2/12/14. WHAT DOES AN AUTHENTIC DISCIPLE OF CHRIST LOOK LIKE?

BLOG 2/12/14. WHAT DOES AN AUTHENTIC DISCIPLE OF CHRIST LOOK LIKE ?

If you are following all of my ‘ruminations’ in these Blogs about an alternative narrative for the tomorrow’s church, then one of the very most basic questions would be: What kind of person is it the church’s purpose/Christ’s purpose to form? What does a New Creation person look like, for pity’s sake? Then, what kind of leadership/mentors would be necessary to produce such? Does that sound like a dumb question? Well, it’s not!

I’ve been ‘around the block’ within the larger church for many decades now, and I can report that it is very difficult to get an intelligent conversation with those who are ‘members’ of the church about what it is that they are called to be and do, or even believe as the followers of Christ. It is equally difficult in all too many church circles to find pastors/clergy/church professionals who are passionate about Jesus Christ, and are captive to his love.

We get ample reports on what are, ostensibly, successful churches, and reports on gifted communicators/preachers—but all too few of those examples indicate a community that is dynamically alive, mature, contagious, knowledgeable, reproductive, and exhibiting much, other that humanly explainable religion.

Having made such an uncharitable accusation, I need to go on to say that there is one place in the New Testament that gives us a description of those components which do, in fact, constitute a person as mature in Christ, and that would be Ephesians 4. In that remarkable letter, Paul comes as close to defining the church’s role in the world as anywhere in the New Testament. He insist that the risen Lord Jesus has given to his church four specific necessary gifts of leadership, whose purpose is to equip all of Christ’s followers for their works of ministry, to maturity, to the stature of the fullness of Christ. For some reason this unique passage gets massaged into something much less than intended. The passage doesn’t even define gifts and who exercises them.

The four gifts are very practical, and are all necessary for every one of God’s sons and daughters to be equipped and reproductive. They are the gifts of: apostle, prophet, evangelist, and teaching-shepherd (or pastor-teacher, i.e., a composite gift). What does an authentic disciple of Christ look like? First: he/she is well-informed with the knowledge of who Jesus is, why he came, why he had to die, what his resurrection accomplished, and why he calls us to be his church. This gift of teaching-shepherd has within it the component of being a mentor and an example in the living out of Christ in daily life. That is the gift of the teaching-shepherd. When the role of pastor, or clergy, or church professional is trivialized, or subverted, and becomes merely custodial, or that of institution-keeper, it is misses the point.

But it doesn’t stop there. Every one of God’s sons and daughters is to be equipped to communicate the thrilling new of Jesus to others, to have on his/her feet “the readiness of the gospel of peace” so that even in the most alien of circumstances, he is able to warmly and thoughtfully communicate with those who are still in the darkness of unbelief, or who have been offended by some bad experience with Christ’s people. That’s the responsibility of the gift of evangelist to the church. The prophetic gift is the one who equips God’s people to diagnose/exegete the cultural setting in which they live and operate. We are incarnate in a world still occupied by the darkness, and we need to understand it. And finally there is the missionary gift, that of apostle. Every one of God’s people, by virtue of their baptism becomes part of the mission of God, perhaps to become a church planter in his/her home. And this can be costly.

Put these together and you begin to get an answer to the question with which I began. We need to know who we are and how Christ equips us. The form of the church will follow that. It would be fascinating if we could insert a micro-sensor of discipleship in each one of us to indicate where we are, or are not, fulfilling our calling to be his sons and daughters of light in this world … to be disciples indeed.


About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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