The High Cost of Non-Discipleship
Hot off the press research from the Barna Group says that the share of practicing Christians in the United States has nearly dropped in half in the last two decades. Just 25% of Americans are practicing Christians compared to 45% in 2000. [I interrupt this research to ask, if 45% were practicing Christians in 2000, why did it decline nearly half in twenty-years? If half of Americans were practicing Christians that’s game, set, match - break out the party hats!] Until you discover how the survey defines a practicing Christian; Someone who identifies as a Christian, agrees strongly that faith is very important in their lives and have attended church in the past month.[1] Jesus would have rolled his eyes and walked on. Only about half as many people go to church half as much - except in the evangelical church where the decline is seen but is meager compared churchwide.
Those who identify as non-practicing Christians have doubled. The survey confirms that lukewarm, tepid Christianity will eventually collapse in our increasing secular culture. Active Christianity has declined just as our cultural elites have managed the gradual decline of our country in the last twenty years.
Listen to the late philosopher/writer Dallas Willard:
“Why Christian faith has failed to transform the masses and to make a more just and peaceful world is because it has failed to transform the human character. The reason is that our gospel most often has not been accompanied by discipleship. Discipleship is not an essential part of Christianity today, in philosophy, program, or curriculum.”[2]
Another way of putting it, the high cost of non-discipleship.
Many years ago, I was sitting at a lunch counter in Indianapolis with a high school friend and we were discussing our faith. He identified as a non-practicing Christian. I informed him that what he claimed to be didn’t exist, not really. It only exists in a non-existent category like a non-practicing husband or father. Yet, it does happen and is a non-category category. That is what I think of the 20% self-reassignment from practicing Christians to the non-practicing category. Even though it is unlikely in the twenty years that have passed to be composed of the same people. The study is not about the original group, but an entirely different set of people. A people who have come behind them; a younger generation who have been taught by a different faculty.
In 1937 Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave the world his book, The Cost of Discipleship. Dallas Willard called it a “masterful attack on ‘easy Christianity’, or (as we have discussed earlier) ‘cheap grace.” Willard goes on to say, “But the book did not succeed in setting aside - perhaps it even enforced - the view of discipleship as a costly spiritual excess, and only for those especially driven or called to it... But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater…”[3]
I would contend that the American church is reaping what she has sown, and God is not mocked. What we sow we do reap. We are reaping the bitter harvest of decline and irrelevancy. What have we lost? We return to Willard:
“Non-discipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring.”[4]
“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” - John 10:10
We have reaped what we have sown. The loss of peace, love, confidence in God, the power to get through the challenges of life, and a general sense of joy and satisfaction.
So here I am, sitting at my desk typing, but the sun is streaming through the window and warms my hands. I see my neighbors walking by with their children. Many are wearing masks. Most have dogs. The parents are masked because they understand the situation. The children and dogs, however, are bouncing about with great delight. The knowledge of this pandemic has stolen peace from the parents which is what Lucifer lives for - to know that underneath those masks are frowns rather than smiles. But then again, we just observed Good Friday, and I once again lean on my friend Dallas Willard.
“When we look at what Christ did for us on the cross and keep that at the center of our vision. There are not many things that will bother us, or even matter at all…it casts transformational light on our own sufferings.”[5]
Good Friday is only good in light of resurrection. Yes, the enemy has taken some important things from us and right now it seems dark, but context matters Jesus did what he didn’t want to do in order to give us what we desperately needed. This is a momentary light affliction that will be flung away by the eternal weight of glory.
[1] Articles State of the Church 2020 in State of the Church 2020, Barna Group, March 4, 2020
[2] Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives (New York: HarperCollins, 1989), 221.
[3] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship
[4] Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines
[5] Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines
