Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did > Status Update

I'm not going to pretend objectivity, JMC and I are obviously in different theological camps, but I also don't plan to "go after him" as it were. Anyone who is not against us is for us, and Comer intentionally and publicly bears the name of Christ. So, as a baptized brother, his gains are mine, and mine are his. He would certainly be welcome at my church and to our Lord's Table.

To be honest, my first real exposure to him was not necessarily a positive one. Long story short, a few years ago a college friend's mom and I got into a long conversation during a tailgate before an Iowa game, and she detailed to me how her church was in the middle of a messy split involving JMC's teachings. Apparently a newly hired youth pastor and a just-returned missionary couple had both come in gung-ho for proclaimimg and implementing everything JMC. Between them, they built a sizeable following among the congregation before the older pastors earnestly looked into it, began condemning some of it, and deep strife developed, rapidly heading toward division. The church has indeed split by this point to my knowledge.

Now, this anecdote doesn't necessarily say anything substantive about JMC beyond that a standard, run-of-the-mill evangelical church might find aspects of his teaching threatening. That should obviously not be taken as a criticism from me. My own CREC has a far more disruptive reputation. It was just, as I said, the first time I thought to really look into this guy.

Anyway, there is a lot to like in the first chapter, at least:

JMC: "The question isn’t, Am I a disciple?
It’s, Who or what am I a disciple of?"

Me: In my circles, a common refrain is: "It's not whether, but which." Which covers the same basic idea.

JMC: "Powerful forces have a vested interest in our believing the myth (and it is a myth) that we are following no one at all. Many of the cultural liturgies that indoctrinate us daily—“Be true to yourself,” “You do you,” “Speak your truth”—can be traced back to sources with a nefarious agenda. If “they” (whether multinational corporations, politicians, anti-democratic government agents, marketing departments, influencers who just want more followers, etc., etc.) can make us believe that each person is a blank slate, just following the inner compass of our “authentic self” in an upward march to happiness, then they can keep us blind to all the ways we’ve been “discipled”—formed and manipulated—by their desires."

Me: Churches and whole denominations (or non-denominations, if you will) are built around this myth of individualism and decisionism as well.

JMC: "The deeper question here is, In whom are you trusting? Who (or what) do you put your faith in to show you the way to the life you desire? It’s my conviction that contrary to what we hear, living by faith isn’t a Christian thing or even a religious thing; it’s a human thing—we all live by faith."

Me: JMC both cautions against individualism (see even earlier quote), but then sometimes seems to lean into it ("the life you desire"). Be that as it may, this quote has a lot of truth in it. We all live by faith. It's not whether, it's which.
JMC: "Following or, as I will describe it in the pages to come, apprenticing Jesus, is the solution to the problem of the so-called human condition. Name your malaise: political polarization, climate change, looming global war, the mental health epidemic, addiction, Christian nationalism, widespread hypocrisy among Christian leaders, our simple inability to be kind… There is no problem in human life that apprenticeship to Jesus cannot solve."

Me: This is just one example of this book being somewhat "Left-coded." Some of these concerns he lists are bipartisan, some of them are purely Left-leaning (climate change, Christian nationalism), but there are no purely Conservative concerns listed here (LGBTQIA+, critical theory, abortion, etc.). I will mention this coding only once here (unless a particularly egregious example or counter-example occurs later) so as not to let it dominate my commentary, but it is fairly common. I can see who he is talking to, and it's not me.

JMC: "Contrary to what many assume, Jesus did not invite people to convert to Christianity. He didn’t even call people to become Christians (keep reading…); he invited people to apprentice under him into a whole new way of living. To be transformed."

Me: Being up front here, I don't prefer "apprentice." I understand what JMC is getting at, but apprenticeship is too weak of an ask. Jesus is the Lord, the King, seeking subjects who will swear allegiance to His Kingdom and then live as citizens of the Regeneration that has come into the world through His resurrection and outpouring of the Spirit. "Follow me" is a command with consequences either way, not a suggestion.

JMC: "My thesis is simple: Transformation is possible if we are willing to arrange our lives around the practices, rhythms, and truths that Jesus himself did, which will open our lives to God’s power to change. Said another way, we can be transformed if we are willing to apprentice ourselves to Jesus."

Me: I'll wait for further explication on this point, but it sounds murky on the surface. Our sanctification comes through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as He transforms us through Word, sacrament, and discipline from glory to glory into the image of Christ. JMC could mean this, yes, but he could also mean other things entirely. It's a rather unclear thesis.

