[The Church and Discipleship] – Definitions

By Louie Rudin

It is always best to define the terms of a given discussion prior to any sort of dialog. Let’s begin by looking in the scriptures for a working definition of “discipleship”. OK, so there doesn’t seem to be one. But wait, we do have the words and actions of Jesus who, after all, will likely have some good insights. The very first thing I found was “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”. “Whoever wants” seems to indicate that this is not an automatically assumed position but that we must choose or desire it. In other words this doesn’t “just happen”. Then there’s “must deny themselves”- not might want to consider denying themselves which implies an optional approach. Jesus wasn’t playing around here. He really was insistent that a disciple is one who is not focused on self gratification but rather on God and His Kingdom. (Soon after this Jesus makes another bold statement regarding wealth- that it is “very difficult” for anyone who is “rich” to enter the Kingdom of God, which isn’t necessarily directly relevant to this discussion but certainly worth mentioning, especially in our culture.)

The next statement that Jesus makes is even more disturbing. He told his followers (Luke 14) that unless you “hate your mother and father, wife and children, sisters and brothers- yes even your own life- you can not be my disciple”. At first glance this might seem antithetical to “love God, love people” but of course the intended message is that no relationship here on earth can be in competition with our relationship with God. Think about it- none of these relationships have any real relevance outside of an intimate relationship with Jesus anyway. (It is unfortunate that the Greek word “miseo” [hate] is used, but think of it as an idiomatic statement like “I really hate that color”, when in reality it is meant only as a relative indicator such that it would not become a preference for you in a given context. The same exact color could look awesome to you within a different context.) In the same passage Jesus reiterates that unless you “give up everything you have” and “carry your cross and follow him” you can not be his disciple. I don’t think he was going for the popular vote.

In John 8 Jesus states, “If you are faithful to what I’ve said, you are truly my disciples”. According to this statement, faithfulness is a key factor in being a disciple of Jesus and is defined as “adhering firmly or devotedly” and “loyal” and “reliable”. These are characteristics that unfortunately are seldom talked about or encouraged.

Then there’s “church”. I’m willing to bet that if you polled fifty random people in a shopping mall and asked them what their definition of church was, you would easily get fifty different responses. As a matter of fact, I’m willing to bet just as much that if you polled fifty random people after any given worship service, you would still get fifty different responses. What’s the problem? Let’s simply look it up in the scriptures. Not quite as elusive as “discipleship”. We even have some words from Jesus as found in Matthew 16 and 18. He refers to Peter as the “rock” on whom the church will be built. Clearly then this reference is not about a building. I’m relatively confident that we could state here that the church is defined as “the Body of Christ” or even the “Bride of Christ” and that most followers of Jesus would say, “Oh yeah, that.” But what exactly is “that”? Entire books have been written about this very subject so let’s just agree for the sake of time and space that church from a generic sense is the entire number of people who are following Jesus as his disciples. The “local” church then is a smaller group of disciples who are in some sort of proximity to each other. We gather from the writings of Paul and Peter that the early churches were gatherings of believers who were identified by their cities. “To the church inCorinth…” and so on were common greetings of the letters that these men wrote. We aren’t certain about the structure of these “bodies”, such as where they met, what their meetings looked like and so on. But we can easily conclude that they didn’t have paid “professional” leadership, extensive programs, seminars, budget meetings, Sunday school, vast campuses with elegant buildings, scheduled services, bulletins, membership classes, or much else of what we see in our church culture today. From the book of Acts we gather that their times together were spontaneous and frequent, that they worked together cooperatively, that they shared equally and cared for their own without any intervention from outside sources like the government. The early church grew exponentially to the point where the Roman government became intimidated by the perceived threat that they posed with their allegiance to God’s Kingdom rather than to theRoman Empire. Interestingly enough, the church continued to grow in great numbers, even with (some would argue here “due to”) the great persecution that they suffered. The contrast to ourWesternChurchtoday is profound, and I believe one of the greatest contrasts is an apparent absence of discipleship.