Are More Christian Resources Making Us Better Disciples?
A century ago, the average home kitchen was small and simple.
A homemaker might have had a cast-iron skillet, a few pots, a knife or two, and a wooden spoon worn smooth from years of use.
There was no refrigerator humming in the corner.
No electric mixer on the counter.
No microwave.
No air fryer.
No wall of gadgets promising to make cooking easier.
There was certainly no infinite library of recipes available with a swipe of the thumb.
And yet families cooked.
Meals were prepared daily.
Children were fed.
Tables were filled.
Today, our kitchens are larger, brighter, and filled with tools that would have seemed miraculous a century ago.
We have every convenience imaginable.
Entire aisles of stores are devoted to specialty cookware.
The internet offers endless recipe libraries.
Thousands of cooking videos are available in seconds.
And yet many of those beautiful kitchens sit quietly.
DoorDash arrives at the front door.
Takeout bags pile up on the counter.
Meals are eaten from containers while standing in a room full of appliances designed to make cooking easier than ever.
The problem, it turns out, is not a lack of tools.
The problem is that having more tools does not necessarily make us people who cook.
Something similar has happened in the modern Christian life.
Today, we live in an age overflowing with Christian resources.
The Explosion of Christian Resources
A hundred years ago, the average Christian home had very few resources.
Most believers owned a Bible, perhaps a hymnal, and maybe one or two devotional books if they were fortunate.
There were no sermon podcasts.
No conference circuits.
No YouTube theology channels.
No endless supply of Bible apps and reading plans.
There were certainly no shelves of niche books promising to solve every area of life.
Today the situation is very different.
Christian bookstores overflow with titles on marriage, parenting, leadership, evangelism, prayer, church growth, and spiritual formation.
Podcasts deliver sermons by the thousands.
Bible apps offer dozens of reading plans.
Commentaries and teaching series are available instantly.
We now have access to more Christian teaching in a single week than many believers in earlier generations heard in their entire lives.
An Honest Question
Has this abundance produced deeper obedience to Jesus?
Are Christian marriages stronger because of the avalanche of marriage books?
Are Christian parents more faithful because of the endless stream of parenting resources?
Are churches more compelling witnesses to the gospel because of all the strategies and systems we can now study?
It is difficult to look honestly at the spiritual landscape and conclude that the answer is yes.
The Subtle Danger of Abundance
The issue is not that Christian books are bad.
Many of them are helpful. Faithful teachers have served the church well through their writing.
But there is a subtle danger that comes with abundance.
We can begin to confuse learning about obedience with actually obeying.
We read about prayer instead of praying.
We listen to sermons instead of repenting.
We discuss discipleship instead of practicing it.
Information multiplies quickly. Obedience grows slowly.
Scripture anticipated this danger long ago:
“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
James 1:22
It is possible to hear truth constantly and yet remain unchanged by it.
In fact, an endless stream of teaching can create the illusion that we are growing simply because we are always learning something new.
The Path Has Always Been Simpler
Following Jesus has never been primarily about gathering more information.
The path of discipleship has always been much simpler and much harder at the same time:
Hear the Word.
Believe the Word.
Obey the Word.
The Spirit of God forms Christ in us not through an endless supply of explanations, but through humble hearts that actually yield to what God has said.
The Pattern Scripture Actually Gives Us
The New Testament does not picture discipleship primarily happening through books.
It imagines it happening through people.
In Epistle to Titus 2, Paul describes a very simple pattern for how believers grow.
Older men teaching younger men.
Older women training younger women.
Not through lectures or programs, but through shared life.
Through example.
Through imitation.
Through watching someone actually follow Christ in the ordinary details of daily life.
The early church did not have shelves of marriage books.
But they had older couples who had walked with Jesus for decades.
They did not have parenting podcasts.
But they had mothers and fathers in the faith who had already raised children in the Lord.
They did not have endless teaching resources.
They had something far more powerful.
They had spiritual family.
Perhaps the real danger of our age is not simply that we have too many Christian resources.
It may be that we have replaced relational discipleship with informational discipleship.
And those two things are not the same.
A Final Thought
The modern church does not suffer from a lack of resources.
If anything, we live in an age of spiritual abundance.
What we may lack is the quiet, steady resolve to take what we already know from Scripture and simply live it.
The problem is not that we have too many Christian books.
The deeper problem is that we have become comfortable learning about obedience instead of practicing it.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Darryl
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