Discipleship

For the last few months, I've had discipleship on the brain. When I look though the New Testament and how Jesus did ministry, discipleship just screams from the pages. The way he taught, the way he acted, the way he spoke.

Below are some of my thoughts. This is more of a brain dump than a treatise on discipleship. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

1. Jesus taught a lot of people but his main focus was his 12 disciples. They were the ones he explained to things more clearly. He traveled with them exclusively. He knew that they were the ones he was leaving His church to so he spent most of his time with them. And this was 12 guys. Not 100. Not 1,000. Just 12. And even among those 12, he had 3 that he focused on more closely.

2. Not all of your disciples are going to make it and they're going to fail often. Judas betrayed him. Peter denied. Jesus straight up called Peter "Satan" (when was the last time your pastor called you Satan?). Doing this discipleship thing is going to be filled with frustration and heart ache as the people you're discipling fail. I can't imagine what Jesus thought as he saw them struggle so much with something that he just explained.

3. Yes, I think I should have disciples. However, that also means I should be someone's disciple. When I was reading (part of) the book that contained Mother Theresa's letters, I noticed that she wrote to people who were her confessors, that is, someone she could write to confess her sins and her trials. People criticize the Catholics for having this but I think that, in the right context, this is a great thing.

More on this later. These are just some opening thoughts.

2011 is going to be great. I can feel it.

Rev.