Discipleship as Story Participation Intro

Discipleship Intro (Pt. 1)

Discipleship is one of the primary buzzwords in mainstream American Christianity. However, I am not convinced the church properly understands what it is saying when they use the word. As Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride states, “You keep using that word. I don’t think you know what it means.”

In one sense, discipleship summarizes the entire Christian life, for it is not an activity that one can engage in off and on during the week; it is the activity. All of life is to be wrapped up in becoming a more mature disciple.

In another sense, discipleship has become a misleading term and an elusive quest. It has become so many different things to so many different people that I wonder if most Christians could provide a clear, cogent definition of what it is.

It must be said that the church’s failure to properly define and create processes to create mature disciples is not due to a lack of attention to it. Everyone talks about it. Discipleship and the Great Commission are littered throughout the mission statements of denominations, ministries, and schools.

• The Southern Baptist Convention's mission states, "To present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations." They are all about making disciples. 

• The Assemblies of God's mission statement encompasses four aspects, of which discipleship is a part. They are as follows: 1–Evangelize the lost. 2–Worship God. 3–Disciple believers 4–Show compassion.

• The family of churches I am a part of regularly uses the phrase, "we are disciples who make disciples." We view our lives as disciples who are making more followers of Jesus.

I could multiply examples. The point is that the concept of “discipleship” is ubiquitous in the church.

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Here is my question:

If the primary emphasis of the church is on 'making disciples,' then why do we not see an ever-increasing growth in both the numerical numbers and, especially, in the overall maturity and health of Christians in America?

Here is one good answer. Francis Chan states that the church wrongly reserves disciple-making to the "professionals." He writes,

"We reduce discipleship to a canned program, and so many in the church end up sidelined in a spectator mentality that delegates disciple making to pastors and professionals, ministers and missionaries." (Crazy Love) 

Thus, the only people attempting to and even responsible for making disciples are the elite Christians. The average Christian is not doing anything and does not believe it is their responsibility to make disciples. They pay people to do that work. Rather than the few (pastors) equipping the many (laity) to make disciples, the American church believes the many pay the few to do the work of making disciples.

As valid as Chan's comment is, I think the problem is more profound than who is doing it.

Alan Hirsch begins to get to the deeper problem. He writes,

"I think it is fair to say that in the Western church, we have by and large lost the art of disciple making. We have done so partly because we have no clear definition and process; partly because we have reduced discipleship to the intellectual assimilation of ideas; and partly because systemic consumerism in our own day works directly against a true following of Jesus." (Forgotten Ways)

I would like to highlight two aspects of Hirsch’s analysis.

First, there is 'no clear definition and process.’

Discipleship seems to be this nebulous thing that we all think we know what it is, but can the church provide a clear definition of what discipleship is and provide pathways to see it accomplished?

The lack of clarity causes confusion, and confusion causes deformed disciples. Moreover, the pathways that the church provides are often misguided. The way a church organizes itself teaches the people in the church what the church is. In other words, the processes that are created teach people what a disciple looks like. At the risk of oversimplification, the primary structures the church offers to its people are mediums for Bible studies. Thus, the way to be a mature Christian is to know more about the Bible. TO BE CLEAR, Biblical acumen is essential for every Christian. It is just insufficient. There is more to a mature disciple than the ability to know the Bible inside and out. Discipleship is not about information. It is about transformation.

If the church is to recapture the essence of discipleship, it needs to provide a robust, theological, and practical definition of discipleship. But it must also provide pathways that reinforce its definition. Most churches structure themselves in ways that work against their mission. (See my post on “The Church: A Vendor or Missionary?”) Thus, we need pathways and processes that reinforce what we aim to accomplish rather than inhibit our discipleship task.

Second, we live in line with the wrong stories.

Hirsch brings up the pervasive American story of consumerism. He states the 'systemic consumerism in our own day works directly against a true following of Jesus." He is right. The cultural story of consumerism is antithetical to true discipleship. It is hard, nigh impossible, to be an individualistic consumer and a disciple of Jesus simultaneously.

Yet, Hirsch only brings up one side of the coin. It is not just that there is an alternative cultural story that makes discipleship difficult; it is also that there is no proper understanding of the Christian story. Herein lies the crux of my argument. The American church fails to make mature disciples because it does not know its own story. One cannot correctly play their role within a story if they do not even understand the story they are in. One cannot follow Jesus if they do not know the story that he entered into and is bringing to completion.

It is significant to realize that the church does possess a story to which they are making disciples. Whatever conception the church has of the biblical metanarrative will shape how they define discipleship and inform the processes they create to accomplish their goal. The problem, in my opinion, is that the church does not know its own story; it possesses a sub-biblical story. Therefore, the disciples they create are not fully formed. They are being deformed by a sub-biblical metanarrative

Our conception of the biblical story determines how we understand discipleship and the processes we create to make disciples.

Summary: The entire American church seems to be all about discipleship. However, if that is the case, why is the church shrinking and mature disciples becoming rare? My answer is that we have the wrong story. Since story drives who we think we are and what we do, if we get our story wrong, we get everything else wrong. It is not just that we live in a culture that is antithetical to the true story, it is also that we do now know our own story. We do not know what role the church possesses within the unfolding drama of God. Therefore, we need to define discipleship and provide contexts that are based on the comprehensive story of what God is doing in and for the world.

For discipleship to occur in our churches, we must provide a clear definition of what it is and a process of how we will get there based on the unfolding drama of God's mission in the world. 

Stay tuned, as in our next post, we will continue our discussion of defining discipleship so we can more faithfully engage in it.

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