Revolutionary Discipleship

By M.E. Brines

The author lays out the problems of the Christian church in America today - declining attendance, spiritual apathy and cultural irrelevance - and demonstrates they are directly related to the lack of discipleship training provided by the church and expected of the average Christian. But how would Jesus recruit, educate and train disciples? Wouldn’t it be great if there were a book on how to do that? Wouldn’t that be the perfect way to model our lives? Wouldn’t that be the perfect mission to organize a local congregation around? Isn’t that what Christian churches are supposed to do? Currently there are dozens of books available on discipleship by all sorts of authors who come at the subject from every different perspective. But if we really want to know Jesus’ ideas on the subject, why not examine the “books” written by the disciples that Jesus personally trained? Revolutionary Discipleship examines the Gospel of Matthew to see exactly how Jesus trained his original disciples and how Christ expects us to be disciples and to make disciples of others. Unlike most discipleship books you may have seen that quote two verses and then expand them into an entire book, he follows Matthew’s account of Jesus’ training of His disciples verse by verse and in context. It’s a journey to discover what the Apostle Matthew said Jesus taught about discipleship, not what the author or any other merely human writer thinks discipleship ought to be. Think of the author as a fellow student; Jesus is your teacher. Along the way you see how the discipleship training that Jesus practiced two thousand years ago compares to what goes on in modern American churches today. How do we stack up against the teachings of the Master? If you want to truly be an effective and obedient follower of Christ in America today - you need to read this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.E. Brines
• Release date: Aug 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466005181

M.E. Brines

M.E. Brines spent the Cold War assembling atomic artillery shells and preparing to unleash the Apocalypse (and has a medal to prove it.) But when peace broke out, he turned his fevered, paranoid imagination to other pursuits. He spends his spare time scribbling another steampunk romance occult adventure novel, which despite certain rumors absolutely DOES NOT involve time-traveling Nazi vampires! A former member of the British Society for Psychical Research, he is the author of three dozen books, e-books, chapbooks and pamphlets on esoteric subjects such as alien abduction, alien hybrids, astrology, the Bible, biblical prophecy, Christian discipleship, conspiracies, esoteric Nazism, the Falun Gong, Knights Templar, magick, and UFOs, his work has also appeared in Challenge magazine, Weird Tales, The Outer Darkness, Tales of the Talisman, and Empirical magazine.

Book preview

Revolutionary Discipleship

By M.E. Brines

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by M.E. Brines

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - The Problem

Chapter 2 - The Solution: Discipleship

Chapter 3 - How Jesus Chose His Disciples

Chapter 4 - Disciples are persecuted

Chapter 5 - Being a Disciple Changes You

Chapter 6 - What do Disciples Study?

Chapter 7 - What does Jesus expect of his disciples?

Chapter 8 - Disciples do good works

Chapter 9 - Disciples Pray

Chapter 10 - Disciples don’t hold grudges

Chapter 11 - Disciples do good works without thought of reward

Chapter 12 - Disciples trust God to take care of them

Chapter 13 - Disciples make a priority of their mission

Chapter 14 - Disciples put doing what’s right above being nice

Chapter 15 - Disciples do good works 2

Chapter 16 - Disciples have their faith tested

Chapter 17 - Disciples are persecuted 2

Chapter 18 - Disciples don’t stay inside the church

Chapter 19 - Disciples are more than just passive watchers

Chapter 20 - Discipleship promotes unity

Chapter 21 - Being a disciple is not complicated

Chapter 22 - Rules are not as important as people

Chapter 23 - We are saved by FAITH, not simply by reciting a prayer

Chapter 24 - A disciple’s fruits are his credentials

Chapter 25 - Disciples do the works of Jesus

Chapter 26 - Traditions are not as important as people

Chapter 27 - Jesus wants his disciples to do great things

Chapter 28 - The commandments of men do not compare to those of God

Chapter 29 - Disciples get corrected when they are wrong

Chapter 30 - Jesus told his disciples to take up your cross.

Chapter 31 - Disciples study the Bible 2

Chapter 32 - Disciples need to develop their faith

Chapter 33 - Disciples don’t let the responsibilities of the world distract them

Chapter 34 - Disciples resolve disputes peacefully

Chapter 35 - Disciples either stay married or stay single

Chapter 36 - Disciples do not worry over the things of this world

Chapter 37 - Disciples are to be like servants

Chapter 38 - Jesus is their example

Chapter 39 - Disciples watch for Jesus’ return

Chapter 40 - Disciples aren’t afraid to do the right thing

Chapter 41 - Graduation Night

Chapter 42 - Death is only the beginning

Chapter 43 - The defining characteristics of a disciple

Chapter 44 - How does the Church in America measure up?

