Contemporary Discipleship

   Jesus designed discipleship to be contextual. As a disciple we are meant to impact the culture in which we live.  This makes discipleship contemporary.
   This implies that we, as today’s disciples, were made “for such a time as this” (to borrow a phrase from Esther’s Old Testament biography). We need training to be equipped to address the issues of our contemporary culture. These concerns include -- humanism…individualism…materialism…pluralism…and relativism.
   Each of these “isms” is causing spiritual schisms in our culture. Each, in its own way, challenges God in culture. Each also has a spiritual solution. Disciples are the ones called upon by God to be vessels of those solutions -- to sustain the spiritual integrity of culture. An apt verse from Paul’s writings fits here:
   “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is -- His good, pleasing and perfect will.”  (Romans 12:2)
   As disciples of Christ, we are placed in culture to be the “difference makers.”  We are not to be absorbed into culture…but to be instruments for transformation within culture -- to plant the “good, pleasing and perfect will” of God.
   How ...