The adventure of discipleship in a risk-locked society

When was the last time you heard the hymn ‘To be a Pilgrim’ by John Bunyan, or how about ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before!’?

Perhaps you don’t know them at all. These hymns, once classic school assembly songs for generations, haven’t made it into the 21st century. Their language is dated, but the sentiment shouldn’t be. They were a call for us to love Christ and to serve Him unashamedly, written as a call to discipleship and to ‘share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus’. I’m not sure we sing many hymns now which encourage risk-taking with such reckless abandonment.

We are increasingly nervous about challenging people with the cost of the gospel. There are many reasons for this. We are people of our time, and elements of what has been called ‘therapeutic moralistic deism’ have crept into our Christian culture. It is not surprising. The landscape around us has changed. The mental health crisis is real. I know many who have experienced severe mental illness, which has floored them. Recovery from this is often slow, and relapses common. We are conscious of the fragility of people and long for them to know the hope of the gospel and the comfort Christ brings. We are also aware of bullying in our churches by some leaders, which has devastated some. Pastors who want to be gentle, faithful shepherds can feel paralysed and unsure of what proper discipling looks like. But despite this backdrop, we must continue encouraging one another to live faithfully for Jesus in a hostile world. We know we need to go and make disciples, but we must also exhort one another to live faithfully as disciples.We need to encourage one other to radical boldness and wholehearted commitment to Jesus. To do that, we must challenge the ‘safetyism’ that prevails in our society.