This month the PCC are taking a whole meeting to engage with a course that claims to help Churches understand how effectively they disciple their members,
Run by the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity (LICC), the authors have identified twenty ‘vital signs’ that they say indicate just how effective a Church is at discipling their members. The PCC will be considering how healthy our own ‘vital signs’ are: We will keep you updated!
But for now, I would like to pose a couple of questions: What, exactly, is a disciple and what is discipleship?
Now you might want to jump right in with the answer to the first of these questions at least: A disciple is someone who follows Jesus.
If that was your answer, you would be right. But, what does that involve? Is it about believing in Jesus or about coming to Church regularly? Is it about trying to live a morally good life or about being faithful in Bible study and prayer?
Well, true disciples of Jesus are both less and more than these things. They are simply people who accept who Jesus is and what he has done for us; and who then strive to follow his example and put his teachings into practice in their whole lives. All disciples repeatedly get things wrong (just ask Simon-Peter} but if we recognise our mistakes, repent, and turn back to Jesus we are being faithful disciples.
Jesus invited us to be his disciples in those famous words of his from Matthew 11.28-30. He calls all who are weary and burdened to take his yoke upon us and learn from him.
Being a disciple of Jesus is a full-time vocation but when Jesus went on to say that "my yoke is easy and my burden is light” he was claiming that following him was far less taxing than trying to conform to the standards of the world.
One of the purposes of any Church or Christian group is to help its members take up or put on this yoke of Jesus. The process of doing this is called discipleship.
Now you might well feel that at Church or in your Life Group you can learn much about Jesus and maybe even lean how to be like Him. But I wonder whether you feel equipped to be a disciple of Jesus on a Monday morning at work or at school or in the Supermarket or wherever else you may be?
As a Church, we want to become better at enabling us all to become whole-life disciples, part of which is a confidence to share our faith in Jesus with others. That might sound scary, but it is the path to real joy, real peace, and real contentment. Remember Jesus came to bring life in all its fullness {John 10.10). Only his disciples can fully experience the reality of this promise. Ian