Our work and God's work
"Aren't we just teaching people to perform, when we teach them spiritual disciplines and how to disciple others?" The young man asking me this question grew up in the church in the US. Many of these bodies of believers, though well intentioned, are places to sit and observe, but not participate. Consequently, when confronted with the actions necessary to fulfill the command to "Make disciples", he is seeing a paradigm unfamiliar to him. Unfamiliar, and uncomfortable. A pretty good definition of following the person of Jesus, and participating in His work of finding, recruiting, and bringing to maturity a generation of followers who both learn and reproduce the spiritual life. When we ask the question "Aren't we just teaching performance?" I am convinced that we are looking through the wrong lens. The sin of the garden was the fallacy that we can be the directors and rulers of our own lives. In disciple making, this tendency causes me...