Discipleship is not a program, but the core of the church
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman, November 26, 2012
Professor Larry Steven McDonald described the need for his workshop on Authentic Discipleship by quoting from Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn’t, where Stephen Prothero wrote about America: “Here faith without understanding is the standard; here religious ignorance is bliss. … Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant about religion.”
McDonald was speaking at the Truth for a New Generation 2012 Apologetics Conference, sponsored by Alex McFarland and North Greenville University, and held at First Baptist Church in North Spartanburg, S.C.
“We can have our Bibles,” McDonald said, “but our understanding is very small … We don’t even know the Ten Commandments that we affirm and really believe.”
He quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”
“You don’t see the Bible portraying two-tier Christianity,” said McDonald. “It just talks about disciples and non-disciples. Either you are or you are not. … When we embrace Christ, we embrace Him as a disciple.”
McDonald said he learned the Great Commission — Matthew 28:19-20 — as child, but understanding did not come until he read The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman.
“The Great Commission is about evangelism, but that is not all it is about and it is not the end thrust of the Great Commission,” he said.
McDonald called attention to the grammar of the verses. The verb – or the action part of the sentence – in verse 19 is “make,” so that “make disciples” is the thrust.
He then turned to the three participles, “go,” “baptizing” and “teaching.” Those participles not only support the verb, but help accomplish the verb. “In a sense, they carry that imperative command sense of the verb … As we go, baptize and teach we must do so to make disciples.”
McDonald said that Christians tend to believe the Great Commission was fulfilled when a person was led to Christ, so they went to the next unbeliever and there was no personal growth.
“If a person gives birth to a baby and then abandons that baby, we would say that is tragic,” he said. “Yet we birth people into the Kingdom as a midwife and leave them and that is tragic.”
He quoted I Peter 2:2 “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.”
Although salvation is complete, McDonald said, “it is not the end result. As Paul said, we have to work out our salvation. There has to be a growth that takes place … When we are young, we don’t understand a lot, but we should not get stuck there. We must continue to grow.”
Hebrews 5:14-6:1 says, “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God.”
Today in the church, said McDonald, “we have Christians who are still on the bottle, even though they say they have been a Christian for 10 years … sometimes pastors keep preparing those bottles … It is time for the people in our church to understand justification, sanctification, glorification, adoption.”
He said those were good words, which some translations of the Bible have watered down. “Christians need to understand these terms.”
What discipleship is not
McDonald emphasized that discipleship is not a program. “The most common mistake is turning discipleship into a curriculum that a serious disciple completes and then graduates from. The most damaging result is that churches categorize discipleship as just one of the ministries of the church, rather than the core of the ministry.”
“Discipleship is a mind set, the very core and thrust of everything we do in the church,” he said. If a ministry of the church doesn’t fit under the discipleship umbrella, then it may need to stop.
Do not, he warned, view discipleship from a production line aspect. “It is more relational. It is building a relationship with Christ and the people around us.”
McDonald said that discipleship is not just for new Christians. Even the older, more mature Christians need to be challenged and it is not just for people who like structure, he said. “Remember discipleship is not a program. When we strip down discipleship to just completing a curriculum, it becomes much less than God intended.”
What is authentic discipleship?
Using A Theology of Mark: The Dynamic Between Christology and Authentic Discipleship, by Hans Bayer, McDonald laid out eight characteristics of discipleship.
1. Surrender to God’s will, with an emphasis on cost.
Then He called the crowd to Him along with His disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Mark 8:34-37 (NIV)
Some of the church’s problems with discipleship can be traced back to problems with evangelism, he said. “We have to be careful how we evangelize … Jesus says there is a cost to following Him.”
“We are trying to market sale the church to the world – to make it more palatable for them to come in,” McDonald said. “Many preachers don’t like to talk about the cost of discipleship and following Christ.” However, Christ made no bones about it.
He said that everything Christians have and do “has to be under Christ’s Lordship. You follow Him and everything you have is His. We are just stewards. Every good and perfect gift comes from above.”
As a Christian makes a decision, he should say, “Not my will, but Thine.”
“Those are Christ’s words” in the Garden of Gethsemane as He faced the cross, said McDonald. “If he can say that then, why can’t we say that when facing a decision?”
2. Faith in God
“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:22-24 (NIV)
McDonald said that Jesus starts out with “have faith in God,” and later in the verse contrasts that with “does not doubt in his heart.”
“We have to somehow move from being fear, doubt-driven people to people who are driven by our faith,” he said. “How do we move from fear to faith? Reading the Word of God,” and he suggested the Old Testament book Habakkuk as a good
place to start.
“We have to understand God and the vastness of His character,” said McDonald, “and when we do, we can move into a faith of walking with Him.”
The prophet Habakkuk from being fearful in the beginning chapters of the book, until, in chapter 3, he is in worship of the awesomeness of God Himself. “Many of our churches,” he said, “emphasize how you can be self-fulfilled or some emphasize what you can do, and they do not have us bask in the glory of God.”
3. Prayer
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. Mark 11:25 (NIV)
Oftentimes, prayers are petitions – making a supplication before God – and that is Scriptural, McDonald said. “What is wrong is when we spend 90 percent of prayer asking God for things … Prayer is more of a communion and basking in the presence of God.”
In His own life, Jesus on many occasions pulled away from the multitudes and prayed. “It was a regular, consistent pattern in Jesus’ life,” he said.
He asked the audience, “What would it be like to get away for a day once a month or quarter and spend that day in prayer and in the Bible?”
4. Watching over the heart – the ‘good soil’
The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy.But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop — some 30, some 60, some a hundred times what was sown. Mark 4:14-20 (NIV)
The Scripture describes the different soils of the heart, said McDonald. “What is the soil of your heart like? … Our heart needs to have good soil. We need to take hard look at our heart. Is it so crowded by the things of this world that I couldn’t hear God if He was standing beside me?”
5. Humility and service like a little child
They came to Capernaum. When He was in the house, He asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus called the 12 and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” He took a little child whom He placed among them. Taking the child in His arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” Mark 9:33-37 (NIV)
“The powerful aspect of that is having humility,” he said. “Go back to where we learned humility and how to serve … we need to spend time with a child.”
6. Forgiveness
And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Mark 11:25 (NIV)
“Some of us have things in our lives that we need to deal with,” McDonald said. “We have to learn forgiveness, and the way we learn forgiveness is coming to the cross.”
He said that it was only when he began to understand the depth of his sin that he started understanding the depth of God’s forgiveness. “And when I understood that, I started understanding the depth of His love and how it extends to other people … All of us have to come through the cross.”
7. Withstanding temptation and alertness
Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Mark 14:38(NIV)
8. Confessing Christ
If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels. Mark 8:38 (NIV)
McDonald said that “when we come to Christ, we have to stand up for Him. We have to learn to speak up for Him. Words are needed. People do see Christ in our lives, but we need the words.”
He ended the workshop by advocating a new way to “keep score in the church.” Instead of counting bodies and buildings, “How many people are we sending?”
Because, McDonald said, “if you send them out, your number (in the pews) might not grow” but the number in the Kingdom will. And advancing the Kingdom of God is ultimately the role and responsibility of every authentic Christian disciple.
McDonald is the professor of Christian spirituality, dean and director doctor of ministry studies, T. Walter Brashier Graduate School of Christian Ministry, North Greenville University, Greer, S.C.