In the latest edition of the Hopeful Activist’s Podcast Abi takes a walk through Mark’s gospel with Matt Britton to find out what it looks like to be Jesus’ disciple. You may already know Matt for his fabulous work with Proximity, but did you know he is also an award winning theatre maker? Matt got up close and personal with the disciples by learning the gospel of Mark, and has now performed it word for word multiple times, including in prisons, care homes and schools.
“So I went to Liverpool prison, and I’m in a room full of Scousers with nothing other than the Word of God to preach” Matt told me, “I thought, how on earth is this going to go down for the next 90 minutes? And people just get sucked into the story. And when it comes to the resurrection bit, at the end, we had a load of cheers from the lads in prison.
Not what I was expecting!”
In this podcast episode you’ll hear 4 modern disciples share their lessons in following Jesus, based around the things Matt has learnt from walking with the disciples through Mark’s gospel. We see that discipleship involves: learning and doing on-the-job, Jesus going to our patch, the supernatural as normal and Jesus having faith in us!
1. Learning and doing on the job
Joe Warton researches and writes about discipleship for organisations such as the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. He told me,
“I love that idea of [discipleship] being active and relational … it’s a ‘doing’ thing. There is a learning element, but it’s practical learning.”
Joe found an interesting parallel in nature: Greenland Sharks! Scientists estimate they live for up to 350 years, “but what’s really cool about the Greenland shark is it never stops growing. And I think sometimes we can think about discipleship; you do loads of growth for the first few years after you become a Christian, and then you’re just in performance mode after that, and you’ve got your ticket to heaven.” But Joe challenges us to have the mindset of a Greenland Shark… “If someone’s listening to this and they’ve been a Christian for 64 years,… that person can still be growing.”
2. Jesus goes to our patch
Discipleship Jesus’ way means showing up where people are. Matt uses the example of the calling of Levi, “Sometimes I look at the church mindset of: we drop the drawbridge with an outreach event, and we try and grab as many people from the community into the church. Then we [raise] up the drawbridge again, and we’ve done our bit! Jesus is doing the opposite. He’s going to close proximity to where the people he’s called to are …and he’s eating and drinking with them.”
Krista Coulson leads a team of Christians in Tees Valley Community Church near Middlesbrough, along with her husband, Nikki. She has followed Jesus back to the community where she grew up, which years earlier she had left and hoped never to return to! “Discipling for us is just being family, doing what Jesus did, being amongst people. It’s sharing struggles … stepping into their hard times, not running away.”
Early encounters with Christians impacted Krista’s journey, “I’ve been a committed Christian for 13 years now, so I remember the first moments of my own discipleship where people reached out to me. I was a single mom, and I had three children under 18 months; I was really struggling and full of a lot of shame. It was just that lack of judgement, people just wanting to help me but not judge me for my feelings. [They] could see the need for support, but didn’t make me feel useless.”
3. The supernatural is normal
Another unavoidable lesson from the gospel of Mark is the power of the miraculous. As Matt observed,
“Jesus isn’t afraid to expose his disciples
to the weird and wonderful.”
Natalie Williams from Jubilee+ agrees that this should be a normal part of our Christian journey now too. “God is a God who provides supernaturally. And it’s not just about can we run projects that help people? We must do that, and we should do that. .… But it is also, let’s be in faith to pray for the things we can’t do when our food’s run out, or when we can’t heal the sick, which obviously most of us can’t do! Then, you know, let’s … pray!”
4. Jesus has faith in his disciples
Matt chose the story of the feeding of the 5,000 to illustrate the counterintuitive idea that Jesus actually has faith in us! “They’ve got a couple of pieces of bread and fish, not enough, maybe, to feed and feed two people. And yet he said, “You go and feed them”. It’s completely ludicrous ask! Jesus… sees what’s within them, and He wants them to be part of the miracle.”
Once again, the challenge is on us modern disciples to make this part of our journey. Matt wants us to allow the Bible to speak into our discipleship journey, “Even today through Mark’s gospel, Jesus’s hands [are] reaching out and pulling at the faith within us and pulling it out to the forefront… if we can raise our level of expectation of what Jesus can do through us, we will see, like he suggested, far greater things.”
Journeying through Mark’s gospel with Matt showed me that discipleship isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about showing up, being open to Jesus, spending time with him, and letting God work through us. Jesus loves us, sees our potential and invites us to be part of something miraculous! Hear this and much more on our latest episode with The Hopeful Activists’ Podcast.
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