Foundations of Discipleship

🌱Seed 🙂Agree

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Importance: 10%

Quote

“Can a blind man lead a blind man?  Will they not both fall into a pit?  A disciple is not above his teacher,  but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.”

• Luke 6:39-40

Thesis

Discipleship and Christian formation is a holistic process that involves more than knowing the right things. 

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Towards an Integrated Life

What is the goal of discipleship? So often we get lost in the weeds of event planning, or the pressures of day to day ministry that taking time to reflect on the end goal of discipleship slips into the background. In our rush to do, we forget what we are meant to be.

The following discussion embodies my written thoughts on this question. Through prayer, study and continued reflection, I have become increasingly convinced that being a Christian is so much more than just knowing the right things. For after all, “Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:19).

So much of modernity has shrunk humanity down to brains on sticks.  If you just think the right things or think hard enough you can be, do, or achieve anything -  or so the sayings go. Yet we are so much more than that. Humans are unique embodied creatures.  Dependent beings living every moment from breath to breath.  Therefore, in order to understand discipleship, we must first start by grasping the Biblical description of human existence and purpose. 

This topic in and of itself could take up many pages.  It seeks the core of our existence and the purpose for living.  Things no one can quite get away from, no matter the life one may choose.  Because of this, we will use three defining moments from salvation history to anchor our description of humanity.  

The Two Commissions

The God given purpose of human living.

The Full Picture

As we pull these pieces together, the call to become a disciple of Jesus takes on flesh and bone.  To be a disciple means to be a co-creator and a lover.  A follower that answers the ancient call of the creator to live life in the Gospel. This call speaks of a compelling, even enrapturing experience and dependence on God. 

Yet this description does not always ring true in experience. Ever since the enlightenment movement of the 1800s, Lutheran education and practice has targeted the minds of its pupils.  This approach has been carried out effectively, producing generations of well informed and educated people. However, in the reduction of discipleship to the life of the mind, we have lost the bigger picture. 

This discussion has aimed to illuminate the deep seated, earthy, gut wrenching nature of the call to follow Christ. Humans are not primarily shaped by thoughts.  Some of our most foundational years of development are years we do not even remember.  Humans are rather primarily co-creators and lovers.  It is through these lenses that we seek to plan and enact future Christian discipleship. 

Discipleship as Christian Formation 

The Hebrew word to know (Yada) continues the line of anthropology we have started down. To know is to experience.  Without experience there is no true knowledge.  If this is true, and humans are primarily co-creators and lovers, then the orientation and direction of Christian instruction and practice should take on a much different shape than a data dump. But what shape is that? 

As co-creators we are physical beings connected to a physical earth.  Earthen vessels tilling and caring for the ground from which we were formed. We are connected to the rhythms of nature (just ask a teacher if they can tell when the moon is full).  We reorient and reconfigure the materials of this earth to create and build.  Our Lutheran theology prepares us nicely to understand the implications of this reality. 

We experience the means of grace bodily. The elements joined with God’s eternal words of power bring mysteries into our hands.  We taste and touch.  Not only this, but the flow of daily vocations brings us into each and every day as stewards.  Taking the relationships, jobs and duties we are given to create places of love.

As lovers we do not coldly calculate the path of greatest return. Rather we seek to usher in a world full of wonder and beauty.  In his book Desiring the Kingdom, James Smith embarks on a journey to describe what this shift in our understanding should look like as we contemplate a path for Christian formation.  

At its core, love is a desire.  As such, it is by nature aimed at a recipient. Love does not exist in a vacuum, without a subject to love, love does not exist. All humans have this base drive to love and adore something.  Sinful humanity has aimed this love toward so many abrogate entities from money and sex, to the face looking back in the mirror.  The work of Christian formation is to reorient this basic desire.  To place God back in his rightful place as the one we love with our whole being. 

Facilitating such a seismic shift within the very core of those we shepherd is no simple or small task. It is far easier to expect the regurgitation of material rather than seek experiential knowledge of the one true God. How do we help shape such primordial and precognitive portions of ourselves - much less those we shepherd?  The Process of Formation  In order to understand the tools at our disposal, we must first describe the process of formation (or malformation) we have already experienced in our lives up until this very moment. Daily living constantly puts us through a crucible of formation. We clearly see this when major events happen in life (milestones, tragedies, etc).  Yet the same forces that shape us during these major events are at work each and every day.

Returning to our description of humans as primarily co-creators and lovers, the foundational mover of a human is desire. Humans are spectacularly adept at doing what we want. We can reason, and work the environment around us so that we do what we want (often to our own detriment).  Therefore, to shape the most inner being of a believer is to change what we desire. 

A particularly convicting verse in this regard comes from Psalm 1:2 as it describes an ideal righteous life:   “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”  We often speak about being Sola Scriptura, but has that belief honestly sunk into the recesses of our being? Can any of us honestly say that we delight in God’s word so much that we think about it all the time? What would happen if our desires were shaped to be in line with this ideal?

