What is the Problem?
So, what exactly is the problem? I could define the problem with one word, anthropocentrism or human-centeredness. The very first step in successful discipleship is simply the realization that the universe and all of its grandeur does not revolve around humanity. Sadly, postmodern, individualistic, twenty-first century American churches have bought into the idea that Christianity revolves around the individual, that Christ works for man and that God somehow needs our worship. If there is one thing that I have learned in my religious pursuit thus far, it is that we simply cannot lift God up. Instead, He holds us up and keeps us from destruction.
Twenty first century Christians, at least in America, have reverted to defining salvation as taking place the moment someone decides to turn his or her life over to God. Salvation, in a sense, has come to simply mean conversion. Conversion is no doubt a part of salvation. Did Jesus not tell the sinful woman who washed His feet as he reclined with Simon the Pharisee, “Your faith has saved you” (Luke 7:50)? Did He not speak of salvation in the past tense? We do the scriptures a great injustice, though, when we, in our limited understanding, reduce salvation to conversion alone. Jesus also said, “…the one who endures to the end will be saved.”11 Salvation, according to Christ, was both a past event and a future goal.
If we have given our lives over to Jesus Christ we are saved, but we are also being saved. Salvation includes both the conversion and the transformation of the individual as a member of a community. The way that we have popularly defined salvation manifests itself in the manner with which we choose to treat discipleship. When it comes to investing in someone else’s spiritual growth, we have a culturally conditioned tendency to hit it and quit it. We act as if it is enough to simply bring someone to a point that they are ready to give their lives to Jesus Christ. After they have done so, we leave them to grow spiritually on their own.
What would it be like if you turned in your job application or resume to a company that you wanted to work for, and after the interviewing process you are accepted for the available position. Even though you are accepted for the position, you are not told when to show up to work. You are not given a company policy or instruction on how the company prefers you to do your work.
Sadly, this is how many of us view salvation. We work to recruit an individual into God’s army, but after he or she signs on, we fail to plug them into the church body where they can serve. We do not continue to help them to develop in their spiritual walk with Jesus Christ or give them instruction on how to replicate God’s work on this earth. An assumption that has been made by a vast majority within the Christian community is that making disciples is equivalent to making converts. It only requires of us a brief moment to make a convert before we leave them to learn and develop on their own. It takes a lifetime to make a disciple.
Working together with Him (Jesus), then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”
- 2 Corinthians 6:1-10 ESV
Already, not yet
Notice the amazing nature of the above passage. Paul speaks of salvation as if it has already happened and as if it is constantly taking place. Through the idea of constant salvation, the believers in Corinth were encouraged not to use the grace that they had received from God in vain. Paul quotes from Isaiah (49:8) as Isaiah is speaking God’s word to Israel’s restoration, “In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you…” Just as Israel was restored to God in the day of Isaiah, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ allowed for God’s people to truly be returned to Him. “Today is the day of salvation.”
Now, as God’s servants taking part in the constant salvation that He has to offer, we commend ourselves to endure all things in the name of Jesus Christ: in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights and hunger. We commit to overcoming these distresses by practicing purity, gaining knowledge, being patient, conveying kindness and, most of all, by depending on the Holy Spirit within us. We love and speak the truth by the very power of God. We overpower these hardships with the weapons of righteousness that God chooses to endow upon us; the sword (God’s Word) for our right hand and the shield (faith) for our left.12
Starting on a pure foundation
American Christians, in this postmodern era, like to talk about the goodness of God’s grace and the prosperity of those who ask Jesus into their hearts. We, first of all, fail to even mention the many hardships that come along with genuine faith. In our misrepresentation, we open the door for misunderstanding. We set our new brothers and sisters up for failure because they enter into what they think are relationships with God that is based on themselves, or the human individual. The striking and understated reality of the matter is this: God does not work for us; we work for Him. God is the author and the perfecter of the faith that He has entrusted to us.13
This means that we are not simply asking Jesus into our heart. We are literally asking Him to be the King of our lives. We are pledging our allegiance to God, even over the earthly government to whom our worldly allegiance is pledged. We follow our King no matter how much persecution we are forced to endure or how many hardships avail in our lives. So, for the most part, we fail to provide newly adopted children of God with a proper informational foundation.
We must also recognize that when we endure all of these things, we, the Christian people, endure these things in the name of Christ. Each and every believer endures the hardships that come with following Christ in Christ’s name and not one outside of that name. Since every one person endures those hardships in the name of Jesus Christ, we live through those hardships together in one name: as a community. After all, we are all the singular body of Christ in this world.14
Communal living
We misrepresent God’s gospel when we so proudly declare that God saves the individual person to Himself and has a plan for each individual person. I do believe that the individual, personal aspect of our relationship with God is important, but I do not believe that we should ever divorce the communal aspect of our relationship with God from the overall equation. For there only to be an individual aspect of this relationship again places the attention of the relationship on the human being. The only object of our affection is, or should be, God. The only way that this is possible is in community. We live together. We work together. We share God’s gospel together. We worship together. We overcome this world’s many problems together. We are all in one Christ. We walk in unity toward the one object of our affection: God.
The state of individualism in a twenty-first century American context, is an obvious state of self worth. We receive this constant message, “Do what is best for you.” We are told to create goals for ourselves and to pursue those goals unreservedly, overcoming all opposition. We want status. The devastating phenomenon is not that the world is individualistic in nature, but the fact that this individualistic philosophy has invaded the walls of the American Church, or has been there all along, and has hindered the way in which we even begin making disciples.
