Like you, perhaps, I tuned in to ABC News recently to learn the story of Brooke Greenberg: a sixteen-year-old girl the size of an infant with the mental capacity of a toddler. Doctors are baffled by her body's inhibited development; it's the only case in all known medical history of a virtually ageless person. As a parent, I sometimes lament the passing stages of my children's development: I will never feel their fine baby hair between my fingers again; I will never hear their sweet little voices try out new words as they learn to speak. But as much as I mourn that loss, I recognize that it is part of their growth and maturity. Eternal infancy, like Brooke Greenberg's, is not normal either in human development or in the faith development inherent in our being Christians, the recipients of God's living and abiding word (1 Pet. 1:23).
The making and sustaining of disciples is an integral part of the Great Commission. In the catalog of any major Christian publisher, discipleship resources are always prominently displayed. But I wonder if, in our mad dash to get our congregants into a discipleship class or group, we miss what Jesus actually set out to accomplish. Discipleship is more than just a status ("I am two-thirds the way through a discipleship course at my church"); discipleship is a way of being. To be a disciple is to be a follower of Jesus, a believer in the gospel, a baptized pilgrim progressing’as the great Puritan John Bunyan put it’to the City of Zion. Maybe the feeling of many pastors that discipleship is like herding cats indicates that we've taken a step in the right direction: away from programs and classes and into the application of the whole Bible to the whole life.
In this issue of Modern Reformation, we've asked our contributors to reflect on the growth process of the Christian life, specifically the relationship between wisdom and discipleship. Editor-in-chief Michael Horton starts us off by defining discipleship beyond the currently popular categories of experience and incarnation. Baptist writer and popular blogger Michael Spencer (aka "the Internet Monk") asks American Christians if their faith has been accommodated to their lifestyle or if their lifestyle has been transformed by their faith.
Presbyterian laywoman Paige Britton turns our attention to the ordained leadership of the church as the disciple-makers necessary for discipleship to occur. And Presbyterian minister and college professor T. David Gordon laments the fact that many of those ordained leaders are not fit to train the disciples for whom they are charged to care. Where Dr. Gordon looks broadly at media-ecology as a threat to disciple-making, Shane Rosenthal (producer of the White Horse Inn) looks specifically at educational theories and practices that have put the disciples in charge of their own progress: self-feeding has a long and infamous history.
Will we, can we, grow up in our faith? The mission of Modern Reformation is to help Christians know what they believe and why they believe it. Our purpose isn't merely to inflate the minds and egos of our readers; we see this as an important part of personal discipleship. The best kind of discipleship experience is a shared one; so if you have benefited from Modern Reformation and are interested in helping someone else grow in their faith, hope, and love, encourage them to sign up for our free trial subscription offer: they'll get this issue and access to over eighteen years worth of material in our online archives.
Eric Landry
Executive Editor