JMC: "Now, if you’re familiar with this story, it’s easy to miss how bizarre it is. What would make Simon literally walk away from a profitable business and leave behind his family and friends, with zero planning, all to follow a man with no income stream, no organization, and no official position into an unknown future? Is this drinking the Kool-Aid before there was Kool-Aid?
Or are we missing something?"

Me: Well, there's the context the Apostle John provides that Andrew (at least) was already a disciple of John the Baptist and heard John point Jesus out as, "The Lamb of God," and thus started following Jesus. Andrew would then a bit later go and grab his brother Peter to follow Jesus, too. What I'm saying is that there was quite the lead-up to this climatic "follow me" moment.

JMC: "Every rabbi had his “yoke”—a Hebrew idiom for his set of teachings, his way of reading Scripture, his take on how to thrive as a human being in God’s good world. How you, too, could taste a little of what they’d tasted…"

Me: Good teaching right here. Well done.

JMC: "To some, he’s a wraithlike apparition, there to inspire later generations to a fuzzy kind of goodwill. To others, he is a social revolutionary—resist!—fist up to the Roman Empire then and all empires now. To a large number of Western Christians, he is a delivery mechanism for a particular theory of atonement, as if the only reason he came was to die, not to live."

Me: Let me perhaps surprise you, I am 100% agreed with JMC here. (I will expound more later.)
JMC: “What lies at the heart of the astonishing disregard of Jesus found in the moment-to-moment existence of multitudes of professing Christians is a simple lack of respect for him.”

Me: True. We do not see Him as King of kings and Lord of lords, the current and forever Ruler of the kings of the earth. Rather he's a buddy, a friend, a guide, a guru who gives good life advice, etc.
JMC: "Disciple is a noun, not a verb."

Me: Not always true.

JMC: "People regularly ask me, “Who are you discipling?” or “Who discipled you?” But as far as I can tell, not one time in the entire New Testament is disciple used as a verb. Not once."

Me: He acknowledges Matthew 24:19 in the footnotes, but then utilizes how our modern translations have rendered it (butchered it, to be precise) to justify this statement. "Mathēteusate" is a Greek verb that means "disciple" (as in "do discipling on"), not "make disciples" as it is often translated. The truly unfortunate thing about rendering this word this way (as verb+object) is that it changes the direct object of the sentence to something that isn't even there. Not a small consequence ensues.

Who should be discipled, baptized, and taught to obey all that Christ commands? The nations as nations. The ethne are the direct object of the sentence. Given all authority in heaven and on earth, Christ is sending out His Church to announce His rule to all the nations under His reign (Ps 2), baptize them as Yahweh did Israel (1 Cor 10:1-3), and then teach them to obey His commandments as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Now we can have a healthy debate about how ethne ("nations") probably has "ethnic families" in view (stemming directly from Gen 10) rather than modern geopolitical nations, but large political groups of people (ethne) are the direct object either way, not individual "disciples." So yes, the Gospel is political. Very political. More on that later.

JMC: "The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who are identified as “Christians” will become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners—of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence."

Me: I resonate deeply with this need to push the implications of the Gospel out to the edges of life. Another common saying in my circles is "All of Christ for all of life."

The "Gospel Centered Movement" was in many ways a good thing in that it focused so heavily on teaching the saving mechanics of the Atonement, but it has had some rather lamentable lasting consequences as well. "Gospel Centered," often came to mean "Atonement Only" with every text being construed to be only about that, and every sermon application terminating in "So just trust Our perfect Savior even more to wash your sins away!"

Week after week the question, I've done that, but what do I do now? is met with, "Just place your faith in Jesus, but harder!" But, how do I grow? How should I work? How should I spend my time? How should we educate and discipline our kids? How should we tithe? How should I vote? What should I do with every aspect of my life now that I have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light? "Now, we're not legalistic here, so you'll have to figure all that out yourself. We might offer classes with some explicitly non-authoritative life-advice (as if the Bible has nothing to say about any of this beyond some optional pointers) while just encouraging you to be 'nice'."

