Discipleship and the Evangelical Church

A Critical Assessment

Jesse Hamilton

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781666791167
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

The Evangelical Protestant church is in the midst of a crisis--but the causes might be different than we think. In this book, Jesse Hamilton argues that the reason for the church's growing disunity, moral and cultural confusion, and general lack of passion and power is its perpetual neglect of the fundamentals of discipleship--what it truly means to follow Jesus. Our only hope for change is to recalibrate our hearts and lives on the call of Christ and the New Testament distinctives of absolute surrender, deep and abiding holiness, the work of prayer, and engagement with the lost and needy of the world--all the things that the modern church has so often struggled to commit to. But first, the church must come to a biblical understanding of what these things actually are and how we must pursue them. Combining theological rigor with clarity of thought and simplicity of style, Discipleship and the Evangelical Church aims to reach modern Christians with the urgent message of the hour, which is nothing other than the timeless call of Christ to follow him.

1

The Gospel

My wife Ana (pronounced Ah-na in the Russian language) is an endlessly fascinating person. Born in the Soviet Union in the early eighties, she grew up in the tiny country of Moldova, which gained independence after the Soviet Union’s collapse. The changes brought about after the decline of the Soviet communist bloc plunged her home country into widespread poverty. She grew up genuinely poor. Her parents often had to take odd jobs just to help the children survive, even serving as missionaries in outer Siberia for several years to make ends meet. She received charity packages from the West, wore hand-me-downs from her brother, and worked with her family every autumn to prepare preserves to get them through the winter. Life was hard—but glorious in its own right. Her parents, both incredibly talented and accomplished musicians, worked hard to foster an intellectual environment in the family. Ana grew up reading Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and translations of Shakespeare, while immersing herself in all the glorious music of the western classical tradition. The talents and musical legacy of her parents were passed on to each of the four children, but in none did they find more magnificent expression than in Ana, who by an early age was something of a local celebrity, showcasing her prodigious piano talents on national television and in numerous competitions. By the time she was in high school, her parents had shipped her off to boarding school in Romania, where the environment and teaching at the time were better suited to develop her world-class piano talent. Despite the horrors of living in a foreign country, and one that was at times hostile to her Moldavian heritage, Ana continued to progress as a concert pianist, winning more and more competitions and making plans to study abroad in a more developed country.

Toward the end of her senior year in high school, Ana heard of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: a famed Moldavian concert pianist, known throughout the world as one of the greatest living pianists, was returning home to perform and host auditions for a new piano department he was creating in, of all places, a small college in the States near my hometown, where he hoped possibly to retire. When Ana was informed of this thrilling piece of news, she was a country away in Romania, still grinding away at her studies. Somehow she managed to hop on a train, travel all night to Moldova, and make it in time for the pianist’s auditions, which were to take place before his concert. When her time finally came to play for him, the unthinkable happened—the lights in the auditorium went completely out. Still in the midst of Liszt’s dramatic but treacherous transcendental etude no. 12 (“Snowstorm”), Ana played on, and when she finished, the great pianist sat in perfect silence for a minute or two in the near total darkness. When he finally spoke, it was to ask if she had a passport. Afterward, Ana found evidence to suggest that a jealous parent of a fellow auditioner had switched off the lights in an effort to sabotage her performance. But it was no matter. God was bringing Ana to my hometown—and, eventually, through another set of remarkable providences, to my home church. And there, before her senior year of college, I was to meet her.

When I met Ana she was again something of a local celebrity, having won important competitions in Louisiana and in the southeastern United States, and having been well on her way for some time to what appeared for all the world to be a successful and even illustrious concert pianist career. Her mentor had been fashioning what was to become one of the great piano departments of the South in its heyday, and Ana was something of its prize jewel. But unbeknownst to me at the time I met her, God had already set the wheels of change into motion. Just before Ana and I met, her world-renowned, enormously gifted mentor had rather shockingly not been rehired. What appeared to be a clear future path for Ana was now covered by brambles of confusion. Or not, actually. Even before her mentor’s departure, the Holy Spirit had been speaking to Ana in that still, small voice, unmistakable in its faith-fueled luminescence. How could she continue to spend hour upon hour in a tiny practice room, wasting away her life for the lure of the concert stage? Especially with so many needs in the world? In the end, as she tells it, it was the simple demand of Jesus to save one’s life by losing it that carried the day. The fame, fortune, glamour, and even the deep and abiding beauty of the music she played and the artistry she demonstrated while playing it—nothing was going to keep her from fully following Jesus. By the time I met her, her decision had already been made. The departure of her mentor, in the end, was a catalyst of sorts, but it was also merely confirmation of where the Lord was already leading her. She was going to Africa to work with needy, unevangelized children—unless I, fresh from my first stint overseas, could persuade her to consider the part of the world I had been working in. Thank God I eventually did.

