Discipleship and the Church

In my junior year in college I began preaching every Sunday. As a returned missionary kid from the Middle East, I experienced some reverse culture shock. One shock was the discovery that people had said “yes” to church and were very loyal to its traditions, but their “yes” to be a disciple of Christ appeared weak. The opposite might be more common today. The deeper we go into being a “heritage” church, where very few members are first generation Christians, the more attention we need to give to discipleship. It cannot be assumed.

Church leaders and Christian educators can easily assume discipleship and “move on” to deeper aspects of spiritual formation. I’ve been blessed with more than a decade of Christian education as a student but remember very little training in discipleship or disciple making. As a professor for more than 30 years I have also assumed that all the study of the Bible and related topics would make us better disciples. We need to be more intentional.

Every culture in the world provides a language and values system through which the Gospel of Christ can be communicated, in which one can become a disciple, and where the church can thrive. It will always cost something. In the East and global South, folk religion and the grip of collectivistic societies challenge the values of discipleship. The consumerism, modernity, and secularism of the West challenge the sacrifice and obedience necessary for true discipleship. A deceptive view of sin undermines the power of grace and will not make healthy disciples. In The Cost of Discipleship (1963), Dietrich Bonhoeffer emphasized the vital relationship between grace and discipleship.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which one must knock . . . (1963:46).