Discipleship in the future
Submitted by andyg on 26 May, 2004 - 16:50.
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the question I’m interested in engaging with on the conference is how do we disciple or what does/will discipleship look like the future people of God? Radical discipleship is much harder to do these days. I wonder if this in part due to problems with the way we present the gospel, an over-emphasis of justification over sanctification (to use the theological terms). How do we take seriously the call to follow Jesus in a consumer culture. Tom Wright’s work rightly goes back to heart of Jesus’ message: kingdom of God - how does that look and what does that mean for today’s emerging church?
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tags:
Emerging Church... dissenting church
Thanks for your post Andy. I think it raises a crucial issue for the emerging church. Evading the accusation of simply moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic (or similar metaphors!) is crucial. If all the emerging church succeeds in doing is to create just another grouping within the streams, then I suggest it has failed in fully grasping the opportunities that God has presented to it.
Creating life-long disciples, apprentices, followers of Jesus, must be a key goal. For me, Doug Paggitts work at Solomon’s Porch in Minnesota is a helpful contribution. Dallas Willard’s subversive ‘Divine Conspiracy’ is superb. Stuart Murray’s ‘PostChristendom’ is an excellent analysis of where we have come from and the challenges that are faced as we move forward.
Perhaps the emerging church faces the key challenge of what it means to be the dissenting church in the 21st century?
Dissenting from what exactly?
Edward, I’m half-way through Post-Christendom at the moment and enjoying it very much - despite the low but persistent background drone of an anabaptist axe being ground. I’m curious to know where it’s leading. Meanwhile, for the sake of clarification, in your view what would the emerging church be ‘dissenting’ from? As you say, the question of what ‘radical’ will look like in the emerging church is crucial and potentially one that could open up an early fault line in this new movement.
dissent v. assent
I too wonder what we need to dissent from? Isn’t discipleship a matter of assenting to something? My impression is that the difficulty with regard to discipleship today is to get us to assent to the Lordship of Jesus in our lives, both individually and corporately. So the question is what radical thing the gospel of Jesus is calling us to do in our western, post-modern context and are we ready for the sacrifice that might entail (“take up you cross and follow me”)? Some aspects of emerging church seem to have that sacrificial edge, and the lesson I learn from this is that we need each other as a challenge and provocation to live radically. Different expression of church might be radical in different ways, so I am not sure that we need uniformity here. We do need humility to learn from each other though.
Meric
Gospel - Mission - Discipleship
some agreement and something to add - can i point you to my post on The Gospel & Mission discussion