Quotes on Discipleship from Dallas Willard
In his book, Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard outlines three aspects of discipleship making: “we must be disciples, we must intend to make disciples, and we must know how to bring people to believe that Jesus really is the one.” Here are some further hard hitting ideas that are inspiring. I would like to share with you in hope of a similiar experience, though admittedly the context is partially lost.
…non-discipleship is the elephant in the church; it is not the many moral failures, financial abuses or amazing general similarity between christian and non-christians. These are only the effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among christians believers today, is the failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in the kingdom among us. And it is an accepted reality. The divisions of professing christans and to those for whom it is a matter of whole life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer or client relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for the last 1500 years…
…it must be our conscious objective, consciously implemented to bring others to the point where they are daily learning from Jesus how to live their actual lives as he would live them if he were they. That implemented intention would soon transform everything among professing Christians as we know them. For example, much time is spent among Christians trying to smooth over hurt feelings and even deep wounds, given and received, and to get people to stop being angry, retaliatory, and forgiving. But suppose instead we devoted our time to inspiring and enabling christians and others to be people who are not offendable and not angry, and who are forgiving as a matter of course. Great peace, the Psalmist says, have they who love thy law, nothing trips them up. Psalm 119:165. To intentionally make disciples is to open the doorway for people to become like that…
…we [should] intend to make disciples and let converts happen instead of intending to make converts and let disciples happen…we are not talking about the duties of full time ministers, but the duty of a friend, a neighbor…
…you lead people to become disciples of Jesus by ravishing them with a vision of life in the kingdom of the heavens in the fellowship of Jesus. and you do this by proclaiming, manifesting and teaching the kingdom to them in the manner learned by Jesus himself. You must change the belief system that manages their lives…
October 1st, 2008 at 11:05 am
“…make disciples and let converts happen instead of intending to make converts and let disciples happen…” - good stuff!
Discipleship is the vehicle for the Godly development of our character, we don’t “accidentally” become Christ-like in our behavior - we must be intentional in shaping our life-pattern to that of Christ’s.
W. Adam Greer
October 1st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
“…non-discipleship is the elephant in the church; it is not the many moral failures, financial abuses or amazing general similarity between christian and non-christians. These are only the effects of the underlying problem.”
Yowza. That’s a wake up call right there. How often do we treat the symptoms when the disease just goes right along wrecking havoc.
Now I’m curious, how exactly does Willard define dship? Yes yes I know I should have read the book by now, but is it essentially the mentoring and building up of existing Christians by other Christians? I’m a little thrown off by this line “we must know how to bring people to believe that Jesus really is the one” and just curious what his definition is so I can understand that line more in context.
October 1st, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Yeah, you are right
Since I’ve been mostly only talking about this book for the last year, you really must read it sometime.
Here is some excerpts from an article found here:
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=336
And as a disciple of Jesus I am with him, by choice and by grace, learning from him how to live in the kingdom of God. This is the crucial idea. That means how to live within the range of God’s effective will, his life flowing through mine. Another important way of putting this is to say that I am learning from Jesus to live my life as he would live life if he were I. I am not necessarily learning to do everything he did, but I am learning how to do everything I do in the manner in which he did all that he did.
[...]
So as his disciple I am not necessarily learning how to do special religious things, either as a part of “full-time service” or as a part of “part-time service.” My discipleship to Jesus is, within, clearly definable limits, not a matter of what I do, but of how I do it. And it covers everything, “religious” or not.