Some good stuff from the Signposts folks:

The future of the Christian church rests on the quality and the success of our discipleship. The future of any movement relies on the ability of the current members to recruit people to the cause. If Jesus had not been successful in recruiting people to his cause and inspiring them to follow in his path, then the Christian faith would have concluded with his death. The resurrection experiences of the early disciples were obviously a significant factor in turning the scattered and scared disciples into people who were capable of creating a fledging Christian community. Yet, the resurrection experience was significant only in the context of the discipleship that Jesus had offered in his lifetime. The continuation and growth of the Christian faith resulted from Jesus’ ability to infuse his disciples with the message. As Hirsch notes, it almost failed; despite the time and energy that Jesus put into his followers’ discipleship, the fragile Christian movement almost failed before it had begun.

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The Christian faith has always found ways to communicate and create disciples. The task has not changed, even if the context has. We need to create ways to develop disciples who embody the ways of Jesus. This development needs to take into account our current post-Christendom, post-modern, post-denominational and consumeristic missional context. We need to ask what it means to covenant together to take the missio deo seriously. How do we cultivate individual commitment to the cause of Jesus?

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