When I was in school, if something happened during the semester that legitimately prevented you from completing the required work, the professor could give you an “incomplete.” Most of the time, that would give you a little extra time to complete the work and ultimately get credit for the course. Still, seeing an “I” on the report card did make your stomach tighten a little. “Incompletes” are hard to live with.
And yet, if we were to grade our lives, most areas would get an “Incomplete.” Indeed, our entire lives – every aspect is one big work in progress. I guess it’s part of the human condition. We’re always working but never quite getting there.
e. We’ve grown so used to this reality, we’ve given it a name. It’s called the “eighty percent rule.” This rule states if you can get a chore eighty percent complete, we should consider it done. Taking the project to completion – the final twenty percent – simply isn’t worth the effort.
While we should learn to live as a people who are constantly on the way and never arriving, we have to be careful this attitude doesn’t lull us into complacency. Let’s look at church discipleship. Everyone would agree making disciples is the major work of the church. Most of us would also agree how poorly the church is doing this. Why?
First, we have an incomplete definition of discipleship. For most of us, a disciple who reads the Bible a lot. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love studying Scripture. I encourage everyone to read and study their Bibles, but discipleship is more than piling up Bible knowledge. Discipleship is more than learning about Jesus, it’s aligning our lives with the model of His life and His teachings. Traditionally, we’ve called this process “sanctification.” We have to understand true discipleship involves our whole lives for the rest of our lives. Most think if we’ve gotten our congregations to read their Bibles more, we’ve accomplished the work of discipleship. Not so fast. Without life transformation, discipleship is incomplete.
Second, while we celebrate life change, we have to understand the life change in a disciple’s life is in preparation for more and more significant kingdom ministry. Every transformation is preparation for service in God’s redemptive work. While we celebrate the alcoholic who quits drinking and the addict that stops using, we never see this as the end of the story. The person who gains control of their temper, the timid person who gains confidence, every personal victory big and small is nothing more than the Spirit preparing the person for their use in God’s kingdom.
Too many of us think discipleship is not only successful but complete when a person has dropped their bad habits and is reading their Bible. Nothing could be further from the truth. First, discipleship is never complete. Because we are never totally aligned with the identity and teachings of Christ, we always have work to do. More importantly, discipleship always points to and ends with the person being on mission with Christ.
Christ is always at work in His world. His people are joining with Him in this work. As disciples, our aim is to be as close to Jesus as possible and that means we will be working with Jesus in His redemptive work. The call is to follow Jesus, not hang out and talk with Jesus. There are things we only learn in obedience. Service, ministry, mission are all as important in a person’s discipleship as reading the Bible. Study drives service and service drives us back to study. We can’t have one without the other.
While we understand discipleship is never done, we’re only closer to the goal of discipleship when we’re actively serving with Christ. Disciples not only believe. True disciples obey. True disciples work for the sake of their Master. Anything else is an “incomplete.”
