Session: “Discipleship in a Post-Communist Context” Danut Manastireanu , Professor, Romania

In the summer of 1999, ten years ago, I participated at a conference in Eastborne, UK called International Leaders for Discipleship.

During that reunion, I led, together with Dr. Peter Kuzmic a seminar on Discipleship in a Post-Communist context (recordings of this seminar could be purchased HERE).

During this week, on Thursday 29 October I will lead in Osijek, Croatia, during the conference entitled “Celebrating and Assessing Twenty Years of Freedom” a workshop on “Christian Discipleship in Post-Communist Context.

The emphasis in the presentation ten year ago was on the need for Christian discipleship in our context. THis year’s presentation will be on an analysis of the nature of post-communism and how could Christian discipleship respond to the particular challenges of this period.

In anticipation of Thursday’s workshop, I publish here a text that contains the main content of my presentation there.

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On the “discipleship gap”: “In my understanding, the root problem of the “discipleship gap” is theological . . . The artificial separation of justification and sanctification (and of the Savior Christ from the Lord Christ) has led to the caricature of a church.

“Another important reason for the failure of the church in terms of discipleship is the unwillingness of modern Christians to pay the price of discipleship…  This perspective cuts across the pragmatic expectations of the ‘missionary market.’ ”

The time has come for a new prophetic call. It is a call to the whole Gospel, the call to discipling the nations for the Lord Jesus Christ.

BACKGROUND

Vital statistics: I regularly teach hermeneutics at Emanuel Bible Institute in Oradea, Romania, and I teach religious education at Richard Wurmbrand College in Iasi, my home town. But I am currently on leave of absence, finishing the last stage of my Ph.D. at London Bible College. The title of my thesis is “A Perichoretic Model of the Church: The Trinitarian Ecclesiology of Fr. Dumitru Staniloae” [Staniloae is the most important Eastern Orthodox theologian in Romania, a country dominated by Orthodoxy.]

Early influences: I was raised in an evangelical environment, but I became aware very early of the inability of our churches to fulfill the high calling of the Great Commission. Their inward perspective and their lack of social concern may be explained only partially by the pressure of the former communist authorities.

This painful awareness made me search for meaning in Marxism, and I gave my life to Christ only after I realized that the Marxist social claims were mere fallacies. Following my conversion, I became involved for a number of years in a dissident movement in an attempt to fight for Christian rights.

On the draw of discipleship: What made me choose discipleship over political activism was the observation that the latter was merely trying to change the wineskins (to borrow the biblical metaphor), while discipleship was really about the “new wine” that will eventually burst the old wineskin and ask for a new one.

DISCIPLESHIP FAILURES

An insider’s take on the post-communist church: We are still trying to learn to live under the new conditions. I am not an expert in other regions and can hardly be called an expert in mine; however, I was able to perceive a number of discipleship failures that seem to be peculiar to post-communist societies.

To start, the church in the former communist countries was not prepared for the newly gained freedom. To add to this, the West believes in what I perceive to be the myth of the Christians’ major contribution to the demise of communism. In spite of this flattering portrayal, the church in Romania — and to my knowledge, the church in other formerly communist countries — was not able to go through a moral cleansing process. This should have been demonstrated, for example, through the exposure of secret police informers in the churches and the eventual restoration of these people after repentance. Since this did not really happen, the church was not able to lead the way towards a moral regeneration of our society. Without a renewal in the church, no major renewal of society is possible. Furthermore, the church itself has absorbed too much of the dictatorial mentality: manipulation, control through guilt, inflexibility and authoritarianism. The influence should be the other way around.

Global implications: Another important reason for the failure of the church in terms of discipleship is the unwillingness of modern Christians to pay the price of discipleship. Making disciples is a long, painful, costly process. In it, you can hardly “count heads,” and it takes years to assess the effort in terms of results. This perspective cuts across the pragmatic expectations of the “missionary market.”

For discipleship to receive again the due attention it deserves in the Church of Jesus Christ, nothing less than a paradigm shift in our mentality has to take place. The solution is not in technology, nor in finances, but in true metanoia — the total change of our mentality. This is something only God can bring about.

Theological implications: In my understanding, the root problem of the “discipleship gap” is theological. A simplistic and reductionistic understanding of salvation (limited to redemption or forgiveness of sins) has led to an obsession with conversion to the detriment of discipleship. The artificial separation of justification and sanctification (and of the Savior Christ from the Lord Christ) led to a caricature of the church. The results of this are disastrous: If the Gospel is only about “saving souls,” then why bother with more? Producing as many conversions as possible becomes then the need of the hour, the only urgent task of the Church.

Instead of a “holy nation,” we witness the creation of a society where most people have “the assurance of salvation” because they once said yes to Christ, while living basically like the pagans around them. Is this not what the “once saved, always saved” theological technology is all about? Instead of leaving to God the control over the process of regeneration and the transfer of people from the “kingdom of darkness” to the “kingdom of His Son,” we became obsessed with “the crossing of the line,” counting heads, or pushing people into the Kingdom.

Key obstacles: It seems to me that the global Church is, to a large extent, in the same place as Israel at the end of the Old Testament. We received a heavenly mission, but we have utterly failed. What else could we call it when 90 percent of our efforts are concentrated on 10 percent of the world population? First, we have redefined the Gospel, reducing its scope (as the Jews have done with the Law). Second, we surrounded ourselves with high walls, while the rest of the world is going to Hell.

THE ROLE OF DISCIPLESHIP

Vision for discipleship: Evangelism and discipleship are not two stages of the Christian life, in which the first is essential for salvation while the second is dispensable. The Christian life is not about having our sins forgiven and being saved from hell, but about “gathering together all things in Christ — those which are in heaven and those which are on earth” (Ephesians 1:10). What if salvation were not just about “souls” (whatever those would be) or even just about the church, but about the whole cosmos?

I doubt that time, economics and politics can touch the essence of discipleship — if we refuse, as I do, a mechanistic understanding of the process. Discipleship is about the whole of life (including time, economics and politics, but not being limited by them). I believe that the critical issue is the metanoia I spoke of above. We can only contribute to this “mental paradigm shift” by cooperating with the grace of God. The solution is not a program, a new campaign or an advanced technology. The best “tool” for discipleship is a spiritual mentor: a mature Christian who has a vision for making disciples, who has an attractive lifestyle and who has a hope to offer those around. We are called to be these people. Without them, no matter how hard we try, we will fail again at discipleship.

Requirements for renewed discipleship: We need first a sort of disenchantment with the limited concern for evangelism (understood as conversionism). Second, we need a new awareness of the idea that discipleship is not merely a sociological effort, nor even an ecclesiological one. Rather, this mission is rooted in the missio Dei — the eternal plan of the Triune God to bring back all of Creation into harmony with its Creator God.

On the significance of the conference: This meeting seems to me extremely significant at the threshold of the new millennium because it may lead the Church out of the ghetto — into the whole world — to fulfill the holistic mission of the Triune God.

Anticipated results: At a global level, I hope for a renewal of interest in the theological (not technological) understanding of discipleship. At a regional level, I hope for true cooperation and learning about discipleship from each other as fellow members in the Body of Christ. Finally, I hope that the whole process could be transferred from country by country in order to stimulate, challenge and debate learning and a new vision for discipleship in the third millennium.

Final challenge: The time has come for a new prophetic call. It is a call to the whole Gospel, the call to discipling the nations for the Lord Jesus Christ.

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