True discipleship is an awesome thing. But I think we can learn something from the example of the first disciples of Jesus. Jesus, like a good Jewish Rabbi, called on a group of men to follow him- to live with, learn from, act, think and be like Jesus. And for three years that's just what they did.
But after three years of life together, before he returned to his Father's right side, Jesus commissioned his followers as apostles and sent them out into Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to all the world.* For three years the followers of Jesus were identified as disciples, but for the rest of their lives, for as many years as God gave them, they were identified apostles-
"Apostles: messengers, representatives, the founders of the church."
Perhaps the reason so many seasoned Christians are so disgruntled is that we've cheated believers by putting the emphasis on discipleship instead of apostleship? Maybe after about three years of discipleship (wasn't seminary three years?) we should be going out and building the church as the representatives and messengers of Jesus?
It would appear that in the long haul the first Christians were sustained not by remaining disciples, but by becoming apostles; not by looking back on their time with Jesus, reminiscing about the good old days, but by going forward. Going out into all the world as Jesus told them to do. Going out and sharing the good news of God's love. Going out and building more Christian communities, more churches. Maybe it's time for a lot of disciples of Jesus to get on with being the apostles of Jesus?
I know it's about that time for me.
*In the four gospels we find the title "disciples" used hundreds of times, in the book of Acts less than 30 times, and then never again. In the four gospels we see the title "apostle" used 9 times, but then in the books of Acts more than 60 times.
1 comment:
We're totally behind you here! We talked with Greg too about why so many people seem to be feeling "unfed" after a few years (or decades!) in church, (and as you say become somewhat disgruntled) and he said his solution to them is to go out and seek the lost and begin discipling someone else! aka, be an apostle! It's the best way to grow... so there's some insight to what we began talking about a couple weeks ago.
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