DOPCANDY

I thoroughly recommend that you check out the LICC web resources on Engaging with Youth. Jason Gardner has written some excellent articles – all of which can be downloaded here. A particular favourite of mine is “Mission & Discipleship: a rough introduction. Read on and get a flavour!

Mission & Discipleship: a rough introduction by Jason Gardner

White and rice. Honey and bees. Jolie and Pitt (let’s hope). A fool and his money. Mission and discipleship.

Spot the odd one out? Yes well done you Bibliophile you, as Proverbs tells us a fool and his money are soon parted. All the other items are seemingly inseperable, not least mission and discipleship.

There are a whole host of reasons why doing mission and thinking about mission are integral to how we disciple young people, particularly in our current context in the UK but before I start writing a mini series for HBO on the subject let’s start with a story.

Britain has just announced war on, for now let’s say a fictional country, like ‘Spain’. The war is so great that everyone between 16 and 50, men and women get drafted. As per your draft instructions you head to a local bus depot where you, and a motley crew of people from all over the streets and neighbourhood where you live, get on to an Army coach to head for basic training. A drill sergeant at the front checks names as the bus starts out.

After exchanging fears and concerns with the person in the next seat you manage to doze off. You wake up and as your head clears from sleep you notice something strange. The signs of the towns you’re driving through seem to be written in Spanish. Spain? Already? Startled you head to the front past a series of worried looking faces and you challenge the drill sergeant.

‘Sergeant, not sure if the GPS is playing up, but we seem to be in Spain.’

‘Very observant private, and very correct.’

‘But what about basic training? Shouldn’t we be back in blighty learning how to clean rifles and peel spuds, shouldn’t we be throwing up on assault courses about now?’

‘You obviously slept through the announcement. New tactics. In times of war we don’t train in Army camps but on the front line.’

‘The front line? The front line? But we don’t stand a chance.’

The Sergeant grins. ‘You stand every chance, you’ll be training under the best that the army has to offer, Captain Beaumont. He’s never lost a new recruit who’s followed his command and he’s making advances against the enemy all the time. Not just that but wherever he goes many of the opposition are deserting and switching sides. Incredible.’

You head back to your seat and as you settle back down, you do throw up.

Isn’t this a similar context to the one Christ finds himself when he ‘drafts’ the first disciples? Isn’t this where we find Jesus at the beginning of Mark’s gospel?: ‘The time is come’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.’

And, after a fanfare from Heaven at his baptism announcing that start of his three year mission, we find him driven into the desert for 40 days of preparation that’s marked by a direct conflict with the devil. This sets the context for an ongoing battle that sees the forces of Satan continually on the run and finally defeated at the Cross.

And so Christ travels from town to town announcing the advance of the Kingdom of God. His public ministry looks less like a preaching tour and more like a military campaign and he recruits and trains as he goes.

He announces victory over the ‘dominion of darkness’ (Colossians 1.13) by bringing to bear in the world the force of the kingdom of light: healing the sick, bringing shalom – wholeness- to those needing forgiveness, hope to the poor and exposing and expulsing demonic forces.

And he invites those ‘living in the land of shadow’ to join forces with him, to turn around, to repent, to experience the good life of his kingdom rule. So we see Christ recruiting in order to extend his own reach and impact. It’s in the context of this conflict that Christ trains the disciples: he looks for support as he continues a difficult fight and he looks for those who will help him to advance the kingdom by announcing its presence, bringing shalom and defeating Satan.

Mark details this, and in doing so is more specific than the other gospels, when he describes why Jesus chose the twelve, in Mark 3 we read ‘He appointed twelve – designating them apostles – that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.’ Apostle means ‘one who is sent out.’

Jesus ministry underlines a mission that is always on the move. There’s a great urgency in his drive towards completing his mission – setting his face towards Jerusalem – but also in his sending of his followers, in the great commission of Matthew 28, echoed in Acts 1. The kingdom of God is always to advance, always to invite those loyal to the darkness of life outside his rule to switch sides.

