01. Introduction
A little more than two months before his passing, Dallas Willard showed up powerfully for his last public conference. Not only were Dallas’s words especially weighty, but he opened with a topic that may seem atypical for him: the local church. In a weakened but nonetheless prophetic voice, Dallas begins:
“I think we are on the verge of a time when the church is going to be able to make some decisions. That may be a funny way of talking to you. But for long periods in the history of the church, as in the history of Israel, there were no significant decisions that could have been made.”Dallas Willard, “Session 1: How to Live Well—Eternal Life Begins Now” (Westmont College, February 21, 2013), 00:10, https://conversatio.org/how-to-live-well-2/?collection=12270#sec_07. Video of this talk and the other sessions of the conference—“Living in Christ’s Presence”—can be found here. The transcription of the sessions is published in Dallas Willard, Living in Christ’s Presence: Final Words on Heaven and the Kingdom of God (IVP, 2014). All other citations will be to this book.
That is a funny way of talking to us, Dallas. Don’t churches (and for that matter, the ancient Israelites) make significant decisions all the time? Pastors and church leaders make decisions about sermon topics, the format of Sunday services, the style of worship, the curriculum for small groups, whether to have small groups, what version of the Bible to have in the pews, how to organize the children and youth ministries, how to attract new members, how to motivate volunteers, whether to livestream the Sunday service, how to handle outreach, and so on. Indeed, for many pastors, the decisions appear endless if not relentless.
02. A Pretty Tough Patch for the Church
As we will see, the endless focus on these sorts of decisions is part of what kept churches from being able to make significant decisions. But times are changing. Dallas continues:
“I think we have been through a pretty tough patch with the church . . . sometimes we need to be conscious of where we are coming from and where we are going. We are coming into a time when many churches and Christians who are in leadership positions will be able to say it’s all about discipleship and transformation into Christlikeness.”Willard, Living in Christ’s Presence, 10.
The significant decision that many churches and church leaders were unable to make is to say that local congregational life is “all about discipleship and transformation into Christlikeness.”
Of course, we are apt to wonder why many churches and church leaders were unable to say this. What is local congregational life “all about,” if it is not all about being conformed to the image of Christ? Dallas carries on:
“Now, if you read the New Testament or even the Old Testament, you might have come to that conclusion already [that it’s all about discipleship and transformation]. It is hard to avoid, but circumstances in history have a way of claiming us and not letting us see what’s actually happening. We have been through a period when the dominant theology simply had nothing to do with discipleship.”
Perhaps we can agree that coming to the conclusion that the church is all about discipleship to Jesus and transformation into his likeness is fairly obvious from simply reading the Old and New Testaments. But, Willard says, historical circumstances have a way of “claiming us” so that we cannot “see what’s actually happening.” Willard is drawing attention to the fact that our historical and cultural situation can prevent us from seeing what would otherwise be clear. Churches were unable to focus on discipleship and transformation because of the heavy hand of human history. Willard goes on to specify, at least in part, what it was about history that occluded the church’s vision: Protestant Christianity had been through a period of time when the “dominant theology simply had nothing to do with discipleship.”This is an important historical point about which there is both a short-form and long-form telling. By short-form, I mean a largely 20th century story of the loss of emphasis and understanding of spiritual formation. By long-form, I have in mind a story that goes further back to the Puritans and the Protestant Reformation itself. For the shorter story, see Willard, “Discipleship,” in Gerald R. McDermott, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology (Oxford University Press, 2010), 236–246 and George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2006), 72–101. For the longer story, see Richard M. Lovelace, “The Sanctification Gap,” Theology Today 29:4 (1973): 363–369 and Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How A Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard College, 2012).
Dallas thought that throughout the 20th and well into the 21st centuries, local congregations and their broader networks were locked into a narrow vision of the gospel and, therefore, were distracted from discipleship and transformation. Dallas contended that the gospel message that was preached and accepted as true had been reduced to one or another message of “sin-management” such that transformational discipleship dropped off the church’s radar.
We need to pause and let that sink in. If the fundamental purpose of the local church is to, as Paul says, “present everyone mature in Christ” (Col 1:28; cf. Eph 4:11–16), then for that purpose to drop out is akin to baseballs dropping out of a baseball game or removing apples from your apple pie recipe. Christian life and churches absent discipleship to Jesus and transformation into his likeness is a contradiction in terms. Imagine folks playing a baseball game without any baseballs and we have in mind something like what it is to go to church without discipleship and transformation at the center of church life. It is reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood, in which the character, Hazel Motes, founds the Church of Christ without Christ.Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1949), 104. Absent a focus on teaching one another to do all that Christ commanded, churches are drained of their raison d’être. Willard puts it this way:
“We have been through a period when the dominant theology . . . had to do with proper belief, with God seeing to it that individuals didn’t go to the bad place, but to the good place. But that developed in such a way that the predominant thought is that a person can have the worst character possible and still get into the good place if he believed the right thing. This disconnection became increasingly burdensome to the church itself until we came to the point that, as is widely discussed, there is not a clear difference between Christians and those who aren’t Christians.”Living in Christ’s Presence, 10.
Having the “right” beliefs was disconnected from steady growth into Christ’s likeness. It seemed that as long as persons believed the right thing to receive forgiveness of sins and heaven when they die, it didn’t matter much what kind of person they became after conversion. Once understanding of the need and nature of transformation is lost, Christians will undoubtedly fail to experience reliable growth in love of God and neighbor. The result of that disconnect was that there is no obvious moral difference, generally speaking, between Christians and non-Christians in the world today.
