Discipleship is not something you learn. A disciple is someone you become. (Jim Griffith and Bill Easum, Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by Church Starts, 2008)
I say yes and no to that quote—but mostly yes. We tend to think of discipleship as only content—subject matter found in a curriculum guide or a book; content that can be reduced to words that fill in the blanks on an outline we keep in a notebook.
In actuality, discipleship is a whole-life, embodied and social reality. This is the major, true and useful idea from the quote: discipleship has a conceptual, cognitive component, but it cannot be reduced to just that. To use a $45 word, but one perfectly suited for our use here, we could say that discipleship is not coterminous with content. Discipleship includes learning doctrine, Christian history, theology, etc., but it also goes way beyond it. It has to do mainly with following Jesus—learning to live our lives as he would live them if he were in our place, our family, our roles, etc.
Obviously to follow Jesus well we have to know enough right things about him—i.e. his worldview, values, way-of-life—to actually imitate his model in our lives. Having thought about this with me for a couple minutes, I’ll bet you can see where this is going: learning is not just content. Learning, in the sense of the ability to imitate and embody worldview and value system has to do with our whole being—body, soul, mind, heart and social self.
So thanks Jim and Bill. It is true:
Discipleship is not something you learn. A disciple is someone you become.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Todd,
Just got your book; thanks again. Really looking forward to reading it.
Great post.
February 20th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Thanks T–get a bunch for your group!
February 24th, 2009 at 10:18 am
[...] No Comments I came across the following quote on Todd Hunters blog the whole of the post is here if you’re [...]
March 21st, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Much appreciate the post Todd. Great to see the new direction your moving in.