Called: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be

Kary Oberbrunner, author of Journey Toward Relevance, is writing a new book on discipleship. Radical Congruency has had a chance to look at the manuscript and his discussion of some of the big issues about discipleship in a postmodern world.

The book is titled Called: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be. Kary presents a four-component view of discipleship:
* Knowing
* Being
* Doing
* Reproducing
Of course, reproducing means making more disciples, not having kids. :)

Like any model, it will be somewhat deficient. But these 4 components are all key: not only in understanding discipleship, but more importantly, being disciples.

Kary is bold enough to suggest that discipleship can be measured - not in quantitative or statistical terms, of course, but qualitatively according to the four traits listed above. He gives examples of some extremes of these traits, and notes that they must occur in balance:

Judas was a disciple with his knowing and doing but failed to follow Jesus with his being. As a result, he was never considered an authentic disciple. There is reason to believe that Alexander was a disciple with his being but failed to follow Jesus with his knowing and doing, as evidenced by his blaspheming and evil deeds. In the 1 st century there were many preachers who were followers of Jesus with their knowing and reproducing but were considerably lacking in the area of being. During Jesus’ ministry many presented themselves as followers exclusively in their knowing; however, when it came time to be doers, they were excluded from the list of true disciples.
(from Chapter 9: The Measurement Paradigm)

Called will be released in November or December, but is available for pre-order through Kary’s website in September.