Embrace Natural Community

Jesus’ Model of Discipleship Through Shared Life

Hey everyone, John here, enjoying a beautiful walk on a nice day and thinking about the third chapter in my book, Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age. You can go to againstthewavesbook .com if you want to get a copy of it.

But one of the things that I talk about in that particular chapter is how Jesus went about making disciples, training them for all the threats that they would encounter. And what you notice is that Jesus lives with these men for a period of years.

He is in fellowship constantly with all kinds of people. In that day, there was kind of an open spirit. Even a lot of houses would have open doors so you could sort of see what's going on, as I understand it.

And this is why sometimes the Pharisees see what's going on and criticize Jesus. But anyway, he's with people all the time. He's interacting with them. And, you know, the world of Christ's time actually has more in common with the world that our grandparents inhabited, probably, than the world that we live in now in so many ways.

Technology, Mediated Relationships, and Real Community

And what I see a lot now is technology is, of course, mediating a lot of relationships. But how often are they not even really real relationships? If you develop a strong in-group preference for your chat group online, I'm not saying that's always bad, but you want to use that as a vehicle by which to create actual tangible friendships in real life.

Just, I would say the same thing with dating apps and stuff, right? I mean, it's a means to an end. It's not the end. You're not supposed to be remaining on the dating app website, although some of you are doing that and you need to stop.

It's a means to an end. And one of the things I think we're in danger, or at least it's under threat, is actual, tangible, real relationships, connections to people within our sphere of influence and proximity.

Restoring Tangible Discipleship and Practical Leadership

And we need to restore those things. That's ideally how we even do things like discipleship. You can't just create a program, a metric, seminary-level training, and put it online, make people go through it, jump all these hoops, and then expect that they're prepared.

This is one of the problems with our leadership as well. You need some hands-on practical experience with real people. And that's one of the things Jesus modeled. And it's one of the things that we need to get back to.

So I give you some practical ideas for how to do that. And I talk a little bit more also about what kinds of threats I see stemming from technology. So anyway, you can check out all of that, Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age, againstthewavesbook .com.

God bless.