Discipleship today
I was chatting to someone in our church last week who recently came to faith in Jesus from an unchurched background. He’s gloriously alive in his faith, full of joy and excitement. And he has a wonderfully refreshing insight into what this now means for him.
He is struck by the simplicity of what Jesus said in the gospels, and particularly the call to radical discipleship. Take for example, Luke 9:23 where Jesus says, “whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me”. This is the essence of the call on every one of us who professes faith in Jesus. Will we embrace a radical discipleship for the sake of the glory of God and the service of others?
As the church generally adjusts to the reality of our post-Christendom cultural context, the Holy Spirit is, I believe, renewing in us a missional understanding of what it is to be the church. We exist not for ourselves but for the benefit of others. As someone committed to helping the local church I am privileged to lead and serve, become truly missional, I am convinced, more than ever, that the primary way in which this will happen is through a discipleship culture that helps people respond to this call from Jesus to live out a radical faith.
The word “radical” comes from the Latin “radix” or “radicalis” and literally means “having its roots”. Radical discipleship is about being rooted in the person, power and purpose of Jesus. It invites us to emulate him in all that we are, say, think and do. Mike Breen, whose work on missional discipleship is influencing the thinking of many of us, says “discipleship is an intentional pursuit”. It’s a choice we make.
And whilst it’s simple, it’s not easy and it’s costly. Let me suggest three ways in which this will be experienced.
The first is sacrifice. Following Jesus at all costs means that we will have to make sacrifices. The apostle Paul puts it like this in Romans 12:1: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship”.
Contrary to the implicit message of our consumer culture, we simply cannot have it all. Something has to give somewhere. Radical discipleship is about saying no to other things in order to pursue the Kingdom life in Christ wholeheartedly.
Secondly, it involves faith. Radical disciples are people who live in such a way that there is a gap between what they can make happen in their own gifts, talents, resources and strength, and what needs to happen, trusting that God will fill the gap somehow. Time and again I hear stories of ordinary people living in faith, through whom God does extraordinary things. They attempt the seemingly impossible, trusting that “he is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,” (Ephesians 3:20).
Finally, it requires us to be dependent on the Holy Spirit and one another. Radical discipleship is something that we live out together as the people of God. And just like the early church, it’s something that can only truly happen in any consistent way when we allow the person and power of the Holy Spirit to lead, guide, equip, empower and gift us. The apostle Paul is clear in Ephesians 5:18 that we need to be “filled with the Holy Spirit”. Radical disciples also know that they need one another if they are to respond to the call of Jesus and attempt to do things in his name for the sake of others.
The danger in having said all of this is that we conclude this is only possible if we suddenly uproot ourselves and head off to a far-flung land (although it might mean that). Radical discipleship is not just about choosing to be rooted in the life and power of Jesus, but also about choosing to be rooted in the very places that we find ourselves (this is in part what we mean by the idea of “incarnational” mission). The true call of a Christian is not to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things in an extraordinary way.
We do not work this out on our own, but prayerfully and with the help of others with whom we are pursuing the Jesus life. Here are two questions that we encourage people to ask regularly of themselves and one another: “Who can I love and serve this week?” and “what can we do together to make where we live a better place?”. Those two questions unlock a world of possibility for us all.