Baptist Times: Whole-life Discipleship (Feb 2011)

A Vision for Discipleship
Albert drives buses. He’s passionate about serving people, extending those courtesies that make life easier – waiting for the person who’s still running to the stop; exercising patience with those who’ve lost theirs. He’s also bothered about the other drivers in the depot. When I met him he was about to return to work following a short strike during which only five drivers had crossed the picket line. ‘My job tomorrow,’ he said, ‘is to be a peacemaker. That’s why I’m here.’ Albert has a vision to make a difference in his place of work. Quietly spoken, with a sense of humour, a diplomat and a good listener, Albert deploys that gifting by actively engaging with the relational tensions of his workplace. Along the way he hopes to drive lots of people safely from A to B, enable as many as possible to experience grace through his attention to their needs, and to speak about Jesus as the one who inspires his vision for a life worth living.

What about you? What’s shaping your vision for your own life?

One of the ways we might approach this question is to take seriously the places where we spend most of our time. That’s what Jesus did. John 1:14 tells us that Jesus “came and lived among them…”  In other words he came to live in a fixed time and place. It mattered where he was. This was the context in which he could fulfil his unique and specific life calling in obedience to his Father.

Jesus was sent to a tiny geographic area on our planet for a limited amount of time, but with a purpose. He came to seek and to save the lost. He came to model an alternative way of life and relationships. He came to declare by word and deed that the kingdom of God had come. He ate
and drank, he taught and healed, he talked and cried, he worked and slept, he prayed and celebrated. He lived fully and purposefully in that moment and in that place and he invited his disciples to do likewise.

Where we are matters. Where we spend the majority of our time in an ordinary week matters to God. So where is that for you - work, home, college, in your community, or somewhere else? Can you make a difference there? On the ‘frontline’ in daily life, in your ‘crossing places’ with non believers?

The Message translation of Galatians 6:4 puts the challenge succinctly,

‘Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that.’

God weaves the threads of our life, our self and our context into a tapestry that displays the wonder of his mission as we ask questions and listen, bring him our dilemmas, search the Scriptures, and exercise boldness in words and deeds on the frontline.

It’s easy to be overly swayed by other people’s expectations or intimidated by the brilliance of other people’s gifting. Allowing such forces to mould us can lead to bitterness or resentment or a growing sense of inadequacy. The truth is: you are one in whom Christ dwells and in whom he delights, his masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10), a reflection of the heart and the mind and the creative genius of the Maker. We’re not all called to be diplomats or drivers. But through our gifting and our growth in Christ-likeness on the frontline we will make a difference wherever we are day by day. So what’s your vision for your discipleship these days?

Tracy Cotterell

Baptist Times: Whole-life Discipleship

LICC has been asked to contribute a series of articles to the Baptist Times exploring themes in whole-life discipleship. In the first of the series Mark Greene looks at a surprising example of faith in action on the Frontline...

Where you are, as in heaven?
Imagine you are a ten year old in a primary school, specifically at Holy Trinity C of E Primary School in Northwood where I live. Imagine that your whole school is going to be discussing what its values should be and voting for them. Now, although the school is a Church of England school there are lots of Muslims and Hindus and people with no particular faith at all.

How in a multicultural context can you inject some overtly Christian component without imposing on others in your community who don’t share that faith perspective?

How do you influence corporate culture – when you are ten years old?

So you get together with two or three other Christians and you think about it and pray about it. And you summon up your courage and you go to the head teacher and say “We think one of our values should be, ‘What would Jesus do.’” And so the head talks to the Muslims. And they don’t mind because for them Jesus is a prophet and she talks to the Hindus and they decide that it’s Ok because after all this is a Christian school. And then the whole school votes and it’s agree that WWJD should become one of the school’s values, one of the criteria by which everything that happens in that school should be evaluated… And they are 10 years old.

Was it easier, I wonder, or more difficult for Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Babylon to make an impact on their bit of God’s world? Is it easier or more difficult for you or me in our workplaces, clubs, towns, villages? Or have you or I perhaps already done it?

Is this too small a tale to tell, I wonder, of how the life of Jesus so courses through a ten year old that they want to see his name high and lifted up… as indeed it then was, for all to see, on a paper elephant head on the walls of their school hall?

Those children understood something very simple. This was the place that God had put them, these were the people he’d placed them amongst, this was the place to bring his love. This was where his name was to be hallowed, this was where his will should be done, this was where his kingdom should come…

The question for us is this: can we too discover the radical possibility of the authentic, adventurous, awe-inspired, agape fuelled ordinary Christian life? In a time when evangelical Christians across the denominations are struggling to see how the Gospel of the crucified and risen Lord really makes a difference in everyday life, can we, like these schoolchildren, be clear on our calling in the places we are called to live and work?

We think that Christians can. In this series we’ll be telling you more stories about what happens when people realise that they are called to make a difference where they are; we’ll be exploring the kind of church that inspires and trains people like this and the kind of full-orbed biblical understanding of God that shapes, inspires and sustains such actions.

Indeed, this vision springs directly from the Gospel, from an understanding that Jesus is creator of all, owner of all, reconciler of all, Lord of all and that therefore there is no aspect of our being, no context we find ourselves in, no task we undertake that is not of interest to him. So the new life we have in him is intended to flow out beyond our Sunday services and our midweek meetings into the whole of life, the whole of our ordinary life - our life at work, our life at home and our life in the neighbourhood, our life in the playground and our life in the classroom.

May the Lord indeed be with you this week wherever you are.

5 Values: 2 - We Value Everyone's Frontlines

This is part of a series of posts on 5 Values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the introduction to the series here...

‘For Christian faith not to be idle in the world, the work of doctors and garbage collectors, business executives and artists, stay-at-home moms or dads and scientists needs to be inserted into God's story with the world. That story needs to provide the most basic rules by which the game in all these spheres is played. And that story needs to shape the character of the players.’ Miroslav Volf

Over the past twenty years, the church has become better at recognising the significance of many people’s vocations. Years ago, many evangelicals assumed that the top job for a Christian to have in God’s eyes was to be an overseas missionary living by faith. This was clearly sacrificial, often challenging and occasionally there would be no awareness of the fruitfulness of the work for many years, if ever. Below this in the assumed godly career ladder were ministers and church workers. If you weren’t able to be employed directly in these tasks, there was always your voluntary time that could be used for the important work.