Discipleship Notes | 1
DISCIPLESHIP NOTES: CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Ric D. Strangway
January 2018
Table of Contents for Notes
I.Discipleship: Definitions
Rowan Williams
Francis Chan
Robert Coleman
Dallas Willard
John Ortberg
Bill Hull
Steve Saccone
Gordon T. Smith
II.Early Influences
John Wesley (1703-1791)
A. B. Bruce (1831-1899)
The Training of the Twelve
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
The Cost of Discipleship.
Robert E. Coleman (1928-present)
The Master Plan of Evangelism
Revisiting The Master Plan of Evangelism: Why Jesus’ Discipleship Method Is Still The Best Method.
III.Last Fifty Years
Rowan Williams (1950-present)
Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life.
Gordon T. Smith (1953-present)
Essential Spirituality.
Transforming Conversion: Rethinking the Language and Contours of Christian Initiation.
Dallas Willard (1935-2013)
The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God.
The Divine Conspiracy Continued: Fulfilling God’s Kingdom on Earth.
Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ.
James Bryan Smith
The Good & Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ.
The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love With the God Jesus Knows.
The Good and Beautiful Community: Following The Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love
The Kingdom and the Cross
Hidden In Christ: Living As God’s Beloved.
Embracing The Love of God: The Path and Promise of the Christian Life.
John Ortberg
The Life You’ve Always Wanted.
Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You.
The Me I Want To Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You.
James C. Wilhoit
Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered: Growing in Christ through Community.
Gary W. Moon
Apprenticeship with Jesus: A 30-Day Experience.
Bill Hull (1946-present)
Conversion and Discipleship: You Can’t Have One Without the Other.
Greg Ogden
Discipleship Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life In Christ.
Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time.
Jim Putnam
Real-Life Discipleship: Building Churches That Make Disciples
Francis Chan
Multiply: Disciples Making Disciples.
Dave Buering
The Jesus Blueprint: Rediscovering His Original Plan for Changing the World.
Greg Hawkins (& Cally Parkinson)
Move: What 1,000 Churches Reveal About Spiritual Growth.
Francis Cosgrove
Essentials of Discipleship
Dann Spader
Growing A Healthy Church
Stephen Smallman
The Walk: Steps for New and Renewed Followers of Jesus
Bobby Harrington
Discipleship That Fits: Five Kinds of Relationships God Uses to Help Us Grow
James Sire
Discipleship of the Mind: Learning to Love God in the Ways We Think
IV.Missional & Church Planting Writers
Steve Saccone
Protégé: A Missio Playbook.
Bob Roglien
A Jesus Shaped Life: Discipleship and Mission for Everyday People.
Empowering Missional Disciples.
Mike Breen
Covenant and Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible.
Building A Discipling Culture: How to Release a Missional Movement by Discipling People Like Jesus Did.
Multiplying Missional Leaders: From Half-Hearted Volunteers to a Mobilized Kingdom Force.
David E. Fitch
Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines that Shape the Church for Mission.
Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier.
Hugh Halter
Tangible Kingdom
Christopher C. Smith (& John Pattison)
Slow Church: Cultivating Community In The Patient Way of Jesus.
Roger Helland (& Leonard Hjalmarson)
Missional Spirituality: Embodying God’s Love from the Inside Out.
Alan Hirsch (& Lance Ford)
Right Here, Right Now: Everyday Mission for Everyday People
V.New Testament
J. R. Edwards
J.R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002
Scot McKnight
Turning To Jesus: The Sociology of Conversion in the Gospels.
