There are some things I’m not very good at. One is being brief, and I’m not sure this will be, but one of Luke’s questions in the previous blog prompted this particular posting. The question? “What is discipleship?”
This last Sunday I sat through an “all-church” meeting regarding our community’s reaction to an elder team decision. The decision? To remove our Senior Pastor in order to pursue a leader with different giftings — an uncomfortable decision for a number of reasons. They presented their decision of change in a professional, concise, well-thought-out manner. They were humble and well-spoken. But all of it had to do with the structure of the church, not the heart or mission. No mention of the centrality of Jesus and his commission of His Church. In the midst of the meeting, an astute young man asked the question, “Can you define for me your understanding of what discipleship is? What does it mean to make disciples?” They hemmed and hawed and went around in circles with a number of Christianspeak and cliches. Their lack of understanding — of even having considered the question — had been exposed.
In the conversation of my mind I was more than a little frustrated. These were supposed to be the spiritual leaders of our community and all of the wisdom they could come up with in response to discipleship were some platitudes and the assumption that “all of us already know this.”
“That’s not discipleship?” I thought. At first I was overtaken by my own arrogance. My next thought was, “I could fix this if given the chance.” I heard the Lord prompt this question to me: “You can fix it, can you? Then define it for me.” Crap. Exposed again. But I do have some thoughts. So I add them to the mix (not in any particular order):
1. It is a movement toward something. Obvious, right? I’m not so sure. Movement and movement toward something are not the same thing. My five-year-old son rides his bike around the same circle for hours. Eventually he ends up in the same place he started and does it all over again. Sometimes he goes faster and sometimes he goes slower, but always around the same circle. Does this sound familiar when you think about being in church?
2. It seems to me that it encompasses the God-created metaphor of parenting. You start with an infant, help them to grow into a child, move them to adulthood and release them to be married and have their own kids. Doesn’t discipleship have that same goal in mind? To move someone toward maturity, one of the signs being that they are now able to move someone toward maturity. I think the metaphor is a good one. As a youth pastor (soon to be former), I know that there are students that I use to watch my kids for a time, but I wouldn’t call them ready to be a parent. However, babysitting is a good step in that direction. Maybe we should think of discipleship that we think of raising children.
3. Question: how do we know when someone has reached maturity? Not going to make a list. Paul and Jesus talk about that a lot.
4. Discipleship is Jesus-centered. I think this is one of the things we assume, but often doesn’t happen in reality. To know Jesus, right? That has to be the thing we’re moving toward. It makes me re-think strategies and assumptions I see and have used in the local church.
I’m going to stop so the list can be added to by others. By the thousands and thousands that read this blog. Either that or it will remain an electronic blip of information stored on some server somewhere that eventually gets deleted when space is needed for something else. I love blogs.
Jamie
