Christian discipleship 

In Christianity, "discipleship" is the practice of living a life modeled after the example and teachings of Jesus. The term "life in Christ" is also used in Orthodox traditions, and in both the East and West, "imitation of Christ" is the common theological term. But discipleship deliberately evokes the special status of certain of Jesus’s followers during his ministry (only some of whom were called disciples). There have also been several specific discipleship movements within Protestantism.

Overview

During Jesus’s ministry, the disciples were a larger group than the Twelve Apostles (though the Twelve Apostles would also be considered disciples) but did not include all of Jesus’s followers. The disciples were those who were most devoted to the ministry and, in many cases, were charged with a mission to serve it in some capacity. In particular, disciples differed from ordinary followers in that they were often charged to spread the word of Jesus to other people, so that his movement could spread. There are several places in the New Testament where this occurs: the "Little Commission" in Matthew 10, where apostles are sent to heal and preach to other Jews throughout Palestine; and the "Great Commission" in Matthew 28, in which after he is resurrected, Jesus directs the apostles (apart from Judas) to spread his teachings to "all nations."

The commissioning of the apostles has been interpreted in different ways by different theologians and denominations. The Gospel of John and the book of Acts stress the gifts of the Holy Spirit that the disciples will enjoy, and their authority to forgive sins, providing some of the passages important to the Pentecostal movement. The Evangelical movement interprets the Great Commission as making disciples of all Christians and therefore requiring proselytizing of them.

In the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6), much as in the commissioning of the apostles, a large crowd of disciples (as many as seventy-two) are directed to spread the word of Jesus—in this case, that the Kingdom of God is imminent—as well as to heal the sick. But there are other ethics that can be derived as indicative of discipleship in the broader sense, key among them, open commensality: Jesus was not just famous but infamous for sharing his table and space with the undesirables of his society, including sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, and Samaritan foreigners. This made him the object of scorn and ridicule among those outside his following—and so to persist, it must have been important. Many consider it an extension of what Jesus called the "new commandment": simply to love one another.

"Discipleship" has also been the name of several Protestant movements, most of them short-lived, including the movement also known as the Shepherding Movement within charismatic churches in the 1980s. Radical discipleship refers to a theological movement that seeks to return Christianity to its roots, overlapping with the concerns of emergence Christianity.

Bibliography

Camp, Lee. Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008. Print.

Gorman, Michael J. Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and the Mission. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015. Print.

Gushee, David P. In the Fray: Contesting Christian Public Ethics, 1994–2013. Eugene: Cascade, 2014. Print.

Gushee, David P., and Glen H. Stassen. Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. Print.

Stassen, Glen H., Rodney L. Petersen, and Timothy A. Nelson, eds. Formation for Life: Just Peacemaking and Twenty-First Century Discipleship. Eugene: Pickwick, 2013. Print.

Sutton, Matthew Avery. American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism. Cambridge: Belknap, 2014. Print.

Tooley, Michelle, Rick Axtell, and Michael L. Westmoreland-White, eds. Ethics as if Jesus Mattered: Essays in Honor of Glen H. Stassen. Macon: Smyth, 2014. Print.

West, Traci W. Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women’s Lives Matter. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006. Print.