Interestingly, in each place the indigenous Christians have said essentially the same thing to me: “Dan, we need help with discipleship. People are being evangelized here, the gospel is being proclaimed, but faith in Christ in (Costa Rica, China, Africa) is a mile wide and an inch deep. We need to go deeper. We need to develop disciples.” Usually, my immediate response was to think “why on earth would they think that American Christians know any more about discipleship than they do?”   And that was instantly followed by my own longing for the church in America to cease being satisfied with shallow nods towards faith while doggedly pursuing the same things everyone else does.

Discipleship. The word is of course related to “disciple,” as well as to “discipline.” It has to do with being a follower or a learner. Following Jesus. Most of us reading this article will say “Yes, I’m following Jesus.” But for many of us, our following is, well, “a mile wide and an inch deep.” To follow Jesus in his day often meant moving directly against the culture.  Throughout history, it is clear that the church has thrived when it has influenced the world and struggled when it was absorbed by the culture.  Yet today we so often act as though living and succeeding in our society is the same as following Jesus. Here’s how Eugene Peterson says it in The Jesus Way: “…so many who understand themselves to be followers of Jesus, without hesitation and apparently without thinking, embrace the ways and means of the culture as they go about their daily living “in Jesus’ name”…They seem to suppose that “getting on in the world” means getting on in the world on the world’s terms, and that the ways of Jesus are useful only in a compartmentalized area of life labeled “religious.”

Which brings us back to discipleship. How do we follow Jesus? How do we receive training to take a different road, to stand in the face of pressure, to pursue a relationship with God rather than the practices of religion – in short, to follow Jesus? Most of us have a yearning, not for more things to do or for more church, but for a deeper connection with God. But how does that happen? One word that is unpopular today, but which can still be very helpful, is “discipline.”  Discipline sounds difficult, like hard work, like something we may not feel like doing and in this “do-only-what-your-heart-moves-you-to-do” world, we often reject the very things we need. Who ever said that faith in God was easy? If everything starts with God’s perplexing desire for intimacy with us, what can we do to help cultivate a deeper relationship? 

Spiritual disciplines are practices that can help train us to be more aware of and receptive to God’s presence in our lives. They are a way of learning more about God. If that just sounds like extra things to do, or a way to earn God’s favor, then we need to stop and reconsider. We aren’t talking about dry ritual or a grudging response to some pastor’s latest guilt trip! It’s not “What else do I have to do?” It’s “What can I incorporate into my life that will help me follow Jesus?”  The prerequisite of course, is honestly grappling with the question: “Is this really what I want?”

So where are things with you? If you are going a hundred miles an hour doing ministry and increasingly find yourself with nothing to give…it may be that you aren’t regularly receiving. Pick the discipline: prayer, study, sabbath, confession, worship, spiritual direction or hospitality. Start to practice one thing in one area, and not something so overwhelming that you’ll drop it after a day or two. Not because you have to, but because you want to cultivate a relationship with the Lord. Often, one simple thing faithfully pursued will whet our appetite to follow Jesus. Not wider, but deeper.

Dan Baumgartner is pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church.
This article was adapted from the September 2007 “Bethany Briefs.”