Missional Millennials (part 2): Discipleship through worship
In the first post of this series, I suggested that our identity forms what we worship. Now I’m proposing that what we worship will inevitably form discipleship in our lives and in others around us.
My mom used to say ”You are what you eat,” as a euphemism for healthy nutrition. In other words, you become like what you digest. It’s not much different for making disciples and being discipled. You are who you hang around, and most communities gather around a common purpose. Something which both parties share a mutual interest in.
You will become like who you hang around.
You will hang around people you have something deeply in common with—your social circles will revolve around the things that you adore. In a nutshell, you will be discipled in accordance to what you most value. Further, you will also influence others in the same sphere of shared desires. Take bowling, for example. If your identity is shaped by your desire to become the best bowler in the world, the practice of bowling will feed your obsession; you will go bowling all the time. You will also surround yourself around a natural community that gravitates towards the same passion, and in so doing will unavoidably become like them, as they become like you. Mutual discipleship. You are what you eat, and you eat bowling.
This can get really interesting for the Christian. We immediately have an open door of evangelism with many people based on shared interests.
- What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
- Who else likes to do that?
- Share with them this common purpose, and build a community around it.
The reason this is usually problematic, is because many Christian’s don’t like hanging outside of their usual church culture.
We like to spend time with other Christians, and remove ourselves from the big bad world. In doing so, we disciple other Christians, and only influence them. Yet if you scan the New Testament, you will see that all people are disciples of something or someone, because we all have an inherent sense of identity, that leads us to seek out communities of worship centered around a common purpose. But dozens of people in your social stream are being naturally discipled by everyone else but you. If it’s true that God shares common grace on the wicked and the righteous alike, then shouldn’t we learn how to enjoy the finer things in life with the non-believer, if for no other reason, than for friendship?
It seems these days, the only time we will ever spend with a non-believer is for the split second it takes to convert them to Christianity. And even supposing that strategy works, they will convert to Christianity without any hope of godly discipleship. Oh but they will be discipled. The question is who?
The conversion lie.
Posted on July 25, 2011, in community, discipleship, mission, worship and tagged Common grace, community, Disciple (Christianity), millennials on mission, missional millennials, worship. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments.
We become like what we worship. (Psalm 115:4-8). So if we worship the Living God, as revealed by Jesus Christ, then we will take discipleship seriously… in fact, we will devote our lives to it!! I am almost finished with The Lost Art of Disciple Making, by LeRoy Elms. It is centered on this very subject and has been very thought provoking. I am guilty of not taking disciple making seriously enough, although parenting is a great wake-up call!! My disciples are with me 24 hours a day!! Jesus’ example of lovingly pouring Himself into the lives of a few men to whom He would entrust the Kingdom of God is….staggering. Elms’ book is a great reminder to live intentionally, to be about making disciples, to be about God’s Kingdom. For me, right now, that means pouring my life into these little ones He has given us, but all in all…. I think it comes back to what we are worshipping. Because if it is the living God, then the Holy Spirit will develop those discipling relationships as we obey Him. I am shocked at how rare it is to actually see the process of conversion followed through to an established, mature, approved worker for the Kingdom. Shocked at my own lack of involvement in this process. But hopeful.
True story. And that isn’t even half of it—they WILL be discipled by someone, even if it’s not a Christian. Someone will step into the vacuum.
I’m so thankful for the grace of our God, who “knows those who are His.” both my husband and I grew up steeped in religion, and neither of us really had intentional discipleship or mentoring.
and yet, the Lord has been so faithful…. Once we found the freedom of the gospel, our hearts just had to be His. And He is still setting us free and growing us up. It is hard to disciple if you haven’t been discipled, right? But hey, you gotta start somewhere and I call it “on the job” training. 
(2 Peter 1:2-8)
Its so true that people will find a way to be discipled by something or someone… I’ve been in an extremely secular acting class for several years now and it really saddens me to see the darkness people turn to in search of some sort of hope and healing for the bad things that have happened in their past. I overheard one girl in my class inviting another girl to an event at her house where they were going to be “channeling spirits”, previously this girl was more new age with “channeling energies” but it was so sad to hear that her practices now were more similar to witchcraft than anything new age. In all the years I’ve been in this class, countless people have come and gone but I’ve never met another genuine Christian in class. These are the kinds of places we should be! My teacher who talked a few years ago about hating Christians for thinking they are right and everyone else is going to hell recently used me as an example in his lecture as someone who takes a stand for something they beleive in while never judging anyone else in a way that makes people want to know more about my faith. I’ve been able to share my faith many times in this class and I’m even more motivated to do so because these people aren’t a project to me, they really are my friends and it breaks my heart to see them look for hope in all the wrong places….we can’t just say we are mad at Christians who give us a bad name, we need to go out and show what the name Christian really represents.
*stepping off my soap box now
I just talked to a gal at Adorn who channels demons. Dark stuff. I’m glad those girls have you in their life. You said it best, “These are the kinds of places we should be!”
People looking for hope in all the wrong places kind of begs a provoking question:
Maybe we should be in the wrong places too?
Interesting way to phrase the question;) I’m not sure it’s so much a matter of being in “the wrong places” but rather being involved somewhere outside of church. I think the fact that in one month, in one small acting class in the middle of LA I’ve encountered someone demonized, another getting into witchcraft, another who asked me how to get rid of a scary spirit she felt in her house and countless others who are broken in different ways- tells me that I don’t have to go to the darkest corners of the world to find people who desperately need God. I dont even need to go places where i think ill find the most desperate people. There is far more brokeness in my own class, that I chose to go to because I liked to act, than I ever imagined. I’m guessing my class isn’t the only place with broken people. I’m willing to bet that these people exist all over the place. I bet the longer we hang out in places we enjoy outside of church, the more people we will find who are looking for God without even knowing it. Just a hunch;)
So good!