Discipleship as Living Into the True Story of the World
This post is part of a Fall 2020 Training Series done with Community Group and ministry leaders at Holy Trinity Church Downtown. The purpose of this training was to dig deeper into our core values and cultivate a common theological vision across our ministries.
by Sully Curtin
Stories shape our life. And I’m not just talking about the stories that we read in books; I’m talking about the stories that we hear and tell one another on a daily basis. We hear and tell stories about our families that can shape our desires. We hear and tell the stories about what it looks like to be successful in our work. We hear and tell the stories about our city that tell us what it means to live a good life.
What stories have shaped you the most?
At Holy Trinity Church, where I am a pastor, we have a set of values that we hope shape and reshape the stories we tell, whether that be through our words, our work, or our worldviews. One of these values we call the Centrality of the Word. We define this value this way:
Everywhere you go within HTC you will find people striving to explain, to learn, and to align their thoughts and actions to the Bible. Put differently, you could say that belief in the total authority, veracity, and sufficiency of God's Word flows within the very core of our being. The reason for this is simple: we believe that the Bible is God’s Word. God’s words are very different than our words. God creates, redeems, judges, and saves by his all-powerful Word, and wherever God's Word is read and proclaimed, God's voice is heard. How thrilling to know that God has something to say to us and to his world! At HTC we value equipping ourselves in God's Word. We want to know it and be transformed by it. We work hard at listening to it and joyfully submitting our entire lives to it.
In other words, we believe Scripture is the true story of the world. For this reason, it is imperative for Christians to hear and tell this story. This is discipleship.
Mark Dever, who has written a helpful little book on discipleship, says discipleship is simply helping people follow Jesus. That is a short and concise definition of discipleship, but if we are going to be fruitful and effective at helping people follow Jesus, we need to know what this looks like. What does it look like to help believers orient their lives, their worldviews, and assumptions of the world so as to follow after Jesus? What I would like to propose is that discipleship could also be defined as helping people live into the true story of the world. What this means is that one of the greatest things a Christian can do to help someone follow Jesus is to help them be immersed in the story of Scripture. I want to give three reasons why we need to keep Scripture central in our discipleship and then three practical applications for us today.
1. God’s Word helps us to make meaning of the world and our experience.
All of human life is shaped and understood in the context of story. Alasdaire MacIntyre offers an amusing story that shows how particular events receive their meaning in the context of a story:
He imagines himself at a bus stop when a young man standing next to him says: “The Latin name of the common wild duck is histrionicus, histrionicus, histrionicus.” One understands the meaning of the sentence. But what on earth is he doing in uttering it in the first place. This particular action can only be understood if it is placed in a broader framework of meaning, a story that renders the saying comprehensible. Three stories could make this particular incident meaningful. The young man has mistaken the man standing next to him for another person he saw yesterday in the library who asked “Do you by any chance know the Latin name of the common duck?” Or he has just come from a session with his psychotherapist who is helping him deal with his painful shyness. The psychotherapist urges him to talk to strangers. The young man asks, “What shall I say?” The psychotherapist says, “Oh, anything at all.” Or again he is Soviet spy who has arranged to meet his contact at this bus stop. The code that will reveal his identity is the statement about the Latin name of the duck. The meaning of the encounter at the bus-stop depends on which story shapes it: in fact, each story will give the event a different meaning.
Scripture gives us the story that gives meaning to our lives. Scripture gives context to why we are here on earth, what our purpose is in life, where history is going, and what is good and what is evil. Scripture tells us the true story of the world through poetry, narratives, prophetic oracles, historical accounts, and letters. Every book of the Bible should shape how we view ourselves and the world around us. Scripture should shape what we desire, how we act, and what we believe is true.
Without keeping Scripture central, we either succumb to the alternate, false narratives of others or we flounder in purposelessness. Discipleship is helping people live into the true story of the world.
2. God’s Word is cosmic in its scope.
It’s a message for everyone about everything. Kant and Hegel refer to this as universal history. Scripture tells the story of the universe from beginning to the end. It starts with God speaking the world into existence and ends with the full and eternal renewal of all things. Michael Goheen again says:
The biblical story is not to be understood simply as a local tale about a certain ethnic group or religion. It begins with the creation of all things and ends with the renewal of all things. In between it offers an interpretation of the meaning of cosmic history. It, therefore, makes a comprehensive claim; our stories, our reality—indeed all of human and non-human reality—must find its place in this story.
