Course: Spiritual Life of the Leader

Lecture 23: Call to Discipleship

The call of Jesus to, “follow me” is the call to redirect everything in our lives. A disciple is one who seeks to fulfill the will of the father by actively following Jesus the Son while continually depending on the Holy Spirit for guidance and strength. Faith is my trust in Jesus as well as the content of the Gospel. Practice is putting it into play. Catechism is the content of the faith, and catechesis is how you express it. Cheap grace is not biblical because it allows for justification without ensuing discipleship. Primary purposes of the church are to proclaim the Gospel, worship and make disciples. In addition to knowing the content, you must live it out. Clergy need to learn how to make and train disciples. Laity must be fully committed full-time ministers of the body of Christ.

I. A Call by Jesus in the Gospels to ‘follow me.’

A. Definition of Disciple

This session is more on how we express our spiritual life. Your spiritual life is going to be shaped either positively or negatively by your actual ministry experience and how you are moving in either fidelity or non-fidelity to the Lord. Again and again in the Gospel, you see an explicit and implicit call from Jesus to follow him. It is the calling to redirect everything about our lives. The minute you compartmentalize anything, it just means that I don’t want Jesus to have that part of my life. It is going to end up dragging everything back. In John 1:43, you will see Jesus approaching Philip and he issues one of his great imperative commands, ‘follow me.’ This was a divine directive to Philip which changed the entire course of his life. It changed everything and in a similar manner the Holy Spirit is summoning followers to follow the Son of God today, to let everything be changed. In the New Testament, there are some prominent words and when you hear these words being used many times in the Gospels and Acts, you think that this needs my attention. It is this call to be a disciple. Can you imagine that the word disciple is used 264 times in the Gospels and Acts? That draws a lot of attention to the whole reality of following after Jesus because that is what a disciple does. My own definition is that a disciple is one seeks to fulfill the will of the Father by actively following Jesus, the Son, while continually depending upon the Holy Spirit for guidance and strength. You know by now how much I love Dallas Willard and he has mentored me via his works and writings. He has further understanding as to what it means to follow the Son of God. He says, ‘the disciple is one who is intent upon becoming Christ like and so dwelling in his faith and practice.’

B. Faith and Practice

So a disciple is intent on becoming Christ like. Following Jesus means that I am going to take on the character and nature of Jesus. So, the disciple is a person who is intent upon becoming Christ like and so dwelling in his faith and practice systematically and progressively rearranges his affairs to that end. By these decisions and actions, even today, one enrolls into Christ’s training, becoming his pupils or his disciples. In a number of Willard’s writings, he will talk about how we are called to be his apprentices, to learn how to do something. I was shown videos on how to throw pots and be a potter. I was given books and watched people do it but until a master potter taught me how to be a potter, I just couldn’t do it. I needed somebody who could clarify it to me. Willard’s terms of faith and practice are important. Faith is both my absolute trust in Jesus in all things and also the content of the Gospel. It is a Biblical and theological understanding of what it means to follow Christ. In other words, faith in the way Willard is using it is comprehension of the specific content of the Christian life. There is a way to the truth and the light and it is clearly shown in God’s Word. We are told by Jesus to love God and love our neighbor. This commandment is a big part of the Christian faith. It is intended to be both understood and to be realized in our lives. So in loving God and your neighbor, that is a faith command; it is the content of the Gospel. In practice, Willard spoke about faith in practice; how is it that I can realistically and practically as a leader take what I read and take what I hear in my heart and put it into practice? So, practice therefore, allows practical implementation; it is the integration of my life. I am getting the commands of Jesus and now I am going to integrate it into my daily life. I am actually seeking to live in the reality of that command. So, faith and practice are both essential. So, faith is the content, as Willard is using it, of the Gospel. Practice is literally putting that faith into play; I am incarnating what the Lord asked me to live out in my daily life. So, a disciple of Jesus in their spiritual walk and life is going to set some fairly heavy priorities and one of those priorities is to know the content of the Gospel.

C. Catechism and Catechesis

Early in church history the word catechism was used. This is a Greek term; it is the content; catechism is the content of the faith of biblical theological teaching. Then you will hear about catechesis which is how we express the content. It is not enough to have content only, to know something without putting it into practice. That would like declaring that I love my spouse and I’m married to my spouse, but I never actually give solid expression to that love. Throughout much of church history, but specifically in the early church, these two points were never separated. You don’t see a line going through catechesis or catechism; to know the Gospel in the early church, was to follow the Gospel. You didn’t know about it. You put your life into it; it was not a topic to be studied in an academic manner. It was a life to be embraced completely. In classic Christianity, you live out the commands of Christ. In the later 1930’s, another one of my heroes of the faith; he was a young German theologian by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Many of you will know that name and for those who don’t, I want to encourage you to get to know at least one work that he wrote. He was a Lutheran and he loved the Lutheran church. But the Lutheran church in Germany in that day and time had some major issues. They were giving into the culture literally. So, he was expressing deep concerns over the collapse of the denomination in the 1930’s and he used the term, ‘cheap grace.’ He said that cheap grace allows for justification (the forgiveness of sins) without ensuing discipleship. They were merely taking the benefits without really throwing their lives into following Jesus. After tracing the misunderstandings of Martin Luther’s followers, not the misunderstanding of Martin Luther himself, but of his followers as shown in his book, called the Cost of Discipleship. It is a classic work; I think that every student, every apprentice needs to get this book. Bonhoeffer made this scathing summary which is just as relevant today as it was then and it just doesn’t apply just to Lutherans, but to all of us today.

