{"id":1052,"date":"2012-11-08T16:07:07","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T16:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/media-rescue-or-ruin-of-relational-discipleship\/"},"modified":"2012-11-08T16:07:07","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T16:07:07","slug":"media-rescue-or-ruin-of-relational-discipleship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/media-rescue-or-ruin-of-relational-discipleship\/","title":{"rendered":"Media: Rescue or Ruin of Relational Discipleship?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I woke up this morning at 3:45 a.m. and knew that I would not fall back to sleep. \u00a0This is not uncommon for me.\u00a0 Many have the same experience after passing age 60, I am 63.\u00a0 The upside is that I am awake when the house is very quiet and I can read and write uninterrupted which is what I have been doing for the past 5 hours.\u00a0 During this time I have written a number of emails to people in Eastern Europe with whom I am doing some discipleship.\u00a0 I am so thankful for email, messaging, facebook, skype, etc.\u00a0 But, I look forward to those ministry trips when I can engage personally and relationally.\u00a0 Media fills some gaps, but does it also create crutches?<\/span><\/p>\n

To the extent that discipleship includes some transfer of information, or content, the development and advance of media has certainly helped discipleship.\u00a0 Briggs noted the comment by Martin Luther about the printing press as \u201cGod\u2019s highest gift of grace\u201d (pg. 24).\u00a0 Printing good material for easy distribution certainly helps discipleship and providing the Bible to all believers was certainly an aim of the reformers (pg. 63). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I submit that the advance of print media has contributed to the demise of obedience based discipleship and to the rise of rationally based discipleship.\u00a0 This advance ran parallel to Enlightenment ideas which where circulated by books and periodicals with amazing speed.\u00a0 There is now little information that is not easily available to the public.\u00a0 Armed with numerous translations of Scripture, commentaries, and other printed and audio media, a believer is lulled into thinking that discipleship is mostly the intellectual (rational) cataloguing of spiritual content. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This has largely effected the North American Church and was greatly enhanced by the Sunday School movement of the 18th century.\u00a0 Even to this day, many churches offer \u201cclasses\u201d which are advertised in their bulletins as being \u201cdiscipleship\u201d opportunities.\u00a0 Christian book stores offer many \u201chow to\u201d discipleship books divided up into convenient 13 chapters that fit nicely into a 3 month quarter of lessons.\u00a0 This dynamic has contributed to the demise of obedience based discipleship which relies upon relationships and community. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Someone once said that there is no spiritual growth apart from accountability.\u00a0 If that is true, then discipleship that is rooted in relationships where obedience is readily observed is critical to the advance of the Kingdom.\u00a0 The advance of non-personal media has certainly contributed to the discipleship enterprise.\u00a0 But, it must not totally replace the personal and relational dynamics that contribute to obedience and ultimately to the maturation process we call \u201cdiscipleship.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m off to meet with a pastor with whom I have a mentoring relationship.\u00a0 We confirmed our meeting and talking points by sending text messages and email.\u00a0 I resourced him by email with attachments.\u00a0 We talked by phone yesterday.\u00a0 But, today we meet, face to face.\u00a0 I get to look into his eyes during difficult questions.\u00a0 I watch for how he responds to humor and to accountability.\u00a0 I get to encourage him personally. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke up this morning at 3:45 a.m. and knew that I would not fall back to sleep. \u00a0This is not uncommon for me.\u00a0 Many have the same experience after passing age 60, I am 63.\u00a0 The upside is that I am awake when the house is very quiet and I can read and write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[389,2],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-briggs","tag-dminlgp","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}