What makes discipleship beautiful?
It may not be what you think.
Over and over again the New Testament refers to followers of Jesus as disciples.
269 times.
The New Testament only refers to followers of Jesus as “believers” 8 times.1
But just a few minutes on Evangelical Social Media™ will have you thinking otherwise. Video after video and post after detailed carousel post explain the minutiae of doctrinal positions to which true believers must adhere.
And if you somehow manage to hop over to Deconstruction Social Media™ you may find a strong sentiment that really knowing what you believe isn’t all that important, as long as you love people like Jesus does.2
But we are neither disembodied brains, nor brainless bodies. We are whole people who are commanded to love the LORD our God (as revealed in Jesus Christ), with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength (Luke 10:27). Scripture refers to Jesus followers as disciples because discipleship involves all of us. Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrased, our “passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence” (MSG).
In a sentence, discipleship can be defined as “the intentional process of following Jesus and becoming more like him in community.”3
Tony Evans adds the important element of reproducing our spiritual maturity in new disciples. He calls discipleship the “developmental process that progressively brings Christians from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity so that they are then able to reproduce the process with someone else.”
So, then, what makes discipleship beautiful?
Discipleship should naturally be beautiful, because its aim is to produce and develop Christlikeness, and Jesus is the perfect incarnation of our beautiful God. But discipleship has been twisted, mangled almost beyond recognition.
Division, snark, arrogance, self-righteousness, moral compromise, and outright violence in word and deed are being reproduced in the American church and called discipleship.4 If you’re wondering why the American church is in such a broken state in this Year of Our Lord 2024, this is why. It’s because we have been reproducing, not the matchless beauty of Christ, but ugliness.
The solution to this challenge is not to push orthodoxy to the back burner, convinced that if we just cared less about right doctrine then maybe we would be nicer to each other. The solution is also not to boil over with zeal concerning the nonessentials of our faith to the exclusion of every brother and sister with whom we disagree.
The solution is to be more precise about the type of discipleship we are pursuing--beautiful discipleship.
So, here’s my crack at a definition.
Beautiful Discipleship
The process of following Jesus and becoming more like him in a manner that combines orthodoxy (sound doctrine), orthopraxy (right practice), and orthopatheia (proper sentiment) to reflect the paradoxical beauty of God, and which can then be reproduced in someone else.5
I reserve the right to adjust this definition as I learn more, but for now I think it’s a start. What do you think? Hit reply or tell me in the comments what I might be leaving out.
Beauty On My Bookshelf
Last month I read two beautiful and completely different books. How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key had me stifling laughs so I wouldn’t wake up the man I am (mostly) happily married to who was sleeping next to me in bed. It also made me cry. The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall was gritty and honest and filled with the texture of lived experience, unlike so many novels about faith. It brought me back to the joy of reading good literature.
Beauty In My Everyday
These two run me ragged, but they are, in my opinion, the most beautiful toddler terrors to ever grace the planet. Sitting on a picnic blanket and trying to sneak a few pages of my latest book in between 1,476 requests for snacks is infuriating, and also one of my favorite things.
In pursuit of Beauty,
Clauson, Karl ,The 7 Resolutions, Moody Publishers (2022), 34.
But let’s be honest, you have to put in some intentionality to be seeing both types of content in your social media feed, unless it’s just one side belittling the other.
This is the definition Cru uses.
I suspect this is happening in other parts of the church, but I can only speak to my experience as an American.
Gregg R. Allison popularized these three elements of balanced discipleship.