by Jonathan Dodson

Over the past three decades, I have failed in countless ways in being a disciple of Jesus, in obeying and honoring Him as my Redeemer and Lord.

I’ve wandered the wasteland of religion in an attempt to earn the un-earnable favor of God. I’ve chased the pleasures of the world, in an attempt to satisfy my infinite longings with finite things. And neither the legalistic rules of religion nor license from rules in worldly living have satisfied.

These twists and turns on my discipleship path have not honored Christ. Yet, despite my failures, year after year, the desire to honor and obey Christ has not withered. In fact, it’s grown even amidst failure.

“Sharing Your Faith”

Along the way, I’ve come to understand that following Jesus alone is not really what it means to be a disciple. Both the church and the parachurch taught me that being a disciple means making disciples. I was told that this meant two primary things. First, I should be active in “sharing my faith.” Second, I should find Christians who are younger in the faith to tell and show what it means to be older in the faith.

It took me quite a while to realize that this practice of making disciples was incomplete. Making disciples requires not only “sharing my faith,” but also sharing my life — failures and successes, disobedience and obedience.

Making disciples is not code for evangelism, nor is it a spiritual system whereby professional Christians pass on best practices to novice Christians.

Professional Disciples vs. Novice Disciples

But I preferred only to disclose my successes, to pass on my accumulated wisdom and knowledge, while hiding my foolishness and ignorance. It’s not that I wasn’t making disciples; people gobbled up my platitudes and piety. The problem was the kind of disciples I was making, disciples who could share their faith but not their failures.

Why did I embrace this kind of discipleship? Should blame be laid at the feet of the church or parachurch? Not really. It was my fault. My motivation for obeying Jesus (in this case, making disciples), had shifted from attempting to earn God’s favor, to earning the favor of my disciples. “Disciple” had become a way to leverage my identity and worth in relationship with others. As the dispenser of wisdom and truth, I was comfortably placed on a pedestal. The more disciples I made, the better I felt about myself. My motivation for discipleship was to receive praise, worth, significance.

I was a disciple lacking authenticity and community, motivated by a mixture of genuine love and lust for praise.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of good intentions and a lot of good fruit from these relationships, but in a sense, I was still following Jesus alone. The professional/novice relationship created a comfortable distance, not only from admitting my failures but also from genuine community. I stood at the top of the stairs of discipleship, instead of sitting in the living room with fellow disciples. I put the best foot forward and hid the ugly one behind me.

Disciple had become more of a verb than a noun. Less about a community centered on Christ and more about an activity centered on what I know.

The Gospel is for Disciples Not Just Sinners

Fortunately, Jesus is big enough for my misunderstanding of what it means to follow Him. As I continued to “disciple” and read the Bible, I was struck by the fact that the disciples of Jesus were always attached to other disciples, that they lived in community. This community was authentic.

They confessed their sins and struggles alongside their successes. But they also seemed to continually come back to Jesus, not merely as their example, but also as their identity, their entire sense of self.

The New Testament is filled with exhortations to keep Christ at the center of our discipleship, not only for instruction but also for transformation. I began to realize that Jesus is not merely the start and standard for salvation, but that He is the beginning, middle, and end of my salvation. He is my salvation, not just when I was 6, but every second of every day.

Contrary to the unforgiving demands of religion, Jesus forgives us when we fail. He doesn’t kick us when we are down, but dies to lift us up. Unlike the deception of worldly pleasure, Jesus offers true satisfaction and joy. Instead of wooing me into death, He leads me into life, His resurrection life.

It slowly became apparent to me that the gospel of Christ was where I was meant to find my identity, not in impressing God or others. Refusing to share my life with others, especially my failures, was a refusal to allow the gospel of Christ to accomplish its full breadth of redemption in my life.

Very simply, God was leading me into a kind of discipleship with the gospel at the center, a constant, gracious repetition of repentance and faith in Jesus, who is sufficient for my failures and strong for my successes.

