Transforming Discipleship by Ogden Greg;

Author:Ogden, Greg; [Ogden, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2010-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

Developmental Stage Three: Exhortation (Adolescence)

The adolescent stage of discipleship is very much like the adolescent stage of children. During adolescence a critical issue is building confidence so that teenagers can blossom into their own persons. This occurs by allowing teens to learn by trial and error. Parents limit the amount of rescuing, while offering support and consolation as needed. In other words, adolescents grow up by facing the consequences of their actions.

The image of a coach is an appropriate one for this stage. The coach is in the privileged position of helping people to see the potential they didn’t know was there. Tom Landry, the legendary coach of the Dallas Cowboys, defined coaching as “making men do what they don’t want, so that they can become what they want to be.”[8] Elton Trueblood proposed the image of “player-coach” as the best modern metaphor for the equipping pastor. “The glory of the coach is that of being the discoverer, the developer, and the trainer of the powers of other men. This is exactly what we mean when we use the Biblical terminology about the equipping ministry.”[9]

In 2 Timothy, generally considered Paul’s last known correspondence, he melds the image of coach and father. Paul conveys in this final letter that the end of his ministry is imminent: “The time of my departure has come” (2 Timothy 4:6). Paul’s agenda is to ensure the transmission of the gospel to the next generation. What the Lord has allotted him to do is complete. So he is thinking about effecting the transition to those that have been in the battle with him. Paul’s leg of the race is almost over. But before he receives his reward, he must pass the baton.

One of the persons to carry on in his absence is his beloved son in the faith, Timothy. You get the sense that there were few people in Paul’s life who held the place of affection as did Timothy. True, Paul was Timothy’s spiritual father, but my guess is if Paul had the choice of a biological son, it would have been Timothy. “To Timothy, my beloved child,” he begins this letter. In his first letter to Timothy he addresses him as “my loyal child.” To the Corinthians Paul wrote that he was sending them Timothy, “who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 4:17).

It is the natural order of things that faith is passed from parent to child. Every son or daughter longs to receive the blessing of his or her father. About a month after my father’s death in 1994, I went on a two-day silent retreat, seeking some space to process my emotions in the aftermath of my parents’ deaths, which occurred within a month of each other. I found myself drawn to Paul’s second letter to Timothy. All of my life I had wanted my father to be in the position to offer his blessing and exhortation to carry on the faith. Now I knew with finality that day would never come.

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