What picture of discipleship hangs in the gallery of your mind?
“Words are stupid things, it’s meaning that counts”. Words are simply containers into which each of us packs meaning and mental pictures. Conversation uses shared words but communication involves shared meanings. The degree that words carry common meanings determines the level of communication. We have all had the experience of using words to explain our idea to another person only to find out later that what we thought we said was not what the other person heard or understood.
This challenge in communication exists even when we speak the same language, in the same culture, and in the same time period. Consider the exponential complexity when using words translated from a different language, culture, and era.
This is the challenge we face in understanding what Jesus meant when he gave his followers the invitation to be his disciples and the command to make disciples. The word disciple is a common term in the Gospels but not in our current culture so we must draw from biblical history and not our current culture if we are to understand what Jesus meant when he used the term. Since discipleship forms the core of our life with Christ, it seems a pretty important concept to wrestle with.
In 2016 The Navigators asked the Barna organization to do a study on the state of discipleship in America. In the published results the opening statement succinctly states the problem. “A critical component of this study is to define “discipleship”. The concept is familiar to many, but a widely accepted definition remains elusive.”
Our concept of discipleship, like many others concepts, hangs in the gallery of our minds. This gallery is the “cognitive unconscious” part of our brains that acts as a filter whenever we get new information. The picture is fairly ridged allowing us to accept, reject, or modify new information rapidly depending on how well it fits our current picture. To alter the existing picture we must first bring it down from the unconscious gallery and consciously wrestle with it in the workroom of our mind. Only then can we hang it back up with the possibility of real life change. This is the “renewing of our minds” process that Paul refers to in Romans 12:2.
I would like to invite you to take down the picture of discipleship that is currently hanging in the gallery of your mind and reexamine it. The purpose of this blog is to give you some fresh perspective with which to examine your picture of discipleship. My desire is to be catalytic, at times affirming as well as challenging.
I have been on this journey of discipleship for over 50 years, wrestling with what it means to be a disciple and how to “make” disciples. I have led discipleship ministries on university campuses, in the military, in churches, and in the marketplace and I am still learning what authentic discipleship looks like. Discipleship is an adventure, one from which we will never recover. I invite you to join me on this journey, together making our picture of discipleship more biblical and authentic.
Think about…
- What is your current picture of discipleship that hangs in the gallery of your mind?
- Did you paint the picture or was it borrowed?
- How much of your picture comes from cultural Christianity and how much from Scripture?
Looking forward to the Adventure of Discipleship and learning more of what it means to know Christ on the resurrection side of the cross. One thought…”Reframing” is a common buzzword. From your blog’s theme and this first post, regarding discipleship, rather than “reframe”, we maybe need to re-assess the work itself, refine, expand or even start over and not worry about the frame. Thanks, Ron and Mary!
I have enjoyed your books and other writings, and really identify with you. Ron, I look forward to reading more. I really like your illustration of the pictures in our minds. I am one of those who thinks in pictures. My father was an inventor and told me that he did too. My mother told me she heard music and could see the notes in her mind.
I too have been very careful to describe something and then to find that others were seeing it completely different from what I thought I was saying. That is why I like being able to study, consider and reconsider the meaning of the words used by the writer of God’s Word, the Bible. You’ve heard, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” But how many pictures are there in a word? Write on Ron! Or did I mean right on?
Ron,
I think you have hit on a very important topic here. When the Barner Group said that “A critical component of this study is to define “discipleship”. The concept is familiar to many, but a widely accepted definition remains elusive.” This is exactly what I have experienced over my 45 years of “discipling” events. We know that methods may change but principles do not in scripture anyway. So the best scripture I can think of that goes along with what I have just said, is (Eph 4:11-12), it is a function of “equipping”