A Discipling Community

This Lent, I’m exploring Five Characteristics of Christian Community in series of sermons as well as reflecting upon these themes here. You can listen to the sermon on a Christian community being a discipling community here. What is a disciple? In a general sense, a disciple is a student or apprentice. Not just a casual student, but a committed student. Someone who has devoted him or herself to a particular teacher. These sorts of student-mentor relationships have famous threads in many circles, but perhaps especially, in academic, artistic, and martial ones. The rising scholar whose mentor is a legend in their field. The renowned composer who studied with one of the greats. A martial artist who has devoted herself to her master and learning his art and passing it on to the next generation.

If you apply this understanding of disciple to Christianity, you are at once shaken and challenged. If the primary mission of the Christian Church is to make disciples, and if disciples are committed in the way that other disciples are to their teachers, then the work of the Church becomes both more challenging and exciting. We have often been pretty good at making church goers in our congregations. People who show up, sometimes regularly, and who sometimes also help out with other activities around the church. This is all fine as far as it goes. However, it doesn’t go far enough, according to the instruction of all the great spiritual teachers. Spiritual teachers aside, it falls short of THE Teacher’s example and instruction, “Go therefore, make disciples of all nations…teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:16-20).

A disciple in the Christian sense is a follower of Jesus. A disciple in the Christian sense is someone seeking to allow their faith to anchor their life and their faith to flavor and saturate every aspect of their life. This doesn’t, necessarily, translate into being at the gathered church all the time. Disciples worship regularly, usually weekly, some more, but their particular sense of Christian call and responsibility may manifest through their profession, their volunteering, or in raising their family. There are many ways of following Jesus and many variations on the path of discipleship. Despite the disparate ways of being a disciple, disciples across the spectrum share many things in common, beginning with the one Lord. Disciples aren’t perfect by any means, but they understand they are on a journey. How is your discipleship going? Is discipleship something your local church talks about and more importantly, does?

What did you hear in the sermon, in the text, or this reflection? What would you challenge, what would you add? What are you still wondering about?