Christian Formation

According to Matthew's Gospel, virtually the last thing Jesus said to the church was, "Now as you go, make disciples of all nations" (28:19). Apparently disciples are made, not born. That is, becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ is not the normal, natural, inevitable, inexorable development of one's personhood. It is more traumatic, more disruptive, more comprehensive than that. It is a life-long process of "bending one's life toward God" as C. S. Lewis once put it. The implications for the church are worth noting.

First, discipleship is both "event" and "journey," "moment" and "process." It is not event without journey, nor is it journey without event. Salvation begins with a decision, a moment, a choice in which we choose to become a follower of Jesus Christ, a commitment we Christians call "conversion" (see Becoming a Christian). But it does not end there. It is not complete until we, in Paul's words, "attain the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13).

Second, this means that salvation and discipleship are both personal and corporate. Jesus' command, "Follow me," is personal, but it is not private. He summons us to live a distinctive kind of life in a distinctive kind of community he called the church.

Third, salvation is more formation than education; hence, we call disciple-making at Southside Christian formation rather than Christian education. If salvation were education, then it would merely be a matter of the mind - learning a set of facts; reciting a set of beliefs. Nor is salvation merely therapy, or behavior modification, as though becoming a disciple were purely a matter of changing a few bad habits or developing a positive attitude or healthy sense of self-esteem. But in the New Testament both Jesus and his first followers describe salvation as more formation than anything else. Salvation is not merely taking on a few optional accessories; rather, it involves a metamorphosis (more like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly), the total transformation of a person into a completely new kind of person called Christian.

Here at Southside, when we say that our mission is to lead people to become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ, this is what we mean.