Our Discipleship Problem (Part 2)

I confess it: I am still almost consistently behind on things. I was listening to cassette tapes long after CDs became popular; I just got a Blu Ray player; and I still haven’t seen any episodes of the latest season of the Office. So, whenever I stumble onto a lecutre like the one by Bob Thune gave on discipleship, I am not surprised that I love it and that it’s an old lecture. Thune’s lecture “Deconstructing Discipleship” (available via Acts 29) has really helped to spell out, for me, some of the underlining problems for ineffective discipleship.

It was James K.A. Smith who stated that behind every pedagogy there was a philosophical anthropology, by which he meant that the way we teach people presupposes a particular view of human nature. According to Thune much of the Evangelical church has bought into an Enlightenment view of human nature which follows Rene Descartes in saying, “I think, therefore I am.” In this view human nature is summed up in the capacity to think and rational formulate concepts. We believe, says Thune, that “human beings are things that think.” This view of humanity, then, shapes our approach to discipleship. “Our discipleship is primarily about imparting information.” If it is true that human nature is bound up in rational thought, then good discipleship needs only to disseminate information to create genuine disciples. The problem, of course, is that even though this is what we think and what we do it is hardly creating genuine disciples.

The reality for many churches is that for all the years of sitting under good preaching, partaking in Bible studies, and memorizing Scripture we are still finding large congregations without much transformation going on among the members. What do the homes among your church members look like? What do the business practices of your members look like? What do the friendships look like among your members? What do the evangelistic efforts of your congregation look like? This tells a more realistic story about the nature of your discipleship then your attendance charts do.

I can just speak for myself here. I read and study a lot, and yet for all the knowledge that I attempt to pack into my head (I am sure not all of it sticks) I still see ugly spots in my life where I am not being transformed, where disobedience and rebellion rule. Why is that? I believe part of the answer has to be, as Thune points out, that our view of discipleship is rooted in a bad anthropology. Humans are much more than things that think. So to fix our discipleship problem we must go to the root: fix our anthropology.