The Question of Discipleship

Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity ...  And God permitting, we will do so.

                       (Heb.6:1-2)

He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.

(Col.1:28)

One of the most sobering fields of study in the history of the Church is the demise of Christianity in North Africa in the 6th and 7th centuries.  What had been a thriving and virulent Church for centuries, giving rise to immense theologians whose writings continue to shape the Church even today (Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Augustine etc.), was in the end incapable of withstanding the corruption from within and the Caliphate from without.  The period stands as a warning against complacency and the presumption that the grace of God in Christ precludes His removing a Church’s ‘candlestick’ (Rev.2:5). 

Interestingly, one of the contributing factors was the gradual disappearance of the Catechumenate.  Church leaders were exhausted from generations of contending for the faith against Donatism (the debate about whether Christians - and especially Church leaders - could be re-admitted to Church life if they denied Christ in times of persecution) and Arianism (Arius taught that Jesus wasn’t ‘true Godf rom true God’, but was part of creation), and their ranks depleted by years of persecution and more recently invasion.   Feeling besieged, they lost their fiercely intentional programme of evangelism, initiation and discipleship that had been crafted over the centuries previous.  As the Catechumenate fell into disuse, the Church was weakened and expectations of discipleship were eroded.  People began to feel that it was OK to simply join Church, often without going through what had become known as ‘the awe-inspiring rites of initiation’.  As the foundations of discipleship were stripped away, the edifice of the Church slowly lost stability, and was unable to stand in the face of corrosive and unbiblical theology on the one hand, and in midst of a collapsing culture and the rise of Islam on the other.

Of course, it wasn’t just the initial process that had been lost.  It was the whole experience of being grafted meaningfully into the life and mission of the Church, it was the foundations of an informed faith, it was training in Christian living, the expectation and vision of growth.  It was the network of relationships and fellowship that was cultivated in those early years, and the scaffolding that would support and shape a lifetime of spiritual maturing that we can barely imagine at the moment.

Some of you know I spent a few days in North Africa a few summers ago.  I spent two of those days in the company of two Church leaders.  The conversations and time spent in prayer with them inspired and challenged me in equal measure.  This is where I first encountered the idea of such a rigorous start to Christian discipleship.  Intriguingly they had re-established a three year ‘induction programme’, and were breath-takingly realistic about its importance: ‘if you don’t complete that programme, we’ll lose you’.

One effect of such an enthusiastic start to the Christian life is that it creates a spirituality of expectation.  A trajectory is set which will continue to guide aspiration and hunger throughout our earthly race.  We end up with a clear vision for growth and the tools to pursue our heart’s desire for Christlikeness.  Discipleship becomes a life-long passion.  We don’t grind to a halt after a three-year induction…  that induction becomes a Launchpad into the rest of our Christian life.  Obviously, the Catechumenate can’t provide a context for that. 

The danger we must avoid is trying to force everything into our gathering on the Lord’s Day… unless we are willing to set aside the whole day!  But the agenda for the Service of Divine Worship is structured around preaching and sacrament.   Unfortunately, for over half of those involved in the life of MIE, Sunday is their only point of contact with the worshipping life of the Church.  And the stats suggest they don’t make that contact every Sunday.  This is the path to spiritual atrophy.  We can’t possibly learn everything we need to know, cultivate the fellowship, or receive the support and encouragement, example and incentive to live faithfully as a disciple of Christ simply by turning up to a service on Sunday.  We can’t expect a sermon to deliver everything we need.  It is the start of a conversation that must run beyond the Service.   Sunday is a great first step…  indeed a normally necessary one.  But the idea that this would be the extent of our involvement in the life of our church, and that we would have any real expectation of making spiritual progress is ludicrous, and has gone unchallenged for far too long in the British Church.

Questions:

What do you not understand about Church? Are things said/done in services, or elsewhere in our life together, and you’re not sure why, or what they mean? What are they?

What is there about being a Christian that you struggle to put into practice?  What help have you sought to address those places where you struggle?

If you had to explain to someone how living their life would have to change if they became a Christian, what would you say? 

Read Heb.10:19-39

What is the ‘hope we profess’ (v.23)?  What might distract us from it, or cause us it to slip from our grasp?

Can you share your experience of ‘spurring one another on towards love and good deeds’ (v.24)?  Where has this been welcomed / rejected?  Is this part of you experience of Fellowship Group?  How could it be more so?

Why is the ‘habit of meeting together’ (v.25) so difficult to sustain? 

How can we have any spiritual confidence after reading vv.26-31?  How would you counsel someone at MIE who was afraid they had sinned deliberately? 

What does it means to ‘trample the Son of God underfoot’ or to ‘treat as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant’ (v.29)?  …and that ‘the Lord will judge His people (v.30)?  Does it change how you think about being a Christian?

Would you be willing to have your home confiscated because of your identification with and involvement with the Church (v.32-34)?  If you knew this was a possibility, how would it change your relationship with others at MIE?

What would it look like to ‘shrink back’ (vv.38-39)?  Does this passage leave you feeling unsure about whether you are a Christian?  Do you think that this the purpose of the passage?

Memory Passage:

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand.  In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!  Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.  But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Heb.5:11-14

For further reflection:

So where does such long-term disciple-making take place, if not (exclusively) in the Sunday service?  It occurs within a matrix of relationships that is focussed on our Fellowship Groups.  We must resist the temptation to marginalise Fellowship Groups, or to see them as optional extras.  Part of that temptation is rooted in our feeling that if people are only coming on a Sunday, we have to cram everything into Sunday – but as we’ve seen, this is dangerous reasoning.  We also need to stop trying to fit our discipleship in around the rest of our life.  Our tendency to see ‘Church’ as something that must be contained and limited so that ‘we don’t spend too much time on Church things’ is equally dangerous.

To be fair, we tend to think of Church in terms of meetings.  But what if ‘Church’ was actually about people and relationships, a means of grace through which we grew, and were instrumental in helping others grow?  What if our fellowship groups were actually that: groups in which we experienced the outworking of the fellowship of the Church?  Fellowship isn’t just about being with people we like.  It is about relationships that are focussed on Jesus, and that are used by the Holy Spirit to draw us into our relationship with Him.  So yes, prayer and Bible Study will feature large in the life of a Fellowship Group, but the agenda will spill out into the love and support that we so desperately need if we are going to confront the Hydra that is our sin; if we are to be faithful to Christ in the often challenging and painful circumstances of life; if we are to actually change and grow.  That requires involvement in each other’s lives.  Fellowship Groups are never less than Prayer and Bible Study, but they have to be more.