Dangerous Discipleship

Ed Stetzer has written several good book on church planting. At the Innovation3 Conference he talked about the "Dangerous Church" (for a summary of his talk click here).

One point that caught my attention was that the Dangerous church would re-think discipleship. I am really struggling with this. Discipleship, up until now, was thought of in terms of taking a class, learning lessons - EDUCATION. Our paradigm for discipleship was education and higher learning. Thank you Enlightenment.

As I try to lead Terra Nova, I am truly wondering how can we help people find "new ground" on their spiritual journey without asking them to take 4 classes and call themselves "discipled"? I want to start over in our understanding of discipleship.

I think discipleship means...

Walking with someone and doing life together; thus trying to figure out how to live out the teachings of Jesus and Scripture in the reality of everyday life. This could mean regular meetings over coffee or small groups of people intentionally doing this, but it could also mean simply pouring yourself into another person. I have several people in my life who I am trying to pour myself into. I do it differently for each of them. Some of them I have to challenge to step and do. A couple of them I have to poke and prod to get them out of their shells. A few I have to ask them to shut up and listen to others. They are all different and every day brings a different situation in which to learn and teach.

Discipleship is less a program and more a mindset. Everything I do is discipleship. When I invite Jimmy over to watch 24, it is discipleship. When I lead staff meeting, it is discipleship. When I go to lunch with the chairman of our board, it is discipleship. When I go out for wings and a beer with some guys, it is discipleship. I have to adopt this mindset...all the time!

Discipleship is about helping someone become who God created them to be. It is not about learning a systematic approach to life and theology (which Postmodernism has demonstrated doesn't always work anyway). I know that parenthetical statement is loaded with issues, but I don't have time to deal with them right now. Discipleship is more like a mentor and apprentice than like a teacher and pupil. I may be a geek, but this is one aspect of the Star Wars movies that I loved - the Jedi master and their "student." They did life and battle and training and thinking and strategizing together. Together was the key. That is where the learning took place. We have lost that in the Church today.

Discipleship is about love. It is about loving another person because that person is God's child and you want that person to blossom. If you don't love another person, you cannot disciple them.

I know there will be more on this later. This is where I'm at right now (late one night while my wife is at work and I muse on this stuff). I would love to hear your feedback.

Under the Mercy,
Jason

Our Definition of Spirituality

I have been really wrestling with what it would look like to be a "spiritual" person. For decades (maybe centuries) we have defined a good Christian by certain practices - read your Bible, pray, go to church, be a moral person. While there is nothing wrong with these practices, I have noticed that these have become the end goal in modern Christianity.

We are to develop friendships with "non-Christians" and then share Jesus with them. Then we are supposed to bring them to church where the preacher (or the programs the church has developed) will train them to do the things I listed above. BOOM! We have a new Christian.

When I look through Jesus' life, this doesn't seem to be the same thing He tried to accomplish with the people He met and developed friendships with. He would love them and then teach them about how they could love God by being who God made them to be. After experiencing God's love, they would then naturally be inspired to love those around them.

I don't want to make this too simplistic, but it seems like Jesus goal in discipleship was not to create Bible-reading, praying, church-going, moral people. His goal was to help those people around Him find out how deeply they were loved by God the Father and then let them become the person God created them to be.

I realize this might seem risky - what if they mess it up? What if they get a screwed up notion about who they are in Christ? What if they blow it? But Jesus didn't seem to mind. He took Peter under His wing and Peter still left hanging in Gethsemene. Jesus poured Himself into Judas but Judas still betrayed Him. John was "the one whom Jesus loved" but he still asked if he could be the #2 guy or call down fire on a city that didn't treat Jesus well.

Casting a vision that helps people see what their true identity is in Christ is risky. They might abuse it. They might not follow all the rules we think they should. What do we do then?

I guess we just keep loving them and listening to them and do like Jesus did...let them be who God calls them to be and try to be wise about when to step in and when to let them go. Maybe all of this is really a challenge for us to decide if we are more focused on the outward appearance or the inward relationship. Maybe discipleship is as much about our own understanding of our relationship with God as it is other people's.