(I’m just trying to do some short stuff that would’ve gone on Twitter, in much less thoughtful, developed form, on the personal blog instead.)
One of the trends I have noticed in many conversations with people who have left the church is that I don’t think their churches thought of discipleship in terms of “preparing people for virtuous agency.” “Discipleship” basically meant hovering over people to make sure they read their Bibles, but it seldom engaged in a real way with the difficulty and complexity of life. Indeed, in many cases it didn’t engage in a real way with the difficulty and complexity of Scripture! There’s an irony here because they—we, really, I grew up in this world too—heard a great deal about “discipline.” But in practice “discipline” mostly meant “thoughtlessly obeying authority figures and practicing prescribed rituals.”
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Jake Meador
Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, First Things, Books & Culture, National Review, Comment, Books & Culture, and Christianity Today. He is a contributing editor with Plough and a contributing writer at the Dispatch. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE with his wife and four children.
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