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I.Discipleship: Definitions
Rowan Williams
“a disciple is … a learner; and this, ultimately is what the disciple learns: how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.”[1]
Francis Chan
“The word disciple refers to a student or apprentice … Basically, a disciple is a follower, but only if we take the term follower literally. Becoming a disciple of Jesus is simply as obeying His call to follow.”[2]
Robert Coleman
“A disciple is essentially a follower of Jesus, seeking to live his or her life as He lived His. It’s someone who is actively learning how to live like Jesus. It’s an ongoing process—a journey that has a beginning but no end.”[3]
Dallas Willard
“… a disciple, or apprentice, is simply someone who has decided to be with another person, under appropriate conditions, in order to become capable of doing what that person does or to become what that person is.”[4]
Willard goes on to summarize:
“To be a disciple of Jesus is, crucially, to be learning from Jesus how to do your job as Jesus himself would do it.”[5]
John Ortberg
“Following Jesus simply means learning from him how to arrange my life around activities that enable me to live in the fruit of the Spirit.”[6]
Bill Hull
“Discipleship occurs when someone answers the call to learn from Jesus and others how to live his or her life as though Jesus were living it. As a result, the disciple becomes the kind of person who naturally does what Jesus did.”[7]
Steve Saccone
“A protégé and mentor relationship is a dynamic relationship of trust in which one person cultivates in another person the ever-deepening capacity to grow in the grace of God and to maximize who God designed them to become.”[8]
Gordon T. Smith
“The meaning of discipleship is captured in the call of Jesus: ‘Follow me.’ Discipleship is a response to, and subsequent loyalty to, a person. Discipleship includes loyalty to a creed and a movement and possibly a congregation. But ultimately, its true meaning lies in loyalty to Jesus.”[9]
II.Early Influences
John Wesley (1703-1791)
A. B. Bruce (1831-1899)
The Training of the Twelve
(Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1894)
Forward: By D. Stuart Briscoe
“For over a hundred years The Training of the Twelve has been highly regarded and widely received. No less an authority than Dr. W. H. Griffith Thomas called the book, “One of the great Christian classics of the nineteenth century,” and Dr. Wilbur Smith, America’s number one evangelical bibliophile remarked, “There is nothing quite as important on the life of our Lord as related to the nothing quite as important on the life of our Lord as related to the training of the twelve apostles as this book … ix
Preface to the Second Edition
First appeared in 1871. Second ed: 1894
1. Beginnings
John 1:29-51: “All beginnings are more or less obscure in appearance, but none were ever more obscure than those of Christianity. 1
2. Fishers of Men
“The twelve arrived at their final intimate relation to Jesus only by degrees, three stages in the history of their fellowship with Him being distinguishable. In the first stage they were simply believers in Him as the Christ, and Hi occasional companions at convenient, particularly festive, seasons. Of this earliest stage in the intercourse of the disciples with their Master we have some memorials in the four first chapters of John’s Gospel, which tell how some of them first became acquainted with Jesus, and represent them as accompanying Him at a marriage in Cana,1 at a Passover in Jerusalem,2 on a visit to the scene of the Baptist’s ministry,3 and on the return journey through Samaria from the south to Galilee. 11
“In the second stage, fellowship with Christ assumed the form of an uninterrupted attendance on His person, involving entire, or at least habitual abandonment of secular occupations. 11
“The twelve entered on the last and highest stage of discipleship when they were chosen by their Master from the mass of His followers, and formed into a select band, to be trained for the great work of the apostleship. 12
4. The Twelve
“The selection by Jesus of the twelve from the band of disciples who had gradually gathered around His person is an important landmark in the Gospel history. 29
“These twelve, however, as we know, were to be something more than travelling companions or menial servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were to be, in the mean time, students of Christian doctrine, and occasional fellow-laborers in the work of the kingdom, and eventually Christ’s chosen trained agents for propagating the faith after He Himself had left the earth. From the time of their being chosen, indeed, the twelve entered on a regular apprenticeship for the great office of apostleship, in the course of which they were to learn, in the privacy of an intimate daily fellowship with their Master, what they should be, do, believe, and teach, as His witnesses and ambassadors to the world. 30
5. Hearing and Seeing
“Eye and ear witnessing of the facts of an unparalleled life was an indispensable preparation for future witness-bearing. 41
12. First Lesson on the Cross
13. The Transfiguration
21. The Master Serving; or, Another Lesson in Humility
25. The Vine and its Branches
30. Power From on High
“As the promised power was indispensable, so it was in its nature a thing simply to be waited for. The disciples were directed to tarry till it came. 537
31. Waiting
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
The Cost of Discipleship.
