Accountability and Assimilation

The discipleship process is one of assimilation. It is both crucial and life-giving that new disciples assimilate Jesus and be assimilated into His Salvation Life.

Assimilate? 

We ‘take in (Jesus) and understand (Him) fully.’

We ‘absorb and integrate (Jesus) into (our lives).’

We ‘become absorbed and integrated into (Jesus).’

And this whole discipleship adventure is one we experience with someone else or some other people.

In the Old Testament there are some archetypical examples – not all successful - of the accountability relationships that characterize discipleship. In our reading today, we saw Jethro and Moses. In Exodus 18:14-22, Jethro had to correct Moses who was micro-managing and thus proving inefficient in his role with the people of God. Moses took his instruction and so the experience of all the people improved.

We might infer that Moses discipled Joshua and Caleb and Phinehas. It’s not so clear about the level of relational accountability (although there was also a command structure as part of these relationships, so there was definitely accountability involved!).

Through 2 Kings 1-17, Elijah disciples Elisha who disciples Gehazi and the school of the prophets (among others). Elijah succeeded with Elisha. Elisha succeeded – to some extent [we’re still talking about it] with school of the prophets.

It gets a bit easier to draw inferences about discipling relationships in the New Testament. In Colossians 4, we see that Paul discipled Epaphras and School of Tyrannus and Tychicus and Aristarchus and Onesimus and Demas. Those were not all successful relationships.

And in Matthew 10:2,3 Jesus discipled Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Thaddaues, Simon, and Judas. There was a high level of accountability that started with His invitation, “Come, follow Me” (Mark 1:17), and instructions to obey (John 14:15; 15:10) (He failed with Judas. And Peter had a bad season, too, but pulled out of it; However, He started with 12 and now we’re into the millions, so it worked!).

One effective though possibly somewhat counter-intuitive approach to discipleship is shared accountability. So there might be a group with a 45-year Christian along with a 45-day Christian. But the key is that they are both accountable for the same things, to each other. It changes the dynamics from Jedi Knight instructing Padawan to a couple or a few followers of Jesus who think it is a good idea to live within certain shared commitments. That way we are all responsible to God and each other for our conduct and alignment with God’s will.