Ep 46: The Discipleship Sandwich (Bonus Episode)

In this special bonus episode, we zoom back out to take another look at the Three Primary Problems, but from a different angle. Let’s picture discipleship as a sandwich! The meat and cheese are our spiritual formation, the top piece of bread is the Kingdom, and the bottom is our Five-Element Communities. In our current age, holistic formation in Jesus means feasting on the entire sandwich! And we’ll tackle one or two of the ideas that can make consuming our sandwich challenging in the West. Time to eat.

TRANSCRIPTION

Discipleship Sandwich

Listen to this episode here!

On today’s bonus episode, we’re going to zoom out and look at the Three Primary Problems, but from a rather different perspective.

We’re going to look at them as layers of a sandwich.  And we’re going to explore one or two key ingredients, the key ideas, that have propelled the problems.  So, let’s dig in.

Back to Basics: The Idea

Let’s head back to Episode 1, where we first defined what an idea is

An idea is “a fundamental concept, assumption, or principle in which our hearts are rooted but of which we’re generally unaware.”

Philosopher and theologian Dallas Willard wrote, “Ideas are so essential to how we approach life that we often do not understand when and how ideas are at work… (People) don’t know what moves them, but ideas govern them and have their consequences anyway.”[1]

That is a shocking statement.  You and I are supposedly governed and powered by deep ideas in our hearts, but we generally aren’t aware of what they are, how they influence us, or even how they got there.

Willard went on to write, “The apostle Paul warned that ‘our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Then Willard added, “These…powers and forces are spiritual agencies that work with…the idea systems of evil. These systems are the powers’ main tool for dominating humanity (italics mine).”[2]

Willard then linked ideas to discipleship.  “The process of spiritual formation in Christ is one of progressively replacing those destructive images and ideas with the images and ideas that filled the mind of Jesus himself. (2 Corinthians 4:4, nrsv).[3]

“Changing those governing ideas is one of the most difficult and painful things in life…Jesus confronted and undermined an idea system and its culture, which in turn killed him. He proved himself greater than any idea system or culture, and he lives on. He is continuing the process of a worldwide idea shift that is crucial to his perpetual revolution, in which we each are assigned a part.”[4]

These powerful, governing ideas sit in the deepest part of who we are as humans, our hearts, or our roots. And we’ve been exploring various ideas and their impact on us as individuals and as cultures.

As you might expect, ideas are at the root of the Three Primary Problems.  Let’s start in the middle of our sandwich.

The Meat and Cheese

The middle of our sandwich is what we call discipleship, or spiritual formation.  And the problem with the middle layer is what we call the Discipleship Dilemma.

There’s a lot of confusion today about discipleship.  What is it? How do we make them? What’s the difference between a disciple and a convert? What should we expect as a disciple?

Here on Soil & Roots, we’ve defined discipleship as simply the journey to become more like Jesus.  It’s an ongoing transformation of the heart.  It’s character formation, heart formation, spiritual formation.  We grow to desire the things Jesus desires, to love the things He loves, so that His ideas become our ideas.

We’ve looked at this at a high level, and we’ve explored it very practically.

Our hearts give off all sorts of indicators of what’s going on inside, and we’ve discovered that Jesus’ heart does as well.

We’ve identified eight of these indicators: our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, health, relationships, words, and how we use time and money.

If we truly desire to become more like Jesus, then we desire to think His thoughts, feel what He feels, behave as He behaves, relate as He relates, and so on.  This type of formation goes far beyond our stated beliefs or what we intellectually agree to.  It’s the transformation of our entire person.

So, we introduced the concept of Heartview – using our indicators to explore our hearts and Jesus’ heart, so that we can become more like Him.

Because our heart indicators are deeply influenced by our own stories and relationships, discipleship involves understanding how our stories impact us and those around us.  How our stories fit into the grand story of the Bible and the Kingdom.

Now this concept of discipleship –the formation of our spirits, our hearts – was lost for some time in the West and then recaptured several decades ago.

You may or may not be aware of it, but there’s a “spiritual formation” movement that’s steadily growing and features ministries such as Renovare, Dallas Willard Ministries, and Grafted Life.

More and more seminaries are including courses and even full degrees focused on spiritual formation.  Biola University, Talbot Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Liberty University.