This truncation of the Christian life has led to a search among the youth for something MORE: more authentic, more fulfilling, more rooted, more life-encompassing, more traditional, more formative. I see the younger folk turning in droves to Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Mysticism, Anglicanism, and various levels of Reformed (My wife and I went from Light Roast Calvinist to Dark Roast Reformed ourselves), all of which promise a more full-bodied expression of the faith. The Sunday morning emotion-driven, performative song and light-show with the repetitive Gospel(tm) message-sermon from a pastor you don't personally know among otherwise perfect strangers just isn't cutting it anymore. That is why messages like JMC's (and my own CREC) are gaining traction and growing in adherents year after year.

JMC: "You see, Jesus is not looking for converts to Christianity; he’s looking for apprentices in the kingdom of God."

Me: How I would put this same point? You see, Jesus is not looking for converts to Christianity; He’s looking for subjects in the kingdom of God. Those who will swear their allegiance to Him as Lord.

JMC: "I came of age at a fascinating time in the history of the North American church. Every year, more than a million millennials walk away from the faith. And of the millennials who grew up in evangelical churches (like myself), only 10 percent qualify as what the Barna Group has labeled “resilient disciples”—which, sadly, does not mean they are the next Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr.; it just means they are basic followers of Jesus.
Friends, 10 percent is a serious problem.
But what if this crisis of discipleship is a feature of evangelicalism, not a bug? What if it’s exactly what we should expect based on how many people understand the gospel itself?"

Me: And our numbers will continue to decline as long as we keep doing silly things like declaring MLK to be the cream of our Christian crop when everyone with internet access can quickly discover that he was a serial adulterer who openly and repeatedly denied that Jesus is God and that He bodily rose from the dead (among many other core Christian beliefs). A man who did great things for society is not always a good man, much less a Christian man. We must stop kowtowing to what we think the culture wants to hear and start speaking straight truth (with grace) to it instead. If they can't find clear eyed truth at church, they are going to find it in less savory places.

JMC: "From at least World War II on, in many circles, the gospel was preached in such a way that a person could become a Christian without becoming an apprentice of Jesus. As I said, discipleship was optional—something to consider later if one were into that sort of thing. Many “converts” then felt that evangelism was a bait and switch: You come for the “free gift” of eternal life, raise your hand and pray the prayer, but then you are told to “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.” The problem is, that’s not what people signed up for."

"Why am I saying this? Because how you understand the gospel is the linchpin of how you approach (or don’t approach) discipleship. “Saying yes to Jesus” does not an apprentice make."
"Full disclosure: The following is a caricature designed to sharpen my point, but this is the “gospel” as it is presented in many circles…
You are a sinner going to hell.
God loves you.
Jesus died on the cross for your sins.
If you believe in him, you can go to heaven when you die.
Now, much could be said about this “gospel”—namely, that it doesn’t sound anything at all like the gospel Jesus himself preached. (Keep reading…) Yet everything in it is “biblical,” although in desperate need of nuance. I believe it. The problem is not that it’s untrue but that it’s missing whole pieces of truth that are really, really important. It simply does not come close to the full picture of salvation we find in Jesus’ preaching or the writings of the New Testament. And it has created a kind of salvation by “minimum entrance requirements.”"

"The fatal flaw: This version of the gospel has no call to apprentice yourself to Jesus. It normally requires you to say a one-time prayer, believe a set of doctrines about God, and attend church, thereby ensuring you go to heaven when you die. But in a bizarre twist, it does not necessarily require a life of apprenticeship to Jesus in the here and now."

Me: That's not much of a caricature, really. (Upon further reflection, this critique of the evangelical gospel is probably the point that tore apart my friend's mom's evangelical church.) But here again, I 100% agree with JMC. Once again, this is known as "Theological Minimalism" in my circles. "What is the absolute lowest hurdle we can set for people to get over and be saved?" (Then we can have more "decisions for Christ" and "baptisms" on our tallies). And the gospel is reduced to a list of spiritual propositions (or spiritual laws) to be understood and intellectually assented to. This bare assent is then given the lofty term, "faith."

Can this "faith" (merely believing the right things) save you? No. The essence of saving faith is "personal trust" or perhaps even better "allegiance." It's relational first, even often beginning in the mother's womb for covenant children, and as it grows and is nurtured it organically develops to include both the requisite propositional truth and obedience to the law (i.e., love), just as an acorn naturally develops into an oak tree.

We should never measure a child's immature faith by an adult's mature faith, but we should absolutely judge an adult's faith by that of a child (Matt 18:3).
JMC: "It’s less of a transaction and more of a transformation."
"And it’s not just about you and me as individuals but also about the formation of a whole new humanity and the healing of the cosmos itself."