We had a glorious senior year together, attending all of her fabulous concerts and recitals, some solo, some with orchestra. As I traveled with Ana to each and every venue dressed in my concert best—my only suit—with the dazzling star of the hour upon my arm, who was now my fiancé, I got a glimpse of a world I had always dreamed of—a world not merely of elegance and sophistication, but one of undeniable, divinely-charged beauty. Night after night, midst an atmosphere of splendor, I was whisked away into the intoxicating fantasy-worlds of Rachmaninoff, Liszt, and whomever else my wife was playing. It was heady stuff—and mercifully short-lived. As soon as we were married it abruptly ended. My wife and I were plunged headlong into the world of what it means to follow Jesus—where circumstances are often uncertain, faith tested, provision delayed, requests sought for and miraculously provided, and God’s grace desperately depended on through the means of prayer. And in this world we have remained for the past nearly two decades.

The secular world, and even parts of the Christian world, would say Ana made an incomprehensible mistake. She would counter with the simple claim that is at the heart of this chapter: to follow Jesus means to give up everything. I am not convinced that the Evangelical church today really understands what this means.

Recent Trends

I want to begin our consideration of the foundational truths of the Christian faith—what the New Testament calls the gospel—by examining a recent trend. The “gospel-centered” movement has become quite influential in the Evangelical Protestant church of late, and its proponents have been earnest in their intention to make the gospel not merely the entry point of the Christian faith, but also the focal point and even the substance of the faith, as is often said in such churches. A well-known advocate puts it like this:

Growth in Christ is not going beyond the gospel, but deeper into it. Believing the gospel is what released an explosive power in Jesus’ followers that caused them to live with radical recklessness and audacious faith. Make the gospel the center of your life. Turn to it when you are in pain. Let it be the foundation of your identity. Ground your confidence in it. Run to it when your soul feels restless. Take solace there in times of confusion and comfort there in times of regret. Dwell on it until righteous passions for God spring up with in you. Let it inspire you to God-centered, death-defying dreams for His glory . . . Study it, deeply—like the seminarian studies doctrine, but like you study a sunset that leaves you speechless; or like a man who is passionately in love with his wife studies her, until he’s so captivated by her that his enthrallment with her drives out any allurements toward other women. The gospel is not merely the diving board off of which you jumped into the pool of Christianity; the gospel is the pool itself. So keep going deeper into it. You’ll never find the bottom.1

Having spent considerable time in such churches over the past many years, I can testify to the zeal with which this enterprise is carried out. To be sure, there were many in one church I attended, which was fairly large and influential in that part of the country, who appeared conflicted about the terminology at times; in the back rooms where various ministries were taking place, some of which I had the privilege to be a part of for a couple of years, the leader of one particular ministry repeatedly substituted the term “God-centered” for “gospel-centered”—almost instinctively—and the exchange was met from time to time with murmurs of approval.

It is not my intention to explore this matter extensively in this book; my general purpose lies elsewhere. However, since this trend has captivated so many around the country, and the movement has gained so much momentum, and since my larger purpose is to point out those issues in the church which, I believe, need to have the light of examination shined on them anew, it would be useful to make at least one or two comments in passing, despite the fact that many have offered substantial criticisms of this movement in recent years.

First, very generally, surely one must be incredibly careful with terminology, especially when it enters widespread usage or popularity. When such phrases as “gospel-centered” begin to grow in prominence, it is virtually inevitable that some vital aspect of biblical doctrine—or even some aspect of the subject itself—goes missing. After spending several years in one church that was quite large and incredibly influential, I can tell you that the phrase did, in fact, begin to take on a significance whose parameters were a bid too wide. It was mentioned without fail in every service, it seemed, and eventually it was presented as the sum total and substance of everything one needs to know in order to become more like Jesus, as the quote above makes explicit. A favorite verse was 1 Corinthians 15:3: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” A brief study of this verse reveals that the precise meaning of the phrase often rendered in English translations as “of first importance” is anything but certain; but the point here is that “of first importance,” even if this is the proper translation, in a very real sense became “of sole importance.” Despite the benefit of consistently focusing on the gospel, I found that the resulting problems were twofold: a general neglect of the larger set of vital biblical doctrines that the New Testament writers obviously thought essential to our sanctification, and an inadequate view of the grace of God, one that lent itself to abuse. This latter problem was especially acute, as young Christian friends I knew battled with remaining sin, assurance, and the like, and were constantly bombarded by the lure of what at times smacked of “cheap grace,” as Bonhoeffer famously put it.2 I believe, as Bonhoeffer did in his day, that an honest study of the New Testament makes it clear that the way the gospel is presented today is often unbiblical, for lack of a better term, as it fails to capture various nuances of the Christian message as presented in both the gospels and the epistles. Simply put, an emphasis on the forgiveness of our sins in Christ to the neglect of, say, the necessity of holiness, is simply not the way the Christian faith and life are presented in the New Testament. But more on this later.

My primary critique of this movement is as follows: how or why we should “center” our lives on anything other than the actual center of the universe, God himself, is difficult to apprehend. The reason the term “God-centered” resonated a bit more with my ministry-leader friend, perhaps, is because it simply makes more sense to say it, logically and biblically. The gospel is not bigger than God himself. On the Christian worldview, logically-speaking, God is clearly at the center of the universe, however one wishes to define the term “center”; and the Bible certainly places him there. As Romans 11:36 puts it, all things emanate from him, are achieved through him, and are unto him, or for his glory. And the fact that this particular verse comes at the end of an extended passage in which God’s sovereignty over all things, even over the salvation of individuals and the destiny of entire people groups, is unapologetically proclaimed, undersc...