Discipleship and the Church

Discipleship and the Church
by Bill Hull

The most wonderful thing that has ever happened to the world is Jesus. After that, the most wonderful thing is His presence in a community of people called the Church. Many have been critical of the Church, many more have given up on it, and still others stand against it.

The Church will always vacillate between the glorious and the grotesque.

• Grotesque, Webster says is “characterized by distortions or striking incongruities in appearance, shape, manner, fantastic or bizarre…strange, eccentric, ridiculous and absurd.” I think I use grotesque quite accurately; it would take less than a hundred readers of this statement to thoroughly document each part of the above definition.
• But then there is the glory, and there is the stunning fact that there is nothing else. As Elton Trueblood put is, “however poor it is, life without it is worse.” Let me steer you away from the notion that Church exclusively means a group of people who gather on Sundays in order to go through a religious routine. Instead think of millions of people who are called by Jesus to follow Him. Part of answering the call and claim of God on their lives is to gather regularly in homes, rented buildings, restaurants and parks, in groups no smaller than two or three. Where they are gathered Christ is present and they stimulate one another to love God and the people around them.

What makes a Church is a group of followers of Jesus who form a community. A community exists where they are committed to a common pattern of life together. They will submit to one another under the authority of Christ, they will be dedicated to form relationships built on trust. They will create an environment of grace rather than judgment or critique. They are devoted to helping each other keep their commitments to God. And the primary commitment is to follow Jesus and to live the life He lived.

The Church Exists for Others

This is true because the Church is composed of disciples, followers of Jesus. Jesus came for others and his life was a gift to the world.

• Therefore, followers of Jesus have no other calling than to give their lives as living sacrifices.
• Therefore, followers of Jesus are called to live the life He lived and to make other disciples. This is done through love and an extended hand.
  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” There are far too many people who have agreed to a set of religious facts about Jesus who have not committed themselves to Christ. A non-discipleship Christianity is now accepted and preached in too many churches. When we begin to think that discipleship or following Jesus is optional and not necessary to salvation, we have entered into a Christ-less Christianity. Because discipleship or following Jesus is the evidence that we have committed to Christ, it is more than signing off on the idea. Non-discipleship, Christ-less Christianity is the reason that the Church has lost its power and attraction to so many.

So Why Should You Become a Part of a Church?


There is only one reason: to answer the call of Jesus on your life to follow Him. “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for me will save them. What good is it for you to gain the whole world and yet lose or forfeit your very self?”

These words return us to the original idea that since Christ’s life exists for others, his follower’s lives exist for others; therefore, their community or the Church exists for others. The beauty of it is that a life devoted to others is also a life that meets the deepest need of a person. You get everything you desire by giving up the tyranny of the immediate. Joy and fulfillment then are by products of living for others. I can’t imagine a better deal. Give your life to Christ and live the life for which you were created.

Think of the Church this way: The Church is a group of devoted disciples who are intentionally living life as a response to the love of God and learning from Jesus to:

• Believe what He believed [transformed mind]
• Live the way He lived [transformed character]
• Love the way He loved [transformed relationships]
• Train the way Jesus trained [transformed habits]
• Minister the way He ministered [transformed service]
• Lead the way He led [transformed influence]
  

Can you imagine a group of people who actually lived that way? I close with the words of the once stimulating Quaker Scholar Elton Trueblood who now resides in the presence of Christ:

“What we need is not intellectual theorizing or even preaching, but a demonstration. One of the most powerful ways of turning people’s loyalty to Christ is by loving others with the great love of God. We cannot revive faith by argument, but we might catch the imagination of puzzled men and women by an exhibition of a fellowship so intensely alive that every thoughtful person would be forced to respect it. If there should emerge in our day such a fellowship, wholly without artificiality and free from the dead hand of the past, it would be an exciting event of momentous importance. A society of genuine loving friends, set free from the self-seeking struggle for personal prestige and from all unreality, would be something unutterably priceless and powerful. A wise person would travel any distance to join it.”

Thinking Minds

"The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking." —A.A. Milne

To that let me add "A Christian mind is only happy when it thoughts are in unison with the mind of Christ."