Me: What I call "the Regeneration" that has been unleashed through Christ's resurrection, ascension, and the outpouring of His Spirit upon His Church at Pentecost. The Church then flows out like a river of living water into the dead world and begins to bring life: redemption, restoration, and renewal as the corporate Body of Christ is His hands, feet, and mouth in the world.
JMC: "Jesus’ gospel was that Israel’s long story had reached its climax in him—that he had come to reunite heaven and earth and usher in the kingdom of God, a God-saturated society of peace and justice and love. Jesus’ central message was that this in-breaking kingdom is available now, to all. That anyone, no matter who you are, where you come from, or what your station in life is, can enter this kingdom and be “blessed” (or “happy”) with God. You can have this new kind of life if you will put your trust and confidence in Jesus for the whole of your life.
Is this how you understand the gospel?"

Me: Yes. No notes.

...Okay a few. But they are all just building on what JMC is saying here, though he might disagree. The Greek word euaggelion ("gospel") was a common word with a well known meaning in Greco-Roman culture and politics. We are far too quick to jump to the etymology here ("good news") instead of how the term was actually utilized in the world of Koine Greek.

Generally, it was a political term used in the event of a political regime change or a new military conquest. So, for instance, when Rome conquered a new territory, they would send messengers all throughout this newly defeated and subjugated land bearing the message, "Good news! You have been conquered by Rome and have come under the imperial rule of his merciful majesty Ceasar! Come swear your allegiance to your new lord and live! Bend the knee (or it won't go well with you)!"

This is the exact message of the Gospel. "Good news! Our Lord Jesus Christ has conquered your king Satan, sin, and death, and has received dominion over all! You are now under the new everlasting reign of the merciful Son of God! Come swear your allegiance (your faith) to your new Lord, be baptized into His kingdom and live! Bend the knee, or it won't go well for you!" Announced to whole ethne at a time, it is 100% a political message (Ps 2, again).
JMC: "We are often told, “It’s not about what you do; it’s about what Jesus has done for you.” But that’s a false dichotomy, and that language is never used by any of the New Testament writers. It seems the Western church has at times been more careful to avoid “works righteousness” than to avoid sin."

Me: Correct. No notes (but actually this time).

JMC: "Jesus famously said,
I am the way and the truth and the life.
People misread this as a statement about who’s in or out and who’s going to hell and who’s en route to heaven, but that’s not likely what Jesus meant. It’s far more likely he was saying that the marriage of his truth (his teaching) and his way (his lifestyle) is how to get to the with-God life he offers."

Me: A false dichotomy here. It's both/and. "Nobody comes to the Father except through Me" (the next part JMC didn't quote) certainly has both a radical exclusionary AND a radical inclusionary meaning to it. I hold to yet another interpretation of the narrow/broad gate text he discusses next but won't bog things down by introducing my preterism here.

Concluding thoughts so far: Pleasantly surprised. I have disagreements here or there as I expected, but there is a lot of good insight and some wisdom here. Much of my view of the book will hinge on how he fleshes out his three steps (Be with Jesus, Become like Him, Do as He did), but I don't have all kinds of alarm bells going off in my head as is often the case with books along these lines (and as I was honestly expecting).

*rubs hands together anticipatorily* I am glad you are reviewing this book. I quite like JMC, though I certainly don't agree with everything he says. He often gets criticized for his writing style. That's just a "meh" point to me. He obviously is trying to be accessible. Go for it I say. Just be accessible while being faithful. But I'm interested to continue to hear your thoughts on this book.

Good gracious, I need to reformat these notes for goodreads before I hit the send button next time. Also, that one verse should be Matthew 28:19 (The Great Commission).

Thanks, Ryan! As I said, I've been pleasantly surprised so far by the preliminary chapter(s).

Honestly, I feared I was diving into another Rob Bell or a Ruth Haley Barton where I would spend the whole book skeptical if what I was reading was even remotely Christian (instead of something else entirely with a Christian facade), but Comer has put my unfounded fears to rest early by being clear when and where it matters.

I know I'm not going to agree with everything. I'll probably even strongly dislike some of it, but he's clearly an orthodox brother in Christ who shares many of the same concerns I do about our current Christian milieu, even if our favored paths forward vary.