Discipleship for Our Times

In a comment to my previous post, Susan (The Philosophical Pastor) lamented that "discipleship is an ideal better suited for cultures and times no longer ours."  She goes on to say that "it is not going to be the kind of thing today's more common brand of church leader would want to engage."  I am hopeful (but not overly so) that the first statement is not the case, that there is a place for discipleship in our culture.  As for the second statement, I think she's right on the money.  But I am also convinced that this is just fine with God.

It seems to me that one of the most common themes in all of scripture is the remnant, the few faithful reserved by God to preserve the depth of the divine-human relationship.  We see this idea over and over and over.  It is there in Genesis in the flood story.  It is there in the purge of the Israelites after they left Egypt and turned to idolatry.  We see it time and again in the history of the kingdoms, in the exile and in the splinter groups around the time of Jesus (the Essenes, the Pharisees, the Zealots, etc.).  In the history of the church there have always been minority communities of believers who have separated themselves from what they perceived as excesses or deficiencies to retain what they perceived as true or truer faith.  Think of the desert fathers, the Reformation, the Puritans and, more recently, the emerging church movement.

Certainly some these movements may have been driven by far less than holy motivations, maybe pride too often has guided people of faith to believe that their way was the "true" way.  But their movements were inspired or vain, whether history has left them vindicated or forgotten it is clear that people of faith have never had a problem with heading off on their own.  I think that is what discipleship is all about.  In our western Christian culture and in our age, it seems to me that this is what is required.

One thing is also clear from the history of our faith, for every remnant that strikes out away from the pack there is always a majority that takes the road more traveled.  It is clear to me that this will always be the case.  Jesus preached to masses of people but when his message got challenging there were fewer who would stick it out.  Read John 6:53-69 or think about the story of the rich young ruler as examples.

So if we're going to answer Jesus' call in the Great Commission I think we need to start by letting go of the idea that discipleship is for the masses.  Jesus himself had followers and he had disciples.  I'm not proposing any hard distinctions between the two but just as there was a clear difference between the Jew who gave his dutiful sacrifices and the passionate and humble student sitting at the feet of the Rabbi there can also be a difference between the typical church attender and the twenty-first century disciple of Christ.

The trouble is that making disciples is messy, time-consuming and really hard.  Let me say that again, it's really hard.

It's also not very flashy.  If you're and pastor and you have to choose between an auditorium full of faithful but mostly anonymous attenders and a small group of passionate but screwed-up disciples (like the ones Jesus led), which would be more likely to advance your career?

Susan was right, it's not the kind of thing today's common church leaders will want to take on.  It's just that this is what the boss told us to do.