Because of this urgency Christ trains on the job. And although Christ takes his disciples on retreat from time to time, he also ensures that they learn how to deal with conflict by observing how he deals with opposition whether it comes from teachers of the law or demons.

This is front line training. When Peter asks if ’seven’ is a good amount of times to forgive your brother, Christ responds ‘no seventy seven times’ (Mathew 18) – in other words, always forgive – because when you do you’re encouraging a lifestyle approach that sees the kingdom of God advance, that sees God’s shalom realised on the earth and darkness defeated.

This image of discipleship as training in the middle of conflict is common throughout the New Testament. So in Ephesians we have the Christian as the soldier trained to combat Satan and to see sin as an attack on God’s rule (Ephesians 6). And when we resist sin through the power of the spirit, we become battle hardened, we mature, we make steps towards becoming veterans well versed in denying Satan a foothold – like Christ in the wilderness. The battle against sin and darkness is depicted as a battle precisely because it is, as the writer of Hebrew points out ‘In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.’ (chapter 12)

And we see Jesus equipping his disciples to deal with the two eventualities faced by any advancing force: resistance and surrender. When Christ thinks the disciples have been sufficiently trained to head out to preach he tells them ‘I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.’ Matthew 10.16. And ‘if anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.’ Jesus briefs them well as the rest of Matthew 10 depicts but he does not hold back from sending his followers into risky situations – letting them know that there are those who will respond warmly but also those who will oppose.

It appears that there is no neutral ground: we and those we are seeking to reach find ourselves in either state, either resisting Christ’s rule or surrendering to it, as Jesus says in Mark 8. 40, ‘whoever is not against us is for us’.

Bob Dylan, during his seventies gospel phase, depicted this well in his song ‘you gotta serve somebody’:

You might be a rock-and-roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You might be a business man or some high degree thief
They may call you doctor, they may call you chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Serve somebody

You might be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk
You might be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country underneath another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes, indeed
Serve somebody
It might be the devil or it might be the Lord.

Our actions in life mark out which side we’ve been loyal to.

Christ came with a clear mission; to ensure God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven by advancing his kingdom rule, and he came with a clear method of how he would equip his disciples to do this within the context of a conflict that was already raging.

We have the same mission. Is our method as clear? Where are our faith communities actively advancing the kingdom of God? Where are we raging against injustice? Bringing hope to the poor, the weak and the needy?

We might be of a generation that wants to see miracles but has a hard time believing they can happen, but it’s clear that Jesus intended us to mark the presence of the kingdom in our midst through the miracle of bringing physical ’shalom’ – wholeness – to people: healing the sick, raising the dead and driving out demons.

More importantly how are we involving our children and young people at the front line? Our job is not to shield them and protect them but, as we seek God’s direction, to equip them to face the challenges that lie all around them every day, at work, at school, at home and on the streets.

Christ realised how great the challenge was to his disciples, that’s why he put them through a school of hard knocks. That’s why he always made sure people knew just how much it would cost to follow him, he knew that this battle did not belong to him alone but to all those who would own his name.
If we fail to realise the scale of the challenge, we will also fail to prepare our young people properly.

And in an age that scoffs at the idea of an eternal battle between darkness and light we have to acknowledge that Christ’s mission on earth only makes sense in the light of this reality.

And so, for ourselves, we should not be surprised that seeking to travel with young people through all their trials and triumphs feels like a battle, it is. This is our starting point for seeking to disciple young people: that they might add their own God given strength to a mission that Christ is still recruiting for.

I’ll finish with a scene from the recently released animated film Star Wars: Clone wars. The impetuous but brave Jedi Anakin Skywalker is leading his troops into the fight against a seemingly overwhelming droid force. The Sergeant turns to him and asks:

‘Sir what’s our strategy?’

Anakin turns, grins and says ‘Follow me.’ Then jumps into the battle.