like a fire

My thinking in process ministry was recently challenged by, of all people, my wife. She didn’t so much say that I was full of beans, but impressed the need on it being Biblically based. She then gave me a bunch of scripture to help illustrate it. I’ glad I married up. So she is definitely a co-author now.

Discipleship is something I have realigned my thinking on even before process ministry came along. I just have a problem with labels. Don’t call something it’s not. If your discipleship is really only Bible study, then it isn’t discipleship, just like if your prayer breakfast means you ask God to bless the food before you eat, then it isn’t much of a prayer breakfast. Just be honest and say, this isn’t really a prayer breakfast or discipleship, It’s really just a group a people getting together to eat or a platform for me to teach you some Bible.

So what is discipleship according to Paul? Well it can include Bible study, but it can’t be limited to that. I look at Jesus’ and his disciples. He didn’t lug around a cart for carrying the Bible and teach directly out of that. Instead he lived his life around them and had many teachable moments. It included what the Bible said, but it went far beyond just what it said. It was lifecoaching at its best. It was a look at what discipleship should be. It wasn’t just teachings, it was finding the meaning behind the teachings and showing how we respond to that meaning.

Discipleship is more application of truth than teaching it.

Add Cathy’s idea of process ministry to that and it starts looking a lot more like Jesus. What did Jesus tell Peter and Andrew when he called them?

Jesus called out to them, “Come, be my disciples, and I will show you how to fish for people!” Mt. 4:9 (NLT)

He didn’t say, “come with me and you will catch fish. Or men.”

He referred to a process of learning how to live in the calling that focuses on what you do, not the results you get.

There was no goal other than doing what you’re called to do.

The goal was to be faithful in your calling. Jesus didn’t say that Peter should reach about so many people at pentecost and that they would then reach so many people until we get where we are now. He said that he would show him how to live according to his calling as a disciple.

That is what process discipleship aims at. Help people find their calling and show them how to do it. Encourage them to live outside of narrow goals that go beyond anything we can control in our own calling - like bringing people to Christ. Only God can do that. We should just be faithful in calling and let God do what he does.

More later on what that looks like.