What have we done in this world to turn a concept such as discipleship into a binary system? We’ve muddled up the whole Bible and watered down the truth of scripture by boiling it all down to bullet points. We’ve turned salvation into a 5-step process dependant upon our belief in key scriptures and removed the lordship of Christ from the whole equation! The fact of the matter is this: discipleship has no objective measure. I can’t pull out a disciple-stick and see how much of a disciple you are. In truth, I can’t really know anything about your level of discipleship because I can’t read your heart. True, there are certain outward actions you’ll have if you are a disciple like love and the fruit of the Spirit, but I’m no one’s judge and can only truly know my own heart, which is often easily swayed and confused.
Why am I writing this?
Who really cares anyway?
If we can’t come up with a better way to disciple people, the church, the Body of Jesus Christ on earth, is going to die. We’ve already seen a steep slide in the faithfulness of Jesus-followers, so much so that there aren’t many true followers of Jesus left. We are living amidst the Pharisaification of the church, so much that the church has become what the Temple was and is to Jews, a place to worship, not a living, breathing organism bent on doing the will of God.
Perhaps it would serve us to look at why this has happened to Jesus’ beloved bride.
It is my belief that in the beginning, the simplification of the gospel was pursued in order to provide a concise, easy-to-remember method for leading people to Jesus. It still serves as that. I believe that church leaders were in pursuit of an easy way to evangelize. What has happened because of it though is that we have turned it into a rite of passage, a secret handshake if you will: a way to tell who’s in and who’s out. Then we used this methodology to exclude those who were out and to make them feel like garbage because they weren’t in. “Don’t you want to believe in Jesus too? If you don’t you’ll go to Hell! Hell is a terrible place, filled with demons that look like they came out of some demented video game and with hot air blasting in your face all the time! You don’t want to go there, do you?” The problem with this is that no one in their right mind would answer, “yes” to those questions. No one wants to spend forever in that situation.
So we have thousands of converts or proselytes, but no disciples. Isn’t that what Jesus told us to do? Make disciples?
I’m reminded of the passage in Acts 15 when the church had a huge committee meeting to determine whether the new Gentile converts needed to participate in all the Jewish rituals in order to become “real” Christians. It became such a big deal that Paul and Barnabas came back from the mission field and even Peter showed up to have a say. They came to this basic understanding (forgive me if I paraphrase): “What a ridiculous argument to be having! We know that God determined to save the Gentiles as they were, giving them the same Holy Spirit he gave us. Why on earth would we require them to perform the same rites and rituals we’ve been doing since we were Jews? He cleansed their hearts by faith, not by some outward show!”
What does this say to us?
Is it possible that what we understand, coming to the Bible with all the assumptions and cultural biases we have, that we might not understand everything about salvation? Is it possible that the five scriptures we use that belong to our favorite evangelistic method aren’t the only ones that are necessary for understanding Jesus? Could it be true that, while noble, our evangelistic intentions aren’t complete? Doesn’t God want more from us than proselytizing? Didn’t Jesus ask us to make disciples?
This leads us back to the subjective nature of discipleship. How do I know when someone is a disciple? The simple answer is, you don’t. We can’t know the hearts of men. All we can do, then, is lead by example. It seems that early teachers and philosophers had a pretty good method for teaching. They would take on one or two pupils at a time and let them observe. Then they simply lived their lives, engaging their disciples in conversations about life. In this way, the pupil learned from the master. It is the same with apprenticeship. The apprentice spends time with the master, learning from what the master does. When the time is complete, the apprentice strikes out on their own, eventually taking on their own pupil.
This creates tension for us, though, because it requires something from us we don’t want to give. It requires effort. It requires time. It requires patience and love. Evangelism in itself, while intense and demanding, is really the easy way out. When we make our efforts about winning a convert or making a proselyte, whether we succeed or fail, the job is done. Taking on a disciple not only requires an ongoing effort to teach and love, it requires us to be active all the time. Little is gained by telling an apprentice to “do what I say.” Only by actually doing the work ourselves can our disciples see what truly needs to be done. Then we’re never completely sure that they get it. It is, however, much more likely that they will if we give them an example. That’s why it’s not arrogant for Paul to tell other believers to “do what I do.” It’s simply discipleship.
May your eyes be opened to the need for discipleship. May you become the discipler Jesus needs you to be.
