Leaders in faith: Members of the body are one

Posted September 17, 2009 at 4:13 pm and filed under Faith.

By Gordon Duncan

I’m reading Jonathan Dodson’s great discipleship book “Fight Clubs,” and after the introduction alone, I’m eager to take it all in. In the very first few pages, he speaks to the need for discipleship within the church, saying, “The gospel is about saving and transforming entire communities in relationship, not mere individuals who go it alone.”

Gordon Duncan

Gordon Duncan

These comments speak to the essence of what is missing in many churches today. Yes, pastors and churches are to call individuals to faith in Jesus Christ, but pastors and churches are to call individuals to faith within the body of Christ. The “all eyes closed” and “all heads bowed” style of presenting the Gospel tells folks that they can secretly make commitments to God that are lived out privately, whereas no example of such a faith exists in Scripture.

Modern discipleship has also suffered from this individual emphasis. Yes, we are to grow men and women in their personal relationship with Jesus, but that growth is to be lived out in the context of community, the church. Reducing all training in the faith to one-on-one teaching is an inevitable path to a narcissistic faith that falls apart when God appears to have failed to deliver on his promises.

Paul makes this point undoubtedly clear in I Corinthians 12:

  • “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”
  • “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”
  • “For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.”

There is no “Jesus and me” here. There is only “Jesus and we.” Every believer is part of the body of Christ, and though one-on-one time and training is invaluable, discipleship and conformity to the image of Christ is best done in community. Notice in the Gospels, even the disciples are always mentioned in groups. Yes, Jesus spent time with Peter, but for the most part you see him spending time with Peter, James and John.

The verses in Corinthians give us the push we need. The believer is part of one body — the body of Christ. That body has many members, and it is alien, foreign and against God’s design to try to go it alone. Just as my seeing is informed by my hearing, so is one believer in Christ informed by another.

The takeaway for me and for any one else in this body of Christ is to call people to a Jesus-based community. If you are a believer and find yourself without a committed, accountable community, you are all seeing with no hearing. You are an eye trying to function as the whole body, which is in practice mutant and deformed.

Though we will always be tempted to go it alone, discipleship and maturity as a follower of Christ is best developed and grown in the context of others who are walking the same path.

Gordon Duncan is a pastor of Sovereign King Church.

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