Five keys to resilient discipleship when living in exile

Having recently read Faith for Exiles, by David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock, I have been reflecting on how we live and grow our faith in a culture where we feel we are exiles. The following article is the fruit of my reflection. You can read my review of the book here and I have also written a LifeWord Summary of it which you can find here. The following is based on the five practices that the authors’ research identified as marks of those young adults they call ‘resilient disciples’. These are those who are sustaining a strong faith in a culture which the authors refer to as ‘digital Babylon’. I have put my own spin on the five practices, using different words and adding my own reflections – but they echo the authors research and I am grateful to them for these insights. I hope it helps.

#1 – find your identity through intimacy with Jesus

In a society which emphasises the individual and personal choice, it is important to see that identity is not something we choose. It is given to us by grace. We are created in God’s image and, though damaged, that image is restored as we follow Jesus. But in this age of self, it is all too easy to try to make Jesus in our own image and find that our faith is insubstantial when it comes to the real challenges of life. It is also possible to grow up in church doing all the ‘right’ and expected things with everybody else but still have no real faith. In fact, religious upbringing can sometimes inoculate us from true faith. We must therefore develop, and help our young people to develop, a real life faith relationship with Jesus. A faith that goes beneath the surface. A real, everyday faith, where we genuinely live each day in intimate relationship with Jesus. This will mean learning more deeply about prayer as a conversational relationship with God, about how to hear God, about guidance, and encountering God regularly in Scripture, as just a few examples. We will need others to help us with this (see 3 below) but it cannot mean just going along with the crowd. A real, personal, meaningful faith is the bottom line. Anything less will not sustain faith in exile.

#2 – learn to discern your culture

For many Christians, most input into our minds comes from the world through our various ‘screens’. The cultural atmosphere is likely influencing most of us far more than any spiritual, biblical or theological input, and so many Christians are just unthinkingly imbibing the values of the culture. We are often conforming to the pattern of this world, drifting with the cultural tide. It is imperative we learn to think critically about the cultural messages we are immersed in, from the foundation of a rich and deep understanding of the Christian worldview. We should reflect, for example, on the implications of the Bible’s big story – creation, rebellion, redemption and restoration. A few Bible verses to try to prop up our faith will not be enough. We are going to have to learn to think hard and deeply about our faith and the relationship of the gospel to culture. Churches should make this a priority. A weekly sermon is important but not sufficient for raising resilient disciples.

#3 – follow Jesus in community with others

We have to challenge the whole idea of ‘solo discipleship’. Many Christians, at least in the West, have drifted from gathering together as church, focusing on doing what they feel like doing, spending their time with people who are just like them. This trend was exacerbated by the covid pandemic, but was already underway before that. The Church must take a good, hard look at itself to see where we have contributed to people’s departure. But it is also part of the cultural drift toward the detached individual. We have to challenge the whole idea that we can follow Jesus on our own, or with just family and a few friends. Part of the beauty and the challenge of church is that we come together as a community of people who are not like us – different generations, cultures, backgrounds, personalities etc. – in what Dallas Willard called ‘a school of love.’ Community and relationship is hard work at times but it is by working through relational challenges that we grow up and grow together. As Eugene Peterson puts it, “You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honour” (James 3:18, The Message). True discipleship can only happen in community.

#4 – practise whole of life discipleship

The vast majority of our time, for most of us, is spent in the workplace. Even those in education or retirement still have a sense of vocation, of purpose. A sense or desire that what they do each day is a participation in the larger purpose of God. And how we do what we do each day, not just Sunday and a midweek meeting, is a major part of our formation as followers of Jesus. We must therefore have an approach to discipleship that connects with vocation. Although sacrificial service in church community is an important part of learning to follow Jesus, disciples are not just potential volunteers for local church activities. Churches need to envision and help to equip disciples to see how the vocation they feel called to is a part of God’s plan in creation and restoration, and how their work is central to their discipleship. In the UK, the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity is doing excellent work in this area (see here). Living everyday with Jesus and for Jesus, including in the workplace, is essential for resilient discipleship.

#5 – seek God’s different kingdom first

This whole site is based on the belief that to live in God’s kingdom is to live differently from the world around us. To follow the way of Jesus is to go against the grain of the world. Let me be clear – this does not mean aligning with what we think is the ‘Christian side’ in the culture wars. The power-grabbing, unkind and loveless way some are doing this is the very opposite of God’s different kingdom. But exiles do not fit into the culture around them. It is not their home. They don’t fit in with those on the right who seem to abandon love in their defence of truth, nor those on the left who seem to abandon truth in their desire to love. Refusing the pull and push of pressure groups from either side, they follow the ‘narrow path’ of taking up their cross to follow Jesus who was full of grace and truth, kindness and holiness. Exiles are countercultural firstly because of their loyalty to Jesus. But also for missional reasons. ‘We are to live counterculturally for the common good,’ write Kinnaman and Matlock. We are best able to bless the world when we are most different from the world. Resilient disciples have therefore determined that their priority is to see God’s kingdom come in our world, as they long for people to see the beauty of the kingdom and of its king. To do this, they live both missionally and differently. They live missionally as they want to see God’s Kingdom come. They live differently because they want to uphold the distinct beauty of this kingdom. This primary loyalty to God’s kingdom is the mark of resilient disciples living out their faith in exile.