I know I've been riding this discipleship horse pretty hard in my blog lately, but I've been doing a lot of reading in this area recently. I just finished a great book called 'The Connecting Church' by Randy Frazee. He has some rich thoughts in this work. He has some provocative thoughts on the role of the local church in the shaping of the life of a disciple, I quote from him:
"The Bible clearly teaches that God intends to accomplish His primary purposes through the church. The first Christians understood that a decision to follow Christ also included a decision to make the church the hub of their world, even when it required the abandonment of existing social structures. Yale University professor Wayne Meeks makes this point, 'To be baptized into Jesus Christ signaled for Pauline converts an extroardinary thorough going resocialization, in which the sect was to become virtually the primary group for its members, supplanting all other loyalties.' Frazee goes on to say: Yet the writings of scripture lead one to conclude that God intends the church, not to be one more bolt on the wheel of activity in our lives, but the very hub at the center of one's life and community."
He elaborates on these concepts in his work, but one thing shines through as he discusses this aspect of the place of the church in the life of a believer, we can't do without it, in fact we desperately need the local church. We do not grow on our own, we grow in community. Not in a community that is established or functioning as a 'spiritual Walmart' where we go to get what we need for convenient living, but a place to be challenged to grow in both general and very specific ways in Christ.
PM