Chapter 45 - Join the revolution!

* * *

The Problem

The Christian church in America is dying and it’s not from natural causes. It’s being slowly poisoned and the perpetrator is someone no one would ever expect. It’s not murder; it’s suicide.

That’s a pretty harsh statement, one you may not agree with. After all, your church may be doing fine, or at least may seem so. But lets examine some facts and statistics about the Church as a whole in America.

According to the Barna poling organization More than four out of five Americans claim to be Christian and half as many can be classified as born again Christians. Nine out of ten adults own a Bible. Most adults read the Bible during the year and a huge majority claims they know all of the basic teachings of the Bible. This would seem to indicate that America is a Christian nation and that our churches have been very successful.

Yet Barna concludes his study saying, "How, then, can most people say Satan does not exist, that the Holy Spirit is merely a symbol, that eternal peace with God can be earned through good works, and that truth can only be understood through the lens of reason and experience? How can a plurality of our citizens contend that Jesus committed sins and that the Bible, Koran and Book of Mormon all teach the same truths?"

The fact of the matter is that in America today there are many church attenders but few actual followers of Christ. This is borne out further in the same study:

"The year's research also underscored the fact that half of the people who attend Christian churches on any given weekend are not Christian - that is, they do not trust in Christ alone for their eternal salvation. The vast majority of those people have been attending Christian churches for more than a decade.

Regardless of its true character and intent, the Christian community is not known for love, nor for a life transforming faith, explained the researcher. Outdated means of outreach, inappropriate assumptions about people's faith, and a lack of passion for helping non-believers to receive God's love and acceptance are hindering the Church from fulfilling its mandate. America remains one of the largest mission fields in the world, and the American Church remains the most richly endowed body of believers on the planet. There is no lack of potential. [Barna Identifies Seven Paradoxes Regarding America’s Faith, December 17, 2002]

Ask a pastor and he’ll admit to a few challenges, but most seem to think things are going all right. We blame any such problems as we have on the unsaved themselves, on the influence of Hollywood Liberals and the secular media. Christians seem to believe that if people like Rosie O’Donnell would just shut up, everything would be fine.

Barna concludes: Most pastors are content with the way things are going in their ministry. A national survey among pastors revealed that a majority feels they are doing an excellent or good job in leading people spiritually in relation to 12 of the 13 areas of performance evaluated. (The exception was in the area of raising money for ministry.) In fact, the larger the church is, the more likely the pastor is to feel pleased with his performance as its leader.

Yet he confessed confusion over that outcome. Pastoring is a difficult job, he acknowledged, "and it's important not to become discouraged by the magnitude of the spiritual battle in which we are engaged - after all, we know that we are aligned with the winning camp. However, it's a bit troubling to see pastors feel they're doing a great job when the research reveals few congregants have a biblical worldview, half the people they minister to are not spiritually secure or developed, kids are fleeing from the church in record numbers, most of the people who attend worship services admit they did not connect with God, the divorce rate among Christians is no different than that of non-Christians, only 2% of the pastors themselves can identify God's vision for their ministry they are trying to lead, and the average congregant spends more time watching television in one day than he spends in all spiritual pursuits combined for an entire week.

"Pastors, alone, cannot be held accountable for the spiritual disrepair of America. But it's worrisome when there is a strong correlation between church size and self-satisfaction, because that suggests that attendance and budget figures have become our mark of success. It's troubling when our spiritual leaders cannot articulate where we're headed and how the Church will fulfill its role as the restorative agent of our society."

But is the Church in America really doing that badly?

In a national study at http://www.barna.org/only 7% of Christians identified spiritual wholeness and development as the factor that will produce a successful life. Family and Personal Accomplishments Lead People’s List of Success Determinants, Barna went on to state: The Christian faith commends sacrifice, servanthood and sharing as the means to significance. How is it possible to have more than 120 million adults attending Christian churches on a regular basis, but only 15 million who grasp the message that success is not about personal accomplishment or material possessions?

