This is the second part of a three part post taken from a lecture in the Voices of New Life Series. If you haven't seen the first one, you might look at it before reading this one.
Modern Stages of the Christian Life
Modern discipleship differs from that of the ancient church in two significant places. First, baptism is either performed in infancy or at conversion, not after an extended period of catechesis. Because catechesis is performed either before baptism or not at all, many are baptized who never grasp the full significance of the faith, or the duties that are connected to the faith. Second, when actual training is done, it is presumed to be complete in a relatively short period of time. The contemporary church has programs for study and enrichment, but they are generally without a formal goal or direction. Seekers, learners, and disciples learn together with the same material. As a result, the seekers often are at a loss to understand what is happening, while the mature believers find it difficult to stay alert. It is a “one-size-fits-all” approach to discipleship.
Modern church discipleship, when it is attempted at all, is a relatively short-term process, aimed at developing productive believers who serve the institutional church We hurry disciples though the steps at a pace the early church would consider insanely fast, turning out like-minded believers like cars off an assembly line.
One of the best and most effective examples of modern Christian discipleship comes from Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church.[16] Warren uses a baseball diamond model to illustrate his church’s disciple making process. The bases represent knowing Christ, growing in Christ, Serving Christ, and Sharing Christ. Moving through these four stages usually takes about two years. Sharing Christ is the final stage and the apex of spiritual maturity. At the end, the mature Christians are expected to evangelize and disciple others, and keep the chain going.
The Navigators, perhaps the best known and the most effective discipleship ministry in the contemporary church, has a wide variety of excellent materials for discipleship and Bible study. Fruitfulness, in the form of making disciples, is generally considered the end of the discipleship road. Lorne Sandy, former president of the Navigators, listed the three stages of Christian discipleship as Identified with Christ, Obedient to Christ, and Fruitful in Christ.[17]
Campus Crusade for Christ, founded by Bill Bright in 1951, uses eleven “transferable concepts”—“How to be sure you are a Christian,” “Experience God’s Love and Forgiveness,” “Be filled with the Spirit,” “Walk in the Spirit,” “Be a fruitful witness,” “Introduce others to Christ,” “Fulfill the Great Commission,” “Love by faith,” “Pray with Confidence,” “Experience the joy of giving,” and “Study the Bible effectively.” Two transferrable concepts deal with assurance of salvation, two with the Holy Spirit, three with sharing, two with prayer and Bible study, one with love and one with stewardship.[18] Each book is intended to be used in one or two weeks, for a total of between eleven and twenty-two weeks of discipleship—about six months.
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has a four week Christian life and Witness course. The final lesson of this course focuses on sharing the faith. [19]
Let us put Warren et. al. into the same rubric as the others.
Table 5. Stages of Christian life with contemporary examples
Repentance | New Birth | Eternity | |||
1 John 2 | Children | Young Men | Fathers | ||
1 Cor 3 | Carnal | Spiritual | |||
Mapping | Seeker | Servant | Settler | ||
3rd C. Church | Seeker | Learner | Kneeler | Disciple | |
Warren et. al. | Knowing | Growing | Serving | Sharing |
The last line of the chart demonstrates the difference between the modern evangelical understanding of Christian discipleship and the Biblical/historic/traditional understanding of discipleship. Generally speaking, the discipleship of the evangelical church is directed at training people to share Christ and build up the immature believer. Looking it in human terms, it would be like saying that the purpose of human existence is to have more babies. While this is certainly a part of why we are here, that cannot be all.
This modern formula of spiritual formation is reflexive—that is, it is focused backwards upon itself. We are not just called to make more disciples, but to make better ones. If we only focus on the process of making more, and do not focus also on the process of making better disciples, then the quality of Christian discipleship will necessarily erode over time, and the church becomes more shallow and less effective.
The ancient church apparently believed that something more was necessary. The mature disciples were trained in ways that were not even shared with the young. Something was being passed down from mature believer to mature believer that was not part of the process of sharing.
This statement is not intended to suggest that the early church did not evangelize, or that we should not evangelize. On the contrary we most emphatically should! Nor am I suggesting that programs such as Warren’s, Billy Graham’s, and the Navigators’ are wrong or need to be corrected in their discipleship of new believers. If there is a deficiency today, it is in the church’s deficiency to fully consider what mature discipleship entails. It requires more than faith sharing, more tithing, more even than becoming good church members. True discipleship means a whole life change and the maintenance of spiritual health for a lifetime.
The irony of our modern emphasis on making new members is that it has not worked. No matter how much effort we put into evangelistic methods, the majority of our people never spiritually reproduce. Even a highly effective evangelistic church draws more believers than unbelievers. Christians who are supposed to be mature still cannot and do not share Christ.
The reason for our failure is not that we have not been told to share Christ, but that we have been told little else. God requires Christians to press on to a deeper maturity. In the Great Commission Jesus said:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."[20]
Going, making disciples, and baptizing are the first three stages of a four-stage process which also involves teaching people to behave like Jesus. Our goal is not simply to produce new disciples but to produce better disciples—fully incorporated into the Body of Christ, trained to live as Christians, aware of the presence of God in their lives and capable of standing until the end of their age.
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