A Hopeful Heretic

Christian? Disciple? What's in a Label?

I had a strange experience recently.  On a whim I asked a group of men I meet with regularly what is apparently not a simple question: "Are you a disciple of Jesus?"  I found their answers really interesting.  There was all kinds of doubt based on an association of the word with some kind of unattainable ideal.  Even after I defined the word "disciple" as meaning simply "student" there was still doubt, more, it seemed, due to inexperience with the idea.  They had simply never thought of their spiritual lives in that manner.

The strange thing is that if I had asked each of them, "Are you a Christian?" there would have been no doubt at all.  I imagine that this again has to do with how one defines the word and, for Evangelical Protestants, the word "Christian" is primarily wrapped around one's beliefs about salvation.

What I find strange is that knowing whether you are a student of a particular teacher is pretty simple.  Knowing whether you are assurred of eternal bliss and blessing in the afterlife is a little more complicated.  Now I know that many people believe in a "doctrine of assurance" and my point here is not to dispute their belief.  It just seems to me that salvation is based on the grace of God, something that is by definition outside human control.

The decision to be a student of a particular teacher, however, is entirely within human control.  Of course this assumes that the teacher in question is welcoming new students and, in the case of Jesus, we believe that he is.

As I have been pondering the marching orders of Jesus in what we commonly call The Great Commission I have wondered whether there is a difference between being a Christian and being a disciple.  Luckily for me far greater minds have already examined this question.  In his landmark book, The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard emphatically answers my question:

...we should note that being a disciple, or apprentice, of Jesus is a quite definite and obvious kind of thing.  To make a mystery of it is to misunderstand it... [page 281]

...It is almost unversally conceded today that you can be a Christian without being a disciple.  And one who actually is an apprentice and co-laborer with Jesus in his or her daily existence is sure to be a "Christian" in every sense of the word that matters. [page 282]

So if being a disciple and being a Christian really are two different things then the question for us is what are we to spend our time and other resources on?  Actually, Jesus made that pretty clear.

Making Disciples Jesus Style

One of the many tasks Jesus undertook in his earthly ministry was to lift up a band of disciples.  Primarily the disciples consisted of the twelve we read most about in the Gospels but there were apparently also a number of others.  For example, Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man who convinced Pilate to allow him to bury Jesus' body after the crucifixion, was call matheteuo in Matthew's Gospel and mathetes in John.

The question I want to look at, though, is what was the discipleship track for these guys?  It seems to me that it was not tremendously different from the way other Rabbis trained their students at the time.  Jesus recruited these people into a kind of work-study program.  They were to support him, protect him, and aid him in his work.  He in turn would train them to a point where they could become trainers themselves.  Indeed, that was the expectation he left them with in Matthew 28:19-20.

Apparently a great deal of the training the disciples received consisted of sitting with Jesus while he peppered them with questions and told them parables.  He took them aside in smaller groups and perhaps even one on one at times to make them focus on particular lessons he wanted them to learn.  He also seemed to have spent a considerable amount of time discussing scripture with them, illustrating for them how the Jewish Law and Prophets applied to their lives and the times in which they lived.

The disciples could also see how Jesus lived and could emulate his behavior and assimilate his attitudes.  They saw him reach out to the marginalized people in society: prostitutes, beggars, lepers, children and women.  They saw him spend time in solitude and prayer and noted his faithful following of Jewish traditions and practices.

My intent here is not to minimize the miraculous things that Jesus did nor to call his divinity into question.  My focus on these common practices for training the disciples is to consider whether these practices would be viable in our times and culture.  I see no reason why they would not be but there are always objections.

For example, I was discussing my current pondering of disciple training with a group recently and someone noted that it is not practical for people to quit their jobs to become a disciple of Jesus the way his disciples did.  That may be true but it doesn't strike me as an objection that Jesus would accept.  He was, after all, pretty demanding of his disciples.  He seemed intent on having their training as disciples come first in their lives with everything else taking a back seat.  The ones who weren't willing to make that kind of commitment were left behind.

But I also wonder whether they all gave up their professions entirely to follow Jesus.  Peter seemed to be able to pick up his fishing skills fairly quickly when they returned to Galilee after the crucifixion.  I wonder whether they got some fishing in between their missions and lessons along the way.  Of course, that wasn't a form of recreation for them, it was a means of feeding themselves and the Rabbi.

But perhaps it might help to consider what the Gospels would look like if we were to reverse my pondering.  What would it look like to if Jesus were to employ the disciple training methods commonly in use in our day?  It seems that he would ask hundreds of people to show up once a week at a local synagogue where they would hear him teach for 25-45 minutes.  They would also recite (or sing) some psalms and hymns together and they would leave some kind of contribution to the ministry.  This weekly gathering would be the only training most people would receive.

The ones who wanted more intimate or in-depth training would be grouped together for additional meeting time of an extra few hours a week (sometimes more, sometimes less).  These meetings would focus on studying scripture but they would not be led by a Rabbi.  Rather the groups would "lead" themselves with the most knowledgeable or sometimes just the most assertive member in charge.

Every once in a while Jesus would call on the community to make some additional sacrifices in serving.  Sometimes this would be in the service of the poor but more often than not it would be to make the synagogue more beautiful or comfortable.  Most people would ignore this call and the ones who did respond would work themselves into exhaustion doing so out of some sense of guilt or obligation.

As you might imagine, this approach to training disciples would probably not have sparked the kind of history-changing movement that Jesus did.  So I'm wondering this: why not do disciple training more like Jesus?  Does anyone know any solid reasons why not?  Does anyone have a better idea?