it for community, which is all the more reason why now is the time for the Call of Discipleship.
Discipleship is a natural fit for the spiritual interests of the day because discipleship is first and foremost an individual act, not a communal one. At its most basic level, discipleship requires that an individual decide to study the ways of Christ and apply it to his or her life. It’s a path with an easy on-ramp: making a personal commitment.
To me, the bishop mentioned above was echoing the words of Christ, who said clearly, and simply, “Stay in my word and you will be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
But the Call of Discipleship is best nourished and lived out in community. Christ intentionally established the Church as the community of disciples. He called Peter to lead it.
The Call of Discipleship does not dismiss community. It places community in context.
It names the purpose of community.
We believe that discipleship is best lived out within a community of disciples — the Church. After all, “Where two or three of you are gathered, there I will also be” (see Mt 18:20).
The Vatican’s General Directory for Catechesis says as much:
In the Christian community the disciples of Jesus Christ are nourished at the two fold table: “that of the word of God and that of the Body of Christ” (DV, 21). (70)
Jesus shows, equally, that the community of his disciples, the Church, “is, on earth, the seed and the beginning of that Kingdom” (LG, 5), and, like leaven in the dough, what she desires is that the Kingdom of God grow in the world like a great tree, giving shelter to all peoples and cultures. “The Church is effectively and concretely at the service of the Kingdom” (RM, 20). (102)
The Call of Discipleship simply changes the emphasis of our past approach without losing any elements of it. Instead of making community the principal focus from which one might pursue the spiritual life, it makes the individual act of discipleship the focus and presents community as the best way to support that life.
The same two elements of individual decision and communal membership remain — neither is lost. Yet the emphasis corresponds more directly to the spirituality of people today. This is one of the ways T4D is different than our past approaches.
8. Resonates with people’s desire to help others
From tsunami relief to earthquake relief, from donating for malaria-preventing mosquito nets to celebrity-driven causes, from Going Green to Doctors without Borders, the moral imagination of the American people and its children is engaged when they are asked to make the world a better place.
T4D has a courageous and compassionate horizontal focus, not just a vertical or internal one. Author Leisa Anslinger often points out that when her parish in Columbus, Ohio, intentionally switched its focus to discipleship, the staff was able to document how the people responded: volunteerism exploded, donations rose, the number of ministries expanded, and the number of people subsequently engaged in communal membership increased exponentially.
The Call of Discipleship shifts from “support the parish” as the primary expression of the disciple’s charity and compassion. The Vatican tells us:
The community of the disciples of Jesus, the Church, shares today the same sensitivity as the Master himself showed them. With great sorrow she turns her attention to those “peoples who, as we all know, are striving with all their power and energy to overcome all the circumstances which compel them to live on the border line of existence: hunger, chronic epidemics, illiteracy, poverty, injustice between nations … economic and cultural neocolonialism” (EN, 30)….
“The church is duty bound — as her bishops have insisted — to proclaim liberation of these hundreds of millions of people … of bearing witness on its behalf and of assuring its full development” (EN, 30). (GDC, 103)
Over the last eight years I have carved out a phrase that captures and connects the Call of Discipleship as I see it laid out in the Gospel, the documents of the Church, and the spiritual interests of the people. This phrase embodies the Call of Discipleship in a way that makes us touch all the bases on the way Home. Teaching for Discipleship also allows us to stop at any of the four bases and spend time probing the beauty and richness and truth there. Yet no single base captures all of it. T4D intentionally asks participants to touch all four bases on the way Home.
Discipleship …
within a community of disciples …
for the good of the world …
and the will of God.
For Reflection
How have you understood the word disciple?
This chapter lists eight reasons why now is a good time to emphasize the Call of Discipleship. Which one(s) do you agree with most and why?
Which one(s), if any, do you wish you could discuss a bit more?
What additional reason(s) might you want to add?
This chapter concludes with a statement that organizes and frames the Call of Discipleship. How does this sit with you?
Which of the four components have you been emphasizing in your own teaching?
Which might you want to increase your emphasis on?
Make yourself some notes about the one or two things you take away most from this chapter.
Part 2
The Challenge
Four Words
The Community of Faith
We have used these four words as a rich way to describe the Church. The Community of Faith implies a committed and dedicated body of people who are known for the faith they uphold and preserve. It is a diverse group of people who share the same beliefs, prayers, symbols, rituals, traditions, and morals.
Our Community of Faith is a Eucharistic one. At its best, the Community of Faith offers spiritual food for those who hunger, compassion for those in need, moral direction in a complex world, and spiritual wisdom for those who seek.
It has done so for 2,000 years.
faith of the community
Same four words, but a different reality. This represents the beliefs, morals, and spiritual guidelines of a larger group — many of whom may be full members of the Community of Faith but seem to resonate more with those in the larger public community.
Faith within these two different communities can often be very different, sometimes even opposed to each other.
What are the differences between the Community of Faith and faith of the community? And how are we to proceed?
Herein lays the biggest challenge in Teaching for Discipleship. The Vatican tells us:
One of the difficulties