Now we need to pause once again to recognize how staggering this situation is. We likely take it for granted and almost think it is normal that professing Christians can be some of the meanest, immoral persons we come into contact with. We are hardly surprised when we hear of another Christian leader who is caught in activities that they spent decades preaching against. There is certainly no expectation that Christians will be gentler, kinder, more patient, joyful, and loving than those who do not identify as Christians. It is acceptable in our Christian communities to settle for moral and spiritual mediocrity. In many cases, there lingers some sense that being conformed to the image of Christ is somehow optional and certainly not essential to what it means to be “saved.”
In fact, it might be thought that to place increasing Christlikeness—to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect—at the center of Christian and church life would be problematic and even dangerous. It would be to make Christianity about good works, self-effort, merit, and set persons up for burdensome failure. There remains the idea that God’s grace in salvation somehow makes transformation unnecessary or at least secondary in importance to being saved. That Christians in general and ourselves in particular do not stand out in the world as virtuous salt and light serves to confirm this lingering idea that Jesus came to forgive sins but not necessarily to transform sinners.
03. The Church is for Discipleship and Discipleship is for the World
But Dallas thought that Christians were ready to move away from these ways of thinking and being. He went on:
“We have perhaps had enough of that, and there are indications we are ready for a change. That change will make a startling difference in our world, because Jesus’ intention for his people from the beginning, and indeed from long before that in God’s covenant relationship with the people of Israel, was world revolution. If you read the Great Commission, you may not realize it is about world revolution. If you think it is about planting churches, as important as that may be, if you think it is about evangelization, as that is often understood—no, no, it is about a world revolution promised through Abraham, come to life in Jesus and living on in his people up to today. That is what our hearts hunger for, even when we don’t know how to approach it or how to go about it.”Willard, Living in Christ’s Presence, 11.
In Genesis 12, God promises that he will bless Abraham and “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3; cf. Gal 3:7–16). To be blessed was to be richly provided for in such a way that you and yours are happy. It was the promise of shalom—the good or blessed life when everything is as it ought to be. Dallas says that Jesus intends to bring this revolutionary way of life into reality through himself. Jesus arrives on the scene announcing, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:3).
Right after proclaiming these blessings—the shalom—that is available in his Father’s kingdom, Jesus said to his earliest students (and, thereby, to us), “You are the salt of the earth . . . You are the light of the world” (Matt 5:13, 14).
Me? You? Us? How could that possibly come to be? This is what Dallas means by world revolution. Followers of Jesus—brothers and sisters in Christ—grafted into the vine that is Jesus, learning to abide with him and in his loving care, such that we bear much fruit. We naturally become the salt of the earth and the light of the world.An incredibly helpful treatment of Willard’s formational-missional vision is just around the corner. Be on the lookout for, Keas Keasler, Kingdom Apprenticeship: Dallas Willard’s Formational Theology and Missional Vision (IVP, forthcoming).
Discipleship to Jesus—learning from Jesus how to become like him in his Father’s kingdom by the Holy Spirit—is what we are here for. This is what God is up to in the world, and it is the primary reason disciples of Jesus congregate in what we call churches. Dallas said, “Discipleship is not for the church. Actually, the church is for discipleship. Discipleship is for the world.”Willard, Living in Christ’s Presence, 21.
04. On the Verge of Deciding that This is So
So, it seems that in the last months of his life on earth, Dallas thought many churches and leaders of churches were on the verge of deciding that this is so. When we say that something is on the “verge” of happening, we mean that it is close to occurring. For example, someone can be on the verge of tears or on the verge of falling. But, of course, we can be on the verge of something and step back from the edge.
Dallas made these remarks in February of 2013. At that time, he said, “we are on the verge of a time.” Have we entered that time? Are we in a time in which reductionistic gospel messages have been exchanged for a vision of salvation as an overall, transformational way of life with Jesus and his people for the sake of others? Are we in a time when the previous dominant theology of right belief has been replaced by a robust and clearly understood theology of transformational discipleship to Jesus? Are we in a time in which pastors and church leaders are saying that “it’s all about discipleship and transformation into Christlikeness”?
In the weeks and months ahead, we will return on occasion to these questions regarding Christian Spiritual Formation in the Local Church. For this first post, we invite you to prayerfully think alongside Dallas with something to read, something to watch, and something to practice related to these issues.
05. Suggestions
Something to Read:
Dallas Willard, “Forward,” in James C. Wilhoit, Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered.
Something to Watch:
Dallas Willard, “The New Testament Theology of the Church.”
Something to Practice:
Dallas suggested that a good discipline for local church pastors was to pray that the churches in their geographical area would be more successful than their own church. That seems like a good practice for any member of a local church as we all can have the tendency to want to build up our own particular group rather than the body of Christ as a whole. Take a few minutes to pray that the Lord would encourage and mature brothers and sisters in Christ at other churches in your area. If you can name the churches, that is best. For instance, “Lord Jesus, I pray for the leaders and congregants at Fountain of Life Church. I pray that their life together would be so rich and filled with your Spirit that those brothers and sisters would be increasingly conformed to your image and shine like a light in the city.” May it be so.