Nearly all Christians have some experience discipling immature believers. Perhaps you started serving with someone who was unkind, short-tempered, and lacking in Christian disciplines. It may be that this person has served in the church with you for over a year now. This disciple may be growing slowly, but we don’t see the growth. We have not changed our opinion of him (or her). We think: this an unkind person. Groan. Why do I have to work with him?
In so doing, it could be that you never really let this person grow, because in your mind, he is always going to be an immature believer.
We can pigeonhole people in ministry and refuse to let them climb out of our mental perception of them.
Yet Paul describes the Christian life as one of progression when he says that we are all “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18
). As believers, we experience Spirit wrought growth, and thank God for his work in our lives. But sometimes we forget that the Spirit works in other people too.
Instead, we pigeonhole people in ministry and refuse to let them climb out of our mental perception of them.
Paul, Barnabas, and Mark
The story that best illustrates this truth is the sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over Mark. In Acts 15, Barnabas wanted to take Mark with him and Paul on their second missionary journey. But Paul refused to take Mark, because “had withdrawn from Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work” (Acts 15:38). Granted, we cannot be certain what the disagreement between Paul and Mark was really about, but we can say that Paul had a problem with Mark and thought that he was not qualified for missionary work.
Paul didn’t judge Mark as an immature believer forever, but he trusted in the Spirit to change him to become useful for ministry.
As time passed, Mark proved himself to be valuable to the ministry. Paul trusted in the Spirit’s work in Mark’s life and didn’t simply write Mark off as useless. Paul told Timothy this near the end of this life, “Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim 4:11). Paul allowed Mark to grow out of the category of “useless” to become “very useful.” Paul didn’t judge Mark as an immature believer forever, but he trusted in the Spirit to change him to become useful for ministry.
Let Them Be Marks!
I can remember my college days, and in my first year there I was an over-zealous Calvinist. Unfortunately, I entered the cage-stage that many young men go through who discover the doctrines of grace. The problem was that when I grew out of my over-zealous calvinizing (praise God!), due to my earlier foolishness, people assumed that I was still in the cage-stage. I was stuck—I was pigeonholed. By God’s grace, that’s not who I was anymore. But my cage-stage reputation stuck.
I wonder how often we do this? I wonder how often I have done this! Even though I know how it feels, the temptation for me to write somebody off, to pigeon hole them, remains ever present. And I suppose we all struggle in this regard. We refuse to let others grow more and more into the image of Christ (Rom 8:29), because we view them with an image of immaturity. Perhaps they were immature. But they aren’t anymore. We have just pigeonholed them.
A possible reason we pigeonhole people into categories and never let them leave is because we fail to trust in the Spirit’s transforming power in other people’s lives. The Epistle to the Romans tells us that everything we do in our Christian life is by the Spirit (Rom 8:1–16). This is why Paul can tell believers to walk by the Spirit (Gal 5:16) and to live by the Spirit, resulting in “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:22).” The Spirit will change a believer, because he gives us new life (John 3:8).
When put like this, it is easy to see why what I have named “pigeonholing” is both wrong and potentially sinful, because it leaves no room for the Holy Spirit to grow a sinful person from one level of glory to another and so into the full stature of Christ.
And in the end, it is not so much the person we are trusting as it is the Spirit of God at work in that person that we must trust. It is only God who is intimately acquainted with the spiritual state of a person (1 Sam 16:7), and it is only God who will be able to truly change a person from the heart.
So, stop pigeonholing, and instead trust the Spirit to change people.
I originally published this article in 2012 here. Unsatisfied with it, I edited and rewrote it here.