(New York: MacMillian Publishing, 1949)
Forward (Bishop G. K. A. Bell)
“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” D.Bonhoeffer. 7
Bonhoeffer: b.1906, son of a university professor, Christian Lutheran
Hitler came to power in 1933, in 1935 Bonhoeffer was one of the leaders of the Confessional Church.
In 1943 he was arrested, in prison and concentration camps.
The guiding force in his life and all that he did was his faith and love of God.
Introduction
“When the Bible speaks of following Jesus, it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from all man-made dogmas, from every burden and oppression, from every anxiety and torture which afflicts the conscience. 40
“Only the man who follows the command of Jesus single-mindedly, and unresistingly lets his yoke rest upon him, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure receives the power to persevere in the right way.” 40
“Jesus asks nothing of us without giving us the strength to perform it. His commands never seek to destroy life, but to foster, strengthen and heal it. 40
I. Grace & Discipleship
1. Costly Grace
“Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God.” 45
“An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins.” 45
“Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. 46
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. 47
“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. 47
“Costly grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. 48
“The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. 55
“We must therefore attempt to recover a true understanding of the mutual relationship between grace and discipleship. The issue can no longer be evaded. It is becoming clearer every day that the most urgent problem besetting our Church is this: How can we live the Christian life in the modern world?? 60
2. The Call of Discipleship
“The call goes forth and it is at once followed by the response of obedience. 61
There is no other road to faith than obedience: “We are not expected to contemplate the disciple, but only him who calls, and his absolute authority. According to our text, there is no road to faith or discipleship, not other road—only obedience to the call of Jesus.” 62
“Discipleship means adherence to Christ, and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship. 63
“Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. 64
“If we would follow Jesus we must take certain definite steps. The step, which follows the call, cuts the disciple off from his previous existence. The call to follow at once produces a new situation. 67
“Discipleship is not an offer man makes to Christ. 68
“Jesus says: ‘First obey, perform the external work, renounce your attachments, give up the obstacles which separate you from the will of God. Do not sya you have not got faith. You will not have it so long as you persist in disobedience and refuse to take the first step. Neither must you say that you have faith, and therefore there is no need for you to take the first step. 73.
“The life of discipleship is not the hero-worship we would pay to a good master, but obedience to the Son of God.” 84
3. Single-Minded Obedience
Building off the story of the rich young ruler: fundamental issue is “single-minded obedience” 90
“The actual call of Jesus and the response of single-minded obedience have an irrevocable significant. By means of them Jesus calls people into an actual situation where faith is possible. For that reason his call is an actual call and he wishes it so to be understood, because he knows that it is only through actual obedience that a man can become liberated to believe.
The elimination of single-minded obedience on principles is but another instance of the perversion of the costly grace of the call of Jesus into the cheap grace of self-justification.” 91-92
“Rather the whole Word of the Scriptures summons us to follow Jesus. We must not do violence to the Scriptures by interpreting them in terms of an abstract principle, even if that principle be a doctrine of grace.” 93
4. Discipleship and the Cross
Cross for Bonhoeffer: Means rejection and shame, as well as suffering.
“Jesus Christ must suffer and be rejected. This “must” is inherent in the promise of God—the Scripture must be fulfilled. There is a distinction here between suffering and rejection. Had he only suffered, Jesus might still have been applauded as the Messiah. All the sympathy and admiration of the world might have been viewed as a tragedy with its own intrinsic value, dignity and honour. But in the passion Jesus is a rejected Messiah. His rejection robs the passion of its halo of glory. It must be a passion without honour. Suffering and rejection sum up the whole cross of Jesus. To die on the cross means to die despised and rejected of men.” 95-96
“Jesus must therefore make it clear beyond all doubt that the “must” of suffering applies to his disciples no less than to himself.” 96
“Discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus, and therefore submission to the law of Christ which is the law of the cross. 96
“To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is: “He leads the way, keep close to him ... and take up his cross.” 97
“If your Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.” 98
“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christian suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. 99
“In fact every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all of our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and his call are necessarily our death as well as our life. The call to discipleship, the baptism in the name of Jesus Christ means both death and life … Every day he encounters new temptations, and every day he must suffer anew for Jesus Christ’s sake. 99