Why LC2C Is NOT A Program or Curriculum

What Kind of Teaching Makes True Disciples? August 27, 2007 John H. Armstrong When you read the Gospels you soon discover that various phrases and ideas occur again and again. This is not an accident. We are meant to pay attention to these things. The frequency of some words shouts to us if we are not totally dull. One such phrase that frequently occurs is: "And Jesus began to teach them, saying . . . ." This phrase indicates that our Lord made disciples, which is the word for learners or students, very explicitly by teaching them. One of the titles most commonly used for Jesus was Rabbi, or Teacher. This idea is so prominent in the Gospels that you could easily, and correctly, surmise that Jesus came for two primary reasons: (1) To die and rise so as to redeem all who believe in him, and; (2) To teach all those who would follow him. It is really that simple when you get right down to it. The Great Evangelical "Field of Dreams" But many of us have a problem when we hear this put so starkly and simply. Some incorrectly translate these ideas into our modern cultural forms and think of things like crosses and classrooms, pictures and overheads, musical arrangements and power points. We buy Bibles to mark them, pens to mark them with, and special systems for marking them correctly. The more evangelical we are, the more likely we are to stress Bible teaching as the key to discipleship. Study the Word and it will happen. Know your Bible and all will go well. I call this our "Field of Dreams" theology. If you know the movie you will recall that Ray was told to build a baseball field in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. He didn�t comprehend the message or the meaning but he was told that if he built it "they would come." Well, he did build and they came, right onto the field to play ball with Ray the dreamer. Stars from an the early era of baseball magically appeared to play with Ray the dreamer. In reality, most of our modern evangelical practice tells new converts to: (1) Find a good church where they can get fellowship, and; (2) Get under a ministry of good teaching so that they can grow. But being a disciple means so much more than being taught correct content and good material from the Bible so you can grow. In many ways this is such a distortion of what teaching is that it is crippling the Church hazardously. May I suggest that we stop thinking of a classroom when we read these texts? Don�t get me wrong. I am a teacher and I love classrooms and classes. But the teaching Jesus gave to us is meant to teach us to think like him, to live like him and to follow him wherever he sends us. The classroom of Jesus is not so much a place where we gather but the whole world. And that world should be interpreted through the whole Word, not just through favorite proof texts taken from here and there. This is why I believe real reformation will always be anchored in the whole of Scripture as the primary witness to the Living Word, Christ. This is also why I am calling Christians to a gathering in November where the only book we use in our discussion will be the Bible. The Great Commission and Teaching the Faith "To teach the faith" is for one disciple to teach another disciple to observe all that Christ commanded (Matthew 28:18-20). This is an active process, never passive. And this is the mission of the whole Church, to make disciples as a fellowship of Christ-followers. This is not just a calling for a few special agents. We must all do this by baptizing and teaching those we reach with the Good News, always understood as a community process, to live like Christ. They are to come along the way with us, as his disciples, just as we are his disciples. But Faith Must Have Content The Christian faith has a content without which there is no Christian faith at all. We must be very clear about this when there are voices here and there advocating a type of Christianity without a creed of any sort. This is why the earliest Christians wrote creeds like the Apostle�s Creed and the Nicene Creed. This content was a set of beliefs and this set of beliefs formed the core of what it was that the church or an individual confessed in order to be baptized and to become a real Christ follower, i.e., a disciple. And without this a church would lose faith, thus health and life. This is why theology really does matter, not so much as a system to be argued for as a core to be believed and lived. In the words of a Presbyterian pastor-friend, "The Church has a faith without which she cannot live faithfully." This one of the reasons we teach, so that people can follow Jesus faithfully in accordance with the truth that Christ gave to his flock. Faith Has a Core If we are in perpetual doubt about what forms the core of the Christian faith we will be unable teach a core, and thus we will emphasize those things that are on the periphery as actually being what is at the center. And by this mistake, we fail will fail to actually teach what is really at the center. This is the problem with much of modern American evangelicalism. It teaches things that are not central as though they were, and then majors on learning these things as part of a system we should master. (The list here is endless, which again argues for keeping the core of faith at the level of basic creeds, not human shibboleths.) The Christ of Scripture teaches us a faith to be lived by disciples who obey him, not as theories to be debated and debunked. We need to get this core right, but we also need to connect this core to the vital living of Christian obedience. This seems obvious if you know Church history at all. But what is even more obvious, at least to my mind, is that this is not what is happening in most of our churches today. My Dilemma and My Decision Because of this simple biblical model for teaching and life, I have little or no interest in some things that continually present themselves to me as important for this ministry. I have no interest in: 1. Creating and marketing a new curriculum to solve church problems. Denominations and parachurch groups have been doing this for decades, and it has done very little to really make the kind of disciples that we encounter in the New Testament. 2. Putting together a systematic teaching formula that is my own and that promises more than it can actually deliver, since it is the Spirit through the Word who makes real disciples. 3. Mass marketing my insights and solutions for all kinds of problems in the family, the Church or the culture. Sorry, but I have no cool plans for how to get the ACT 3 message out in ways that will sell and work like the modern approach promises. And I do not plan to write a book on marriage and family either since we already have more of them than we need and we know far more about these issues than we actually practice. The problem, as this simple illustration proves, is not in giving out good content and in making it available. It is that we do not obey what we already know. We have missed the core, bought into a system that tells us how we grow, and then processed a reductionistic brand of Christianity that doesn�t deliver. Reformation Is Still the Need What is needed is a fresh reformation that takes the Word so seriously that it actually believes in true discipleship. This discipleship is not found in knowing a book but rather in the teaching of the person of Christ through Holy Scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit. Far too many of us think that Christian faith is an exam that we pass, not a life that we must learn and pass on to faithful people who will then help us to pass it on to others. We have given them the impression that people are to make a commitment to Christ and then give their money and time to the Church so they can watch others do the mission for them. What I am saying here is not difficult to grasp. If you have been a Christian for only a few years you know I am right. But then church after church, and pastor after pastor, have often taught you otherwise. Don�t you think it is time we called a moratorium on all these "answers" and got people into the life of faith through teaching the Scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit? Yes, this will require gifted teachers and solid teaching, but it will also require a renewal of faith on the part of congregations to stop seeking for every new thing that comes down the pike, packaged and ready to excite another movement of American Christians. I am tired of movements. I want to know Christ. The really hard part, at least for me, is that this requires that teachers just like me not offer pre-packaged deals to churches so that we can create our own group and gain our own fan base. The tug on me to do this is huge at times. I know it well. I have had people tell me that I will never be successful until I follow a marketing plan and offer some new solutions for the Church in sharp and beautifully done ways. I can�t find it in me to give in to this urge. And I think the longer I live, the better I understand why. People don�t really need me at all. They need Jesus. He can teach them with me or without me. I am nothing more than an unprofitable servant at the end of the day. And so are you.