2008 - The Year of Discipleship

So I've been thinking and talking with some of our people in Christ Church about what God might be doing in and through us as we walk into 2008. The attempt to be on mission in the suburbs is challenging - a number of factors work to pull us individually and corporately away from our calling to make God known and put broken people and things back together. So coming out of these conversations, here are a few things I believe we'll be working for this year.

1. Tweaking our definition of church. In the American Southern Suburbs, 'church' usually is only thought of in terms of our large group, Sunday morning worship gathering. I'm thankful that 2007 saw small groups become a critical part of our life together. In 2008, we need to continue to work so that one-one meetings between individuals and couples becomes a more regular part of life. We'll never toss aside Sunday mornings (and it's unfortunate that some missional churches are doing so) but church is bigger than Sundays.
2. Suburban compassion, mercy and justice. I'm hoping we see a movement of churches and individuals towards missional pathways that address issues like marriage and parenting, addictions, and functional poverty.
3. Leadership development. This has not been a strength in the 18 year history of Christ Church and we just now feel like we're getting a process in place that can help us come alongside leaders in the church and the community and equip them to be who God has called them to be.
4. Decentralize leadership/ownership. In most churches, power and decision-making lies in the hands of a few. While we wholeheartedly and passionately affirm the biblical and ecclesiastical imperative to have elders oversee the church, we've started a conversation about how we reshape what our elders do and how we function in order to get all of the giftedness in the church engaged in where God is sending us in Watkinsville and Athens.
5. Learn how to take care of our business. We want to minimize the amount of time spent maintaining the 'machine' of church in order to free everyone up to be on mission. Infrastructure is necessary and critical - healthy bodies have strong bones, muscles, tendons, etc.  But it  is very easy for leaders and entire churches to exhaust all their energies on  tidying up the house without ever thinking and praying and acting in conjunction with Jesus' mission.
6. Value-driven leadership. This fits in with a couple of things previously said...our elders must spend their time guarding the values-practices of our church, embedding those values in new areas for gospel and community to happen, and creating environments that equip people to be on mission in ways the church cannot and should not. One of the things this means is that when elders and our staff meet, the big question is not 'how do we do this' but 'what is God doing?'
7. Less time trying to please Christians - particularly those who have little inclination to join in mission. This does not mean that we ignore people who are hurting. At the heart of mission is incarnating Jesus in the lives of hurting people. What I mean is that we simply cannot spend inordinate amounts of time trying to explain ourselves to those who don't share our core values and work off of other agendas. Thankfully, this hasn't been a huge issue in 2007 - part of that is because we've worked hard to be clear about who we are and what we're about.
8. Continue to talk about who we are, not who we are not. Work hard to help people see the big picture of what we're about rather than getting bogged down in secondary issues and bizarre theological questions. We want to foster genuine discussion and dialogue without getting caught in missional quicksand.
9. Quit worrying about numbers. Notice that I didn't say quit paying attention to numbers - healthy things grow so you'd expect more people to be connected to the church. But to worry about that - particularly if it drives us away from a regular life of repentance and faith - does no one any good.
10. Get better at breathing. It's very easy for Christians to hold their breath - we spend little time taking in good deep breaths of grace and even less time breathing out in lives that love people in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and communities. How do we improve our breathing? There are certainly techniques that we can learn in order to breathe in and breathe out in more healthy ways. We're thinking through ways to help people do that. But what we can never miss is that breathing is the natural way of life for healthy people - grace and the gospel should create breathing in and breathing out as the way we do life. We take in love and grace from God and give it away to others.

When I read all of those things, the word discipleship comes to mind. My guess is that most of us have heard that word and maybe even use it a lot. I've spent the past few weeks thinking and reading and talking to people about discipleship and trying to pull it apart and understand it.

For me discipleship is simply learning to become who you already are. As Christians, God has done something objectively permanent in our lives on the cross. He has chosen us, redeemed us, restored us, and brought us into a binding covenant relationship of love with himself. He has adopted us as children - that is our identity. My life today is learning how to live in response to all of that - sin is my failure to believe that any or all of that is true. So discipleship is God's work of teaching me to be who I already am.

And who am I? I'm someone created and re-created by God to join Him in his mission of making Himself known as He puts broken people and a broken world back together. That's my identity and when I understand that I was created for mission then I'll see discipleship as the process of joining Jesus in the mission I was made for.

So here's to the next 366 days (we have a leap year!) of learning to be who we already are as missionaries to the places God has placed us. May this kind of missional discipleship become part of the fabric at Christ Church in 2008.

Comments

[Rick]

Hey wait, the community I attend is calling this the year of discipleship ... this is spoooooky.

[Matt Adair]

Rick - genius and lunacy run in the same circles...

[Phillip B.]

"Work hard to help people see the big picture of what we're about rather than getting bogged down in secondary issues and bizarre theological questions."

It's so encouraging to be part of a church that thinks this way while still holding fast to the Gospel.