of sufficiency, clarity, and achievability.

Paul tells the church in Ephesus that they have been given leaders to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ (Eph. 4:12). Pastors exist to show the church exactly how that work is to be done. Congregations need pastors who will not only preach clear application in their sermons but design activities and ministries around the ordinary practices that facilitate growth, inviting church members to begin doing these disciplines alongside them.

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