D. Bonhoeffer on Discipleship

Bonhoeffer said, ‘we confess that although our churches are orthodox (having right beliefs) as far as her doctrine of grace is concerned, we are no longer sure that we are members of a church which follows its Lord. We must therefore attempt to recover a true understanding of the mutual relation between grace and discipleship.’ This is that relationship between faith and practice or grace and discipleship of trusting Jesus and following Jesus; it is a both/and. You can’t divide these things up. In that volume, Bonhoeffer went on to unpack what discipleship means. He continues, ‘when we are called to follow Christ, we are called to an exclusive attachment to his person. This attachment must take the form of discipleship.’ Why, because abstract ideas about Jesus and mere knowledge about Jesus do not end and of themselves make for a Christian. Texas had a saying, ‘sitting in church on Sunday doesn’t make you a Christian; any more than sitting in a hen house on Saturday night makes you a chicken.’ There are decisions and actions that are involved in being a true disciple of Christ. The only true relationship that we can have with Jesus is to follow him. This is Bonhoeffer talking to us. At the end of the Book of Matthew, Matthew 28, you will see the primary purpose of the church. I want to connect this primary purpose with your spiritual leadership, your daily life as this is who you are called to be. This is what it means to be a Christian. The primary purpose of the church is always to proclaim the Gospel; that is what we do through word and action; plus it is to purpose Jesus.

II. Discipleship is a Primary Purpose of the Church

A. Content

In Matthew 28:16-20, the eleven had gone onto the mountain to meet Jesus after his resurrection. He told them that all authority in heaven and on earth was given to them; go, therefore and make disciples. This is our marching orders. We are to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that Jesus has commanded you. I will be with you always to the ends of the age. This is setting our compass; this business of making disciples and teaching them to obey. It is not to go and make decisions; it is decisions for Christ and you teach them to obey all that Jesus has taught. This is a huge issue for the church today and so, I want to drill down into it. So, through the help of the Holy Spirit, we are going to teach followers of Christ what he taught his disciples. We have to have content here. There is content to the spiritual life and that is biblical theological content, not the opinion of others.

B. Practice

So, we get the content and catechism in; then you have to do both, you have to have the catechesis along with the catechism. How many of you taught your children to ride a bicycle by showing them videos or verbally instructing them? You have to put the child on the bike and it takes practice and we stay with them until they learn. That is our job.

III. Few Leaders Can Articulate the Faith

A. Example

In the survey that we did across denominations and churches, we have become alarmed. We have found that spiritual leaders, including the want-to-be spiritual leaders, few can articulate the faith. There is not a road map, a schema; it is just not happening. Few congregational leaders can clearly and winsomely articulate their core theological doctrine and they are not preaching and teaching from those doctrines. We have done enough interviews to see this and even though people have gone to some high powered seminaries and have an excellent education. They can tell you about these doctrines and theological truths; it is not what guides them. They are not teaching their people the foundational theology of Scripture. As an example, a middle aged man came to seminary. I was immediately drawn to him because of his loving nature and his sincere heart. He was a very high powered engineer by the name of Tony. He came from one of the greatest congregations in America today, doing a lot of good work. He was part of this congregation for decades; they had a lot of activities going on. Tony first got involved by teaching Sunday school, but he didn’t know the faith like he wanted to. This was part of the reason he decided to get involved. He was eventually asked to pilot an evangelistic ministry called Alpha, a ministry well known today in churches. So, he taught Alpha and began to learn more about Jesus. Tony wrote about those days, ‘burning with the fire of my born again experience,’ he said. He started teaching Alpha and then started experiencing God in that congregation. ‘I was directly being formed by the Holy Spirit and through the witness of others. There were people who were delivered from addition and there was prayer in small group times.’ This is a layperson the pastor dreams of having. So, Tony follows a common historical trajectory for those who are awakened in Christ. After five years of following Christ, the fire started to swain in his own life. In his small group Bible study, which he had established for dads with young children, he saw that they all were beginning to wonder about their faith. What does this all mean for us when we go to work on Monday morning; how do we live this out. They were struggling with the direct application of their faith to their families and to their work lives.

