A Hopeful Heretic

Reconstructing Discipleship

A friend of mine has challenged me to be less about deconstruction in ecclesiology.  Ok, that's not the way he put it.  He said something like, "Why are you always ripping on the church?"  The thing is, I feel some conviction about his challenge.  In the movie, Primary Colors, the lead character, a Democratic primary candidate for President, makes an observation about negative campaigning: "any damn fool can burn down a barn."  I think the same applies to deconstruction in our post-whatever environment.  At some point we need to come up with alternatives.

So as I have thought about the challenge of Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20, I think that it's appropriate for me to offer something of an idea of what to do differently.  I offer this with a great deal of humility because I am in no position to put this idea to the test.  I'm not a pastor and I'm not a church consultant.  Although I work in ministry it's in a role where my influence over such matters is almost non-existent.

Yet, apart from that caveat I want to propose that it should be clear that some kind of new model, hopefully a radically new model, should get some play.  In the contemporary church we put a lot of time, money and energy into making and maintaining Christians, not disciples.  I think that this should be self-evident.  Surely no one believes that the average once-a-week church attender is being built up in spiritual maturity in any way that approximates the training Jesus gave to his disciples.

But I don't feel that we should do away with making and maintaining Christians.  I think that there seems to be a great need for this level of spiritual training and there is apparently a lot of good that comes of it.  I just don't think that it should eat up as much of our resources as it does.  Moreover, it's not what Jesus told us to do.

So here's my proposal: I think that we should train disciples in small, intense programs that have a definite starting point but no definite end point.  People who commit to become disciples would come into that experience with wide variance of foundation and needs.  The training would take longer for some than for others.

When I say intense I mean that it should become the number one thing in the lives of these participants.  By number one, I mean by the standards of Jesus.  For some (but not all) this would mean giving up a career for this training like Matthew or the fishermen.  For some (but not all) this would mean making significant changes in family commitments (like Peter apparently did).  I think it would require a big investment of time, not unlike being in college or graduate school full time.

I think that this training would require group work like the experience Jesus put his original disciples through.  Perhaps it would even be best if it meant actually living together as a group for the training or at least for part of it.

The training itself would have to vary depending on the disciples and the church to which they are devoted.  I think that the example of Jesus shows that the curriculum has to include a substantial amount of training in scripture and in personal spiritual practices.  But that cannot be all of the training.  There has to be real, get your hands dirty, make a difference in the world experiences too.

I think that the trainer would have to be someone as devoted to the disciples as they are to the training.  It could not be someone from a church staff with other responsibilities, training disciples in this manner would have to be their single devotion.  And because these trainers would have to be the most emotionally and spiritually mature people available, they would have to be fairly well compensated and supported in this work.

Since I'm the administrative type I can estimate that it would cost a church about $100k per year for each disciple trainer.  That's salary, benefits and administrative support.  From my noodling with numbers I think that a single trainer could handle between 25 and 50 disciples as a maximum at any given time.  Looked at another way, that's $2000 to $4000 per disciple annually.

Where would that money come from?  Well I think that part of it can come from the disciples themselves.  Maybe that's part of the sacrifice required of them.  After all, the discipleship pitch that Jesus gave to the rich, young ruler was a lot bigger sacrifice than that.

But I think that the commitment also has to come from the church.  As I see it a shift of resources from making and maintaining Christians to making disciples would mean putting fewer resources into weekend services.  I propose this because I think that it is clear that these activities are not meant to train disciples.  Furthermore, it is clear that in many, maybe even in most churches, weekend services are the biggest single cost.

If you're not inclined to agree think about the largest physical space in almost any church.  What is it used for?  How often is it used for that purpose?  What does it cost to heat and cool and clean?  Think about the amount of time the teaching pastor spends preparing for a single sermon and the amount of time the music people spend in rehearsal and preparation.  Think about the support staff who handle the lights and the sound and so on.

But again, I'm not proposing that a church do away with weekend services altogether.  I would, however, suggest that every church take a hard look at what weekend services cost and decide whether they are truly advancing the mission that Jesus gave us.

So how about if once a month we have a weekend without church as it is generally defined?  What if the pastor had one week when he could skip the sermon preparation and spend some time doing all the other things he never has time to do?  We could give the volunteers a break from working and let them spend time meeting their own spiritual needs (or maybe just sleeping in and resting).  We could reduce the electric bill and the gas bill substantially and with less wear and tear on the facility we could cut back on maintenance.

But what would the congregation do?  Maybe we could encourage them to meet in small groups on that one day a month.  They might get more out of the experience if it's not squeezed into an already busy schedule.  Maybe we could encourage them to get out and serve in the community or maybe just spend time with their neighbors, friends and families.  If anyone really can't get through a week without a church service they might want to visit another church that day.  We might even work out an agreement with three other churches to alternate weeks so that everyone has a "discipleship day" once a month.

Now, I'm not naive.  I know that it is unlikely that any church would take such risks.  I also say again that I offer this in humility as someone without the experience to see the bugs or the power to put it to the test.  But I'd be curious to see what others think.

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?

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.

What Did Jesus Tell Us to Do?

After a whirlwind tour of churches large and small, new and old across the country, Jim Henderson and Matt Casper wrote a book: Jim and Casper Go To Church and Casper, the atheist, asked the question that really makes me squirm.  "Is this what Jesus told you guys to do?"  I want to rise in defense of the church, I want to throw it back in his face but the trouble is, I have to answer in a meek, embarrassed voice, no.

I wish that my defense could begin by noting that Henderson and Casper spent their time in weekend services.  They saw two hours a week in the life of each church.  They didn't see small groups at work.  They didn't see people in prayer, people serving or counseling or comforting others.  But again, the trouble is that I have to admit, they saw the part of "church" that occupies the greatest amount of time and takes the lion's share of energy and resources in most local bodies.  They saw the part of church that comes to mind when most people think of church.

And what they saw was, for the most part, embarrassing.

I've recently been challenged by someone I respect to spend less time on deconstruction of what we call church in the United States.  Consequently, I don't want this to be just another rant about stuff that I don't like because, after all, I'm no expert.  I'm just another Christian guy with a blog.

So I'd like to turn Casper's question around and humbly ask, "What did Jesus tell us to do?"  At the end of Matthew's gospel we find our marching orders in a manner of speaking:

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Matthew 28:19-20 (NIV)

We've come to call this passage "The Great Commission" because it is the succinct call to action given by the risen Lord to his followers.  Better scholars with greater minds than mine have done exposition of these lines for centuries so I won't waste any (potential) reader's time with that approach.  But I think that it's worth spending some time reflecting on the very idea of "making disciples."

• What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus in this age and this culture?
• Does it "disciple" mean the same thing as "Christian?"
• How did Jesus "make disciples?"  Should we be doing it the same way?
• Should "church" be only about making disciples, primarily about making disciples or generally about making disciples?

It seems to me that the current blogosphere discussions over Pagan Christianity are reflective of a sincere desire to recapture the essence of Jesus' directions to his followers.  Since the book hasn't made it to the top of my pile yet, perhaps this is a good place for me to start.