Month: December 2016

In 1804 Lewis and Clark with about four dozen men set out from St. Louis for the west coast of the expanding America.  Commissioned by President Jefferson they were tasked with the mission to explore and discover an economical means of travel through the recently acquired Louisiana Purchase.  Secondary purposes included mapping the territory, extending American influence, and making scientific discoveries.

Accomplishing their mission, the party returned to St Louis in 1806.  Along the way they made friends (and enemies), “took pictures”, collected samples, and explored the amazing beauty of deserts, mountains, and rivers.  But upon returning the men took up life basically where they had left off….other than having some great memories and a bigger scrapbook, life was the same.

Several decades later another group of men and women also left St. Louis for the west coast.  Commonly called pioneers, these people had a different mission.  They sold all they had, left the comforts of 1840s modernity, and headed west for a new life.  With the transcontinental railroad still a couple of decades away, they had no plans for returning to their old life.  It was a one-way ticket through the unknown to realize a dream.  A dream created by both fact and fiction motivated people to risk all they had and to invest in this epic adventure.  Those that made the arduous journey were never the same.

The Lewis party made a trip (a vacation with excitement).  But for those early pioneers, it was more than a trip, it was a quest.   The 1678 classic Christian allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress written by John Bunyan (not related to Paul), tells of another adventure that was a quest rather than a trip.  The story follows Christian, the main character, along his journey to the Celestial City.  Along the way he encountered various adventures that change him forever and prepared him for his final destination.

The adventure of discipleship is a quest, a journey of no return.  Along the way we will face multiple challenges, gaze at amazing vistas, and encounter unexpected opportunities …and we’ll never be the same.  We are not coming back to where we started.  It is an adventure of unexpected discovery, primarily of the One who placed the vertical heavenly tug on our hearts (Ecc. 3:11).

Authentic discipleship is not a course we take or a scrapbook we make.  It is not something we complete and move on to the next challenge.  The great Rabbi, Yahshua, has invited us to leave the comforts of the familiar, sell all we have, buy a Conestoga wagon, band together with a group of fellow pioneers, and head west.  With our confidence in Christ as our guide, we need never look back.  Along the way we will likely realize that we have taken too much luggage.  Much that we initially thought essential will be abandoned.  Its stuff that no longer fits who we are and where we are going.  And we won’t miss it.

The invitation Jesus made to those initial fishermen along the Sea of Galilee still stands. “Follow Me” is an ongoing invitation to every generation to join the quest (Matt. 4:19)

Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus….I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:12, 14).

Reflection:

1. In what other ways does thinking of discipleship as a quest change your mental picture?

2. What are the implications of seeing discipleship with a “trip” mentality?

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…

1. What is your current picture of discipleship that hangs in the gallery of your mind?

2. Did you paint the picture or was it borrowed?

3. How much of your picture comes from cultural Christianity and how much from Scripture?