Jesus frees me from trying to impress God or others because He has impressed God on my behalf. I can tell people my sins because my identity doesn’t hang on what they think of me. I can be an imperfect Christian because I cling to a perfect Christ. As it turns out, the gospel is not just for sinners; it’s also for disciples, disciples who sin.

Discipleship with Jesus in the Center

This kind of discipleship is, in the end, not about what I do but who I am — an imperfect person, clinging to a perfect Christ, being perfected by grace.

And in this I am not alone. I am one disciple among many. I no longer stand at the top of the stairs but sit in the living room, where we share our faith and our un-faith, our obedience and disobedience, our success and our failure.

With Jesus at the center, we can encourage one another to persevere in faith, to endure in suffering, to increase in love, to multiply in mission, bypassing the professional/novice distinctions. With Jesus at the center, we can obey from our acceptance not for our acceptance. With Jesus at the center, we can be the church to one another and to the world, without bearing the burden of perfection, a burden reserved for the Spirit, who through grace, makes us more and more like Christ.

With Jesus at the center of discipleship, I immediately enter into grace and into community. Where making disciples flows from being a disciple.

Jesus doesn’t reject me when I fail, and His constant acceptance frees me to succeed in following Him. And that moves me into hopeful confession: both of my sin and in my Savior.

Copyright 2009 Jonathan Dodson. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. This article was published on Boundless.org on June 25, 2009.

I thought this would be a good article to share to help us gain perspective on what discipleship is. As I am learning more about it, I am seeing that it is a communal thing. A couple questions to ponder,

Is our view of discipleship consistent with Jesus’ discipleship? What needs to change?

How can the community in Epic, and among believers here in Davis help foster discipleship that is true to how Jesus did discipleship?

Mike

We’re trying something new! I had the chance to interview John Sun over webcam, who recently graduated from UC Davis. John was involved with Epic during his four years in college.

I asked him to share a little bit about his experience and what God has done in his life and what God is bringing him to now! If you’re viewing this on Facebook or from a FeedReader, click here in order to see the video interview.

The interview ran a little long! Hopefully future ones won’t be as long, but it was great hearing from John Sun! I also noticed that my volume is a lot quieter than his. I’ll get this right next time, sorry about that. John says he misses all of you

In the book UnChristian, the author David Kinnaman quotes an outsider who described Christians in this way, “Most people I meet assume that Christian means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, anti-gay, anti-choice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live peacefully with anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe.”

My friend Chris Tan who was involved in Epic a few years back gave a memorable talk where he mentioned that most people understand Christianity from the viewpoint of the media. He explained how the primary exposure of many teenagers to Christ comes from shows like Southpark. Kids will here Cartman screaming “Eff Christ” and that’s that.

The way the world views Christianity is deeply skewed and oftentimes absurd. However, it has been very encouraging to see how Epic students have embraced our savior and are growing in stature as a result. It has been a blessing to see students understanding of Christianity shift towards truth.

There is still much work to be done though. To share the good news in our modern times is not just a one way message. We also have to combat the worldviews that have disparaged Christianity. We have to meet people where they are at and have a decent understanding of how they got there. Then we can start to build trust by loving them and representing true Christianity to them.

Let me pose a couple of questions.

What would be the first thing you would want to communicate if you were talking to someone about your faith?

How would you communicate such a thing amidst the preconceived notions about Christianity from the world?

Philemon 6, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.

Mike Aalseth

Beneath the surface,
in the shadows I hide.
Afraid of what I become,
when I walk in the light.
I only show the parts of me,
that appear to be clean,
but you desire for,
my all to be redeemed.

I am so afraid of my decay.
I am sick and tired of running away
I cannot stay in hiding
and fake who I am
Will you recognize my face?
Will you accept my meek embrace?

As I learn more about myself, and about the God who created this place in which we dwell, I am struck by how often I try to hide certain parts of me. I am constantly upholding an image of myself that doesn’t match up to who I truly am. The truth, I’m a beggar, in desperate need of a savior. Finding that savior was the sweetest moment of my life.

The two questions posed in this poem here is towards the body of believers. If I walked into your home as a beggar, would you recognize me, and would you accept me as I am?

Mike