Jesus’s ministry included preparing a group of 12 men to go out into the world and spread the good news of salvation through faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone.  Often a lesson would be preached to a large group, but then the truth of the message would be explained only to the twelve.  These men studied the actions and words of Jesus, and rightly so, because He not only spoke the truth, He is the Truth.  Jesus poured out his life through time spent with these men, and we are given a similar charge, as we see when Paul instructed Timothy:

2 Timothy 2:1-2 – “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

So where is this kind of discipleship today?  If this was the model given to us by Jesus, why don’t we find more of this now?  A quick look at church history should be helpful.

If I said that American culture overall is the enemy of Christianity, I don’t think many people take offense.  We live amongst a sea of post-modernism, where objective truth is consistently attacked as arrogance, where morality is called intolerance, and living as a Christian has become punchline for late night comedy.  We as a society are largely made up of indviduals who fall into one of two camps.  There are individuals who believe truth is either found within the individual and therefore relative, or those that believe truth is found through a melding of everyone’s thoughts and ideas. So what about church culture?  How has it responded to the changing cultural landscape?

During the mid and latter part of the last century, the church largely was made up of individual persons who attended Sunday services and perhaps a mid-week service.  This model of personal piety in isolation was not Biblically grounded, and ultimately was unhelpful as individuals would fall through the cracks.

In the 1990’s and around the turn of the millenium, you began to see the emergence of the megachurch, and cultural Christianity took a new turn.  Seeing the deficiencies in the modernist church, where isolation was the norm, the post-modern church would seek to resolve this problem with community.  This was a good change.  After all, as image-bearers of the triune God, we were created for community.  Likewise, Jesus modeled Christian community during his Earthly ministry, and there is a mountain of scripture explaining how community is a means of grace by which God sustains us as believers.  So community was held up as the answer to the problems of isolation within the modernist Church.  Churches wanted to be “open”, for everyone to “feel welcome”, and the result was a watering down of the call to discipleship.  Sunday school was largely replaced with small groups that would meet during the week.  Leaders of these small groups within the church were told they were “facilitators”.  These small group leaders did not necessarily have to be well-versed in the Bible, they just had to lead encourage discussion, and to foster social interaction outside of church on Sundays.  This is largely where most American churches find themselves today.  Where the modernist church failed persons through isolation, the post-modernist church has failed through lack of content and purpose.  We shouldn’t be surprised at this, after all, it was prophesized of by Paul.

2 Timothy 4:3-4 – “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

I love Jesus.  This was not a guy who was pursuing the latest church growth strategy… he just laid everything out there, and said whoever wants to come, come.

Luke 14:25-29 – “Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” 

Jesus was not calling people to believe in Him, He was calling people to be disciples – to follow Him.  In Paul’s ministry as well, we see the same goal.  Paul’s goal was not that people believe in Christ, but that people be mature in Him.

Colossians 1:28-29 – “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

The call to discipleship is costly, as Jesus warns, but there is no other path for Christianity.  There is no Christian fellowship without the truth of God’s Word, mediating those relationships.  We should engage with other Christians in community as a means of grace by which God, through the Holy Spirit can transform us.  We must not be passive in this task, however, but purpose our hearts to pursue relationships where iron sharpens iron.  We should pursue relationships that grow our faith, and where our faith can grow others’ faith.  Each of us should personal be discipled by those more mature in the faith, as Jesus was to the disciples, and Paul was to Timothy.  Likewise, we should always  seek to pour out our own lives, and faith to encourage and grow others.  Each of us must prepare our own hearts, through the study and meditation on the Word of God, so as to be fruitful for God’s kingdom.  This is the discipline of discipleship, where personal pursuit of God in His Word, meets intentional relationship building for the purpose of growing each other’s faith.  This is the charge we are given by God, the model we are given in the Bible through Christ, and this is the only hope we have as a Church.

Grace and Peace,
Adam