What does discipleship mean to you?

For some people it apparently means drudgery. For those who did some of the early Oxfordshire community churches discipleship courses it apparently means being put through artificial hardship, to the point of dreading the word. To some it apparently means discipline along the lines of punishment.

As a church we've started a period of 'discipleship' using OCC generated material. The first session in the 6 week course started Tuesday night, and so far I'm somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing for 2 reasons. The first of these is that the course material is designed with the potential to push people quite hard in terms of the time and effort required to cover all the sections, with books to read (we don't have any) tapes to listen to (ditto) required exercise, essays, abstinence, fasting, bible reading and separate prayer sessions. None of this is bad, but in order to not make the entry bar too high it all feels a bit optional, to the point where I'm having to either own it for my self or just treat the next few weeks as a holiday from leading the house group.

The second issue is my perception of true discipleship. This means spending time with someone who is a mature Christian, working alongside, learning from them, being open with them, letting them speak into my life and confessing issues and problems to them. In this light you can see that the above course is a pale shadow of the potential for growth. Yes, it will stretch people, but in a cold and detached fashion. Of course being put through the mill and pushed to the end of one's tether is all part of the normal Christian walk and experience, but anyone that has raised a family while involved in church leadership will recognise that little short of concentration-camp conditions could push you harder than that.

So what to do?

I was turning this over before God in the kitchen a few days ago. I really felt quite clearly that I needed to buy into the whole thing, set goals and so on, regardless of whether they were required by the course. So I've given up Harmony Central for the next 5 weeks, which IS already leaving a big hole - these are my friends as well as an area of interest. I'm also happy with the fasting, bible reading etc and preparing essays and so on (don't expect them to appear here though - I hate fake blogs that are nothing but bible studies). TBH if I find this difficult I shall be quite disappointed in myself, as most of it is pretty much what I expect as normal lifestyle, but just more compacted., and I'm no 'super-christian'.

One interesting/amusing aspect of this is that a very good friend who is also on the same course is fully as cynical about these things as I am (and sees the artificial hardship with fully as much contempt). In the questionnaire that was filled out before starting was the question "why are you doing the course?". We both wrote almost identically "Because this is a church activity, and we support what the church is doing". I find it great to be with someone as BS free, but we'll need to watch that we don't get sucked into too much cynicism.

Right. Work.