Unfortunately, we don’t have a complete picture of what discipleship should look like in our modern age of program oriented Christianity. We have replaced what should be organic and relational with organization and bureacracy.
Discipleship in the Kingdom goes both ways. While one person might be more mature, he learns just as much in the process as the one being taught. It is natural. When we truly give of ourselves so that others can have life, we get more life than we could ever give up. The fathers and mothers in the faith, by necessity, also need to grow up to be what they need to be. It is a growing experience for all.
This is more evident in the 2nd Karate Kid movie, where the conflict is really Miyagi’s and Daniel is the support system for his master. While Miyagi is still the teacher, he needs comfort and support from his student, and must learn to receive it.
I can’t express well enough the need for these kinds of relationships in the Body of Christ. Not more classes or programs, but community and giving and relationship, vulnerability that deals with real issues and changes EVERYONE, not just the young and supposedly immature. When you stop learning, you stop growing, and when you stop growing, you’re .
I owe much of my Christianity to a man who understood these things. Oh, he had his faults, but he taught not just doctrine or theology but life, wisdom, practicality. He made himself vulnerable, asked forgiveness, and proved to be more mature and wise than any other man or woman who had discipled me up to that point, and I had some good ones growing up, too. And when I flew back from Korea to attend his memorial since he passed from this life to the next, few that knew me in Korea had an inkling as to why my “pastor’s” should affect me so deeply.
He was my Miyagi. He was my friend. And he thought I was pretty OK too. I feel his loss still, and probably always will, but I understand even more the blessing he was to me. That is what I wish for others.
Peace.