Following Jesus

The next pairing of ideas I want to talk about - discipleship vs. membership - is something that has been on my mind a great deal lately. I often find, when I talk to Christians about restoring discipleship as a core practice of the faith, they stare blankly almost unable to comprehend what I mean. Discipleship is, in the simplest of terms, about following Jesus, and our experience of church has duped us into believing that if we keep the traditions of modern western Christianity, we are, in fact, following Jesus.

What Jesus said about it was, if we wanted to follow him, we would need to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. At the time, this was taken quite literally. It meant you denied your own will and agenda to replace it with the will and agenda of Jesus, based on the belief that his will is superior to our own. It meant that you took on his mission, and thus his burden, even to the point of great persecution or death. And it meant that you followed him, allowing his life and the direction of his Spirit set the course for your life.

Oddly enough, today we don't often interpret these words as literally. When I hear Christians talk about the deny self, take up the cross, and follow passages, they somehow find a way to make this almost exclusively about dealing with their personal sin. Self denial is about dealing with our sinful nature. Taking up the cross is about fighting our sin just as Jesus fought our sin with his sacrifice. And following is about living your life by the moral standard of Jesus.

Sadly, there is no mention of our participation in mission, our role in building up the body, the use of our spiritual gifts, or our commission to take the message of Jesus to the world around us. In the age of the modern church, these are the vocation of professional clergy, missionaries, and a handful of committed lay volunteers. But the New Testament makes very clear that there is no such distinction between disciples who serve the mission of Jesus, and disciples who are mere members of the church. We are a priesthood of believers.

The original disciples, recruited to be "fishers of men" would be very surprised to hear that discipleship was merely a matter of personal moral improvement. It was a life directing mission and belief. Modern Christians believe in Jesus. Disciples believed Jesus was the only genuine source of life, meaning, transcendence, and salvation, and they lived accordingly.

True discipleship has been moderated to the point that if we attend Sunday services, give some of our money, sit through a few sermons, and possibly volunteer some time to a church ministry, we are living the life to which Christ called us. Oddly enough, many of the things Christians do to feel spiritual or Christ focused have their origin in human tradition and not in the life and ministry of Jesus. For a helpful book on this subject, check out Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices by Frank Viola and George Barna. While I differ with some of their conclusions, this is a very eye opening book.

The misconception that "doing the church thing" is the same as following Jesus spills over, I think, into our notions about Biblical study. In a recent conversation with some of our church leaders about our educational efforts, including Sunday school, small groups, Bible classes, and sermons, the consensus seemed to be that the purpose of these educational efforts was to encourage. Odd as this may sound, that really bothers me. I wish that we looked on Biblical studies as a source of transformation. I wish that we approached the Bible expecting it to undermine our human thinking and to defy our expectations. I fear that we approach the Bible expecting it to reinforce or perhaps clarify what we already believe. This is, I think, the result of our membership ideology. Since the call of discipleship is moderated to mean being a good and moral person who attends a particular fellowship, the use of Scripture gets moderated to include only personal moral instruction and reinforcement.

One of the things I really like about missional church thinking is that the mission is always directing my attention back to the Scriptures, not to reinforce my belief, but to seek real answers to missional problems. For instance, when people come to me with suggestions about how we can market the church or to advocate some leadership technique, I often find myself asking the question, "How is this reflected in the life and ministry of Jesus." With some regularity, I discover that the thing being advocated is little more than the latest in human thinking about corporate organizations. This doesn't automatically make it a bad idea, but it does cast doubt. If we are trying to live out a divine and organic reality, it serves to reason that many human and structural ideas may not apply.

The idea of discipleship I've proposed within our fellowship is that we would follow Jesus as literally as possible. I don't mean that we will start dressing in sandals and robes, but I do mean that when Jesus says he is the way, the truth, and the life, we reorganize our life around the idea that the ministry of Jesus is our roadmap for mission, the truth of Jesus is the truth that guides us, and the life of Jesus is the source of our hope. If we are true disciples, I believe our choices, priorities, daytimers and checkbooks will all reflect these truths.