- Regardless of the political winds that blow, they are not necessarily helpful or unhelpful for faithful discipleship and his graceful presence in our lives.
Years ago I was approached by a young lady from French television doing a documentary on Mississippi’s religious liberty law. She wanted a local church (and pastor) who would answer her questions. She found us as we were offering hope to women out at the local abortion clinic and she figured we would be good to talk to on the matter. Nobody else in our crowd trusted her to do a fair job but, alas, I found her likable and took the chance and granted her access.
She came in with loads of questions and a filming crew. Among other things she sat through our worship service and then, after we had wrapped things up she asked one more thing: “Don’t you have to have the right people in office in order to have the nation you want?”
Answer: “No. Of course not. God has done some of His best work in nations without righteous political leadership. Whether it was the early Church in Rome (where Christians had NO political power) or China today (where, again, Christians are on the outside looking in). In both cases and in a hundred important historical instances in between, the Church prospered and the Kingdom stayed on the march. We don’t need political power, we need the presence of Jesus and radical discipleship.”
I saw the documentary later. It was obviously meant to be a hit job from the very beginning. It made us look sinister with creepy music playing in the background and things edited out to make all of us look like idiots. And, of course, all reasonable comments from our local church were edited out in the final product; fragments of comments were pasted together to showcase us in the worst possible light.
But, edited out or not, I still think that presence of Jesus statement is still true. And so is the need for radical discipleship.
Dean Kelly, in his volume Why Conservative Churches are Growing, noted that the great mobilizers of Christian history have frequently been religious leaders who drew to themselves little groups of followers. These bands are characterized by, among other things, a commitment to one another in mutually supportive, like-minded fellowship.
These little bands of committed men and women have an impact on history out of all proportion to their numbers of apparent difficulties. In the main, they are usually recruited from the least promising ranks of society: they are not noble or wealthy or well education or particularly talents…. But they are able to cut through the partial and fleeting commitments of the rest of society like a buzz saw through peanut brittle.
Why? Because targeted small groups, linked together and willing to subordinate their personal desires and ambitions to a great cause, are “intensely and continuously so much more alive” than other enthusiasts in lesser causes.
When Jesus told His followers to “make disciples of the nations” this is what He was talking about. People trained in the ways of God so that their sensibilities are driven toward:
- Mutually supportive, like-minded, committed fellowship.
- Disproportionate impact on history
- Able to cut through partial, fleeting commitments
- Intensely and continuously so much more alive
Robert Coleman, in his classic volume The Master Plan of Evangelism, famously suggested how Jesus did this with his small group of twelve and, many others in the history of the Church, have shown how a movement could make this kind of discipleship impact with a well-thought-through system of small groups.
But how can we make this happen?
- Ask God for the fourth and fifth beatitude of Jesus (Matthew 5:6, 7) to come alive in our lives. We need His grace of hunger and thirst for Him, His righteousness and His fullness of the merciful Spirit. Jesus told them that before they were to make disciples they needed the fullness. We need to ask Him for a desperation within ourselves for that fullness. This is the foundation of radical discipleship.
- Take seriously the “means of grace” – first, works of piety. No radical disciple comes from sloth – full attention to daily prayer and Bible study, weekly attendance to a local church service and a discipleship group, regular fasting, regular partaking of the Lord’s supper. These have always been the ground level works of piety necessary for lifechanging discipleship.
- We also take seriously the other side of the “means of grace” – works of mercy. Jesus headed immediately with His disciples in Matthew 4 to the margins of his culture – those with various diseases and pains, the demon-possessed, the epileptics, the paralytics. It is hard to be altogether follower of Jesus and not follow Him to the hurting and the pained in your community. None too few historians think this was the secret of growth in the early church – “Let your light so shine before men that they might see your good works and glorify the Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)
- Develop the culture with your family, your church, your place of business that Catherine Booth’s adage to the cupped faces of her babies is true for us: “You have not been sent here for yourselves; you have been sent for others. The world is waiting for you.”
Regardless of the political winds that blow, they are not necessarily helpful or unhelpful for faithful discipleship and his graceful presence in our lives.
