The afternoon session I attended yesterday was great. It was titled Disciple-Making in a Fresh Context and I think I took more notes than I did in all of the second semester of Systematic Theology in seminary! In a nutshell, the speaker urged us to get out of the mindset that "disciples" are somehow super-Christians and to stop using the idea so sparingly to describe the "saints" of the church and begin to use it for what it really is; a descriptor of all who honestly and earnestly (and imperfectly) follow Jesus.
I was with him the whole time. Theologically and pastorally I was amen-ing right along with the rest of the group. Except for one thing. I wonder if we need a new word?
I have no particular objection to the word itself. "Disciple" is not somehow a bad word in my context and it is not objectionable on its face. But it is one of those words that carries vernacular baggage that can get heavy and even burdensome. It got me wondering if we stick to the vocabulary sometimes at the expense of the thing itself. I wonder if we sometimes lose something by sticking with the words when they have been hijacked by the culture for meanings that might not be quite so helpful.
Just think of how we hear that word "disciple" used in the world today. A few random news items:
"Larry Summers, disciple of the Phillips-curve...
"Paul is often criticized for his disciple-like adherence to the writings of Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand"
"A disciple of market economics..."
"Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, a computer whiz and disciple of Bill James..."
To be a "disciple" in our modern vernacular means simply to adhere to or subscribe to a philosophy. It is so rooted in a modernist-individualist understanding of voluntarily opting to follow one leader or idea over another that discipleship has come to mean little more than joining the parade of a person or idea. But that sort of discipleship is easily set aside. Alan Greenspan used to sit at the feet of Ayn Rand and now he has walked away.
In our modern sense, disciples come and go pretty easily. It is easy to be called a disciple of "A" one day and "B" the next.
That is not what the presentation was about yesterday. At all. We were talking (and the church needs to be talking) about discipleship in a truly biblical way; a way of living that cannot easily be set aside; that defines the very core of who we are.
If being a disciple of Jesus means something radically different than what being a disciple in the eyes of the world means, is rehab-ing the old worth it? The same could be asked about much of our vocabulary in the church. How much do we cling to the words of the faith a the expense of the faith?
We are not about to throw out the Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, but maybe we need to think about whether or not the words are standing in the way of the message.
Personally I don't care if you call me a disciple, a danish or a Dallas Cowboy fan as long as it means "defined by following Christ."
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