Discipleship

Discipleship is something God has been teaching me over the last year.  Formerly I held the belief that people would disciple themselves if they were serious about their faith.  They would plug themselves into a church on their own and read the Bible and pray if they really loved Jesus.  All we really needed were evangelists and churches.  In my plan there was no one on one discipleship.  I used passages like the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts and Paul's conversion.  I imagined that I had no notable discipleship and I was just fine.

Certainly there are some contradictions between my view and the Bible.  I couldn't really get around the Great Commission.  Ya know... The part that says "make disciples."  Maybe I assumed discipleship meant sitting in church services or Sunday school classes.  That's what I see in a lot of churches. I also see a lot of complacency.

I'm pretty tired of churches defining "discipleship" as a class or a program.  It just seems like another class or another self-help program.  In my experience, discipleship classes offer limited community and a good bit of anonymity.  Maybe I've just experienced them done wrong.

The discipleship I see in the Bible is gritty and difficult.  It's not clear cut.  It's not an easy 12 step program; it's doing life together.  One man takes another man or two under his wing and shows him his life.  The rabbi (if you will) teaches his disciples all the wisdom he has learned from his rabbi. Our proverbial rabbi holds the disciples accountable and teaches them what it means to love and to serve and to live missionally.  He pours his life into theirs.

This can definitely happen in a class.  The class can't make it happen.  The class should never be the focal point.  The majority of teaching should happen outside the classroom, just like the majority of Biblical learning should happen outside the church service.  The class should be a place where people can come together and share their discipleship experiences and be encouraged as they go back out to do more discipleship.

When I was in 6th grade, I had a group of seniors (in high school) who really poured into me.  I thought they were really cool and I was really lame, so I wanted to be like them.  They just hung out with me and invited me to a Bible study and asked me about my life.  They are a huge part of why I started reading the Bible and pursuing Christ.  I've had so many people pour into me and I hadn't seen that until recently

So this is broad strokes.  I'm not sure there's another way to develop the title "discipleship" another way.  God's been showing me how vital personal discipleship and mentors are in Christian growth