ChosenRebel's Blog

Monday Discussion

Coach John Wooden is viewed by many as the greatest college basketball coach of all time. His coaching, his players and his team were characterized by unrelenting high and clear standards. Some of his team rules had nothing to do with basketball. They just had to do with being a team.

“Coach Wooden forbade his players to grow facial hair. One day All-American center Bill Walton, the seven-foot-tall most coveted player in the nation, showed up with a full beard. “It’s my right,” he announced. Wooden asked if he really believed that. Walton said he did. “That’s good, Bill,” Coach said.   “I admire people who have strong beliefs and stick by them, I really do.  We’re going to miss you.”  Before day’s end Walton had shaved off his beard. That was more than three decades ago. Walton still telephones the coach once a week to tell him that he loves him. (Rick Reilly, “the Back Page,” Sports Illustrated, March 20, 2000). [p. 59 The Disciple Making Church: From Dry Bones to Spiritual Vitality]

I got to thinking about coach Wooden when I read these words from Jesus:

Luke 14:26-27 (ESV)
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.[1]

Clear and unrelentingly high. These words are sober. They strike at the heart, the core, the central defining idolatries of our lives. If you are anything like me, you love your family with an intensity that borders on idolatry every day that you breathe air. I do. I love my four brothers, my two sisters, their wives and husbands,  their children, my children and their spouses, my two unmarried daughters, my wife—my incredible wife, with a love so intense that I am crushed to even think of a world without them.

Yet Jesus calls me to a discipleship that must love them less than him. In fact, he says that I “cannot” be his disciple in any other way. Twice.

Question: How are you raising the bar on what it means to be a disciple in your own life and in the disciple-making patterns in your church?

Let’s learn from one another. None of us has all the answers but God is teaching all of us. Throw your voice into this discussion. It is important.

[1] The Holy Bible : English Standard Version. Wheaton : Standard Bible Society, 2001