So far I have written about the farming and family metaphors for discipleship. This week our focus is on our third metaphor of apprenticeship.
I have had three main apprenticeships in my life: as a viola student under a master teacher at the Conservatorium, as an academic under my PhD supervisor, and as a church minister under the Senior Ministers at St Hilary’s Kew.
To be an apprentice is to work alongside your master, to observe them, to copy them, and to learn their technical skills. Paul writes to Timothy “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2). Timothy had been his apprentice, but now he wanted Timothy to get his own apprentices from the church in Ephesus.
Discipleship by its very name, is about learning disciplines – techniques or skills. As a viola apprentice I had to learn how to make a variety of beautiful tones by scraping the horse hair of my bow back and forth on the strings of my instrument, I had to learn to put my fingers in the right spot at the right time so that I was in tune and rhythmically accurate, I had to learn how to interpret the music in an artistically satisfying way, and to play with others so that together we could make an even more beautiful sound. This all required discipline and the learning of technique through observation, correction, and 10,000 hours of hard work.
Christian discipleship also requires discipline and the learning of technique from a master teacher. Prayer, for example, can be done by anyone at any time. However, there are also helpful techniques that can be developed so that you can pray more effectively. Do you know how to pray with people who are really sick? There are techniques for that. The same is true for Bible reading and leading others in Bible study, for sharing your faith with others, for being an active and engaged worshiper in Sunday services, for serving others, for pastorally caring for people, for giving financially to the church and to missions, for fasting, meditating, and resisting sin and growing in holy living, to name a few. There are also techniques and disciplines for how to be a Christian single person, how to have a healthy Christian marriage, how to be a good Christian friend, and how to parent.
We should be spending our lifetime learning these skills. Being a disciple is not about being entertained, or having a consumer experience, or attending a social club. It’s about following in the way of Jesus through the complexities of life – and that does require developing skills. Don’t worry, Jesus doesn’t need us to be expert disciples from day one, but he does want us to be committed to being lifelong apprentices.
And, once you have had some time as an apprentice, you can start to have your own apprentices. While I was a viola apprentice at the Conservatorium, I also had my own students. In a similar way, growing up I was apprenticed as a disciple by my mentors at church, youth leaders, Bible study leaders and older Christians who I looked up to and wanted to be like. And soon, I nervously got involved in discipling others. To this day I have people who disciple me and people who I disciple.
If you are an apprentice builder - then that is a formal arrangement. But you can also informally learn some of the skills to be a builder, perhaps by watching your parent at home use the tools. In the same way, sometimes our discipleship apprenticeship happens formally through a program at church and other times it happens informally through relationships. As a parent, the slightly scary thing is that whether we like it or not, we are apprenticing our children as disciples. They watching and observing us. What are they seeing? What skills are they learning? If you are feeling inadequate as a parent in the area of discipling your children, don’t worry, that’s quite normal. The good news is that there are skills you can learn.
How are you going as an apprentice disciple? What skills would you like to develop? Do you have anyone speaking into your life? We all need someone to show us how we can grow or to correct us if we go off the path. Also, if you have been a Christian for a while, who are you apprenticing? I would love to see Merri Creek be a church of masters and apprentices.
Peter Carolane
Senior Minister
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