The Missing Piece of Discipleship

Some things are only learned by doing. We can go to a workshop on changing a tire. We can watch a video on how to do it, but until we’ve heard that life draining “thump-thump” telling us we have a flat tire, we may never learn how to change a tire. The process of finding the tire tool, pulling the spare out of the trunk, loosening the lug nuts and switching the tires out is a life changing moment. We all know there are things about changing tires that can’t be known until we change a tire. If we’re going to learn how to change a tire we have to actually change a tire.

The same is true for discipleship. There are certain things about following Christ that can only be learned in obedience. We have to live out the truth of Jesus’ teaching before we actually learn the depth and reality of His teaching. Jesus says if someone hits us on one cheek, we are to turn the other cheek. We are not to strike back. We are not to defend ourselves but we are to absorb the violence of our attacker and in absorbing it, we remove it from the world. Does it work? Growing up in Alabama I remember the pictures of the Civil Rights marchers going across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and being met by the police who were blocking their way.

If the marchers had responded blow for blow, there would have only been a riot. By not responding, the marchers confirmed the movement. Like I said, there are some things learned only in obedience.

Jesus understood this and emphasized the need for His followers to learn by doing when He would routinely send out His disciples for short term preaching missions. On more than one occasion, Jesus sent out the disciples to preach and heal and then come back and report to Him. Notice the pattern: listen and learn then go and do. The learning isn’t complete until the disciple can do what they have learned.

These days, everyone is emphasizing discipleship. Go to any church and you can play “discipleship bingo” by marking out phrases such as “going deeper,” “spiritual discipline,” “Bible study,” and “being in the Word.” All of these are fine and I don’t mean to make light of them, but all of us know what we’re talking about when we say “discipleship.” We’re talking about a class. We’ll meet and listen to someone teach about a passage in the Bible. We’ll discuss the passage among ourselves and try to discern what it “means for us.” Then, we’ll meet again next week, the week after that and so on. The one of us who can memorize the most trivia about the life of Jesus, is considered the most spiritual among us. Most of us approach discipleship like we’re studying for the Bible category on Jeopardy.

Jesus didn’t promise His followers that we would know more than most people. He promised we would do the same things we see Him do. What did we see Him do? Preach. Teach. Heal the sick and cast out demons. Calm the storm and walk on water.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been part of a discipleship process that included any of the above.

Discipleship begins in worship. We respond to the revelation of God in Christ to us. It may have been in the living room of our home the way it was for me or on the road to Damascus like the Apostle Paul. Wherever it was, our story begins when Jesus, the Good Shepherd, finds us. I always remind people who tell me they’ve found Jesus that Jesus wasn’t lost. We were. The good news of the gospel is Jesus finds us.

We are driven to study in an effort to understand what this revelation of God means. Who is this God who comes to us? What is He doing in our world? What do these words like “grace,” “mercy” and “love” mean? How do we live this way? Can we live this way?

As we study, we begin to understand that God is on a mission to redeem the world and restore all of creation to His original vision of wholeness. We also understand we are called to be part of that mission. Perhaps we are to take the gospel to people groups who have never heard it. Maybe we will volunteer in a free clinic. God could be calling us to reach out to the lonely and overlooked in our congregation. All of us are being sent somewhere to someone.

It’s the same practice Jesus has always used. Listen and learn. Go and do.

Sadly, most of us never discover our mission. We never partner with God in His redemptive plan. We show up on Sunday morning with nothing to celebrate and demand our worship team bring worship to us. They can’t do that. No one can bring worship to us. We have to bring our own worship. We have to show up every Sunday saying to one another, “You’ll never believe what I saw God do this past week! Let’s worship!”

When Paul says that he was convinced Jesus was able to keep him, where do you think he learned that? He learned in the Philippian prison, the struggles of Ephesus and riding out a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea. These things weren’t learned by hearing. They were learned by doing.

For most of us, we’re missing one third of the discipleship process. We don’t understand how Jesus works because we’ve never been there. We’ve read about it, but never seen it. We’ve never seen Jesus turn two fish and five loaves into a banquet for thousands because we’ve never been in a place where the need was so great and our supplies so limited…until Jesus showed up.

As disciples, we should be learning all the time. We should be in daily study of the Scriptures – as deep as we can go. Yet we should never think our training is over just because we’ve studied a lot about Jesus.

We won’t have learned the lesson until we can do it ourselves. There are things we learn about Jesus only in our obedience. Disciples are those who can do what they have seen Jesus do.

This essay was first posted in Scot McKnight’s newsletter.