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How do we make faithful disciples? Heather, Tara and JR. investigate several models of discipleship and evaluate how approaches to making disciples have shifted in the last few decades. We share what discipleship looks like in our own contexts, and what we’re working on in the future.
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1:00 – What is Discipleship?
7:00 – Information vs. Transformation
20:00 – The Limits of Belief
35:00 – Spiritual Formation
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InAllThings Charity - November 9, 2015
What is Discipleship?
How do we make faithful disciples? Heather, Tara and JR. investigate several models of discipleship and evaluate how approaches to making disciples have shifted in the last few decades. We share what discipleship looks like in our own contexts, and what we're working on in the future.
From Series: "In All Things Charity Season 1"
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12 replies on “What is Discipleship?”
Thanks for this Podcast. A lot of good information regarding discipleship that can be transformational if we allow the Spirit to form us through it. 🙂 Love the “hidden track” after the closing song. The three legs of sensibility, accountability, and responsibility are a helpful way to approach a wholistic discipleship. I think it is often the case that we get stuck in just one, possibly two, of the three. But when we do that, our embodiment of Jesus is not whole, but fractured.
What do you think about coinciding orthodoxy w/Sensibility, orthopathy w/accountability, and orthopraxy w/responsibility?
I can’t speak for Tara or Heather, but I like it! The language is helpful.
Also, glad you enjoy the podcast 😀 Thanks for listening and engaging!
Hey Emman! Sorry I didn’t see this comment earlier; we actually talked all about it on Episode 7 today! I think you’ve got the framework exactly right, though I personally tend to avoid the “ortho” language specifically. Let us know what you think of the discussion!
Hey Tara! Yeah, I am just trying to connect thoughts and ideas with various forms of language into a framework. Just so I am not assuming. Is your aversion to the “ortho” language because it is not “lay-friendly” or because defining “right” can be difficult or something else?
Well, I’ve come to think of language as extremely important for its creative–or destructive–capacity. So with various important terminology, I tend to ask myself: does this create, of God’s people, a centered-set or a bounded-set? A centered set is a group which stays in a certain area because they’re inspired or fed by the same thing… like sheep around a deep well. A bounded-set is a group which stays in a certain area because the boundaries won’t let them out. As you can imagine, I think one is healthier than the other.
When it comes to “ortho” language, I get claustrophobic. I’m not completely firm in this, but I THINK that what I hear there is bounded-set language. We have a “right” way of doing this, and everyone should get in line, no questions asked. I’m open to the possibility that I’m taking this too far–because language is obviously subjective and communally formed–but I think that’s what’s latent in those terms.
But as we learned in the podcast, J.R. doesn’t have any of that baggage. So I’m willing to discuss this–and I deeply respect your understanding of what language does in people. So what do you see here?
I completely understand your points and agree that “right” language can, and is often “unrightfully” used to, bind people. I think though that “right” language can be centring (Aussie spelling 🙂 ) rather than binding if it is expressed in the context of grace. There is indeed a right Way, Truth, and Life we are called to be inspired to centre our lives around. I think the importance of our discipling role is to ensure that people are truly inspired to gather around that right way for the right reasons. When we gather people around a certain right way to think, act, and relate to one another it needs to be done in a way that embraces, encourages, and empowers people to do so out of a grateful response to the grace and love of God. That is the inspiration that I think of when you used the word “inspired” above. If people are fed and inspired by God’s love and grace toward a grateful response to follow the right Way, Truth, and Life then that is truly liberating rather than binding. But if we as pastors disciple people toward the right way through shame, guilt, and fear then that is indeed oppressive and binding and does not involve the genuine freedom that Jesus offers us. So I guess I am saying that I understand your hesitation because of the damage that has been done and is being done by pastors and lay leaders using the wrong means of guiding people to the right way. At the same time I think that it is important that we not give up on using the right means to inspire people to centre their lives around the right way. When the right way to think, act, and relate (I would put all that under loving God and people) is liberated by the grace and love of God it is no longer rigid and binding, but centring. Thoughts?
I definitely see what you’re getting at, but I’m not sure I see in Jesus’ ministry so much an emphasis on the “right” way of living as an emphasis on being freed from bondage. The bondage doesn’t seem to me to be so much “You’re doing this wrong!” as it is “This is killing you.” To me, then, the language of right/wrong feels automatically guilt/shame inducing. To center someone around the “right” way of living still seems a bit off the tree of the knowledge of good & evil. Instead, to center someone around the “free” way of living feels a lot more like the biblical language that I find most inspiring.
Honestly, I’m not just trying to be pedantic. The more I think on it, the more I think this gets at the heart of what we’re doing here as pastors. If we believe our jobs are to get people to think-right/feel-right/behave-right, then I’m pretty sure ministry is going to be both frustrating and abusive. I really appreciate you helping me think through this, because I’m beginning to believe our language forms what we actually do, regardless of what we intend to do. So maybe using the language of “right” itself actually causes us to become authoritarian. Could that be possible?
Yay! just listed to this (didn’t realize you guys had cranked so many episodes out so quickly, so I’ve got some catching up to do!) Thanks for plugging Crouch’s Culture Making at the end, as I have a copy of that book but haven’t read it yet. Guess I need to get on it!
P.S. JR and Heather, I haven’t read Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together” either – I have yet to develop much of an interest in Bonhoeffer. I mean, I’m more inclined to come around to him than somebody like CS Lewis or Francis Schaeffer, but I have to fight against a general aversion to the kinds of popular or “big name” (so-called) “theologians” that evangelicals flock to… and, for better or worse, Bonhoeffer is one of them. So there’s my confession. 🙂
SO GLAD we aren’t the only ones 😀
Andy Crouch is my Spirit Animal.