Skip to main content

Introduction to Community Based Discipleship


This is the first blog entry from my new book Community-Based Discipleship. I will begin with an excerpt from the Introduction in which I briefly relate how I assessed using the word discipleship to describe how I had grown to understand my relationship with Jesus Christ and his with me.
“As the ideas within this book germinated in my mind and began to take some sort of shape as themes and chapters, I found that I needed to think about the utility of the word discipleship to describe the way in which I had begun to conceive of learning from Jesus. As many Christians know, discipleship is a very loaded term.
Much of my early experience of discipleship was at the feet of church leaders who weaponized it into the WMD of their own version of fundamentalist Christianity. It was an approach to discipleship that tended toward anti-intellectualism and a philosophy of leadership that created (or attracted) narcissistic demagogues who espoused a Pharisaical interpretation of holiness and personal associations. It is not unfair to describe it as toxic.
Others who “ministered” to me used the word discipleship just a bit more gently as a rubric or sorting tool to discern who were the best Christians, sort of like deciding who gets picked first for the kickball team in gym class. Those who were chosen to be discipled were essentially co-opted to “serve the vision” of the leadership. If their ability or interest to do so ever waned, they would be exhorted to be faithful. If that didn’t work, they would be discarded and replaced. Needless to say, I am sometimes a bit nervous about even using the word discipleship. If you don’t like the term either, I understand.
Thankfully, I also knew a few brave souls who “made disciples” in a way that empowered the people whom they mentored to reach toward their full potential as students of Jesus. These discipleship entrepreneurs were so busy loving God and loving people that they failed to notice how their understanding and use of the word discipleship was truly revolutionary. I will refer to them throughout as “salt and light” disciples. They are true world changers, though people rarely know their names! Their example is the reason why I have decided to keep the word and use it in this book.”

Community-Based Discipleship is available at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=community-based+discipleship&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Conversion or Devotion?

Can you imagine Jesus telling his disciples to get a divorce or abandon their children so they can can follow him?   Can you imagine your pastor preaching a sermon like that in an attempt to convince lukewarm Christians to surrender their lives to Jesus?   Of course not; that would immediately qualify Christianity as a cult wouldn’t it?   Every Christian understands that Jesus would never affirm that Christian conversion or discipleship implies abandoning your spouse and children, destroying your family, to follow him.   Why, then, do we Christians sometimes expect non-Christians to risk destroying their family to convert to Christianity or serve Christ faithfully?   Usually, we quote this scripture from Matthew 10: 34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — 36 a...
3 comments
Read more

Discipleship and Christianity

An excerpt from my newest book Community Based Discipleship: Discipleship has normally been thought of as an exclusively Christian word that is used to define what devout believers are expected to believe and do. This approach to discipleship has done a lot of good for millions and millions of people over the long centuries of Church history, but we should not assume that faithfully following one’s inherited or preferred version of Christianity is always the functional equivalent of being a disciple of Jesus. If we are not careful, our discipleship can be inappropriately molded by a longstanding Christian environment that has reduced discipleship from a transformative relationship with God in the person of Jesus into a manageable lifestyle that everyone understands and follows. We must also begin to wrestle with the jarringly counter-intuitive fact that people around the corner and around the world understand and use the words Christian or Christianity to convey a wide variet...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mission Top Ten

I never claimed to be normal; you just wrongly assumed that I was. It’s true. I obsess over things sometimes, usually about things involving world mission. Last year, for example, I put my entire life, marriage and the welfare of my children on hold and redrew a world map according to macro language and culture rather than the current and much to be commended micro approach to people groups. I created new nations like Afrabia, and Dravidia. Iran and Afghanistan became Persia. and Latin America became Hispana. It was a blast. My current obsession has been reading through Operation World and creating my Mission Top 10 . These are nations which need   apostolic missionary work the most and are the most open to receive it, sort of balancing need and opportunity. My list is subjective of course; yours may look different.Some countries with huge needs and real opportunity did not make the list. So, here is my Mission Top 10 . Japan is the largest unreached nation on earth. I...
Post a Comment
Read more