I wrote earlier this spring about the death of Dallas Willard and the impact his life and ministry had on getting the “discipleship” conversation to the forefront in North American evangelicalism. One of the ways he did this was to distinguish discipleship from other things which are necessary to discipleship but not sufficient to describe the whole of it.
John Chandler
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Willard was once asked in an interview if spiritual formation was the same as discipleship. He responded: “Discipleship as a term has lost its content, and this is one reason why it has been moved aside. I’ve tried to redeem the idea of discipleship, and I think it can be done; you have to get it out of the contemporary mode. There are really three gospels that are heard in our society. One is forgiveness of sins. Another is being faithful to your church: If you take care of your church, it will take care of you. Sometimes it’s called discipleship, but it’s really churchmanship. And another gospel is the social one — Jesus is in favor of liberation, and we should be devoted to that. All of those contain important elements of truth. You can’t dismiss any of them. But to make them central and say that’s what discipleship is just robs discipleship of its connection with transformation of character.”
In one stunning paragraph, Willard put his finger on the evolution of the conversation about spiritual formation: it has moved from a conversionist perspective (focusing on “making decision for Christ”) to a church-based view (where your life as a follower of Jesus is captured entirely in your participation in congregational life), and is now evolving to a focus on discipleship, or whole-life participation in the Kingdom of God.
The place of church in society is evolving to where congregational life is now typically not at the center of civic life. This is either a substantial loss (if living with Jesus means being at church), or an incredible opportunity (if living with Jesus means being the church in the world). Willard has done a great service to us by clarifying what the transformational gospel really is, and by describing the costs of settling for lesser gospels.
John Chandler is leader of the Spence Network. Follow the Spence Network on Facebook and Twitter.