The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

by Jared C. Wilson

(Remember when we had to “go onto” the internet? You heard a dial tone and a series of buzzy pings, like your computer was conducting a underwater search for your email using sonar.) Now, nobody “gets onto” the internet. We’re always on. The internet has become the very matrix of life and culture itself. We carry constant connectivity in our pockets. The web has become the atmosphere.

Ninety-eight percent of family life is simply Not Ready for Instagram.

The life of Christian discipleship is designed to be lived in community, and if you get beyond those awesome couple of verses about “The Fellowship of the Believers” in Acts 2, you see that even in its earliest forms, the early church was not Instagrammable. But it turned the world upside down.

He even ought to come disturb our precious little megachurchianity too. Because a self-esteem project masquerading as discipleship has infected the way we “do church,” and our religious institutions are not immune to the fig leaves of faux community.

Abandoning the reflection of culture and adopting the challenge (and caretaking) of culture will require our churches to think of their ministries less and less as a place where religious goods and services are provided and more and more as a training center where the community is inspired and empowered by the regular preaching of the gospel to follow Jesus, and where it learns how to serve its neighbors and each other in his name.

Many of us choose church communities not because of brotherhood or relational connection or submission to the idea of community itself but rather because the music is better, the services are at more convenient times, the youth ministry is well-resourced, or some other appealing feature.

The result of all this is the customer-driven church, where everything is tailored and marketed directly for maximum impact among maximum crowds. In the customer-driven church, the churchgoer is in the seat of honor. The customer, as they say, is always right. The problem with this is that the entry point for the kingdom is the denial and crucifixion of self.

There is no concept of the church in the New Testament as a collection of individuals with individual ambitions and preferences.

The dirty little secret of modern church programming is that small group programs are not working well.

At the outset of creation, God looked at solitary Adam and announced that it was not good for man to be alone. But in the day of the customer-driven church, we basically respond, “Nah, it’ll be okay.” But we are not okay.

The Acts 4 church listens to and feels Scripture together, prays together, joyfully fasts together, and serves others together. Today’s church should do no less.

And the further good news is that embracing kingdom rhythms becomes easier and more sustainable when it is done alongside others.

And a lot of people try to do church like that. Just enough involvement to not get hassled about not being involved but not enough involvement to actually be involved.

How would you know if your theology sucked?

We may be able to read more at once when we’re studying alone, but we likely miss more than we cover. Studying the Bible for one’s self is imperative for the growing Christian, but studying the Bible with others is even more so.

From the larger gathering of worship services to the gathering of small groups, the blueprint for Bible study in the early church was a team event. Perhaps the best way to cultivate a feeling for Scripture is experiencing bold preaching and devoted community groups. As we study Scripture together, we begin to interpret it through a communal lens and ponder its implications not just for our individual life but for our church.

Pastors, the first thing you ought to do about your people’s reluctance to pray is pray. Pray for them. And with them. And by them and in front of them.

None of us is ever in danger of praying too much.

The first thing we ought to confess is our sin of not confessing our sins to each other.

Grace is pronouncedly stronger in churches profoundly weak.

But it’s worth taking that risk because many times our honesty and transparency liberate others from their own prisons of “having it all together.” Our courage to be failures gives permission to others to “own up,” and when we all own up together, the Lord does not punish us. He rewards us!

A message of grace will attract people but a culture of grace will keep them.

astounded they let us into the community. Given what we know of ourselves, given that we are the worst sinners we know, it is a staggeringly arrogant thing to begrudge any other repentant follower of Jesus a place at the dance. If the bar was low enough to allow our entry, what advantage is there to raising it?

You cannot grow in holiness and holier-than-thou-ness at the same time.

So this means that, instead of coming to church with our preferences, we seek first our real priorities. Instead of coming with a desire for our own fulfillment, we seek the flourishing of others.

It is my goal now, for as long as God would have me simply as a sheep and not a shepherd, to be as low-maintenance as I can manage for my church.

But can I be honest? In my forty years in the church, despite some negative experiences with a few pastors, I’ve encountered way more bullies in the pews than in the pulpits. There are just as many pastors victimized by graceless congregants as vice versa.

You may not be Baptist, but you do need to submit to your church leaders. The Bible says so. Argue with it, if you want, but know that you are arguing with God.

To be a Christian is to be a churchman or churchwoman.

It means remembering that playing the “devil’s advocate” is not a good thing. The devil doesn’t need any advocates in the church!

Some people in our churches see it as their role to “keep the pastor honest.” These people are usually the kind that make the pastors keeping watch over them groan.

When a congregation becomes preoccupied with a vision for the church experience it wants and then has to actually participate in the messiness of authentic Christian community, the contrast is jarring.

There’s only one Messiah. So if we’re expecting all our inner dysfunction and awkwardness and hurts and fears to get fixed by the experience of Christian community, good luck with that.

Bonhoeffer says about this dual dynamic: “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.”

The two great failures of the evangelical church today are failures of the highest magnitude: neglecting to proclaim the gospel and refusing to embody it.

We don’t have to be experts, just converts pointing each other to Jesus.

My gospel wants to leap from my pocket and set fire to the whole damned bookcase. Self-help doesn’t help. My self is the problem. How can my self help my self?

If any of us have what it takes, why are we going to church in the first place?

the solution to bad things we do isn’t good things to do but good things to be.

There is no holiness so fickle as the false holiness of the self-righteous.

The Spirit produces more and more patience in our hearts, because as we grow in faith we also grow in our realization of our sin. We see more of our inadequacy as we mature in Jesus, not less. Our subsequent humility results in patience with God (who is astoundingly patient with our sinful selves) and with others as we become more inclined to let them off the hook.

The more we experience the kindness of God in and through our own repentance, the more kindness we find to afford others.

We are made good as the alien goodness of Jesus is credited to our account as if it were our own.

And so the good deeds that result in our life through the Spiritual process of progressive sanctification are not ginned up, as it were, from our religious sensibilities or from “the goodness of our heart” but from the goodness of Jesus gradually taking more dominion in us.

If the essence of Christianity is not justification by “being good,” it could be rightly said to be this: justification comes by grace alone, received through faith alone, in Christ alone.

It’s as if God is saying, “You need faith to please me. Here, have some faith.” What a gracious God we have!

I will be honest in saying that I have found myself becoming more gentle due to the Spirit’s working in me than in my own pursuit of gentleness. But I do have an ambition for it.

I tend to think, in fact, that by God’s grace gentleness is often the result of just getting older as a believer, something that develops more in us as we simply slow down and become more wise, more circumspect, and more thoughtful.

the zeal of judgment is found most strongly in the young. When I was young(er), I knew everything. It was fantastic. There wasn’t a subject I couldn’t expound on and ignorance was no hindrance.

It sounds counterintuitive on the surface of it. Paul calls this control “self-control,” and yet he is clearly saying in context that this is a fruit grown by the Spirit. The fruit of self-control is at root Spirit-control—or, if you prefer, Spirit-led or Spirit-governed.