Discipleship and Religious Bullies

Note: This is a repost (with slight revisions) of a blog from January 2014 that has proven to be one of my most popular articles. It is the second in a series of blogs on discipleship in the church.  Click here for part 1.

So many of the discipleship programs I have been through have focused on teaching me to do religious things like prayer, Bible study, and tithing. These are all good things to do.

But here’s the thing that stands out to me as I read the gospels: Jesus rarely told his disciples to do religious things. Seriously, go read the red letters and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Prayer. Jesus didn’t talk about it much. In Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer it’s the disciples who approach him asking that he teach them to pray. That wouldn’t be necessary if teaching them to pray had been an emphasis of his discipleship program.

Study of Scripture. You won’t find Jesus talking about it at all, really; not surprising when you consider the widespread illiteracy of the day and the unavailability of personal copies of the Scriptures.

Attendance at synagogue. Once again, he never commands it or instructs his disciples to attend synagogue each week.

Tithing. Nope.

Again, I’m not saying these are bad things or that we shouldn’t do them, I’m just pointing out that Jesus didn’t make them as central to his discipleship program as we do to ours.

He didn’t need to, of course.  He assumed that they were doing these things. Each of these was a part of a Jew’s life in 1st century Israel. This is what the Jews did as a part of normal life: they prayed three times a day, went to synagogue on the Sabbath, where they heard Scripture read and explained, and they tithed.

But that proves the point I want to make: these things hadn’t led to a transformed life, a life in which devotion to the personal agendas or the agendas of the world had been supplanted by devotion to God’s agenda.

Things in Israel were a mess, and all the while people were doing these religious things.

And in fact, the Jews who did them the most and the best were the Pharisees—and Jesus consistently warned us not to be like the Pharisees. The Pharisees did all these things, plus some, and rather than getting in line with God’s agenda they were working against it and not being very nice about it.

They were religious bullies.

So, in other words, doing religious things doesn’t necessarily lead to a transformed life.

In fact, doing religious things without a transformed life produces religious bullies.

And it’s true today. There are church bullies in our churches, right? You know who they are. Not every church has them (I’m guessing and hoping) but a lot do.

A lot.

I know enough churches and enough pastors to know that they have to deal with them.

The bones of once-alive churches and the bones of once-alive pastors litter the Christian landscape because of mean Christians.

It’s a sad reality that state the Baptist convention my church belongs to has to have a church conflict resolution ministry. What’s sad is not that there is conflict in our churches—that’s actually to be expected—but that we might lack the will or the ability to resolve it ourselves.

It ought to be a basic skill of a disciple, and it’s not.

But the really sad truth is this: the ones in the center of these conflicts, the ones who cause the most trouble in our churches, the ones who end up being the bullies are not the new members, the new Christians, or even the non-Christians.

Like in the Israel of Jesus’s day, the ones causing the trouble are the ones who have been through all our discipleship training programs.

They come to all the church events, they never miss a week of church, they serve on various committees—they are the leaders of our churches.

When conflict resolution consultants go into a church and sit down with the combatants, they are sitting with the leaders of the church—the “mature” Christians.

When I think of the church bullies that I’ve had to deal with, I know for a fact that they read the Bible every day, pray every day, give at least a tithe of their income, serve on various committees, and make contacts with visitors.

They do everything our discipleship programs tell him they should do—and they can be the meanest, most manipulative persons you’ll ever meet.

I can only conclude that our system is perfectly designed to give us the results we are getting.

Our programs are designed to give us skilled church men and church women but not people with transformed hearts.

Something more is needed.

Next: Discipleship Jesus’ Way

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