Disciples are not born, they're taught.
And children are not adults, they too are taught. I'm currently reading a book about parenting and finished the chapter on giving too many choices. The basic premise revolves around parenting appropriately to developing abilities, understanding, age, and moral judgment. In this chapter, the authors deal with the ever-present temptation to give too much freedom to a child who is not ready to handle it. I'm sure those of us who are parents remember, or experienced today, struggling with a child who wants certain things, done a certain way, and in their own time- whether or not their parents have given another instruction. Sometimes as parents, it's simply easier, less conflict-ridden, to give into the daily whims and desires of our children. Does it really matter that Justice wants cow's milk instead of almond milk even though I've already poured almond milk? If we think of the way children develop over time, it really becomes less about the immediate choice and more about training our child to listen, growing into a more mature use of freedom, and teaching against the grain of a culture addicted to personal freedoms and choice. More than likely, a child lashing out, throwing a tantrum, and repeatedly saying 'no,' has learned these bad habits over time and their perspective must change.
If you've spent any time getting to know Joy and I or read about our work on this blog, then you know we are quite passionate about discipleship. And this doesn't sound unique or different or more radical than any other church. Most churches will express a desire to make disciples, because it's in scripture. But when I look around the Christian landscape and do a subjective survey of the state of Christian discipleship, I think most Christians bend toward 2-year old tantrums, addicted to personal freedom and choice, and treat the church like parents who merely make suggestions for Christian living. There exists no new alternative, no changed perspective, no un-learning of bad habits and re-learning of new ones. We think people will become disciples randomly by rubbing shoulders with enough 'good' people. It seems to me that a disciple of Jesus has come about more by accident (or perhaps by the Spirit's continual pursuit) than by building a culture of discipleship in which believers commit to one another in grace, love, and mutual submission (what the church ought to be).
But we've all experienced and witnessed low levels of commitment and high levels of church shopping. How can you re-train someone (a process that takes time) if they're not around long enough, or only commit to showing up once a week, to break free from the old way of doing things?
I'm also currently reading through Starting Missional Churches in which the authors combine many of the benefits from the church planting movement with the keen insights from the missional movement of the last decade. They note the detriment to churches of the rise of the self-proclaimed individual through enlightenment thinking and consumeristic practices. They write, "Too often Protestant splitting [when individuals or groups leave a church] is tied (unconsciously) to believing that a church is a set of commodities to be consumed. When churches focus on their own preferences and their assumptions about other shoppers, we fall into deadly traps of our consumer culture and nobody wins- neither the church nor the neighborhood." Or put another way, the child gets what he/she wants, but its detrimental to their own development. In Ephesians, Paul talks of some being like infants, tossed back and forth by every whim of teaching. Rather, we are to grow up into the kind of love fitting for those who follow Jesus.
Notice that for the church, it isn't necessarily about itself; it exists for the sake of the health of the community for which it is a part. If the members of the church cannot practice a core principal of "Unity" (just read Ephesians), then the neighborhood surely notices and will not benefit from the church's presence- and mission is destroyed. Like a child whose perspective needs to be altered through preventative measures, so also Christians must move away from consuming spirituality and move toward committing to one another through the daily grind of life.
If we as Christians are fixed upon our own desires, go to church to 'be fed,' or walk away at the hint of conflict, then we will not grow into the full maturity of Christ. If I'm unable to place my life underneath the story of Christ's death (a story of giving up power), I will continue to fall to other stories of greed or violence or selfishness or hatred and I will destroy community. To be a disciple is to give up all the stories of the world for the one enacted in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. That story creates reconciliation, produces love, and teaches grace (the exact elements I wish my children to embody). And when the church looks like that, it won't take long for our neighbors to take notice and want be a part of it.