I remember giving my life to Jesus Christ at the age of fifteen. Of course, at the time, my personal view of salvation was individualistic. Because of my own individualistic philosophy, I was only concerned with myself and how I related to God. After a detrimental relationship and a three-year spiritual deficit, God took me to a place where I had no choice but to shift my attention from myself to Him. I began to write in January of 2010 for nothing other than the worship of God and the building up of other believers. In my experience, I can say quite confidently that living in a right relationship with God results naturally in a focus on communal living. This is why those who are heavily indulged in American pop-culture find it to be so grossly difficult to live according to the Christian lifestyle. This is why it is so difficult for so many American preachers and televangelists to truly benefit the body of Christ rather than work to be the next Billy Graham, Adrian Rodgers, Francis Chan, Tony Nolan, John Piper or N.T. Wright. I have nothing against these great men, but I disagree with a ministerial pursuit of fame, and I hope that these men of faith would agree. God gives each of us a place to serve within the body so that God may be glorified and the body as a whole might benefit, not so that individuals can be glorified as some “hero of the faith”. God is the hero of our faith. Our desire should be only to draw the attention of the people surrounding us to Him as that hero.
Antinomianism
Most Americans, I am almost certain, have heard this phrase: “Salvation is by faith alone.” This phrase, when misconstrued and made to fit our postmodern lifestyles, causes those who hear to believe that works are not as important as some make them out to be. In our churches today, especially among more contemporary congregations, there is a general aura of antinomianism. That is, the idea that since the people of God are saved, there is no need for them to focus on good works or right moral behavior. Actions simply do not matter, according to antinomian philosophy, since we are saved only by faith.
By only encouraging the portion of salvation previously referred to as conversion, we only sympathize, if not completely support, this type of thinking. Paul is unmistakably clear; salvation is past and present tense. We are called not only to conversion, but also to endurance. Without endurance, there is no true conversion. James, Jesus’ half-brother, states it in this way: faith without works is dead.15
Paul states that “we are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”16
We are literally called to live in the world that has so been corrupted by sin, yet, because of a present-tense salvation; we are to live apart from the corrupted world.
Young Billy gave his heart to Jesus Christ in the summer of 2011. He decided at one moment that he would shift the foundation of his own thoughts toward God instead of toward self. That was his conversion and the beginning point of his salvation. Billy did not change dramatically overnight, but did recognize something different about his attitude and his motives. Billy now continues to serve, as this is being written, the youth ministry at his church in the capacity of a student leader. He will be the first to admit that his life is far from perfect. He will also tell those he has the opportunity to minister to that the Christian life is not about being perfect but about pursuing perfection. It is about enduring the corruption in this dark world. It is about standing apart from corruption even though we are surrounded by it. How can we possibly return a dark world to God if we refuse to approach that dark world? Being a follower of Jesus Christ is about more than simply being secure. It is about being a soldier.
Antinomianism is not always ostentatiously obvious in the life of the individual. In fact, with our growing emphasis on the authority of the individual in the Church we implicitly encourage the devastatingly minute sense of the philosophy. One’s choice to simply rely on Christ for their eternal security while not being willing to endure corruption is disastrous to the health of the Christian community. This exponentially popular philosophy results in what we might refer to as an anti-commitment lifestyle: especially as it relates to discipleship. While older generations were committed to mentoring those younger and less mature in the faith than them, younger generations seem not to want to tie themselves down with work that does not render instant results.
We are currently facing an epidemic, and have been throughout Church history, where many of our leaders and members long to see vast numbers of converts making individual professions to the Christian faith. Rarely do we spend the necessary time mentoring them within the community of believers. This negatively empowers most of our brothers and sisters in the faith to remain spiritual infants. They have the security, but we are not equipping them to be soldiers. Though we seemingly gain instant results, we fail to multiply those results because the new believer never matures enough to become the mentor for the next generation. We reach less people with the Gospel of Christ because we focus on reaching a greater number of people more quickly.
The “we” factor
Dr. R. Bruce Carlton, the professor of cross-cultural ministry at Oklahoma Baptist University, stood to give one of his lectures in a class on evangelism, of which I was a part. As his lecture progressed, Dr. Carlton described the downfall of the clergy-laity competence gap; though he did not use the same terminology. Carlton stated that the American church seems to be relying almost completely on the ministerial staff of the local church for one hundred percent of the members’ discipleship needs. In this respect, he stated, that protestants were no better than the Catholics before us.
Paul, though he receives most of the credit for his ministry, emphasized from the very start that ministry is a team effort, “Working together with Him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.”
The fact of the matter is this, no matter the denomination: clergy cannot cultivate, solely, the spiritual growth of the entire body that is needed. Every mature believer should be mentoring someone less mature in the faith. Ongoing discipleship is not an individual effort; it is the responsibility of the believing community under Jesus Christ.
Each of these problems, which result from the anthropocentric philosophies in twenty-first century America, contribute to the constant unfaithfulness of church members to the local church community, the lack of constant transgenerational discipleship and the failure to develop future Church leaders and planters. We have been entrusted with the faith that only God can give.17 We are failing to transfer that faith holistically to the generations coming after us.
What is there to do about the trending phenomenon? Can we work against a system that has been developed over a span of time since the fall of man? I certainly hope so, for it is what we are commanded to do as a follower of Christ Jesus.