A way in which I've been thinking about discipleship in recent days is vertical/horizontal. Now, for some reason this makes sense to me, but may not to you...but bear with me!
Vertical discipleship is very much about moving us along in our relationship with God. Through this, we expose our young people to deeper and deeper thinking (and hopefully understanding) of God. They learn how to access their bibles, how to understand how God has interacted with his creation and how crucial it is to have a personal relationship with Jesus. A lot of our kids have 'inherited faith', in that the only reason they come to church is because their parents make them. Only much later do they get the opportunity to really explore where exactly they stand on these issues. Basically, vertical discipleship is 'holiness', about that crucial journey towards Christ-likeness.
But discipleship doesn't seem to just stop there. This is where the horizontal comes in...
Not only are we in relationship with God, but we're also in relationship with each other as a community of faith, and also as members of the human race. Horizontal discipleship equips us to live lives of faith within this context. It takes the theology and biblical studies and makes it real to the every day situations we encounter. We see how scripture was created in and for community, how our faith is defined not only by what we learn but how we live it out. We learn how important it is not to keep this good news to ourselves, but to want to show the whole world the wonderful hope we've discovered.
So how is discipleship missional? Well, I guess it's the way in which we are trained and prepared for our participation in the missio Dei...
It takes seriously Jesus' command to love God with everything we are and to love our neighbours in the same way...
It's a discipleship that prepares as much for life before death as after it (hat tip to Christian Aid for this idea)...one that isn't about creating nice little church member clones, but about helping young people fulfil their potential as radical missionaries for Christ. Like Paul, willing to live or die for Christ, whatever it may cost...
Discipleship must always be tangible, never simply theoretical...
So this is where I've got to so far in this. Clearly there's so much more that we could explore about discipleship, but I wanted to think about what our intentions were in discipling our young people. What do you think?
**NOTE
Graeme has very helpfully (not being sarcastic!!) pointed out that my horizontal and vertical model if taken in a mathematical way could point towards creating a false dichotomy. His blog has a great post on it taking this forward. He uses a DNA strand as an image in describing how God focused and community focused discipleship shouldn't be separated. Perhaps another image could be a rope, which is made up of heaps of different strands which come together to make the whole rope much stronger.
What's really important to point out here is that discipleship must hold together these two strands for it to be truly holistic and missional.
Sorry that this post has now become the longest in the world...! Ever...
3 comments:
It's good to read these ideas, and I don't think the question is relevant only to young people, but to all ages as well. What are intentions when as leaders we are responsible for helping to shape the discipleship of others.
I fully agree that "discipleship must always be tangible". In fact I would say that discipleship that isn't tangible is actually only theology which, whilst having a role within discipleship, leads mainly to a head knowledge.
Without trying to pour hot water on it, my only concern with your model of horizontal/vertical discipleship is from an illustrative point of view. By having two axes of discipleship there is an obvious inherent danger.
If we see the two axes as separate from each other there is a risk of divergence. With the point of convergence being at 90° to either axis, the longer you travel one path the further you get from the others. This simply perpetuates the fundamentalism/liberalism split.
Personally I feel that the two strands of discipleship are inextricably intertwined with each other.
Does that make sense?
Woh Graeme...I guess I didn't come from the mathematical axes point of view, but thanks for pointing that out. I was thinking, like you that they're completely intertwined, but was searching for a way to describe a discipleship that encompassed reverance for God (vertical) and communal responsibility (horizontal).
Thanks for your thoughts, though! I'll leave maths to others!
Martin, I really didn't want to shoot your idea down, but for me the idea brought to mind the sort of discipleship I saw as I grew up.
I've written more over at my blog (including illustrations!!) so will make a shameless plug in this comment!
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