We must keep Scripture central because the story it tells does not just give meaning to our Sunday mornings but to every aspect of our lives. We must work at bringing our work life, social life, family life into conformity to the truth of Scripture. The story of Scripture helps us understand the purpose of work, how we ought to think and engage in the political sphere, why we should care about the well being of the planet down to the flourishing of our neighborhoods. Scripture does not make a divide between private and public. It is all encompassing. As we read earlier, we believe in the authority of Scripture because it is God’s Word, but we also believe it is authoritative to speak into and about every aspect of our world and lives. This is why we keep God’s word front and center in all that we do.
3. God’s Word reveals the author of time and history.
G.K. Chesterton said that every good story has a storyteller. Contrary to what some believe, there is an author to time and history. Whenever you read a story, inevitably, a part of the author's personality comes through it. So it is with Scripture. God has intentionally given us Scripture to understand that this story points to Christ himself. The Bible is God’s self-revelation of himself to us. If we are going to live into the true story of the world and help others to do the same, we need to know the author.
J.I. Packer says, “God word comes to us not only at instruction but as invitation. It comes to woo us into relationship with him.” Scripture beckons us not only into the true story of the world but into relationship with the author of this magnificent story.
I believe we need to keep Scripture central because it (1) helps give meaning to our lives, (2) it is compressive in its claims, and (3) it reveals the author of the story to us. But I want to finish by pointing to a few practical ways to help people live into the true story of the world.
1. We comprehend the story best in community. So if you are going to help someone live into the true story of the world, they need to be rooted in community. Often belonging comes before believing. One reason this is true is because of what we call plausibility structures. Lesslie Newbigin is helpful in this area. He points out that the communities in which we live shape what we believe to be true and possible. Our communities actually shape what we believe to be plausible.
When it comes to the Christian community, there are some challenging things to believe. At the very center of cosmic history is the claim that God became man and died on a cross, but 3 days later rose again from the dead. This isn’t something easy to believe for those of us who have never seen anyone rise from the dead. Thankfully, when we are immersed in a community that every week boldly proclaims the gospel through various Scriptures, songs, liturgies, and confessions, we come to be shaped by them and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, come to believe the truth of Christ’s death and resurrection. God intended his Scriptures to be read in community because it is not only within the community that we come to believe the true story of the world, but it is within the community that we begin to embody the true story of the world. So if you want to help someone live into the true story of the world, get rooted in the community of the church.
2. This language of story is helpful when it comes to walking with someone struggling. I would guess many of you have sat with someone as they confess sin or disclose to you a struggle they are going through. As they explain their struggle, you may quickly identify what is wrong about their thinking, but simply pointing it out will not do much good for them. Instead what we need to do is help identify the false narratives we have been shaped to embrace. This world is not neutral. The culture of our city, our offices, and our schools want us to believe certain things about the world. As disciple-makers, we are called to point out those false narratives and proclaim the true story.
So to be practical for a moment, this language of story can be helpful for us in conversations with others. Think about asking questions about how the Scripture may reveal an aspect about the true nature of the world. Or maybe ask someone struggling what their struggle reveals about what they think is the true story of the world. Use questions to push back the false narratives we have come to believe.
3. We need to help people read the Bible well. If we are going to help people live into the true story of the world, we need to get people rooted in community and help them identify false narratives. This may seem simple, but I cannot stress how important this is. We need to model and communicate to those in our community groups, to the children in our families, and those we read one-on-one with how to read the Bible in a way so as to understand the true story of the world. If we cherry pick passages from the Bible, only reference it to reinforce our entrenched ideas, then we are leading others to believe that the Bible is not a comprehensive book that has unity and structure.
To put it positively, we need to show people how to read the Bible as a unified whole. This does not mean we neglect the different genres and contexts we come across in the Bible, but it does mean we can show people the narrative arch in Scripture. We need to pass along to one another good Bible study skills. This may be an area that you need to grow in. I highly recommend a book called Dig Deeper. It is a great book that can help equip you to read the Bible closely. I would also recommend reading God’s Big Picture by Robert Vaughn to help you see the unity of Scripture’s narrative.
Discipleship means growing not only in the knowledge of the true story of the world, but it means we embody the true story of the world. It is a story that brings a clarity to our longings. It is a story that situates us in a grand narrative of redemption. It is a story about God and his wonderful plans and purposes.
Sully Curtin serves as the Executive Pastor for Holy Trinity Church. He lives in Wicker Park with his his wife Laura, their son, Callaghan, and daughter, Kennedy.