It’s not uncommon for someone to say on this blog, or to find it at another website, or even to hear it from students or pastors: “I’m into discipleship.” Well, so am I, but what do we mean by this? Two basic approaches, and then a third:
First, for some it means practicing the spiritual disciplines. The Christian life is about developing discipleship from the inside-out, and the place to begin is with the classic disciplines. Such folks read the Bible, pray, practice solitude, fast, and meditate. It’s about transformation through the graces of the disciplines.
A second approach is to enter into a life of discipleship by reading, mastering and being mastered by the Sermon on the Mount. A disciple for this group is someone who is radically committed to the moral vision of Jesus — it’s about following Jesus and letting his vision become ours.
Jon Lunde, a friend and former student and now a professor, writes a new book and refocuses this conversation. Instead of focusing on spiritual disciplines or the Sermon on the Mount, Jon Lunde focuses on who Jesus is and lets discipleship flow from the identity of Christ in the covenant context of the Bible. The questions he’s asking are about Jesus as Servant (grace) who is also King (demand). Both are shaped by the covenant God has made with us.
He’s now written this up in a really fine textbook-ish kind of book called Following Jesus, the Servant King: A Biblical Theology of Covenantal Discipleship (Biblical Theology for Life).
Discipleship is not just demand, which too often happens if we don’t see the Sermon on the Mount in context; and it is not just sitting happy on top of a boatload of grace. Instead, there is a covenant, and that covenant shapes the whole idea of discipleship, leading Jon Lunde to this:
Covenantal discipleship is learning to receive and respond to God’s grace and demand, which are mediated through Jesus, the Servant King, so as to reflect God’s character in relation to him, to others, and to the world, in order that all may come to experience this same grace and respond to this same demand.
“…so as to reflect God’s character in relation to him, to others, and to the world.” In recent years, doing life with and around other Christ-followers who are farther along (or not as far along) the path than I am has become a big part of learning (and teaching) that. Where do “naturally discipling friendships” (a phrase from Alan Hirsch) come in? This has proven to be one of the best ways (in addition to other “spiritual disciplines”) I have found of learning and demonstrating loving God and loving others.
Sounds a bit like the Coventant Discipleship I learned from David Lowes Watson some 20 years ago. BTW, I don’t think those categories need to be mutually exclusive through we probably tend to major on one side or the other.
Maybe it’s me, but discipleship is a massive blank spot on my radar, and–with the exception of the writings on spiritual disciplines–it seems a blank spot in most contemporary literture. All the pictures of discipleship that come to my mind are wholly unattractive, but as a church planter this has become a primary question to which I am getting very few good answers.
I picked Lunde’s book up last week, but I would *love* more suggestions from you all on other good books addressing discipleship!
For many in the world affected by Dawson Trotman: Navigators, Campus Crusade and many spin-offs: “discipleship” is a nearly equivalent word to “mentorship/mentor discipleship.” In my experience, the disciplines and moral vision approaches equally apply, with the teleios of being “like Jesus” in character.
The context of this is a one to one relationship, typically older to younger. And I’ve been a big advocate of setting up a limited “discipleship covenant” to do this under: one that contains mutual committments from both parties (such as to pray), the largest of which is to “stay in it” as it gets tough (though usually for a set period of time: say a year).
To the extent that “covenant” includes the idea of “commitment” – the mentor discipleship model seems to align with this really nicely.
I like Tom Wright’s idea in After You Believe that we are to become people of “the goal”. In the present time we are to practice the habits of the heart which shape us into the truly humans God intended us to be. This incorporates the disciplines, the sermon on the mount and the covenant as well.
What I am calling “covenantal discipleship” has, as far as I can tell, nothing in common with what David Lowes Watson taught. Until I read Jerry’s comment, I had never heard of Watson. But after doing a bit of poking around, I learned that his use of “covenant” has to do with accountability in discipleship partnerships. What I do in my book is lay out the covenantal framework that has characterized God’s relationship with humanity throughout history, demonstrating that Jesus is the fulfillment of this pattern. On the one side, the covenants are always grounded in and sustained by grace. On the other side, this grace always gives rise to the demand of righteousness. As the Servant, Jesus is the fulfillment of the grace of the covenants; as the king, he declares the fulfillment of the demand side. When we think of discipleship to Jesus, then, we must realize that we are in covenant with God (in the New Covenant) and are to live in relation to Jesus according to these two roles. Understanding this reality allows us to answer the three big questions regarding discipleship that I raise in the book–the Why, the What, and the How questions.