Discipleship

Alan Knox has a good post on Discipleship by example. After pointing out that we have reduced discipleship to intellectual assent instead of a lifestyle, he makes the following observations:

Of course, in this idea of discipleship by example, there is a built in assumption: the people involved in the discipleship relationship must have access to one another's lives. Furthermore, this access can't be a surface level access. This type of discipleship requires sharing life together, both the good times and the bad times, both the high points and the low points, both the good examples and the bad examples.

I believe this last point is exactly why we have de-stressed discipleship by example and stressed discipleship by teaching only. In our individualistic and entertainment driven society, we are not willing to share our lives with other people. We want what we want, when we want it. We want to do things that are fun or pleasing to us. The idea of inviting someone else into our lives, to consider their needs, or yielding our will to theirs is completely foreign. In fact, in order to think about and live this type of discipleship by example it would take a new way of thinking - a renewed mind, in fact - a mind that is not conformed to the common ways of thinking. But, of course, this is exactly what Paul exhorts us toward - a renewed mind.

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Exactly! The refrain of our society is “I want what I want when I want it in the way I want it.” That certainly doesn't make a good foundation for community, does it?

It is only as we begin to live who we are in Christ—a new creation—that a true community can develop. The natural outgrowth of that is the modeling of discipleship that Alan is talking about.
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