Only one-third of teenagers attending church today are likely to do so once they reach adulthood. [All statistics from Barna Identifies Seven Paradoxes Regarding America’s Faith, December 17, 2002]

In America today a large majority of people describe themselves as followers of Christ and believe in the accuracy of the Bible yet believe that there is no absolute moral truth and argue that truth is always relative to the individual. [ Barna: Americans are more likely to Base Truth on Feelings.]

While most believers have heard of spiritual gifts, half of all born-again adults either do not know what their spiritual gift is or claim that God did not give them one. [Growing True Disciples, page 74]

According to the Gallup polling organization in June 1990 74% of Americans describe themselves as having made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ [Awakening the Giant, Jim Russell, page 13], yet in the last few decades rates of illegitimacy and divorce have skyrocketed and unmarried couples have become a standard feature of our society. Over a million people are currently in prison, (statistics from Prison Fellowship figures) one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world, certainly in American history.

For several decades now most American churches have experienced declining attendance, increasing apathy and lack of spiritual development. The youth drop out en masse as soon as they graduate and adult men are difficult to find in pews on Sunday morning. Christian churches in America are in danger of becoming nothing more than social clubs for old ladies.

Christian influence in society has declined and we are pushed ever more onto the fringes. In the last sixty years abortion, pornography, and gambling have been legalized and praying in school has been outlawed. It’s legal and considered socially acceptable to support an on-campus homosexual club with tax money but a Bible club has to sue just to be allowed to meet. In three generations we’ve gone from a society where teaching evolution in a public school was illegal to one where mentioning a creator is. All of these trends are clearly documented by statistics gathered by the Barna poling organization. In fact there’s a newly coined term for the increasingly successful advance of modern secularism. It’s been described as a culture war. And the Church is losing.

You may think that I’m just out to bash the Church, but I’m not. I want to reform and restore the Church and get it back on track to what it’s supposed to be doing. I believe that the cause of our problem is that we’ve lost sight of our true mission, the one assigned by the Master, and that we’ve in a large part replaced it with ideas of our own about what our mission should be.

I came to this conclusion by looking at the ‘success’ that the Christian churches in America have had over the last sixty years. We’ve gone from being a Christian nation to one where Christianity is one Supreme Court decision away from being banned. Our very constitutional rights to practice Christianity are under attack in a country largely founded by Christians and on Christian principles. What happened? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

* * *

Since these trends only really became apparent since the Second World War the problem seems to be a recent development, so to discover its cause we should compare church organization now with the way things were done in the past. What changed to create the current situation? How is the modern church different from what it was a generation or two ago?

Looking back to New Testament times we see that there was no official church organization. There was no ‘staff’ and the only ‘professional’ paid positions were pastors and missionaries. There was no intermediary layer of professional clergy between the individual members and God. Each individual member was expected to be a disciple and produce fruit himself by using his own spiritual gifts.

By the time of the Reformation 1,500 years later this had all changed. The Catholic Church had a huge and very organized hierarchy of professional clergy who performed ALL the church functions. Individual members were expected merely to attend Mass and were the passive recipients of the teaching and ministry of the paid clergy. People believed all they needed to do to guarantee a place in heaven was to become a member of the church (usually by being involuntarily sprinkled as an infant) and then maintain semi-regular attendance. A particularly zealous layman might perhaps become an altar boy or sing in the choir. No spiritual fruit was produced nor was any expected. The result of this was rampant corruption among the clergy, lack of interest by the laymen and the declining social influence of the church.

Eventually valiant, Christian men attempted to introduce reforms. These people were persecuted by clergy who didn’t want to lose their comfy positions and by conservatives who were convinced that the only way a church should be run is the way it was being run, as if the medieval Catholic Church with all the bizarre customs and procedures it had acquired over the centuries would have been recognizable to Christ and the apostles. Eventually the reformers realized that it was impossible to accomplish any sort of positive change under those circumstances and they left the Catholic organization and formed their own Protestant churches, each based on different aspects of the reforms that each individual leader felt was the most important.

After the Reformation, the new Protestant churches, regardless of sect, typically adopted a lean organization. Usually only pastors and a few missionaries were paid professionals. Without an extensive paid staff of priests, the pastor had to rely extensively on laymen to accomplish the day-to-day activities of the church. Laymen started and ran most of the new ministries that arose in the coming years: abolition, overseas missions, prison reform, temperance, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Gideons, etc. Christians were expected to be disciples and produce good works to demonstrate their faith. The Church grew in size and spread its influence across the globe.

