I've heard the complaint many times that the church does not engage in discipleship, or at least does not disciple as it should. Hopefully (well, usually) the discussions turn to what I think is most important initial question: what do we mean by discipleship? As I said in my previous post, it has been suggested that by discipleship we should include evangelistic and witnessing outreaches. That is, discipleship should also include conversion as well as any subsequent teaching.
Our next question considers what we mean by disciple. Turning to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Merriam-Webster defines a disciple as one who, "accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another: as b : a convinced adherent of a school or individual". Traditionally, Discipleship is the process whereby disciples grow in their understanding of Jesus and doctrine and then further spread what they've come to regard as truth.
We end up with two words which are at odds with each other; the newly re-defined discipleship and the fairly historically consistent disciple. For such a word as discipleship to be re-defined, we must then also redefine disciple. However, I'll leave that up to whoever is advancing this idea.
It doesn't seem to me possible at all to disciple someone who isn't already following Jesus (not to be confusing with teaching someone about Jesus). In this aspect the defense is given that the early Apostles, when they were chosen and discipled, did not accept Jesus, and therefore we can and should work off this example. There are really only a few quick things that can be said about this. The first thing that can be said is that the men who would become the Apostles were waiting for the Messiah. They believed in YHWH, followed the Law and were expectant. You could not make this analogous to today's world with say, an atheist, in that they are pretty sure God doesn't exist, they probably don't know why they need a Messiah and the Law - not that it's in effect to day - is something foreign to them. Furthermore, there are instances of the Apostles believing Jesus to be the Messiah even before their discipleship began (consider the story of Nathanael in John 1). I don't think it is at all valid to infer from these accounts that we should disciple non-Christians for the additional reasons that they don't accept Jesus, they don't care about doctrine and those that do show some interest in the moral teachings of Jesus do so most probably out of humanitarian 'convictions,' not because they have repented of who they thought Jesus is.
I also think it's only creating more problems when using this new umbrella term 'disciple' by combining what we traditionally mean by disciple / discipleship with evangelism and witnessing. We will only have to pull apart this word to deal with the same problems we have in the church today. There may be some sort of good intention behind this rethinking of disciple, however, it's ultimately misguided and unbiblical in practice.
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