I can easily say discipleship has been the lesson of my semester. I didn’t know I needed to learn about it. I didn’t realize how little I understand it or how poorly I’ve practiced it in my life until it kept coming up.
There are four main ways I have learned about discipleship this semester:
Erin (left) and me at Panera Bread earlier this week.
1. Listening to Erin share about meeting weekly with her neighbor to teach her about what it really means to be a Christian. Erin spoke about these weekly meetings as though it is the most ordinary and natural thing in the world to teach someone about Jesus who has never heard about him before.
2. Being blessed with the opportunity to meet weekly with Amanda, a beautiful woman whose love for Christ is evident. She continually encourages me to examine the circumstances in my life, evaluate the motives behind my actions and desire to choose decisions that honor Christ.
3. Reading “The Master Plan of Evangelism” by Dr. Robert E. Coleman with other small group leaders for the table, a college ministry for students at OSU. Coleman walks the reader through Christ’s ministry. He explains how Jesus spent so much of his time investing in 12 disciples and what Jesus did during this time with them. Reading this book was the first time I thought about Jesus as being my example of what it looks like to teach people about Jesus. It’s interesting to think about.
4. Going to a Saturday class put on by The Spero Project about the refugee community in the U.S. There, I was first introduced to the concept of “relational ministry.” The idea being that discipleship can start well before someone becomes a Christian, not just at the point someone declares Christ as his or her Lord and Savior. Discipleship happens when we let people into our daily activities: PB&J for dinner, homework, dishes left in the sink. We don’t pretend to be perfect, “holier than thou” people, but we do invite people to experience our lives with us as we love Christ and live for him. We in essence say as Paul did, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”
As I wrote this post, I listened to Phil Wickham’s newest album and heard “Mercy” for the first time. I had to keep listening to a few lines about 3 minutes into the song.
The lyrics beautifully sum up what has taken me paragraphs to write: “To love like he loves and give like he gives. To tell the story that makes dead men live. And that’s what it takes if we’re going to change the world.”