From this period we get the term, Protestant work ethic from the idea that good Christian disciples should produce good works, not to earn their salvation (or reduce their time in purgatory as the Catholics taught) but as proof of their faith:

* * *

James 2:14-26

(14) My brothers, what profit is it if a man says he has faith and does not have works? Can faith save him?

(15) If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food,

(16) and if one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them those things which are needful to the body, what good is it?

(17) Even so, if it does not have works, faith is dead, being by itself.

(18) But someone will say, You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith from my works.

(19) You believe that there is one God, you do well; even the demons believe and tremble.

(20) But will you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

(21) Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?

(22) Do you see how faith worked with his works, and from the works faith was made complete?

(23) And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God.

(24) You see then how a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

(25) And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she had received the messengers and had sent them out another way?

(26) For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

* * *

But that was five hundred years ago and times and people change. Today the modern American church is characterized by an extensive organization of paid clergy and staff. Since the Second World War, the bigger the church, the more money they have, the more they pull out of the hands of laymen and make the responsibility of paid full-time ministers. The paid clergy organizes and heads up all ministries and programs and individual members are expected merely to attend church and become the passive recipients of the teaching and ministry of the paid clergy. People believe all they need to do to guarantee a place in heaven is to become a member of the church (usually by reciting a short prayer to get saved) and then maintain semi-regular attendance. A particularly zealous layman might perhaps become a Sunday school teacher or sing in the choir. Little fruit is produced nor is much expected. The result of this is the mass exodus of men and youth from the Church, a general lack of enthusiasm by the ones who remain, and the declining social influence of the church.

We have become obsessed with the ABCs: attendance, building programs and cash. The solution to any problem, challenge or opportunity is some sort of program, preferably pre-packaged and slickly produced by some well-known Christian publishing house.

Is there a new package on the market in the area of stewardship? What techniques are working for reaching out to disenchanted members? Has anyone come up with a fresh curriculum for training deacons? How about a 3-day seminar that will be our booster shot for evangelism? But programs are poor substitutes for vision, and completely unacceptable as any Christian group’s reason for existence. God’s will cannot be discerned from a resource catalogue or downloaded from a one-size-fits-all package.

A second standard feature of the ABC church is the tendency to rely on hard work as the way to go forward. If the goals aren’t being realized, our leaders will simply have to keep a few more balls in the air.... [from The Disciple Making Church, p6, Glenn McDonald]

* * *

Does that sound like your church?

How many times have you seen the response to declining attendance or problems in meeting the church mortgage payments presented as some new program to attract more attendance? It may be presented as a means of evangelism, but the heart of the matter is the belief that if this new program will just fill the pews, people will be exposed to the Gospel, they’ll get saved, join the church, fill the offering plate and then we can fund that new expansion for all the new pews we’ll need so we can keep growing - everybody wins!

But do they? The evangelical church in America has become so fixated on the truth that salvation is by faith alone they’ve forgotten that’s not the end of the Gospel. Just as the medieval Catholic Church forgot about grace and became fixated on works, the modern Protestant church has become fixated on grace and forgot about works. Our definition of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus is no longer the same as Christ’s definition and our idea of what it means to fulfill the Great Commission is no longer the same as the mission Jesus assigned to us. We’ve substituted our own agenda for that of God and consequently He has withdrawn his blessings. Our churches, our society withers in a spiritual drought.

We teach a system whereby we share the Gospel, get people to recite the little prayer of salvation (as we call it), get baptized and enrolled in Sunday school. Mention is seldom made of anything further. Apparently that’s all it takes to be a disciple. And that’s all anyone really expects.

Meanwhile the concept of discipleship has changed from being an active follower of Christ to being a passive member of a local church. But there’s more to being a disciple than just getting saved. We quote Ephesians 2:8-9: For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. But we never finish Paul’s thought in verse 10: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them."

We completely neglect James 2:17-20:

* * *

Even so, if it does not have works, faith is dead, being by itself. But someone will say, You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith from my works. You believe that there is one God, you do well; even the demons believe and tremble. But will you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

* * *

Christ Himself had something to say on the subject of works:

* * *

John 15:1-8

(1) I am the True Vine, and My Father is the Vinedresser.

(2) Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away. And every one that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bring forth more fruit.

(3) Now you are clean through the Word which I have spoken to you.

(4) Abide in Me, and I in you. As the