'Follow me': the renewed focus on discipleship

The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship. By Dallas Willard. HarperCollins, 256pp., $23.95.

Why Church Matters: Worship, Ministry and Mission in Practice. By Jonathan R. Wilson. Brazos, 160pp., $19.99 paperback.

Dissident Discipleship: A Spirituality of Self-Surrender, Love of God and Love of Neighbor. By David Augsburger Brazos, 256 pp., $19.99 paperback.

Traveling Together: A Guide for Disciple-Forming Congregations. By Jeffrey D. Jones. Alban Institute, 206 pp., $18.00 paperback.

Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples. By Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger B&H Publishing Group, 272 pp., $19.99.

THE WORD disciple appears 269 times in the New Testament, and the word Christian shows up a scant three times. So notes Dallas Willard, who declares that the church today has inverted that emphasis: being a Christian in many churches does not necessarily entail being a disciple--a student, follower or apprentice of Jesus. But that may be changing. These books and a host of others in recent years focus on discipleship.

Discipleship appears to be a crossover concept, compelling to both mainliners and evangelicals. For evangelicals the turn to discipleship represents a growing awareness that they have too often promoted a gospel reductionism, focusing primarily on conversion and eternal salvation and neglected a way of life here and now. Willard calls this "vampire Christianity." A vampire Christian says to Jesus, in effect: "I'd like a little of your blood, but I don't care to be your student. ... In fact, won't you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I'll see you in heaven."

For mainliners, the theme of discipleship helps congregations that are wrestling with the end of Christendom and enables them to move beyond a vague civic faith that tends to become a religion of good works and achievement and that boils Christianity down to being a good person. Discipleship builds on the longstanding mainline emphasis on Jesus as teacher and example, but instead of universalizing Jesus' claims and in the process watering them down, it involves a robust set of faith practices.

For both evangelical and mainline writers, the theme of discipleship builds on the now generation-long emphasis on faith as a set of practices, inspired by Alasdair MacIntyre and his seminal book After Virtue. MacIntyre persuasively argued that practices are the behaviors that embody and sustain a way of life in a community shaped by a particular moral telos or purpose. This emphasis on practices has helped people think about Christianity not so much as a set of beliefs but as a way of life--a theme stressed in different ways by both Jonathan Wilson and David Augsburger.

A focus on discipleship can move congregations beyond the church-as-club contagion. Symptoms of the contagion include the idea that the main point of the church is to provide for the comfort and satisfaction of its members, that clergy are chaplains who provide religious services, that length of congregational membership is more important than faith or faithfulness, and that the history and lore of the particular congregation override and supersede the importance of scripture or sacraments.

Another way to name the tendency of churches to morph into clubs is to speak of a "membership culture," a term employed by Michael Foss, a Lutheran pastor and author of several works on discipleship, including Power Surge. In churches with a membership culture, people come to think that church offers staff, services and programs for its members. Guests are welcome, but can stick around only if they pay their dues. A reliable indicator that a church is becoming a club is the default form that introductions take: when club has supplanted church, introductions will often begin with a person stating how long he has been a member ("I'm Bob, and I've been a member here since 1982") rather than reflecting on his own life as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

In the church as club, the question "Why are we here?" tends to be answered with "to meet the needs of our members" or "to be a caring community." When the focus is on discipleship, a more likely answer is "to be and make disciples of Jesus Christ--to join God in making disciples."

JEFFREY JONES'S excellent book begins with a pastoral breakdown: the moment when the pastor says to himself or herself, "This isn't working"--"this" being "the institutional church" or "the program church" or "the traditional church." Support for the budget is down, people seem unwilling to serve on boards and committees, all sorts of other interests and commitments are eclipsing church attendance and participation, and pastors are incredibly busy but with little to show for it.

"It was sometime in 1993," writes Jones, "that I verbalized a thought that had been gradually forming in my mind for a number of years.... When I said it board members were taken aback. I was shocked.... The statement I made that fateful night was: virtually all the old answers about what it means to be and do church don't work anymore." For some at least, a breakdown leads to a breakthrough. It leads to ways of doing church in a new time. Often the breakthrough involves turning to the theme of discipleship.