Innate Knowledge

Your Conscience a gift from God

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?"--

John Adams (1775)

Christ Second Coming

"Clearly, no one wishes to say anything that will [awaken] mass hysteria. We must never speak...about 'the Day' [of the Second Coming] without emphasizing again and again the utter impossibility of prediction. We must try to show them that that impossibility is an essential part of the doctrine. If you do not believe Our Lord's words, why do you believe in His return at all? And if you do believe them must you not put away from you, utterly and forever, any hope of dating that return? His teaching on the subject quite clearly consisted of three propositions: (1) That He will certainly return; (2) That we cannot possibly find out when; (3) And that therefore we must always be ready for Him." —C. S. Lewis

The Five Solas

The Five Solas
In preserving and defending the true Christian doctrines that were rediscovered during the Protestant Reformation, we affirm and teach the following five truths:

1. Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone)
The Bible alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured.

2. Sola Gratia (by Grace alone)
In salvation we are rescued from God’s wrath by His grace alone. The supernatural work of the Holy Spirit brings us to Christ by releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from spiritual death to spiritual life.

3. Sola Fide (through Faith alone)
Justification is by grace alone through faith alone. Justification can never be the reward or result of human works or merit, nor does it grow out of an infusion of Christ’s righteousness.

4. Sola Christus (because of Christ alone)
Our salvation is accomplished by the mediatorial work of the historical Christ alone. His sinless life and substitutionary death alone are sufficient for our justification and reconciliation to the Father.

5. Sola Deo Gloria (for the Glory of God alone)
God glorifies Himself in all that He does. Therefore we should acknowledge His purpose and live for His glory alone.

US Could be Going Bankrupt

Owe no man anything!
The borrower is servant to the lender.


US 'could be going bankrupt'

By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor
(Filed: 14/07/2006)

The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country's central bank.
A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.
Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. "To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors," he asked.
According to his central analysis, "the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds''.
The budget deficit in the US is not massive. The Bush administration this week cut its forecasts for the fiscal shortfall this year by almost a third, saying it will come in at 2.3pc of gross domestic product. This is smaller than most European countries - including the UK - which have deficits north of 3pc of GDP.
Prof Kotlikoff, who teaches at Boston University, says: "The proper way to consider a country's solvency is to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. If these burdens exceed the resources of those generations, get close to doing so, or simply get so high as to preclude their full collection, the country's policy will be unsustainable and can constitute or lead to national bankruptcy.
"Does the United States fit this bill? No one knows for sure, but there are strong reasons to believe the United States may be going broke."
Experts have calculated that the country's long-term "fiscal gap" between all future government spending and all future receipts will widen immensely as the Baby Boomer generation retires, and as the amount the state will have to spend on healthcare and pensions soars. The total fiscal gap could be an almost incomprehensible $65.9 trillion, according to a study by Professors Gokhale and Smetters.
The figure is massive because President George W Bush has made major tax cuts in recent years, and because the bill for Medicare, which provides health insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid, which does likewise for the poor, will increase greatly due to demographics.
Prof Kotlikoff said: "This figure is more than five times US GDP and almost twice the size of national wealth. One way to wrap one's head around $65.9trillion is to ask what fiscal adjustments are needed to eliminate this red hole. The answers are terrifying. One solution is an immediate and permanent doubling of personal and corporate income taxes. Another is an immediate and permanent two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits. A third alternative, were it feasible, would be to immediately and permanently cut all federal discretionary spending by 143pc."
The scenario has serious implications for the dollar. If investors lose confidence in the US's future, and suspect the country may at some point allow inflation to erode away its debts, they may reduce their holdings of US Treasury bonds.
Prof Kotlikoff said: "The United States has experienced high rates of inflation in the past and appears to be running the same type of fiscal policies that engendered hyperinflations in 20 countries over the past century."
Paul Ashworth, of Capital Economics, was more sanguine about the coming retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. "For a start, the expected deterioration in the Federal budget owes more to rising per capita spending on health care than to changing demographics," he said.
"This can be contained if the political will is there. Similarly, the expected increase in social security spending can be controlled by reducing the growth rate of benefits. Expecting a fix now is probably asking too much of short-sighted politicians who have no incentives to do so. But a fix, or at least a succession of patches, will come when the problem becomes more pressing."