D17 Part 4: Discipleship Must Be Community-Based

The Gospels are, among other things, the narrative of discipleship training. We can trace the story of how Jesus chose to train and deploy His disciples to carry on His mission, which means that the Gospels are invaluable for teaching us how to disciple one another. In fact, last week we discussed how discipleship must be "Gospel-saturated."

One of prominent episodes of this training is recorded in Luke 10, when Jesus sent out the disciples to minister in His name. But He did not send them out alone - He sent them two-by-two. In fact, He made a habit of it. He sent people out in ministry (and even on seemingly menial tasks), and He consistently sent them out in groups ... as an intentional part of how he was training them for discipleship. Don't miss this! It wasn't just practical - He was always training them in discipleship. Sending them out in pairs or groups was part of their discipleship.

We see very few examples in Scripture where someone is sent out in ministry by himself. No doubt, it happened (see Philip, for example). But the overwhelming pattern is in groups. Not even the great missionary Paul traveled alone very often. Furthermore, he usually sent his disciples out in groups, too. Many of his letters were intentionally inclusive of those who were ministering with him, and he wrote to people who were in ministry as groups (cf. 1 Thess 1:1; Phm 1-3).

This overwhelming pattern leads us to our fourth truth about discipleship:

Discipleship must be community-based.

Discipleship is designed to be done in community, in pairs, in groups, with one another. Our 21st C Western individualism tends to read Scripture with a filter that interprets everything for "me" rather than "us," especially something so personal as discipleship. When we read discipleship as individualistic, we are misinterpreting Scripture. Community-based discipleship is clearly the model of the New Testament.

It is a step for some Christians to accept that Jesus intends for our entire lives to be about discipleship (rather than a weekly meeting I have for the first year after coming to faith where I complete a workbook). It's yet another step for us modern Westerners to accept that Jesus intends for our entire lives to be about community-based discipleship.

This means more than Sunday school classes, small groups, and accountability groups. Those are good things to have in our lives, but there are a lot of these groups where very little discipleship actually occurs. If we take discipleship to mean moving from unbelief to belief in every area of our lives in light of the Gospel, it's safe to say many groups do very little to cultivate this move as a lifestyle.

I'm not suggesting you leave your groups. I'm suggesting you make sure that you are in a group that is pressing toward discipleship. Join a new group or help transform the one you're in. Do not conclude that you can do the life of discipleship just fine on your own. That is patently against the model Jesus carefully crafted for us.

Focused discipleship groups keep people accountable to each other in authentic relationships with appropriate vulnerability, pressing one another to move from unbelief to belief in every area, intentionally multiplying itself by making disciples who make disciples, and serving together to make the Kingdom tangible for others. This kind of group can take many forms, can meet in any location, can have any combination of followers, and can take a variety of names. Labels are not important - disciplemaking is.

I cannot encourage you strongly enough to seek out a small community that earnestly seeks to cultivate complete followers of Jesus.

This is the fourth of 17 truths about discipleship we are exploring together. This week's truth comes from various writings of Caesar Kalinowski.

Consumerism in the Pew

Our economy lives and dies by the consumer mentality - the winners provided the consumers what they want to consume, and the losers somehow failed to. Our politics also depends on a consumer mentality, and for the same reasons - the winners provide the consumers with what they want, and the losers don't. Consumerism is so integral to the modern Western mindset that we have trouble imagining anyone ever thinking differently. It's practically a God-given right! Just listen to how we complain when the cheese isn't melted just the right way on our readily-available burgers.

More than any other culture, more than any other period of time in history, we carry that consumer mentality into the church. The churches that "win" provide the consumers what they want to consume, and the "losers" don't.

The most obvious form of a consumer mentality in the church is "church shopping" - going beyond the normal process of finding the right place to serve and be served into "shopping" mode, finding the best "bargain," and choosing a church that most serves my wants rather than equipping me to serve those who are in want. Find the church with the best "bang for the buck," and you've got a deal! Until a better deal comes along...

A more subtle form is just the attitude carried into a church. There can be a lot of good consideration about finding the right church, but this insidious attitude rides in like a parasite on a host animal. Everything about the church is evaluated based on personal wants rather than mission, vision, integrity, priorities, and authenticity. Yes, it's important to find a church that has what you need in a church, and some churches are a better fit than others. But this parasitic attitude that demands the church fit my way and my wants is found no where in Jesus' teachings about what the church is for.

But the most subtle form of consumerism in the church, I think, actually changes our theology. Because we can pick and choose our potato chips and our politicians, and because we think we can pick and choose our churches in the same way, we can end up with that deep-seated, modern, Western idea that we can pick and choose our theology, too. And it can seem no natural to us that we have trouble imagining anyone ever thinking differently. It's practically a God-given right!

God's truth is revealed to us. It's not a menu. It's not a salad bar. God has no jingle that says, "Have it your way."

We have a responsibility to investigate and determine what we honestly believe what exactly has been revealed, but that responsibility is different than an attitude that presumes to pick the parts we like and leave the rest. If God's Word truly does say, "Love your neighbor" and "Make disciples of all nations," I have no God-given right to follow the one I like and ignore the other.

As modern, Western thinkers, we have a greater tendency than people from other places and other times to adopt this mentality. Most likely, we're unaware of just how much we have that mentality. When we are aware of it, we may not realize how heavily our mindset has been influenced by our culture and times.

We just saw the movie "Wall-E" again. There's an early scene that helps introduce the robotic main character, who finds a diamond ring in a ring box among the discarded trash. He looks at the ring, tosses it aside not understanding its value, but is so fascinated by the box that opens and closes that he tosses it into his lunch box to keep in his collection. Every time we ignore part of God's Word, we are tossing aside a diamond ring, not understanding its value.