As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am thinking a great deal about this idea of discipleship. It seems we've complicated the gospel, muddied the waters a bit, and lost the simplicity and clarity of what it means to be a follower, an apprentice of Jesus. Maybe its because we've turned discipleship into a program, a department in our churches, rather than an intentional, disciplined process where we submit ourselves to the ways of the Master Teacher Jesus. When we make a department of our churches the "discipleship department" or we simply create some efficient program to run people through we can easily be tempted to believe that the "professionals" will handle it from here on out and its no longer our individual or communal responsibility as Christ-followers. Direction, leadership, intentionality are important, but only so far. My point: every department of the church - and of our lives for that matter - should be the discipleship department.
We've muddied the waters.
And I'm guilty of muddying the waters myself. I need to unlearn here in order to re-learn.
The Jewish understanding of discipleship is radically different than what most Western Christians think it is. (That explanation would be a great future post. Maybe I'll write about that some time in the coming weeks).
We live in a world where we talk about the idea of "Christian" at an excessive level and yet we have neglected the language, practice and original, biblical concept of "disciple." In the New Testament the word disciple occurs 269 times. The word christian appears only three times - and was first used to describe disciples of Jesus. Quite an alarming ration, isn't it? You'd think it was the other way around, wouldn't you?
Dallas Willard's book The Great Omission (which was the most provocative book I read in 2006) talks about the lack of discipleship in (of all places) the Church.
"A disciple is a learner, a student, an apprentice - a practitioner, even if only a beginner...Disciples of Jesus are people who do not just profess certain views as their own but apply their growing understanding of life in the Kingdom of the Heavens to every aspect of their life on earth. In contrast, the governing assumption today, among professing Christians, is that we can be "Christians" forever and never become disciples" (p. xi, emphasis mine).
What a haunting last line that is!
Another one from Willard...
"For the last several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit and teachings as a condition of membership - either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination of local church...so far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship is optional" (p. 4, emphasis mine).
My spine tingles when I read that quote again.
More questions I am pondering:
Am I a disciple, or only a Christian by current standards?
How will I know the difference?
What are the building blocks of true discipleship?
How do we make discipleship essential, significant, central -- rather than merely optional?
How I make sure that discipleship does not become a program of the church, but the central, unifying force and commitment that we rally around?
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