Discipleship Today
by Paul Hazelden
Contents
Introduction
As Christians today we tend to think of ourselves in a number
of ways: as Church Members, as part of our denomination, part of
the Church in our locality, even simply as
'Christians'. We rarely think of ourselves as
'disciples' - the term 'discipleship' has come to have associations with
dubious groups and authoritarian leadership. The
time has come to re-claim the Biblical term and the Biblical
concept.
Discipleship in the Bible
The Call
Jesus' call came to men busy at work: 'Follow Me'.
That is our starting point: we are not called to follow a
religion, a way of life or an ethical code - we are called to
follow a person. The man Christ Jesus.
The followers were called Disciples, the common term for someone
who follows - walks with - a Rabbi, and seeks to learn from and
become like him.
In Jesus' day, following a Rabbi was a slightly unusual but
perfectly valid career choice. There were many competing
Rabbinic traditions, so you had to choose your Rabbi carefully - a
bit like like the way you need to choose your Bible College
carefully today. Which is why Jesus' command 'Follow Me'
was so strange, so unusual. Unlike every other Rabbi, we do
not follow Jesus because we have chosen Him - we follow Jesus
because He has chosen us.
If you follow a Rabbi, you do not just commit yourself to a
person. You commit yourself to the Rabbi's teaching, and to
his mission. It was not like today where you go to school
for a few years, get an education, pass the exams, and then forget
all about it. Your choice of Rabbi determined your life's
path, and the same was true of those who followed Jesus.
Followers of the Way
After Jesus died on the cross, an interesting thing happened:
the Disciples did not stop being disciples. The
Apostles were still disciples - they did not set themselves up
as the new authority, because Jesus, in the person of the Holy
Spirit, was still with them. They continued to be
followers. Jesus was no longer physically with
them, so they were referred to as 'Followers of the Way' - God's
way, Jesus' way. The Holy Spirit's way.
Discipleship after the Bible
Christians
After a while, the disciples were given the name of
'Christians'. Through the centuries, followers of
Jesus have accepted the names given to ridicule them, and
accepted them gladly. The followers of Jesus did so
too. Then the followers started to be seen as part
of an organisation, a movement, and this was called
'Christianity'. The focus by now has shifted from
following a person to belonging to an organisation - an
organisation with very good and lofty ideals, but still
something abstract and impersonal.
Christendom
The Emperor Constantine was accepted into the Church, and fused
Church and State together in a bond which remained firm for
a thousand years, and still influences our understanding
today. This fusion of Christianity and the State
became known as 'Christendom'. The individual was no
longer following a person, not even a voluntary member of a
radical organisation, but simply a citizen of the State.
Of course, some people were not wholly comfortable with this
new situation. They wanted something different, something
more than just being a good citizen, more than just being a member
of God's civil service. For them, withdrawal from the state
was the only way they could discover a deeper spiritual life, and
they became monks or hermits.
Within this new framework, the idea of discipleship survives,
but in a very different form. There were two possible
routes, depending on whether you wanted to stay in or opt out of
the state system.
Within the state system, discipleship came to mean education.
Through education you joined the Priesthood. Even
today, in England a Vicar is technically a 'Clerk in Holy Orders'.
Outside the state system, discipleship either came to mean
solitude as a hermit, or community life with a bunch of people
also (in theory!) committed to following Jesus. The various
orders of monks and nuns were movements of reform, seeking to
challenge the church to return to a simpler and purer faith.
Reformation
The Reformers picked up on the need of the church to be
reformed. But instead of following the route of the
monastic movements and challenging the status-quo from outside the
state system (that is, from inside a monastery or convent), they
chose to reform the church within the Constantinian church-state
system.
The Reformers wanted to correct some of the errors of the
established church, while retaining the structures and systems.
So, in the new Protestant churches, if you wanted to follow
Jesus you still had to get educated and become a Priest. As
a Protestant Priest, you would be taught slightly different
doctrines and know your Bible a bit better than the traditional
Roman Catholic Priest of the time, but the process was essentially
the same.
Has God Changed His Mind?
The question can be asked in a number of ways. Did
Jesus intend to found a religion? Would He
recognise all of the denominations and activities
which bear His Name today? Would He recognise
any of them?
I think it is clear that Jesus never intended to start a new
religion with a few distinct doctrines and rituals, but otherwise
very similar to Judaism and various others. So - has God
changed His mind? Did Jesus get it wrong? Or,
perhaps, have we got it wrong?