There’s a national group of trained professionals called “spiritual directors” who walk alongside people in their spiritual formation.

Now, some of modern evangelicalism doesn’t really know what to do with the spiritual formation movement.  We’re so focused on teaching and intellectual pursuits, spiritual formation seems odd, antiquated, really long-term, and too experiential or relational for many moderns.

The primary focus of the spiritual formation movement has been on habits, or spiritual disciplines.  We looked at habits this season – practices such as solitude, celebration, fasting, prayer, service, and silence.  There isn’t any master list of spiritual habits, though I think it’s safe to say modern Christianity has lost the desire and practice of many of these spiritual disciplines.  I’m not sure how many of us have been trained in our churches to practice the spiritual discipline of silence, or contemplation, or even confession.

Much of the spiritual formation movement looks back to the early church fathers and their tremendous research and use of spiritual habits, and encourages us to recapture those habits today.

The core principle is that, if we want to become more like Jesus, we should practice doing the things Jesus did, and the things Jesus instructed us to do.  Makes a lot of sense.

As we talked about, if you want to become more like Michael Jordan, you do the things he did.  You copy his basketball drills, practice regimens, eating habits, and rest patterns.

So that’s a brief summary of the middle of our sandwich – spiritual formation. And here in the west, we’re in a dilemma, a discipleship dilemma. The reason it’s a Primary Problem is that many modern Christians don’t understand what discipleship is or the importance of the five key elements.  We don’t know Jesus particularly well, and we don’t know ourselves particularly well.

That being the case, there are tremendous organizations, churches, and people doing fantastic, relational, patient work in this area of spiritual formation.  That’s great because spiritual formation solves the second primary problem.

The Top Piece of Bread

However, part of what we’re trying to add to the discipleship conversation at Soil and Roots involves looking at spiritual formation as the meat and cheese of a larger sandwich.  That effective, transformative spiritual formation needs the pieces of bread on the top and bottom in order to create lasting, transformative personal, church, and culture change.  In order to solve the middle problem, the Discipleship Dilemma, we must also solve the top and bottom problems of the sandwich.

The top piece of bread is the Kingdom of God. Teaching and living the Kingdom solves the first Primary Problem, the Forgotten Kingdom.

Discipleship will continue to be stunted and hindered, and thus culture will continue to decline, if we don’t recapture the Kingdom of God, the primary theme of the New Testament.

The bottom piece of our sandwich is the Five-Element Community, or what we call Greenhouses. Five-Element Communities solve the Formation Gap.

Discipleship will continue to be stunted and hindered if we don’t recapture specific, small communities designed to form us.  Communities that commit to a holistic approach to discipleship, involving time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction.

Alright, let’s take a bite out of the top layer of our sandwich for a moment, the need to explore, teach, and live the Kingdom of God.

The Most Dangerous Idea to the Kingdom

You might think that the most dangerous, toxic opponent to the Kingdom of God is woke ideology, the worship of the self (what Carl Trueman calls “expressive individualism”), or perhaps the decline of individual responsibility and morality.  Or maybe you think Christianity is most in danger due to Western prosperity or heretical teaching, such as the health and wealth gospel.

I’m asking you to consider that the most dangerous idea to the Kingdom right now may not be any of those.  The most dangerous idea to the Kingdom is what we’ve been calling Christian fatalism.

Christian fatalism is the idea that the Gospel and the church are growing, but somehow the rest of the world is falling apart and heading to hell.  And there’s nothing we can do about it.

Christ will one day consummate His Kingdom, and everything will be made new, but the earth, culture, and nature are going to be destroyed in one form or another in the process.

I submit that this is the most dangerous idea facing the Kingdom right now, and that many other deadly, infectious, unconscious ideas have spawned from it.  And we’re not even aware of it.

Many Christians I run across today are Christian fatalists.  They usually hold to a pessimistic view of the body, of culture, and of the created order.

A few of them are fatalists because of their eschatology.  That’s just a big word meaning our view of the end times.

These folks can be split into two camps.  The first group studies the Bible and biblical prophecy and has formed an informed view of the end times, which it can defend well. There are some brilliant theologians and teachers who hold that the church is growing while the rest of the world will eventually collapse before Christ’s final consummation of reality. It’s a view worth studying and understanding.

