Discipleship is a serious matter. I am convinced I'm nowhere near such an expectation. I'm not depressed; but I also am surely not parading my most amazing faith for I sorely lack.
I am curious about the need for discipleship among us. Some have lived through the Crossroads and Boston Movement eras. Each seemed exciting at first; but then legalism soon arose as demanding standards (which did not come from scripture) were enacted. From my perspective, therefore, we have taken stabs at sober discipleship only to find glaring missteps and misapplications.
Would I be off-base, though, to say that we mainline churches don't do discipleship as much as we do active volunteerism?
If this is true---and I don't feel I am far off---might we evaluate such a pattern?
Volunteerism is great muscle to our sacrificial body. Service and servants mobilize as ant farms; duty, responsibility, interaction. A negative to this procedure is the sheer lack of allowable correction; we as individuals are not approachable when we don't come through at the best level.
Volunteerism has overtly developed a "hands-off" or else I'll move to another group that will appreciate my efforts. This approach leaves us with either giftedness or not; but little training will be permitted for, after all, I'm serving the best I can. Not.
I think of my Preaching School days where one would deliver his sermon in Homiletics and while the remainder of the class checked those traits well-done and not so well-done. And then....both orders would be verbalized to the deliverer in front of the class; You mumbled, your voice is too high, your lifestyle doesn't back what you just said, etc.
Not only am I not an expert in discipleship, I'm barely a novice. My critique is to be taken with such consideration. I do believe that our volunteeristic processes allow immaturity to remain at immaturity for we have groomed our people to be touchy as well as indifferent to self-improvement in the spirituals.
2 comments:
You should read Radical, by David Platt. In chapter 5 of his book, he discusses discipleship in the church. How to "do" Discipleship was ultimately shown to us by Jesus. He came down TO us, and had relationship WITH us (namely the twelve). He WENT. They learned from Him by being with Him and watching and absorbing. In contrast, Platt says the church mostly sits folks down in a classroom type setting and teaches formally (he says obviously that has its' place). That often turns most of into 'receivers' instead of 'reproducers' as Christ wants us all to be.
Also, we tend to define ourselves by what we don't do, and what we stay away from and are against, rather than what we do. The "do" here is the service/ministry that you're talking about. However, when I think of volunteerism, I don't necessarily think of ministry. Ministry serves peoples needs and meets them where they are, but it also has its' roots firmly in the gospel, and ultimately reaching others to change them at that level. Volunteerism is done by many good, but not necessarily Christ-centered organizations. The Spirit's reach, using us, is different.
Jay
Good post.
My motto for 2012
TMDFJ
TBTIJ
TTTTOTCOJ
TFETPOJ
To make disciples for Jesus.
To baptize them into Jesus.
To teach them to obey the commands ofJesus.
To forever enjoy the presence of Jesus.
Larry in Denver
Post a Comment