The Great Omission
Are We Really Making Disciples?
Last week we explored Richard Foster’s quote, “The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”
Admittedly, it’s a counter-cultural (and sometimes counter-church) statement. Some of what we experience in modern Christianity may be designed to produce converts (or perhaps educated converts) but not necessarily people of depth whose lives are centered around becoming more like Jesus.
“Deep people” are forged through a wonderful combination of factors: time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction. At Soil & Roots, we call these the Five Key Elements of Spiritual Formation. We are best molded to become more like Jesus when intentionally engaging in all five elements.
I’ve received some questions on the five elements, so let me explain a bit further.
Let’s say you have a daughter who’s been blessed with a fabulous gymnastics talent, and she has a passion for the sport. She wants to become an Olympic gymnast. She wants to “be formed” more like Mary Lou Retton or Gabby Douglas.
To become more like an Olympic gymnast, she will (and you by extension!) intentionally engage in a five-element experience involving time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction.
Time: She will spend hours upon hours at an appropriate gym, sometimes four or five days a week.
Habit: She will practice a dizzying array of physical and mental disciplines designed to train her and form her holistically.
Community: Your daughter will be inducted into a gymnastics culture designed for one purpose - to form professional athletes. This will include instructors, mentors, peers, and families.
Intimacy: She will be expected to be transparent and open about her experience, including struggles, injuries, successes, doubts, and questions.
Instruction: Your daughter will receive constant instruction, specifically tied to her age, level of skill, and desired athletic development.
In other words, she will become part of a “five-element community” custom-designed to form her into a professional gymnast.
Human beings have naturally developed and grown five-element communities for centuries because we intuitively know forming a person involves far more than instruction.
See if you can spot the five elements in these other intentionally formative experiences:
The military (forming a civilian into a soldier)
AA (forming an addict into someone in recovery)
Marriage (forming two people into one)
College (forming a high school senior into a college graduate ready for a specific workforce)
Parenting (forming a little baby into a non-combative, productive member of society)
And if we look at how Jesus formed His disciples, we see the five elements in abundance (I explore this in detail in Episode 11 of the podcast. Listen here or read here. Plus there’s a visual aid you can fill out! Homework!)
In fact, one of the only formative experiences in which we find a lack of these five elements is modern-day discipleship.
Most Christians today live in a “Formation Gap” - our journey to become more like Jesus consists of bits and pieces of the Five Elements.
Time: Our spiritually formative experiences come in fits and starts, with perhaps a one-hour service over the weekend and a 90-minute Bible study during the week.
Habit: For some of us, the modern church may not be the place where we’re trained on numerous spiritual disciplines designed to form us, such as silence, solitude, radical generosity, sacrifice, and so on.
Community: Due to the somewhat frenetic nature of modern life, we tend to try to keep multiple communities spinning at the same time, and our “church” community is but one among many. Though some Christian institutions try to help us “do life together,” it’s hard to do that when we only see each other for a few concentrated minutes a week.
Intimacy: Sometimes our church communities are the last places we want to shed our exterior veneers and unveil our hearts and desires. We fear being judged for our doubts, dissents, and corruption. Often these fears are unjustified, though “church hurt” is unfortunately common and widespread.
Instruction: Oddly, modern Christianity assumes the most spiritually formative facet of the week is a 30-minute monologue, delivered to an audience consisting of people at various and diverse places in their spiritual journeys. While preaching and teaching are essential to the Christian life, I doubt the average soldier would claim the most formative aspect of their military training is a weekly lecture from a higher-ranking officer.
This “Formation Gap” has strongly contributed to what theologian and philosopher Dallas Willard referred to as “The Great Omission” - the fact that modern Christianity talks a lot about making disciples but struggles to actually make them. Willard defined a disciple as an “apprentice of Jesus,” for the purpose of becoming more like Him.
I live in the Dallas, Texas area, and at least down here, the focus of many churches is on making converts, and then launching those converts into lives of service. It’s common for churches to offer 12 or 16-week courses on the basics of Christianity, and then claim that participants have “been discipled.”
One pastor I follow has repeatedly said from the pulpit, “I know the Great Commission is about making disciples, but you can’t have disciples without first making converts.”
I think he has it backward. You can’t have converts without making disciples. I suspect that’s why Jesus didn’t commission us to “make converts.” He commissioned us to join Him in forming people of spiritual depth, people whose lives are centered around seeking the Kingdom, around participating together in a lifelong journey to become more like our King. To increasingly think like He thinks, act like He acts, relate like He relates, and love like He loves.
I admit mulling over the Five Key Elements of Formation and The Great Omission creates some tension and a host of uncomfortable questions. Why are we so willing to engage in five-element communities for most intentionally formative experiences, except the most vital journey of our lives?
We’ll continue to parse this out in the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you want more information on Willard’s “Great Omission,” either check out his book by that name, or (if you’re feeling particularly ambitious) check out Episodes 1-13 of the Soil & Roots podcast. You can find it on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and other platforms. If you are a reader, you can just read the transcripts at the Soil & Roots site.
Duc in Altum! (Put out into the deep!)
Brian
This Week on the Soil & Roots Podcast
What do we mean when we pray for the Kingdom to come? Dr. Tim Boswell returns to the Greenhouse for a vulnerable and in-depth conversation about our modern ideas about the Kingdom, and how they may or may not align with what Jesus meant when He instructed us to pray for it to arrive.
Is the Kingdom spiritual, or is it also physical? Is the Kingdom right now or just in the future? Does the Kingdom refer to Heaven, or does it include some form of Heaven on Earth? Of our four relationships (with God, others, self, and creation), which are included in the Kingdom?
Join us for the last episode of Season 4, as we finish our months-long exploration of the Forgotten Kingdom!