Try as I might, I was unable to pass this outcome off as a lack of effort on the Christians’ part. One of the most discouraging features of ordinary church members’ lives is how little confidence in their own abilities for spiritual work, or even church work, they exhibit. Leave the irregular, the half-hearted, and the novices aside for the moment. If the steady, longtime faithful devotees to our ministries are not transformed in the substance of their lives to the full range of Christlikeness, they are being failed by what we are teaching them.
