Considering Disciple

Uneven.

If I were given one word to describe Disciple: Getting Your Identity From Jesus by Bill Clem, that is the word I would use. It is published as part of the RE:Lit line and has a forward by Mark Driscoll. It comes with blubs by people like Paul Tripp. In other words, it intrigued me.

Bill is trying to create a paradigm shift in how we think about discipleship. Someone in the church I pastor has been asking me questions about discipleship recently. My answers were in many ways close to what Bill is shooting for. But this runs against the grain of a church shaped by life in America which is filled with standardized tests and a concept of time consumed by efficiency. Programs aren’t discipleship. They can be a means of discipleship, but aren’t necessarily discipleship. Communicating theological knowledge and understanding isn’t either (though people need to grow in their biblical and theological knowledge to grow as disciples).

Bill Clem’s premise is that disciples primarily image God to the watching world (and unseen world). We were created in God’s image. As image bearers, Adam and Eve were to reflect God’s glory, and represent Him to the rest of creation. In their sin, the image was marred.  In redemption, Christ’s work in us (sanctification) is to restore that image in us. We reveal God’s character and represent Him more clearly over time. This premise is a giant step in the right direction. It is a necessary corrective to our thinking about discipleship.

Back to my one word assessment of the book. There are some very good chapters in this book. They are filled with red ink from my pen. And there are some chapters that have little additional ink, or the red ink is expressing my confusion. There were times when I was really tracking with Bill Clem, and there were times when I was under-whelmed or just plain frustrated.

“To disciple people is not to make them like everybody else; it is to shape them into the image of Jesus.”

The book begins with 2 chapters of biblical theology to establish his main premise. Then he fleshes out that premise when he talks about Image (and identity), Worship, Community and Mission. Each of these chapters has a subsequent chapter on distortions regarding that focus. This is a helpful way to think things through. At times these chapters can seem overly abstract. The book can seem overly abstract. He ends the book with chapters on plan and multiplication which are a bit more practical.

The best chapters, in my opinion, were the ones dealing with Image/Identity and Community. Our sense of identity is essential to what we image. We distort that image with self-generated identities (addict, vocation, failure…) or identities forced upon us by others (victim, loser …). As a Christian we need to remember that Christ gives us a new identity. We are called to live out that new identity. But we are inconstant, our sense of identity will shift or fade. We need to be in Scripture regularly to keep our true identity in mind (see my posts on The Salton Sea and Identity and Accountability).

He builds a case for community shaped by truth, prayer, confession and repentance, belonging and witness. He notes some important distortions like therapeutic community (our identity is wrapped up in what is wrong with us), network and program. One of the things I noted in the section on truth was that Jesus invites us into the story. Discipleship (actually Christianity) is not merely affirming the story but entering it. We become characters in God’s story instead of continuing to write own stories. We participate in redemption, having been redeemed by Jesus and telling others of the redemption found in Jesus.

The chapters I struggled with the most were the ones on worship and mission. Some of that struggle, I think, were a lack of clarity on his part. At times I wondered if what he was saying was meant to apply to corporate or personal worship, or both. I had a high degree of cognitive dissonance at times.

The same was true for mission. Perhaps that is because I’m trying to sort out my own view of mission. But some of what he called mission I see as sanctification. The meaning of mission was so broad that the adage “when everything is mission, nothing is mission” seemed to apply. As I think through mission (again), I am more persuaded that our mission is narrow (the Great Commission). There are other things that we must do to fulfill that mission, but those things themselves are not the mission.  This chapter seemed to suffer from fuzzy thinking, though I suppose it could be my own fuzzy thinking or that I’m reading a book on mission simultaneously which takes a different, more concise view of mission.

This is a book I’d recommend. There are important and helpful things here. But the book is not helpful in all things. Glean what you can, get the big picture and think things through more clearly. I suspect your understanding and practice of discipleship will change, for the better.