The second, admittedly larger, group has heard a few things about the end times and has watched a few of the Left Behind movies, but hasn’t really done any meaningful study.  They just assume that view of the end times because they aren’t aware of any other interpretations, despite the fact that this fatalistic view is by far the newest of the three or four major end times perspectives.

But the much larger group of Christian fatalists doesn’t hold to fatalism because of some theological view of the end times.  They’ve just unconsciously picked up on the underlying tone and tenor of our age.

I often joke that this group just watches too much news.  They’ve developed a negative view of the world because 99% of what they take into their brains and hearts is negative news.  Good news doesn’t sell ads, and human beings tend to be far more fascinated by the macabre and morose.

We live in a ubiquitous information age, and the overwhelming majority of that information is designed to get us to view, click on, or consume something so that someone else makes a buck, and they don’t care if what we’re taking into our hearts negatively impacts our unconscious view of the world.

Many Christians and Christian institutions have unconsciously assumed a fatalistic view of the world simply because the vast majority of information we consume is negative.  We have virtually no access to channels that would inform us how the Kingdom of God is actually growing.

And it’s growing.  A lot.

In their book, The Kingdom Unleashed, Jerry Trousdale and Glenn Sunshine note,

“Christianity is spreading faster now than it has at any time in human history. If that statement surprises you, it means that you probably live in the Global North where Christianity is – at best – holding its own. But Christianity is exploding in the Global South.

Consider:

·      There were nine million Christians in Africa in 1900; by 2000 there were 335 million (37 times as many) with most of the growth occurring since the 1960s.

·      In Latin America in 1900, there were 50,000 Protestants; today, there are more than 64 million (1,280 times as many) again with most of the growth occurring since the 1960s.

·      The number of Christians in Asia grew for 101 million to 351 million between 1970 and 2010.

·      In China, it is estimated that 10,000 people per day become Christ Followers, and even by conservative estimates, Christianity has grown 4,300 percent in 50 years. By 2030, China will have more Christians living in it than any other nation on earth.

·      There are 3.7 times as many Protestants in Africa as in North America – and the gap grows dramatically every year.  This has happened just in recent decades.”[5]

Christian fatalism tends to be a Western idea, often because we view the entire world through a very Western lens.

But regardless of how someone comes to assume Christian fatalism, our concern here is not with the sources but with the downstream ideas Christian fatalism breeds, by necessity.

Here’s one very dangerous downstream idea caused by Christian fatalism – the segmentation and separation of the church from other areas of life.

Christian fatalism requires the church to grow while the rest of culture and creation, be it government, the arts, education, the media, and nature, fall apart.  Christian fatalism assumes and sometimes promotes the retreat of the church from the rest of reality, creating a very dangerous and destructive passivity and allowance of evil.

Enjoying the Kingdom Right Now

This is incredibly ironic, considering that you and I enjoy innumerable benefits from Christians of ages past who understood and embraced the fact that we are integrated beings living in an integrated world. That the Kingdom does not mean the church, and that the Kingdom cannot and will not be segmented from the rest of God’s good earth.

That we are all made in the Image of God, and we serve a King who is making all things new.  And that “all things” means “all things.”  That the role of a Christian goes beyond simply sharing a version of the Gospel, but that we are God’s dwelling place on earth, working with Him to increase His Kingdom – a Kingdom that encompasses every atom and speck of the universe.

That’s a shocking idea to many Christians, but let’s ask ourselves some basic questions.

·      Why are we able to read and write today?  Because of Christianity.

·      Why is there a field called science with all its various disciplines?  Because of Christianity.

·      Why does democracy exist today?  Because of Christianity.  By the way, did you know that, according to the Pew Research Center, over half the countries on the planet are now democratic?[6] That trend has been growing for decades.

·      Why are women and minorities allowed to vote? Christianity.

·      Why do we have access to professional healthcare?  Christianity.

·      Why do we place such a high value on education?  Christianity.

·      Why was European slavery abolished?  Christianity.

·      What drove incredible advances in art, music, and beautifying the world around us?  Christianity.

·      What’s the basis for much of Western law?  Principles and ideas found in Christianity.

In their book, What if Jesus Had Never Been Born?, D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe remark, “Everything that Jesus touched, He utterly transformed.  He touched time when He was born into this world; He had a birthday and that birthday utterly altered the way we measure time.”[7]

They list other impacts of the Kingdom beyond what I just noted.

