Here's How

Over a decade after having become a Christian, I sat in my first college class dedicated to eventually turning me into a pastor. This was the class to be in. Students all around campus rumbled and murmured about the bold testimonies older students shared with them about what was in store for us in “Biblical Life and Witness.” This was the class that many seniors opted to take again in their free time before they left the university… without getting any further credit for it. It was also one of only a handful of classes taught by the Chair of the whole Ministry Department. What was about to happen did not disappoint.
I would soon find that this class was marked by deceptively simple truths that ran deep into the faith, and yet, were truths few had confronted on such an intimate level. To give an example, early on Dr. Sanders asked the class a simple question, yet it was one that penetrated through the preconceived notions I had already built up in my mind about what it meant to “follow God.”
“Who has been told that they should read the Bible?” Dr. Sanders asked in his usual straightforward manner. In a class of some eighty college freshmen, many of whom were studying to go into a life in the ministry, every single hand raised with a quiet uproar. With a smirk, Cliff slowly added, “How many of you have ever really and truly been shown how to read the Bible?”
As I thought seriously about the question, my hand began quickly to descend. A small wave of self-doubt came over me as I dropped it back down to my lap. I was not alone. Across the room, seventy-plus hands rapidly went back down, leaving only a small number still raised. As my eyes darted across the room, a sudden realization came upon me. I was sitting in a Christian University surrounded by nearly a hundred individuals who have very likely spent quite a bit of time in church sitting through countless sermons, Sunday School classes, and church gatherings, and yet we as a collective mass had never made it past the fact that we should be doing some certain things and not doing others. In a room full of future pastors, only a few had been shown the how and the deeper why behind it all.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I learned quite a bit from my church and I certainly had things together to some degree. Still, the striking fact that so many hands went down in an instant told me something I was afraid to hear… On average in the life of the church today, people are told over and over again that they should pray, they should read their Bible, they should go spread the Word of God to the poor, and that they should get to know God as their ultimate relationship, but very few are ever taken there, one on one, by someone who is doing it themselves.
What I’m talking about goes so much deeper than simply listening to a sermon series on spending time with God. It goes deeper than a small group setting where a gaggle of friends get together and try to study the Bible. What I’m talking about is apprenticeship. I’m talking about getting down in the trenches with another soul and showing them through long hours together what it looks like practically to do these basic things we tell people should be a part of every Christian’s life. I'm talking about getting to the point where we could confidently lead others through this great journey. I’m talking about what could happen when someone like you catches that fire and starts to show others what it’s all about. Discipleship isn’t simple addition; it’s all about compound multiplication.
The sad thing is that, on the average, this simply isn’t happening in the lives of the very people who call themselves “followers” of Jesus Christ. To our discredit, we rely only on sermons , rather than a deep level of life transference and face-to-face interaction. Even when we do get face-to-face, we all begin from the same level of ignorance. This is not a harsh knock against any believers in particular. The sad fact is that if we have not been trained on the how’s and why’s, then we are in a position of ignorance.