Years ago, I heard Howard Hendricks tell the story of a kid from a Philadelphian Sunday School class that made a big splash. His Sunday School ran a Scripture memory contest in which hundreds of participants entered and little Johnny demonstrated a knack for memorising the Bible. Not only did he win the contest, he became a minor celebrity featured on local radio and guest spots at other churches.

Now, about this time, it became apparent that the Sunday School offerings were going missing, one of the more egregious acts in the primary age world. A trap was laid to catch the culprit and to everyone’s surprise, it was Johnny, the Scripture memory king. Bewildered teachers asked, little Johnny, “How is that you could do such a thing? Don’t you know what the Bible says?” When they cited the biblical reference regarding stealing, Johnny was able to quote the verse without error. “Don’t you see that this verse is telling us that taking what doesn’t belong to you is wrong?” The boy replied, “Oh, is that what it is saying?” So, here’s a kid who can reel off hundreds of Bible verses but they are only words and symbols in his memory bank. They have never fully penetrated his heart and worked their way into his actions and choices.

Now, I was raised on “Trigger finger” teaching. You don’t know what “Trigger finger” teaching is? The Navigators (who are good people, mind you) instructed that there are five steps to handling God’s Word and the fourth step was memorisation, the trigger finger. This is where it all begins. Get the Scriptures into your head and you’ll have it with you always. The twentieth century was engulfed by modernity and the church became a product of the Enlightenment which basically affirmed that knowledge leads to progress. Our churches became learning centres, working on the assumption that “If one knows the Scripture, one will follow the Scripture”. Sadly, we now know that knowledge alone doesn’t necessarily translate into godly living and we have an anaemic western church as exhibit A.

If we think about orthodoxy as “right teaching” we can often declare that we have done well in presenting solid biblical teaching. However, we are now experiencing a disconnect between faith, what we believe, and practice, how we act. Somewhere we need to restore true worship so that orthodoxy, right belief, and orthopraxy, right living, are once more in balance.

One of the factors in this disconnect is the lack of accountability. People don’t work among people with whom they live. In olden days, if I worked as a cobbler, making shoes, there was a built in accountability into my practice because I had to live with these people. We’d say, “They know where I live; they know my family”. Coupled with this, my shop was basically exercised out of my home. So, my family witnessed how I conducted myself in private as well as in public. Another contributor to the breakdown in accountability is urbanisaton. We generally live in a place in which we were not raised. Couple this with rampant individualism, where I don’t want people messing into my private life, and we have churches crowded with people in which what we say we believe and what we really practice do not match up. Why? What’s preventing it? The absence of any accountability has led to disconnect between faith and practice.

Think for a moment about what the writer of Hebrews declares to his readers, “In fact though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s Word all over again.” (Heb. 5:12) The writer goes on to state, “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (5:14) Growing in godliness can be reduced to a cognitive exercise; yet this passage demonstrates something to the contrary.

Firstly, we learn that failure to practice these truths can result in becoming spiritually numb. We never stay in the one place; we’re either moving spiritually forward or backward. Secondly, we come to understand that spiritual growth involves both having in-take of biblical nutrition as well as out-put in exercising our lives, “constant use” and “training”. Frankly, too many of our churches allow people to come and be passive spectators without accountability and then we scratch our heads as to why people aren’t living out their faith.

I enjoy the statement: “Our system is perfectly designed to achieve our present results.” If we see there is a problem, that Johnny is not following Christ then the question becomes, “What do we have to change is help our people to grow?” How can we inculcate accountability into the mix? What are we actively doing to mentor men and women? How are people being equipped to walk in Christ outside of corporate worship on a Sunday? As long as we allow people to take the soft option of rocking up on Sunday morning and thinking that they done their share, many people will settle for a form of godliness that fails the test authenticity. How long will we content ourselves with a model of ministry that falls short of Christ’s call to follow Him? Let’s begin the process of re-connecting faith and practice. Let’s restore both orthodoxy and orthopraxy in our fellowships, right belief and right living.