·      Universities…most of the world’s greatest universities were started by Christians for Christian purposes

·      Literacy and education for the masses

·      Free enterprise

·      Civil liberties

·      Benevolence and charity, the good Samaritan ethic

·      Higher standards of justice

·      High regard for human life

·      The codifying and setting to writing of many of the world’s languages[8]

The reality is, westerners (and now many other people around the world) enjoy a type of life and lifestyle largely unknown and unimaginable to previous ages, either because of Christians directly, or because of the influence of Christian ideas that continue to permeate virtually every aspect of our existence.

But Christian fatalism forces disintegration and separation. It would have us believe Jesus is only effectively head of the church, and that Christianity has limited or no impact on creation and culture, or whatever impact it may have is ultimately doomed to failure.

Thank heavens our Christian ancestors didn’t embrace that perspective, or you and I would be living in a much different, much more difficult world.

Christian fatalism has become such a powerful, assumed idea in the West that we now think it extraordinary or odd when someone suggests a unifying, integrated Kingdom perspective.

Christian Environmentalists?

Here’s a question – what was the very first thing God said to human beings?

It’s the Cultural Commission found in Genesis 1:28. God invited us to steward creation on His behalf. We are to take care of the earth, of nature, and all of its derivatives.

Ok, so why aren’t Christians at the forefront of environmental issues?  If God commanded us to take care of His earth, and Christians have committed to love and serve God, why aren’t thousands of Christians forming organizations and movements to properly steward and care for the planet?

Why are we not the first to voice our concerns when plant and animal species may be going extinct?  Or when corporations are purposefully polluting lakes, rivers, and streams?  Where is the organization called “Christians for the Ethical Treatment of Animals?”

We often make fun of tree-huggers and global warming alarmists, and we’re quick to condemn the worship of Mother Earth or the devaluing of human beings in favor of animals.  I get that – those are valid concerns.

But if the very first thing God instructed us to do is to take care of His planet, shouldn’t Christians be the largest influence and the loudest voice on how to do that?  And why should we do that?

But a Christian fatalist has little desire or motivation to protect the planet. It’s just going to burn anyhow.  Good luck reconciling that perspective with the very first thing God commanded human beings to do.

Is America a Christian Nation?

How about the government? Have you ever participated in a discussion about whether America is, or has ever been, a Christian nation?  That’s been an ongoing debate for decades.

Question: If the Bible tells us repeatedly that Jesus ascended to the Father and now has all authority over all rulers, powers, and nations, both visible and invisible, isn’t every nation a Christian nation?  Are they just in different stages of accepting that reality?

If Christian means “belonging to Christ,” and Christ is right now ruling the cosmos, isn’t China a Christian nation?  Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Vietnam?  Isn’t every nation a Christian nation?

And shouldn’t Christians be routinely reminding the nations of that reality?  Because, at least according to the Bible, that is our present reality. There is no such thing as a non-Christian nation.  They all belong to Him. And the church should be promoting that reality.

On a smaller scale, has your church developed a team and a strategy to influence your local city council or school board?  Is your church seeking the good of your entire community by influencing local political structures? If not, why not?

“Well, separation of church and state.” No, in the Kingdom, there is no such thing. If Jesus is Lord of all government and we are His representatives on earth, responsible for proclaiming His lordship over all government, how do we grow His Kingdom through local government?

Are you beginning to see just how damaging and pernicious Christian fatalism really is?  This is not just an academic exercise.  If Christians in the West continue to accept and embrace – even unconsciously – the segmentation and disintegration that fatalism demands, the consequences are vast and deadly.  There is little reason to seek justice, to overcome evil, to care for nature, to redeem culture, to create beauty, to promote peace, to restore the family, to reform institutions.

In other words, to do what Christians have done for the vast majority of the church age…until quite recently.

This is why the top piece of bread on our sandwich is so urgent and so vital to proper discipleship.  If we only recognize Christ as Savior and ignore His role as redeeming king of the cosmos, we’re missing an enormous piece of the puzzle.  And our hearts and behaviors will reflect that missing piece.  And people, families, communities, and nations suffer as a result.

