About 2 or 3 General Conferences ago, we crafted a mission statement for The United Methodist Church that says:
“The mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”
We’ve put this statement all over bumper stickers, banners, stationary, and even across our church bulletins. As we’ve faced some tougher times since the economic turndown of 2008, we’ve come back to that mission statement time and time again. It’s become a part of the collective imagination of our churches. But let me ask a question: What does it mean to make a disciple? We can quote a mission statement for memory but the question of “how” seems to be the nagging question in many of our church circles.
It is my belief that the greatest failing of The United Methodist Church over the last 50 years does not lie in the number of people we’ve lost or the dollars that have disappeared from our coffers. The greatest failure of our church is a failure to disciple one another.
The Methodist movement began when the Wesleys and others decided the Church of England reached a point where it was going through the motions of doing church. They felt things like personal conversion, salvation in the most evangelical sense, and discipleship were lacking across the Church of England. Now, some 250 years later, we find ourselves in a similar position. Only this time, we’re the ones guilty of going through the motions of doing church.
Over the next few blog posts I want to begin a conversation that I hope readers will contribute to. If the church is in the type of decline that statistics and reports are telling us, then it will take as many people as possible working, praying, and conferencing together (yes, holy conferencing) in order to come up with creative ways to re-imagine ourselves as The United Methodist Church. So I would like to plant my flag in the fertile ground of discipleship and say let’s begin our journey of rediscovery there.
Being Christian Means New Life and Nothing Less
If we’re truly called by Christ to be “born from above” (John 3:5-8), then discipleship is an expression of new life in Christ. John Wesley would argue that once we experience justifying grace (the acceptance of forgiving grace by faith) we are then regenerated into new life. And life, then, takes on new perspective because we are born anew in the Spirit. Discipleship is the process of participating in God’s sanctifying grace that seeks to move us all the way to complete salvation–perfection in grace. So to discuss discipleship, I think it’s only appropriate to use the model of human development and relationships as our guiding analogy.
The Infant Stage
Human beings are relational by nature. I’m becoming more and more aware of this fact as my wife and I get closer everyday to the birth of our first child. Children come into the world defenseless and helpless. They have basic needs that must be met by others. It’s the dependence upon others that begins the relational aspect of our life as humans. Having needs met by a caregiver is among the most primal relationships in nature.
The same is true in our relationship to God. So often we turn to the analogy of God as Father or parent because it is God who, by grace, gives the gift of life and provides our very needs. We like to refer to ourselves “children of God.” It’s comforting to speak of God in these terms. But do we ever risk overusing this analogy? Do we think of God so much in a parental way that we never see ourselves as anything but needy children? Think about it. How often do we reduce prayer to a never-ending wish list (I want, I need). How often do we, clergy and laity alike, neglect our call to be ministers because we’re so inwardly focused (church needs to meet my needs). And how often do we fail to play nice with others (If God loves me, then God must not like those people because I don’t like them). All to easily we can turn into spiritual kindergartners who whine too much and can’t play nice with others because we want everything “our way, right away.”
Growing Up in Faith
The Apostle Paul reminds us that there comes a point in time in life that we’re to put childish things aside (1 Cor. 13:11). So if we have new life in the Spirit, there also comes a time when we should grow in our faith and mature past the point of being so inwardly focused and self-serving. This maturity is found in a life of discipleship. The life of a disciple is found first and foremost in a life that hears the call to deny themselves, take up a cross, and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23). But even more than that, it’s a call that challenges us to move past such a self-centered view of faith. Discipleship means that our faith grows beyond simply a “personal decision for Jesus” or a personal belief we cling to for ourselves. Discipleship requires that we take our faith public as we follow Jesus and give our of lives in community with others. This is why Wesley saw salvation as “holiness of heart and life.” Discipleship requires that faith must take a certain shape in our lives. Discipleship becomes the vessel by which faith, undergirded always with grace, shapes and molds us towards salvation–no less than complete holiness of heart and life towards God and our neighbors.
However discipleship simply cannot simply be a collection of individual journeys. It requires life together with others in community. But more on that later…