The Cost of Nondiscipleship

This summer, I hoped that we might be in the same space with eight different spiritual mentors—some of the greatest writers, thinkers and pray-ers of the last two thousand years—to help us think differently about our relationships with Jesus Christ. My prayer is that from these great mentors, we might see something differently about life and about our lives. Each week, we will have a packet that I’ll email or you can pick up.Each packet has readings, reflection questions and some suggested activities…but you don’t have to do any of it! But if you want to and you have the time, maybe it takes you deeper with Jesus. This week we will spend time with Dallas Willard and his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines. But first, to the Word of God!

Last fall, some of you may remember that my Dad was in a car accident. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Unfortunately, Dad’s car was totaled, so within a few days, Dad was looking for a new car. He really liked his Subaru Outback, so he wanted to get another one. He started spending time with Max at the Subaru dealership—no, I mean like they were long-lost friends. I’m pretty sure Dad had Max on speed dial. While in general I approved of this budding bromance, I felt bad for Max, having to put up with Dad calling him all the time. It was time for extreme steps: I showed Dad the Subaru website. Like all the other automakers, Subaru has this cool website where you put in the make and model you want, and it appears on the screen. Dad wanted red, so we selected red, and the car on the screen turned red. Dad wanted a cream, leather interior, and…poof! Now he could see it. He could choose all the custom trim options, and they too would appear on the screen. If he unchecked something, it went away. Oh, and they would tell you what the price would be for your dream car with all the bells and whistles. Dad liked the off-road tires and suspension, but they were a little pricey, so he took them off. Dallas Willard, in his book, The Spirit of Disciplines, suggests that sometimes we approach faith like my Dad picking the new car, “…to present [Jesus’] lordship as an option leaves it squarely in the category of the white-wall tires and stereo equipment for the new car. You can do without it.” Certainly, we are used to this way of thinking. We live in a capitalist society after all, and that’s brought us many improvements in our quality of life. But, to coin a phrase, if what you have is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. Our commercial approach to life together has us looking at everything through the lens of commercial value. That’s why “church-shopping” became a thing, right? We look for a church that meets our needs. That’s not a bad thing—having our needs met—but the problem is, we are making church revolve around us, instead of us revolving around Jesus and what Jesus wants from us. Churches get caught up in this commercial thinking too. The temptation is to think about our members as “customers” and to think about what the church offers as its “products.” That’s not a bad thing in some ways—focusing on people’s needs is something churches are meant to do—but the problem is, we are trying to be in control of the plan, instead of seeking what God wants. We may even be tempted to say, “The customer is king!” instead of “Jesus is Lord!” Ah! Interesting distinction, isn’t it? Dallas Willard points out two failings of how we often approach faith in our lives, and then he offers us some hope.

First, Willard points out that Jesus wants disciples. In His Great Commission in Matthew, Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all nations, all peoples…” What Jesus is after is not regular customers, not fans who will spread the word, but disciples, students who follow Jesus in order to learn from Him how to live. Willard laments that being that kind of student of Jesus was the ground floor for membership in the church back then. Not so now. In fact, now, even in this church, we invite people to become members who feel like this is home, and who want to learn more about how to be a disciple.

Second, Willard points out that Jesus wanted us all to teach about Him. Jesus says in Matthew, “Teach them to do everything I have commanded you.” What Jesus wants is a virtuous cycle of teaching and learning, not just attendees, not just participants, but disciples teaching and learning from disciples. When I was teaching in the Lay Ministry Training Program, one of my favorite assignments was asking students to pick a significant person from the Bible and teach us about her or him. You could tell they had to really know more and more deeply if they were going to teach it. So if someone came up to you and asked about your relationship with Jesus, sincerely wanting to know how to get closer to Him, what would you say? When one of your kids asks, “Why do we go to church?”, do you have an answer? If you don’t have an answer to these questions for yourself, perhaps this is God’s invitation to spend some time learning about faith from someone. Willard laments that most churches, including ours, don’t have a rigorous education requirement for joining. Instead, we leave it up to individuals to seek the discipleship training each of us needs. Our Monday night Bible study is great, but maybe we need to create some other ways to learn more about our faith. God calls us to be learning disciples.

In principle, I think this fellowship—our fellowship—gets it right. We approach discipleship like Jesus did. When Jesus called people, He didn’t check their resumé and call their references to see whether or not they were disciples already; Jesus simply said, “Follow me!” to the women and men who became His disciples. Did Peter, James and John, Suzanna, Joanna, Mary and the other Mary know everything about what it would mean to be Jesus’ disciple? Nope! But they knew Jesus, and they wanted to be with Him, to learn from Him how to live. Look at our passage:  It says, “They worshiped him, but some doubted.” They all worshiped, but in the midst of that, some doubted—they were still learning and growing in Jesus. So this fellowship invites people to come and worship, to see what this Jesus is all about, and to worship and serve others, even if you have doubts. We still have lots to work on and we can always get better at loving and showing grace to each other, but we recognize we all have to begin somewhere.

And Jesus didn’t require a year’s worth of discipleship class before someone could sign up. It was on-the-job training! In the same way, we recognize that we all come to following Jesus with different backgrounds and experiences, and we respect people’s undisturbed right to their own conscience, to know what they need to grow in their relationship with Jesus. So this fellowship invites people to learn more deeply about living with Jesus, but we don’t require it.

The downside of that freedom is that some of us might choose not to learn and grow. The downside of that freedom is that we might just decide we are happy with a “no frills,” á la carte version of Christianity. We can say to ourselves, “Hmmm. This week I’ll take a little community, but I’d rather not have the annoying people. Oh yes! I really like the music, but I’ll pass on the sacrificing part. I like what God says about grace, but not so much the part about giving up my favorite bad habit.” So we master being nice without actually learning how to love. We learn to feel guilt, instead of finding true freedom. So we miss out. Dallas Willard writes that, “…the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater—even when this life alone is considered—than the price paid to walk with Jesus. Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10)….The correct perspective is to see following Christ not only as the necessity it is, but as the fulfillment of the highest human possibilities and as life on the highest plane.”

This week, let’s go to school with Jesus on how to show grace. This week, let us not be satisfied with an á la carte, built-on-a-website faith, but let us seek discipleship. Can we love our enemies? Can we bless those who curse us? Can we forgive those who wrong us? Can we go the extra mile with someone who oppresses us? Can we show compassion to someone who has not earned it? Those are crazy things! Why do them? Not just because Jesus did them, but because we are trying to learn from Him how to live a life of grace. We don’t want to just know with our heads, we want to know with our hearts, to know in our bones, what it means to follow Jesus. The hope is this: Jesus promises, “Remember, I am always with you until the end of time.”