The conversations of the past week have been enlightening. My wife is convinced that once I can focus all of my attention on this new movement, I'll have more answers. I hope she's right, because it sure seems like my answer to every other question these days is, "I don't know." What are you going to do? I don't know. How is this going to look? I don't know. When can this become an inclusive gathering that welcomes all people? I don't know. What are the Cubs World Series chances? Slim. And none. But mostly none. What does discipleship look like? I don't know.
It's that last question that I have been wrestling with the most these days. If I see this little movement as a missional, disciple-making movement, what does that mean? And how do we get there? While I certainly don't have the answers, I do have some thoughts. So I'll share.
I have come to realize that discipleship is an intimately personal endeavor. So to try and "program" discipleship is quite a misnomer, at least insofar as we try to have a one-size-fits-all approach. What discipleship looks like to this friend might not be discipleship to the next one. While there are certainly some overarching principles, one size does not fit all.
And I think that one of the aspects of discipleship that the church has sorely missed is the notion of discipline. There has been within the church recently (especially within the "emergent" church) a desire to recapture what has been termed the "spiritual disciplines." Things like fasting and meditation and lectio divina and silence and examen. These are things that, for the most part, the church has ignored. I could devote multiple posts to the reasons why we find ourselves in this place, but that's another blog for another time.
But I'm pretty sure that you can't have disciples without discipline. I know that should seem obvious, especially in the English language, but sometimes we miss the most obvious things because they're, well, too obvious. As my friend says, "If only there were some clue . . ." More than anything else, this is what the fast has taught me. Discipline is a non-negotiable part of discipleship. The last thing I want to do while making my daughters' lunches in the morning is stick to my beans/rice/potato/bread diet. I would SO love to lick the peanut butter knife or eat one of those apples. But I have made a commitment to this discipline, and so I am sticking with it.
My dream for this little community of friends/believers/journeyers is that we would continue to hold one another accountable to some form of discipline. We're (hopefully) going to follow this 40-day fasting experience with a 40-day experience with reading the Scriptures. And then maybe a 40-day journey with journaling. Then maybe 40 days of prayer. I just can't escape this notion that disciples have discipline.
And the ways that discipleship shows up in the midst of these disciplines is sometimes unexpected. One family in our group has re-engaged one another in conversations about going on the mission field in a foreign land. They didn't set out in this fast to find life direction, but it is happening as a byproduct of discipleship. Another family is re-examining finances and seeing how much exactly they need to live on so that they can give the rest away. The fast was never designed to mess with personal finances. Still another family is wrestling with what it means to be a community that "does no harm" in the things that we purchase and where we purchase them from. Again, this was never a focus of this fast.
But when we go a little deeper than the surface, we find that there is much to be pondered, explored, and discussed. Many of our deepest wishes and desires show up when we're willing to get beneath the surface. This is what happens when disciples of Jesus rediscover the importance of discipline.
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