“We teach a man to come to church three times a week so he can come and learn to come to church three times a week.”
That’s how a friend described how discipleship works all too often.
What do you think of the description?
The Kitchen of Half-Baked Thoughts
YES! That’s precisely how it works. People learn to do what they’re encouraged to imitate.
I do agree that even when we do a great job with those initial Bible studies and helping people commit their lives to Christ, we sometimes seem to forget about them after their baptism. We all have to learn the disciplines of living like Christ, daily Bible study, prayer, and so forth. You can’t just pick up a habit when you don’t even know you’re supposed to! So we should keep studying with new Christians and encourage them to study and speak with the Father on their own too. I read a while ago the suggestion that new Christians should be encouraged to be assistant Bible teachers in children’s classes (I can’t remember where I heard that, though). I think that’s a great way to encourage their involvement, to show the importance of teaching others about Christ, and to help them learn the stories we consider fundamental.
I’d say your friend is a very wise observer.
I’m not trying to pick on Lisa but her observation reveals the heart of the problem…we seek to baptize first which is only about personal salvation and as a result, baptism has often been reduced to a ticket to heaven (used in the same way Evangelicals use the ‘sinner’s prayer’). Only after a person has been baptized do we try and teach them about discipleship. This is wrong!!! The “great commission” places discipleship as a prerequisite for baptism. And despite the oft misreading of the conversion narratives in Acts that leave us thinking everyone in the early church was baptized quickly, there is good extra-biblical evidence to show that the early church (pre-Constitinian) placed discipleship as a requirement prior to baptism. A helpful book on this is the late Robert Webber’s “Ancient Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith Forming Community.”
Grace and peace,
Rex
Rex,
I’m far from an expert on the Greek, so feel free to correct me on this. Looking at Matthew 28:19-20, I see: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
What I read is: Make disciples by baptizing them and teaching them to obey.
I’m not arguing that we do things in that order (which I’ve actually heard taught… we baptize, then we teach). But I think conversion and teaching are part of becoming disciples.
That said, our goal is making disciples, not just baptizing.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
Tim, I am far from an expert on Greek too:-) but here is my explination. The imperative in Matt 28.19 is “make disciples” and baptism is a condition of this imperative. There is certainly continued teaching needed after a person has been baptized but the imperative is certainly to make disciples.
I don’t have any commentaries in front of me at the moment but it is interesting that the “go” and “make disciples” are both in the aorist tense (past) while “baptizing” and “teaching” are present tense. Neverthelss, the imperative is to make disciples and that, as I understan, means baptism cannot simply be about receiving personal salvation but also is about one committment to live in submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The later assumes then that the person being baptized has been taught about what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus and accepts such demands.
It is interesting that in Romans 6, the Apostle Paul points back to baptism when asking about why the Christians would consider a continued living in sin. Their baptism is where they died to such a life…in other words, at that point they understood the demands (and promises) of living a life of discipleship and chose to surrender (die) their life in exchange for a resurrected life in Jesus Christ.
I am not trying to suggest that the process leading up to baptism must be an extensively long process but in a culture where many live out of a thoroughly secular world view and where many Christians have reduced the Christian life to mere church attendance, we need to take the imperative of “make disciples” as a condition/prerequisite of baptism in a more serious manner.
Grace and peace,
Rex
Rex, I definitely believe that we’ve failed to teach biblical repentance. I think that’s one of the keys, the whole “turn your back on one thing and move toward another.” Romans 6 is saying that baptism makes no sense if repentance is not involved. Why start a new life if its going to be just like the old one?
Sounds like we’re in grammatical agreement. I think teaching and baptizing go hand in hand as a condition of the imperative “make disciples.” I’m not sure of your age, whether you would have known much about the so-called Boston Movement (now ICOC). They certainly had their flaws, but one of their great strengths was the emphasis on discipleship.
Have you read Juan Carlos Ortiz’ book Disciple? It’s a great book, even if it is older than my marriage.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
I have never heard of the book by Ortiz’ but I do remember the controversey over the what was then the Boston/Cross-Roads movement. The church I was raised in had a couple of members that left for that. In some areas, there are Churches of Christ still fearful of the word “discipleship” because of that issue.
And I think you are right about repentance. Biblical discipleship assumes a life of repentance and Acts 2.38 assumes that those being baptized are also in repentance. In fact, I recently read a theological blog that suggested that act of being baptized was symbolically the repentance Peter was commanding. I thought that was an interesting take on that verse.
Grace and peace,
Rex
Absolutely love the quote! There is more truth to it than I want to admit.
I am enjoying the discussion on discipleship. It seems that we have diminished discipleship to an event, program or the latest seminar instead viewing it as an ongoing, life-long process. Discipleship is not simply about learning a few habits and traditions or obeying all of the right rules. It is a dynamic process. It requires that a person constantly seeks after Christ and strives to reveal Christ in an ever-changing culture.
Rule keeping is safe. Discipleship is dangerous.
I agree Guys, err Brethren. :)
Baptism w/o repentance is worthless.
No one has mentioned, but I’m not surprised, the “gift” of the Holy Spirit!
I sure wish we all could grasp the importance of NOT TEACHING THIS!
It is how we are set FREE from LEGALISM!
That may explain why so many of us are!
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
Walk by the Spirit
16But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
LOL I reread it and can PLAINLY see why we don’t teach it!
Why it would condemn 2/3rds of our own brotherhood.
Grace and peace Clay
Tim,
This is brilliantly insightful. i’ve thought for a while that our basic litmus test for faithfulness has been attendance. i’ve even heard a preacher refer to someone as “faithful” when he was clearly referring to nothing more than their attendance. How do we break out of that criteria and into more mature measurements? How do we take something like, say, personal spiritual disciplines and inculcate those into the minds of people in the pews as evidence of faithfulness rather than mere attendance?
–guy
H Clay McCool,
I agree that discipleship is impossible w/out the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. How that works from the beginning point in which a non-believing curious seeker begins to pursue Jesus to the point where they are a baptized believer continuing to pursue Jesus is somewhat of a mystery to me. I do know that 1) Jesus promised (in the Gospel of John) that the Holy Spirit would work to convict the world and 2) it is clear in the book of Acts that the church, like Jesus, lived and operated upon the power of the Holy Spirit.
Grace and peace,
Rex
That quote is, sadly, often the norm.
Discipleship is learning to die daily.
discipleship is impossible without a person seeking to get answers to questions about Christianity. I sat next to a Hindu who was a college student on a flight home from D.C. I asked him if he attended temple.
He said he was not a practicing Hindu but he wasn’t interested either in Christianity. A college buddy wanted him to learn about Christianity.
His dad a cardiologist in Bethesda Md. He is extremely intellligent comes from an educated family but has no interest in the Christian belief system. In this diverse world it is extremely difficult to do what the disciples were told to do. As we all know it took the apostle Paul to get the message out finally. To define a successful pattern for discipleship is like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. What the pattern that was established 2000 years ago is pretty hard to copy, in this complex and diverse world, in my opinion…………
“As we all know it took the apostle Paul to get the message out finally.”
That’s not exactly what is in the New Testament. Paul’s contribution was extremely important, but the gospel was announced long before Paul was converted.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer