I’m aware that there is in some quarters a bit of confusion about what is going on with discipleship in the Diocese. What’s all this about Deepening and Developing Discipleship? This morning I read 1 Peter 2:
4 As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him – 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
This seems to me exactly to explain these two strands of discipleship and the relationship between them. We come to Jesus, the ‘living Stone’ as Peter describes him, and he begins his work in us. If you’ve ever seen stonemasons at work you’ll know that their job is to shape the stone into what they want it to be, chiselling off rough edges and imperfections, getting rid of the misshapen and prickly bits. That corresponds to the work which God is doing in each of his people, what the theologians call ‘sanctification’, and what we call deepening our discipleship. It’s an individual process: just as no two stones are the same, neither are any two people. God knows us and loves us intimately, and like a good stonemason he can see in his mind’s eye what he intends for us to become.
But why does he want to do this work of shaping and perfecting us? Peter tells us: because we are being built together into a Temple of praise for God. It isn’t important that a stone is a particular shape so that it will look good: it has to be the right shape to fit with those around it. God is wanting to build his church here in our diocese, and to do that he needs a lot of individual stones who will fit together perfectly with one another. That’s what our developing discipleship stream is about: building churches and Mission Communities to plan to be more effective in offering worship and proclaiming God’s praises.
How is our Master Mason doing with you?
John Leach
Year of Discipleship 2015 