Recovering Discipleship: Growing by Living

The church in the West has been in decline for sometime now. There are a number of reasons for this but I think one of the major ones is that discipleship is misunderstood by most of the church. Unfortunately we the church have bought into a rationalistic approach to discipleship. The emphasis is on teaching the word in the belief that it will lead to transformation. For some time that was my own view. 

Leslie Newbigin, a missionary to India for over 30 years, upon his return to the UK in the 1974 was shocked at the state of the church. One of the issues he addressed was discipleship and in his book “Proper Confidence” written in 1995 he wrote this:

The revelation of which we speak in the Christian tradition is more than the communication of information, it is the giving of an invitation. It is more than an unfolding of the purpose, which was otherwise hidden in the mind of God but is now made known to us through God’s revealing acts; it is also a summons, a call, an invitation.  . . . The response that is called for, therefore, is not only intellectual assent but also active response. It is belief and obedience, and the two are but two sides of one coin. . . .We are not given a theory which we then translate into practice. Instead, we are invited to respond to a word of calling by believing and acting, specifically, by becoming part of the community which is already committed to the service of the Builder (Jesus). We are invited to commit ourselves and to learn as we go what our role in the whole enterprise is to be. Our commitment is an act of personal faith.  . . . There is no insurance against risk. We are invited to make a personal commitment to a personal Lord and to entrust our lives to his service. We are promised that as we do so commit ourselves we shall be led step-by-step into a fuller understanding of the truth.  . . . Christian discipleship is not a two-stage affair in which a concept of truth is fist formulated and is then translated into a program for action. It is a single action of faith and obedience to a living person, the response to a personal calling. (Leslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence, Cambridge, pp. 64, 66) 

Discipleship does not happen in a classroom. It happens as we live out our faith in Jesus daily. It happens in the home, in our community, in our work place. It is obeying Jesus in all places by loving those around us. For obedience is summed up in two commands, love God and love your neighbours. Love is not learned through studying spiritual truths, it is learned in our everyday relationships. This is why Jesus called his twelve disciples so that they might be with him. Their classroom wasn’t a synagogue but homes, markets, places of work, streets and fields, interacting with people and with Jesus. 

It is important to study the Word and know it well, but if we are not loving by faith those around us every day, our study becomes dry and stagnant. We will only grow in our faith as we live out our faith through the people in our lives.