During World War II women entered the workforce in
droves in order to work factory jobs for the war effort that men could not work
due to having to go fight. This changed
North American life dramatically...particularly for the beer industry. In order for the beer industry to survive it
had to convince women that they should go out after work and have a beer just
like the men did. Women, feeling newly
liberated to be working outside the home, were happy to comply but they didn’t
like the taste of beer nor the beer bellies.
This necessitated that the breweries develop a lighter coloured, less
bitter, less yeasty, less filling, less alcoholic product. As a result, pretty much all dark,
full-bodied, real beers disappeared from the North American market.
This lessening trend picked up again in the early
80’s when in 1982 Budweiser introduced Bud Light to the market. This is the same year Coca-Cola introduced
Diet Coke. Bud Light was monstrously successful
due to the fact that when people drink light beer they tend to drink more of
it. If you are a calorie conscious,
figure watching North American prone to binge drinking, three light beers for
the same calories as two regular beers makes sense. You’re a little more inebriated and so what if
you’ve made more trips to the bathroom and spent more money, no worries because
you’re drinking something you believe to be less fattening…and you’re more
inebriated. Such is the stinking
thinking of the “lite beer” “craze”. If
you’re going to have a beer, have “a” beer, a “real” beer and enjoy it in all
its complexities.
The “Lite” concept, which spells “light” L-i-t-e
because it is a 20% lighter way of spelling “light”, pervades the marketplace
as an advertising gimmick. It is a marketing scheme that tries to get consumers
to believe that the lite version has less calories or some other undesirable
substance than the normal product and is therefore a healthier choice. Outside of the world of food, “lite”
generally means a version of a product that is less expensive because it is comparatively
less powerful, profound, or advanced than its parent product, but it will still
deliver you everything you need in less complicated fashion. I have found in the world of computer
software that whenever I have gone “lite” thinking that I was getting only what
I needed, I’ve had to go ahead and upgrade because the Lite version still couldn’t
do what I needed.
I have this guitar tuner app on my phone. The “Lite” version only gave me the six
individual notes of each guitar string. It
was useless for fiddles and banjos. So,
liking the convenience of a tuning app on my phone, I paid the twenty bucks to
upgrade. That’s how it “Lite” works.
The concept of “Lite” in the marketplace is little
more than a deceptive advertising gimmick.
It misleads us into thinking that we are either making healthier choices
when we really are not or that we are getting only what is necessary but in
reality it isn’t what we really need to get the job done…and so we spend more
money. Now, hopefully I have enlightened
you on “Lite”.
The concept of “Lite” isn’t simply a deceptive
marketing gimmick . The ‘Lite” way of thinking has become pervasive enough in
our culture that it even affects the world of the church. Jesus told his disciples that they are the light
of the world, but what the church as we know it has become is “Discipleship
Lite”. We have reduced the hard work of
being disciples of Jesus, devoted followers of Jesus who teach others to be
disciples of Jesus, to simple concepts like “Simply trusting every day,
trusting through a stormy way,” or just being good moral people, good citizens
with a Bible somewhere on display in our homes.
We believe in God because it gives us comfort and Christianity just
happens to be our cultural default.
“Discipleship Lite” has had a profoundly negative
effect on the Church in Europe and North America. It has proven unable to face the “stormy way”
of religious pluralism. Very few
churches in North America actually do discipleship with the result that we are either
dwindling off as is the Mainline or people are getting engulfed into mega-church
movements that are unable to survive past the leaving of their charismatic,
entrepreneurial founders. What is
missing from “Discipleship Lite” is discipleship all together.
Discipleship is not simply about me having personal
beliefs about God and Jesus that I keep private even when I gather with
like-minded people at church whom I mostly enjoy their company. Getting someone to join in on that is more or
less what could be called conversion to a group. Most of what we call evangelism has nothing
to do with discipleship, but rather conversion to a group.
Discipleship, on the other hand is a small group of
people summonsed by Jesus through the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit to
gather together to study him and his ways with the result that we internalize
him and his ways and live accordingly and go forth and form other discipling
groups. Discipleship involves discipling
others to maturity and those others going forth and discipling others in
discipling groups.
Keith Phillips in his book The Making of a Disciple has a neat chart in it comparing
“Evangelists” to “Disciplers”. If I were
an “Evangelist” and got one person a day to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord
and Saviour, after 16 years I will have accrued 5,840 notches in the binding of
my Bible who may or may not become involved in the life of a congregation. If this year I take the time to disciple and
train three or four people to form discipling groups and from that group only
two of you go forth and form discipling groups and that carries on, after 16
years my efforts devoted to those initial four people will result in 65,536
disciples of Jesus.
In Matthew’s Gospel the last thing Jesus tells his
disciples before he ascended into Heaven was, “All authority has been given
to Me in heaven and on earth. Go,
therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe
everything I have commanded you. And
remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” He says “go and make disciples” not go and
make converts. This simply means
inviting 3 to four people you know well to come and study Jesus with you on a
regular basis with the intent that after a period of time Jesus will call one
or two of you to start another group on your own or together.
In the early church according
to the Book of Acts Jerusalem was the first major center of the faith. Persecution broke out and the church
decentralized. The second major center
of the faith was in Antioch in what is now southern Turkey. Antioch superseded Jerusalem in importance. The church in Antioch was not started by any
of the original disciples of Jesus even though most of them were still
alive. It was started by people like
yourselves who discipled others. The
Mainline Church in North America today is like the Jerusalem church. It has waned to the point of death. The Jerusalem church was persecuted nearly to
the point of death. It sent forth
disciples who discipled and the church is still alive today. It is time we started discipling.
Timothy and I would like to
get a discipling program started in the Cooperative if not in each church then
among the churches. We have a resource
that will involve considerable commitment.
It has twenty-five lessons that cover the basics of the Christian faith
but also serves to train and equip us to disciple others. It is Discipleship
Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ by Greg Ogden who is
also a Presbyterian minister. If you
feel nudged in this direction, please talk to me or Timothy. We need to get this started.
To be blunt, the main reason
the church in North America is waning is the lack of discipling. The churches that are finding their way
through this “stormy way” are doing by means of home-based discipleship
ministries. We here at St. Andrew’s need
to add a new item to our list of Thriving Statements. Can you guess what that is? “St. Andrew’s is thriving when we are making
disciples.” Amen.
