I’d come to faith, studied the Bible, read theology and was now pioneering and pastoring a young and growing church.
I’m a simple Geordie bloke who has come to see the faith as embracing the Great Commandment to “love God, neighbour and self” and obeying the Great Commission to “Go and make and disciples of all nations”.
The church culture of the day was one of Church Growth and programmes and strategies were much in evidence, sometimes neglecting the priority to “make disciples”. Jesus will build his church, our task is to make disciples.
Wrestling with these things I returned to a book I’d first come across at Bible college, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. Deep and challenging, a book that I have returned to through the years, not least as a Companion of the Northumbria Community who derive so much inspiration from Bonhoeffer and his call and understanding of new monasticism.
The books is as relevant and challenging today as when it was first published in Germany in the 1930’s. It is a radical statement about what being a disciple of Jesus entails. Discipleship is an essential part of faith, a radical re-orientating of ones life to “follow Christ”.
Bonhoeffer expounds the Sermon on the Mount, the revolutionary manifesto of life that Christ lays before his followers. His straightforward approach to the Sermon on the Mount, as well as other teachings of Jesus, is very refreshing.
The book denounces “cheap grace” and addresses the issues of suffering, evangelism, mediation and peace making. Bonhoeffer’s defining rule for Christian ethics is simple: follow Jesus. The entire book could be summarized with just those two words, “Follow Jesus”. Amen.