How can the body of Christ better produce people of Christ-like substance? Of all the perennial questions the church asks itself, this one has received a lot of attention lately. There is no shortage of recent books outlining people's disillusion with their church experience, especially young people. Some of those criticisms are valid and some are not. Yet no one can deny the ongoing longing, from inside and outside the church, for followers of Jesus whose lives line up to the example of their Master.
In the book Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon provide insight into this question. In short, their answer is discipleship. While they write with the public ethic of the church in mind, we must apply their reasoning to daily, interpersonal conduct as well. The next couple of paragraphs give their basic line of thought.
People of all ages and cultures operate on assumed values they do not even realize they have. One of the values built in to many modern democracies is traced back to Kant's notion that there is no need to imitate moral people in order to become moral. Rather, Kant argued, all anybody needs to do to achieve morality is to think clearly for him or herself.
Of course, this assumption directly contradicts Christian discipleship, which calls us to learn appropriate belief and conduct by following the teaching and example of another. Part of pastoral ministry, the authors say, is to therefore counteract this ingrained mode of thinking by recognizing mature Christians and challenging others to imitate them. “In sermons, in teaching, in pastoral care and administration, pastors practice ethics by lifting up specific historical examples, saints, for the rest of us to emulate”(109).
I agree with this point and take it a step further. All Christians must aspire to be like the apostle Paul, who without hesitation calls others to imitate himself as he imitates Christ (I Cor. 11:1). Peter encourages elders in a similar manner in I Peter chapter five: “Shepherd the flock of God among you, not under compulsion, but eagerly, not for shameful gain, but willingly, as God would have you, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.”
Instead of taking truth from the architects of worldly systems, disciples learn the truth of Christ in the Scriptures and speak it to one another each day. Instead of settling for human patterns of interaction, they recognize that they need one another because in Christ they are members of one another. Disciples seek not only to follow mature believers , but also to be examples by allowing others into their lives. They live in humility through mutual confession of sins. As sons and daughters of God the Father, they walk in divine love and invite others to walk with them. This is discipleship, and it is vital for producing the kind of people for which the world hungers.
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