B. Thoughts

Tony said that after going to church services on Sunday, he really wasn’t able to engage spiritually much pass lunch time on Monday. So, convinced that he wasn’t able to effectively live out the Christian life, Tony spent the next seven years at his work, building a team based approached that was modeled on Christian values. This is a major international engineering firm. He asked the Lord to help him in dealing with those people who walked into his office and to be present with him. He implemented a no cursing rule within his team and he established specific Christian ways of behaving in contract negotiation and conflict resolution. It is great to have such men and women who implement the Gospel at their work place. During this time, Tony was still struggling with all of this. He knew that Jesus died on the cross for his sins and that God spoke through Scripture. But listen to his language, he couldn’t tell a doctrine from theology or from a tradition. He lacked firm footing for applying thoughts about the trinity and how to apply the incarnation of Jesus into his own life and those around him. What does the atonement of Christ mean for his everyday life at home and at work? He saw no structure of system for living out his faith; yet, he was deeply convinced that the Gospel was meant for anyone as a gift and to be able to live it out with joy. But some of that just wasn’t in his life. Gnawing questions started to grow on him and began to wonder whether he had to go to seminary to understand all of this. That is where I met Tony for the first time. He came to seminary and I talked with him about whether or not he should come to seminary. The Lord actually led him to lay down a very high powered position and to walk away from it to come to seminary.

His own local church had been truly helpful in launching him into the Christian faith, but he didn’t have a firm grasp on the faith side or a firm grasp on the formation side. What it is and how do you live it out. He had experienced Christ and taught about it. But, this is a global issue in the Christian faith. After Tony began attending seminary, he realized what was missing in his Christian life was simply discipleship. He was missing basic Christian doctrine and foundational spiritual formation. He said that he didn’t know the whole narrative of the story. There is a story of salvation that starts from the beginning in Genesis; it starts with Adam and Eve and it ends with a marriage in Revelation with the body of Christ and Christ himself. While he rejoiced in his re-awakened faith and service opportunities; he was thankful for the missional component that his local congregation had going on. But he knew that he had not been standing on solid ground. He had struggles as a layperson for fifteen years to know and live the Christian faith. Tony loved his pastors and thanked God for them. He would be where he was today without the pastoral leadership within that congregation. But when you walk for fifteen years in the Christian faith and you can’t define basic terms such as justification and the new birth and such as sanctification. He needed the theological landscape spelled out. He needed the connection between both basic doctrines of the faith and the formational practices of the faith. Tony should not have had to come to seminary to get the basics of the Christian faith. For you Christian leaders, I am trying to speak into your spiritual life; is your spiritual life founded on the classic historic primary doctrines of orthodox Christianity? These things were hammered out in major councils in the past two thousand years. Spirit life has to stand on the rock who is Christ and there is substance in that rock. If your spiritual life is going to be effective for the kingdom, we not only know what the content are, but we know how to get people on the bicycle and how to get them balanced and equipped and have the right gear on.

C. Dallas Willard Thoughts

Dallas Willard in his 1998 classic, Divine Conspiracy, should be on everybody’s book shelf. This is rediscovering our hidden life in God. It says that non-discipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failure and financial abuses or the amazing general similarities between Christians and non-Christians. Dallas Willard was a gentle gracious person. When he took up the sword of the Spirit, it was a sharpened sword and he used it well. These are the effects of the underlining problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to constantly learn how to live their lives in the kingdom. This is an accepted reality; this is the prophet speaking. He saying that non-discipleship is an accepted reality. The division of professing Christians and those where it is a matter of whole life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer or client relationship to the church is not an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years. This started when the church became the official religion of the state. It goes back to the early three hundreds when this started. That is a lot of years of misunderstanding of the primary purpose of the church.

D. Apprenticeship not Considered Essential

Just like Bonhoeffer before him, Willard describes this elephant as cheap grace which avoids living as a whole hearted follower of Jesus and denies that discipleship to Jesus is the very heart of the Gospel and that we are called to order our lives as his apprentice and kingdom living and not just as a consumer of his merit. It is not just accepting what Christ does for us but we allow Christ to work within us in wholehearted discipleship. This is Christianity and when this is watered down, you will get something that is not Christianity, something that is not historical classic Christianity. So, spiritual leaders, our job is to train people in Christ likeness. You will have the faith side of this and the content side of this along with the living side of this going hand in hand. What feeds the elephant, Willard wrote and keeps it strong, is the absence of effectual programs of training that enables God’s people to do what Jesus said in a regular and efficient manner. It is my thought that Dallas Willard that his voice has gone largely unheard. So, today, we are at a point where discipleship or apprenticeship to Jesus is no longer thought of as essential to faith in him. How could we arrive at this point? There is no curriculum for Christ likeness which Willard wrote about. So, when we talk about the spiritual life of a Christian leader, this has got to be clear and solid information and it has to work itself out in the way we actually do ministry and the way we perceive ministry. Otherwise we have a dichotomy between Jesus and ourselves. They are not connected in terms of how we work in the church. The church cannot afford this division. We have to recover this primary purpose of discipleship. This is going to mean that both clergy and lay leaders are going to need to completely re-think their understanding of how church is to be led. Of course, you will need to learn the ancient disciple of discipleship making and lay people are going to have to make a move from passive non-engaged mere participation to a full committed full time ministry of the Gospel of Christ. Otherwise, you will end up with something other than Christianity. To do this, we are going to have to do a from-through and a to movement.