The mission of the United
Methodist Church is “Making Disciples of Jesus
Christ.” It’s a powerful mission, but one
often confused: Do we really know what a disciple is?
And how do we go about making disciples. I offer to you
my thoughts below:
Definition of a disciple
of Jesus Christ: one who loves the Lord God with
all the heart, mind, soul, and body and loves the neighbor
as the self. This is a life-long process and no one can
honestly say he/she has “arrived”—the
journey continues until we pass from glory to glory—and
probably after that as well.
How does one make a disciple?
First, by being one. That
is first and foremost. As disciple-makers, we engage in
the frequent observance of the Sacraments of the church,
consistent prayer, humble service, rigorous self-examination,
frequent confession, generous giving, radical hospitality
and healthy living. Furthermore, as disciple-makers our
own lives must be integrated as those who operate fully
out of love for God and love for neighbor. Hypocrisy,
lying, asking others to live faithfully when we privately
cut ourselves huge amounts of slack simply must end.
Second, we recognize that
we ourselves are incapable of “making” disciples
in the sense that we can control the outcome. We throw
ourselves and our ministries onto the grace of God and
seek to live with faithfulness. That may mean being huge
risk-takers at times which could launch us into the public
spotlight and bring about ministries with unusual growth.
It may mean quiet and unnoticed ministry with the voiceless
of society, living in poverty and finding contentment
in obscurity. We trust that the Spirit of God is working
in the lives of those around us and recognize that ultimately,
each of us must work out our own salvation with fear and
trembling. We cannot decide for others specifically how
his/her own journey to full love for God and neighbor
will look. We can only model our own faithfulness and
invite others into a similar commitment.
Third, we invite those
who do seek to love God and neighbor most fully into the
spiritual disciplines that we ourselves seek to master.
We teach them to observe the Sacraments, to pray, to serve,
to examine the self, to confess, to give, to offer hospitality
and to live healthily by inviting them to work alongside
us in transparency and vulnerability. We discover the
power of the necessary committees of organizational life
to be means of disciple-making. We learn that in raising
money and setting budgets and repairing broken toilets
and deciding on the color of the carpet in the Narthex
and changing dirty diapers in the nursery that we are
being the hands and feet and mind of Christ in all we
do. We eliminate the sacred/secular division and bring
all things into obedience to Christ.
Fourth, we lay down our
lives for our enemies. We go to the cross for them and
offer forgiveness to them at the moments of our most extreme
agony. Here, we model for all what the love of God is
all about.
And that is how we make disciples. May
God have mercy on us all.
