Some of this I anticipated yesterday but will now state.
1. Missional Jesus calls for a discipleship that is rooted in who missional Jesus is -- Messiah -- and how missional Jesus carries about his mission -- via the cross. Discipleship takes it shape from christology. This is loaded stuff, friends, and it deserves books to expound.
2. Missional Jesus' mission is "church-shaped."
3. Missional Jesus permits his followers to get things wrong and leads them to deeper perceptions of who he is and what he is doing.
4. As the heart of missional Jesus' life was self-denial -- which is what love for others is -- so also the heart of missional discipleship is self-denial.
5. Missional Jesus says it is worth giving up everything -- including one's life -- for this missional Jesus' missional life.
Matt. 16:24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
Matt. 16:27 “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
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Scot,
Stimulating post!
Would you add an explanatory sentence or two to this statement: "Missional Jesus’ mission is 'church-shaped'"? I'm looking for it in the text you quote.
Don't you think that a lot of our USAmerican discipleship takes its shape from bibliology?
It is church-shaped, John, even I'm stretching this text to include its surrounding texts, because following Jesus is done in the context of others following Jesus.
Ah! Now I get it...I'm with you. Jesus is about creating a people--a community---so that discipleship is communal in nature about the self-denying Christ.
Scot, this is your best MJ post yet.
Each one of your points surely deserves books to expound- yet I would agree, that #1 is primus unter pares...
Dana
What impressed upon me about these "missional" texts is that it's about praxis (following Jesus in his way). Right thinking means nothing if it's confirmed by action--that's what really counts in the end,what we'll be judged by.We spend a lot of time "adjudicating" a person's spiriutal firness by what they believe.There will be some surprises in the Last Judgment!
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