What is Discipleship?

A while back I made some comments about discipleship. The brief 'definition' in Greg Ogden's book Transforming Discipleship is a good start: 'self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Christ'. That does not capture the whole of it , but it is a good start. I am about half way through the book now and he adds more later, such as refering to discipling as 'a process that takes place within accountable relationships over a period of time for the purpose of bringing believers to spiritual maturity in Christ'. He also offers an interesting challenge to pastors: what if they, like Jesus, had only 3 years to serve and would have no one to replace them? How would that change their approach to ministry? Would that force them to build discipling processes instead of just 'doing church'?



I was reminded of all this, especially the part about 'spiritual maturity' by an article in the new June 2009 issue of First Things magazine. The archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, writes there, ' If 65 million Catholics really cared about their faith and cared about what it teaches, neither political party could ignore what we believe about justice for the poor, or the homeless, or immigrants, or the unborn. If 65 million Catholics really understood their faith, we wouldn't need to waste one another's time arguing whether the legalized killing of an unborn child is somehow balanced out or excused by other social policies'. He goes on to say that 'we need to stop lying to each other, to ourselves, and to God by claiming to oppose personally some homicidal evil-and allowing it to be legal at the same time'. He goes on to discuss the importance of truth, truth that is greater than this world, and how vital it is to what he calls 'Christian formation'. He decries the idea, so common today, that people can 'create their own truth and then baptize it with an appeal to personal conscience'.



While his viewpoint is Catholic and mine is evangelical Protestant, his concerns are very similar to my concerns about the lack of folks in the church whose entire life, whose total world view has been dramatically altered by the invasion of Christ into their life. Many claim to be Christian but the things they consider true, regarding abortion or justice or marriage or truth itself, are undistinguishable from those rejecting Christianity. As a result, they can in fact be ignored by the political power structure, even in a democracy. The article observes that 'There is nothing more empty-headed in a pluralistic democracy than telling citizens to keep quiet about their beliefs. A healthy democracy requires exactly the opposite. Democracy requires a vigorous public struggle of convictions and ideas. And the convictions of some people always get imposed on everybody else. That's the nature of a democracy.'

Someone's views will be imposed; shouldn't those views be based on truth? Our current culture seems to be more concerned about 'rights' (gay rights, abortion rights, animal rights, etc) than about either truth or the common good. But to make a difference in the debate, your faith must be more than a private thing. It must be something that impacts your whole world view so that you see clearly its implications in all areas of life, and can verbalize it.

So our concept and definition of discipleship must include more than self-initiating in our daily walk with God, and reproducing the faith via witness and evangelism. It must include this part about 'spiritual maturity', about living a life that is distinctively Christian, and about applying the Truth to all areas of life, not just to a compartment of life that we think of as our 'spiritual life'.