7/27/2022 • Desk of Dennis Piller
Are you a Christian fish out of the water?
in the New Testament, “disciple,” “convert”, “believer,” and “Christian” are all used interchangeably. The word “discipleship” is often used today to refer to the biblical idea of being conformed or formed into Christ’s image. It’s a word that describes Christian growth or spiritual formation. The biblical term for this is “transformation.” But we will use “discipleship” as a synonym for transformation in this piece even though the New Testament never uses it this way.
Here are the two streams of discipleship that I observe:
1) There are those who say, “What’s important is discipleship… the church is irrelevant. Let’s not discuss the church; let’s instead discuss how to make disciples.”
When people talk that way, it shouts one fact: That our understanding of church has gotten far afield from what it was in the New Testament. When people make such statements, they are really talking about how the church has been done traditionally (and that can include “churches” that gather in homes, parks, and pubs). Whenever people think of “church” through a traditional lens, it’s not hard to see the pressing need for discipleship.
2) The other camp rightly understands that you cannot separate disciple-making from the ekklesia/Church community. You cannot separate the forming of people into full-fledged followers of Jesus and a living, breathing, vibrant community that gathers under His headship. To put it another way, you can’t separate discipleship from the ekklesia any more than you can separate child-rearing from the family. (Look at what has happened by taking the father figure out of families today.) And you can’t separate the ekklesia from Jesus Himself, for it’s His very body.
I think of too many who say, we don’t need church. God is in us. So they do nothing really… at the very least they have stunted their growth spiritually.
Imagine a saltwater fish. The fish can only survive in its natural habitat, which is the ocean. Why? Because the ocean surrounds the fish with everything it needs to live, breathe, and have its being. The fish is also a dependent creature. Fish swim in schools. Now consider a different image. Imagine that this fish is removed from the ocean and from its school and is thrown in someone’s backyard. People take turns spraying the fish with a water hose every 15 minutes. They also sprinkle salt on its body. That’s an apt picture of modern discipleship and too many so-called Christians.
Discipleship has been separated from the Christian’s native habitat (ekklesia/community) and it’s become a highly individualistic event. That doesn’t mean that an individual discipler shouldn’t “disciple” an individual disciplee to become a better individual disciple. But we have learned through Jesus Christ that Christianity has and always will be a collective, corporate life and pursuit. The issue, therefore, is not discipleship. The issue is restoring the ekklesia as God intended it to be, for the ekklesia is the Christian’s native habitat. And out of it flows everything else. The fish metaphor brings us face-to-face with a question that’s rarely asked today: How did the apostles who received the original commission of Jesus to “make disciples of all nations” carry out this commission?
If you read the New Testament chronologically from Acts to Revelation, there’s only one answer you can come up with. They did so by planting ekklesias/church communities all over the known world. I invite anyone to challenge me on that point. Converts were made and sustained into full-fledged followers of the Messiah, naturally and organically, simply by being part of the local ekklesia in their city. For them, the ekklesia was the environment for spiritual training. It was, as T. Austin-Sparks put it, “the school of Christ.”
The Twelve knew ekklesia themselves. They lived in an embryonic expression of it in Galilee with Jesus Himself. For 3 ½ years the Twelve and some women lived in community with one another where Jesus was both the center and the head of their life together.
When a Christian lives in a living expression of the Body of Christ today, he or she is being discipled just by being part of that expression. Just as a saltwater fish grows, is nurtured, and is sustained simply by living in the ocean and swimming with its school.
That does not mean coming to church to focus on God once a week, like sprinkling the fish with water and salt. Ekklesia, therefore, is the birthright of every child of God. By living in it, God’s people naturally absorb Christ. This is because, in an authentic ekklesia, the life of Jesus Christ is constantly flowing, being shared, expressed, revealed, and imparted by and to the members. To wit, the Christian is “discipled” by Christ and into Christ through the community of the believers when it is functioning as it should. I don’t say this theoretically. I’ve watched it happen countless times over my many years in healthy ekklesias.
Part of ekklesias are the small groups of our church, like Courageous men's group, Beautiful, our women's ministry, Home Builders for couples, and many more. Those who are called to plant ekklesias today, therefore, carry out the so-called “Great Commission.” They make disciples (converts) and establish them into communities where the Holy Spirit does the work of transformation (what many are calling “discipleship” today).
Are you a part of ekklesias? Are you connected in some other way beyond the sprinkling on Sunday morning? Have you set up work boundaries for the well-being of your marriage, family and church?
You’ll never walk alone. Only Boys Aloud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFr8mPh9wyk&list=RDVhrxRccU3Lw&index=6
Excerpts are taken from Frank Viola's blog Disciples in Crisis