It does not take much imagination to see that such a change would bring spectacular results not only in our lives, but the lives of our people.  The great question then becomes: How do we shape desire? It is a slippery question and one that is a constant battle within ourselves.  However, it is not a question without an answer. Continuing to pull on the work of James Smith, we can illuminate the basic mechanics of formation.  

Desires are a created part of our being. We are wired to desire good things or things we need. That definition of what we need and what is good, however, has been shaped by our experience of the world since our youngest days.  Sinful desires grow out of malformation while good and right desires grow out of healthy formation.  This process starts with communal practices (or cultural liturgies).  These are the places we go regularly, the things we do at these places, the results and commitment to these practices we see and experience as we grow up.  All of this contributes to how we see the world and what we desire. 

For example, social media has formed people.  It is a communal practice to create an account, post content, interact with others, etc. Along the way we learn to desire many things, like receiving attention from the things we post feels good.  Being ignored does not. As days go by, the communal practice of social media begins to form habits within us.  How many people scroll mindlessly on social media because it’s a habit? If you ask them why they do it, they can’t give a logical reason because it has become a part of their formation (or malformation). 

All of the habits that have been formed within us through this fulcrum of experience orient us in a direction.  They aim us toward a particular image of what a good life looks like.  For many, social media has oriented them toward a life of popularity.  The image of “what I want to be when I grow up” is a person who has millions of followers and makes tons of money off of ad campaigns. This image of life is what they desire, which reinforces habits that shape their desires, and the cycle continues.  

This chain: 

communal practice - to habit - to aim of desire - to image of a good life 

is what we seek to engage through Christian formation. We need to be in the business of constantly painting the biblical picture of human flourishing as the proper end goal, or aim, of human desire.   

We cannot, however, skip the chain and jump straight to grabbing the imagination of our people.  No matter how beautifully presented or compellingly argued the image of a good Christian life may be, without embodied practices, the chain of formation has not been properly started.  Ritual, Practice, Liturgy  If we are seeking to shape the desires of our people through embodied practices. The next question becomes: What practices are we after? Are we trying to tell people how to brush their teeth or make toast? 

While those practices do shape us to a certain extent, they are not quite the practices we are after. James K. A. Smith introduces a helpful hierarchy to understand different kinds of practices. 

•	Rituals - Everyone has rituals. Habits that happen regularly like: putting gas in the car, reading the news, etc. Anything we do regularly counts as a ritual.  

•	Practices - Out of our rituals there are a number of regular activities that rise to the level of being a practice. Athletes and musicians practice to become better at their craft. So too, our practices are aimed toward a particular goal. For example we go to work for the goal of making money. 

•	Liturgies - The most specific kind of regular activity is liturgy. Like practices, liturgies are aimed toward an end goal. They are more specific however and are aimed at the end goal of fulfilling our identity and vision of the good life. 

Liturgies are the most potent of practices. They define who we are and where we are headed. Therefore we seek to shape the liturgies of our people. Thick and Thin Habits  Another way to conceptualize the practices we are after is the idea of thick and thin habits. 

•	Thin Habits - These are habits that are not done for themselves but for some other end. For example, we pay bills to avoid being sent to a debt collector. The regular habit of paying bills doesn’t, in and of itself, affect the way we think about ourselves or our purpose in life. 

•	Thick Habits - These habits are what we are after. They bring meaning into our life and push us toward our image of an ideal life. 

Forming Thick Habits and Liturgies  As we continue to think through how we access the chain of formation and promote deep change of desire. We can turn to the liturgy we practice every Sunday. Church liturgy is a pattern for living. It carries us along on the journey of the church year. In it we receive all the good gifts of God. Sunday liturgy composes and compiles so many elements from the story of Scripture and helps us begin to practice the thick habits of faith.  

The movement of discipleship should therefore be animated and flow out from our Sunday liturgy. The thick habits of our daily life should be informed and corrected by the words and practices of Scripture. To this end, what follows is a short list of thick habits to think through bringing into our discipleship efforts:   • The Biblical rhythm of time and rest • Worship • Hospitality, community, and graced dependence  • Song and music • Pattern of law, living in the groove, freedom for good • Confession and Grace • Baptism • Creed • Prayer • Communion • Offering • Witness and Confession • Scripture, Sermon, Storytelling • Doing good and Service • Lament and Grieving • Creativity, Imagination, and Future Making • Vocation in daily life to creation, neighbor, and family • Blessing  • Reading and study Move Away from Scholarship to Discipleship  To summarize, the end goal of discipleship is about forming and shaping the deepest levels of our heart in ways only the Holy Spirit can.

“If Scholarship is the goal of discipleship, then we end up with scholars who make more scholars who know right answers. If joining Jesus is the goal of discipleship, then we end up with disciples who make more disciples who participate in the redemption and restoration of all things.”