Called to Discipleship (I)

At the end of this summer, the book Called to Discipleship will be published by Langham Publishing, the translation of the Romanian edition published in 2019. 

A summary of the first two chapters of the book, which was presented at the TCM & FTB 2023 Conference, Austria, is accessible here in two posts to announce the release of this book.

1. The Need to Reconsider Discipleship

Regarding the question why is important to reconsider discipleship today, two answers could be brought into discussion. The first one has to do with the dynamics of today’s society which is beginning to turn more and more towards the practice of discipleship. The second relates to Christian spirituality, which is in crisis and needs to return to the mandate left by Jesus to his believers to disciple all nations, and to understand discipleship as the Christian way of life in this world.

Today’s society tends to focus on relationships, small communities, and elements of local culture at the expense of the importance of institutions and traditional ways to express Christian faith. The social context is highly fragmented and tends to favor a focus on well-defined needs of particular groups of people. Despite a constant reaction to eclesial authority and tradition, Postmodernity represents a new opportunity for discipleship. In today’s demanding societal contexts, such as universities or corporations, the value of discipleship has been widely recovered. The results of this practice have been well studied by specialists and disseminated in the public space, stimulating also some local Christian communities to reconsider their own dynamics according to this paradigm. Christianity is challenged to manifest itself in this context where it can only prevail through authentic models and attractive experiences, not through institutional mechanisms. Discipleship offers the chance to develop a qualitative Christian life that can be presented as a gift to this complex world. 

In nowadays Churches, the practice of discipleship is an option of a small number of believers, being found particularly in monastic circles or in more recent Christian communities which borrow many aspects from the dynamics of social and economic organizations. The inertia of religious institutions continues to show its effects through resistance to change in front of these new challenges. Christian religious leaders are mostly focused on having large numbers of members attending public services, but without making discipleship a priority or an important tool of spirituality. However, Christian identity today is challenged to respond to a mechanism which is no longer, as in the past, based entirely on tradition, religious activism, and large-scale community projects.

Before being a religion, Christianity is a community of people who have decided to follow Jesus Christ, to be his disciples in the world. At the heart of this endeavor is the disciple’s desire to be like his master, and the teacher’s dedication to support this effort without reservation. Jesus Christ left the church with a very clear mandate to disciple all nations (Matt 28:18– 20). It is clear from history, however, that this instruction was not always followed by Christians. Although the Church has grown in numbers over the centuries, the way of discipleship has always suffered, especially after Christianity became the accepted religion in the Roman Empire. 

Discipleship is an ancient practice found in philosophy, religious, and military. The basic idea is to help someone get started in a particular field of life. The biblical term mathetuo (to make disciples) has several meanings. One broad meaning is to make followers of Jesus by preaching the gospel (Acts 14:21). Strictly speaking, the term refers to a whole process, such as that described in Matthew 28:19–20, involving several stages: calling, conversion, baptism, teaching, and being sent into the world. Basically, this approach implies retracing the same path that Jesus, in his ministry on earth, followed with his disciples. In the New Testament, being a Christian means to be a disciple (Acts 11:26), to assume the condition of one who follows Jesus Christ, who is willing to accept him as Lord and teacher, as master and authority in all areas of life. 

Jesus did not call us to a new religion or a new philosophy, but to follow him and carry forward his mission. This is why, discipleship is a way of life, a complete existence. In the same time, Christian spirituality is to be understood as discipleship, that is an experience of life which involves assuming the values and principles given by Jesus Christ. It is the experience of a complex journey, the adventure of humanity’s return to God in an economy of salvation and fulfilment together with the whole creation (Eph 1:10). 

Reconsidering discipleship requires an effort to evaluate this experience as we find it in the Scripture, in the life and mission of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Mark teaches us that the Son of God has essentially done three things in his mission: he proclaimed the gospel, taught people, and healed the sick and came to the aid of those in need (Mark 1:21–45). Christ’s disciples are called to do all this in the context of today’s world. Discipleship is not just about striving to be religious beings, people who participate in religious activities, but who assume and express Christian identity in all that they are and do every day. As disciples of Christ, we are called to carry out the mission entrusted to us, through a genuine and transformative engagement in profession and social life, in family and local religious community, in politics and arts. 

2. Discipleship in the Context of Authority

Regarding the attempt to develop a conceptual framework for discipleship, a way to do it is to use the concept of authority as a platform that can bring together the Christian understanding of the human being (which is the anthropological dimension of this framework) and the incarnation of the Son of God (which is the Christological one). After presenting some conceptual guidelines, we will underline several implications for Christian spirituality from a biblical perspective. 

2.1. The Anthropological and Christological Foundation of Discipleship

Within this framework, we define discipleship as an experience in the context of authority. But authority is a fundamental principle of human existence. The etymology of auctoritas indicates that authority is what makes one grow and develop (1 Cor 3:7). In Christian anthropology, it is accepted that becoming and change are constitutive of human nature. It is about a continuous process of transformation leading to the human purpose or destiny. According to Christian revelation, the dynamism of human life is aimed at union with God, humans being created to share in divine goodness, in communion with the divine persons for eternity (Eph 1:10). 

Authority makes possible this process of becoming and demands a mutual relationship between the one who becomes and the other who makes possible the process of change possible. On the one hand, human persons accept that the source of their lives is the creator and that without a constant and solid relationship with him, they cannot have life, being, and movement (Acts 17:28). On the other hand, divine persons recognize human beings as persons involved in a process of transformation to become like Christ (Eph 4:13). God relates to humans not only because of his creative work, but also as persons whom he loves and wants to become his children for eternity. This means that authority relationship is only validated in the space of freedom (Gal 4:6, 7). The human being is transformed into the likeness of God by exercising his or her own freedom (2Cor 3:17–18). However, the relations in this dynamic of authority are asymmetrical. It is God who holds the authority and he is the source of all becoming. Human beings define their identity and the normality of their existence to the extent that they remain in a relationship of obedience and total dependence on their creator. Maintaining these coordinates implies that human beings remain within the limits of their own freedom and destiny. This type of relationship does not, however, cancel out the possibility of love and interpersonal communion. Moreover, the fullness of relationship between the creator and human beings has a strong foundation in the incarnation of the Son of God. 

Danut Jemna