Perhaps being a Christian, even to day, is not about believing
the right doctrines. Perhaps it is not about engaging in a
set of rituals. Perhaps it is not about belonging to a
community of people with a lineage they can trace back to Jesus.
Perhaps it is still about following Jesus where He leads,
believing His words and accepting His mission. Perhaps it
means that His life's work has now become mine.
The Issues
Money
The way we use money says more about us than almost anything
else. Jesus talked more about money than He did
about sin. A common observation is that the last
part of a person to be saved is usually their wallet.
The church is a human organisation as well as a divine
institution. As an organisation, it needs money to operate.
Too many Christians try to be far too spiritual here for
their own good: "God will provide" they say. True.
But He generally prvides through the sacrificial giving of His
people.
We really only have two things to give - our time and our
money. To be a disciple, to follow Jesus, we have to give
all our time and all our money to God, and let Him use them the
way He chooses. After all, that is what Jesus did.
How else can we follow Him?
Power and Authority
The church will never be what God intends us to be until we get
this area right. On the one hand, we need to exercise
authority in a Godly way, and on the other hand we must submit to
and respect the authority He has put in place while still
accepting our individual responsibility for our own actions and
decisions.
The church has constantly struggled with leaders who either get
carried away by power and pride, or who abdicate their
responsibility and fail to exercise the authority they have been
given. It has also struggled with leaders who do both.
Church members also fail in the same two ways, rejecting the
authority of church leaders or failing to take responsibility for
their own Christian growth - or (again) doing both at the same
time. It is easy to blame the church leadership for not
providing what we want, far harder to understand what we want to
see happen and find ways to bring it about.
Personal growth as a Christian requires my own involvement and
that of the church. It is as if we are in a car: the church
has its foot on the accelerator pedal, and I have my foot on the
brake. The church may be completely hopeless and not press
on the accelerator at all, but we will still go forwards.
But if I choose to press on the brake, no matter how fast the
church wants to go, we will slow down and eventually stop.
Church leaders are also church members themselves - a point so
obvious that it is hardly ever noticed. Until the leaders
are really treated as members and cared for adequately, given
support, encouragement, fellowship and correction, we will never
have more than a handful of effective leaders.
A Royal Priesthood
All Christians are part of a 'Royal Priesthood' - that is, we
are all Priests, and we all have Royal blood in our
veins. Both aspects say that we are important to
God, and important in His scheme of things.
It is easy when thinking about discipleship to get fixated on
how much I need to learn, how much further I have to go.
Which is true, of course. But it is also true that the
purpose of discipleship is not only to change my character and
make me more like Jesus - it is also to equip me to be effective
in God's service.
Jesus did not set up a training college from which the Apostles
emerged ready to exercise their ministry. Jesus trained
them on the job, and expected them to do the work of the Kingdom
before they understood hardly anything. They learned by
doing it with Jesus, and there is still no better way to learn.
We do not become disciples so that one day we will graduate and
become able to engage in the work of the Kingdom. We will
never graduate (except, possibly, until the day we die) and we
only learn as disciples by doing the work. We are a Royal
Priesthood - it is not something we will one day become if we are
good and pass our exams. And as that Royal Priesthood, we
must accept our responsibility towards others and exercise our
authority while we continue to learn our lessons as disciples.
The World
All Christians are called to involvement in the world - real
involvement. Not only to tinkering about the edges,
'doing good' to people who have been damaged by the system
(while leaving the system unchanged), but real involvement in
the nasty and difficult areas. Christians are called
to be involved in politics, not because there is a Christian
party or set of policies, but because the voice of Jesus still
needs to be heard, speaking up against poverty and
injustice.
The Church exists to bless the world. We are
called to be salt and light. So why do we in the
Church spend so much of our time on Church activities, and so
little on the world we are called to serve?
The Jesus we Follow
We claim to follow Jesus, but what is He like?
Radical, awkward, unconventional. A rebel, standing
up against the authorities and bureaucracies of His
day. A critic of the establishment. He
cared for the individual against the system.
Sadly, so much of the Church today takes the side of the
establishment which Jesus stood up against. The
Church, as an institution, is seen to be part of the system
which crushes individuals. As individual Christians,
we have the responsibility to reclaim radical discipleship, and
start again to follow a radical Jesus - a person! - rather than a system.