We’ll explore the impact of Christian fatalism more in Season 4 when we go deep into the Kingdom.  Here’s the point: a disciple who is a Christian fatalist is going to view the world very differently, and behave differently, than a disciple who is immersed in the integrated Kingdom.  That’s why teaching and living the Kingdom is so essential to discipleship in our current age.

The Bottom Piece of Bread

So, the middle of our sandwich is spiritual formation – becoming more like Jesus in our whole person, starting in our hearts.  This is the context of our discipleship.  Who is Jesus?  Who are we?  Where are we in our journey to become more like Him?

The top layer of our sandwich is teaching and living the Gospel of the Kingdom.  This is the vision of our discipleship. The Kingdom permeates our entire existence.  It’s the environment in which we’re discipled.

The bottom layer of our sandwich is all about our path in discipleship.  It answers the “How” question.  We become more like Jesus primarily in communities designed to form us into His likeness. We call these immersive communities of formation, five-element communities, or Greenhouses.

Five-Element Communities solve the Third Primary Problem, which is the Formation Gap.

Here at Soil and Roots, we’ve proposed that there is more to spiritual formation than just habits or just instruction.  We’ve explored all sorts of other formative human experiences and concluded that there isn’t just one or two key elements to our formation, there are five.  Time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction.

Discipleship certainly involves teaching and instruction, and it certainly involves practicing doing the things Jesus did.  However, time, community, and intimacy are also essential to healthy, holistic discipleship.

And though the Holy Spirit directs our formation, we must intend to become a disciple. It’s participatory. We don’t grow to become more like Jesus through osmosis.  If we truly want our hearts to become more like Jesus, we must embrace the fact that discipleship is a lifelong journey in five-element communities.  It takes time, exploring our hearts and stories, a lot of patience, and probably more stillness and quiet than many of us are used to.

There are various obstacles to forming and cultivating these types of communities.  Why is it that we assume and accept Five-Element Communities in childhood, in higher education, in certain careers, in sports, in marriage, but tend to push back against these types of communities when talking about our most important formation?

We make time to take our daughter to the gym five days a week to form her into a professional athlete, but we certainly don’t have time to meet with our communities consistently to be formed more like Jesus.

We’ve explored some obstacles already, things like busyness, purposeful distractions, discomfort, and how different Five-Element Communities may be compared to our typical church experiences.  That’s why it’s important to start by working with the willing.  Find enough people who are desperate for Jesus, for hope, for peace, for the Kingdom, and you’ll have your community.

Eat up!

So, there you have it! The Discipleship Sandwich.

The middle of our sandwich is spiritual formation – becoming more like Jesus.  This is becoming a more accepted, more informed understanding of discipleship thanks to some great organizations, seminaries, churches, and communities around the world.  It focuses on transforming our hearts, our spirits, and our character rather than just accumulating information.

The top layer of bread is the Gospel of the Kingdom – the very good news that Jesus is making all things new.  We are integrated beings living in an integrated world.  Just as our bodies aren’t bad, the world isn’t bad. God created us and the world good, and He’s in the process of restoring what’s been broken.  The Kingdom is the environment, the atmosphere, the ethos in which our formation occurs.

The bottom layer is the “how.” How do we become formed more like Jesus in the context of His Kingdom?  We do that through committed Five-Element Communities. Groups of people growing together in purposeful discipleship, committed to time, spiritual disciplines, community, intimacy, and increasingly deepening instruction in the Kingdom.

[1] Willard, D. (2012). Renovation of the Heart, p. 97, NavPress.

[2] Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 98.

[3] Willard, D., & Johnson, J. (2006). Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Experiments in Spiritual Transformation (p. 72). NavPress.

[4] Willard, D., & Johnson, J. (2006). Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Experiments in Spiritual Transformation (pp. 68–69). NavPress.

[5] Trousdale, J. & Sunshine, G. (2018). The Kingdom Unleashed (pp. 31-32). Trousdale & Sunshine.

[6] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/05/14/more-than-half-of-countries-are-democratic/

[7] Kennedy, D. J. & Newcombe, J. (2001). What if Jesus Had Never Been Born? (p. 1). Thomas Nelson, Inc.

[8] Kennedy, D. J. & Newcombe, J. (2001). What if Jesus Had Never Been Born? (pp. 3-4). Thomas Nelson, Inc.