What Is Transforming Discipleship?

In 2018, the Conference on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches took place in Arusha, Tanzania, on the theme “Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship.” This article considers how this injunction corresponds to the biblical call, namely to love God more than anyone else; to deny ourselves and to take up the cross; and to abandon all that we have. How well does The Arusha Call to Discipleship describe the ambitious demand of discipleship to which the apostles were called by Jesus Christ? This article offers a critical biblical assessment of the qualities a disciple should have; who can be a disciple; the conditions and requirements of being a disciple according to the gospel; and the path of transforming discipleship in the challenging world in which we live today.     

Disciples and Pilgrims,Arusha, and Karlsruhe

A striking feature of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC), held at Karlsruhe in Germany in 2022, was its lack of attention to the “Arusha Call to Discipleship” issued by the WCC World Mission Conference held in Tanzania four years earlier. Further ecumenical amnesia was evident in the Assembly's neglect of the centenary of the formation of the International Missionary Council (IMC) in 1921. It is therefore timely to recall the purpose of the integration of the IMC and the WCC in 1961. This was driven, above all, by the theological imperative that mission and unity can never be separated from one another in the ecumenical movement. On the contrary, these two essential evangelical impulses must continuously inform and energize one another. It was in expectation of such synergy that the integration of the IMC and WCC was enacted. Today, a new opportunity to fulfil this ecumenical hope presents itself. Currently, the “unity strand” in the WCC has a preference for the language of pilgrimage when it comes to expressing the nature of the ecumenical journey, while the “mission strand” has opted for the language of discipleship. The opportunity missed at Karlsruhe was to draw the two into conversation with one another. Enabling the two motifs of disciple and pilgrim to inform and enrich one another could prove to be a vital source of renewal for the ecumenical movement in the next phase of its journey.     

From Busan to Arusha,and beyond

A new World Council of Churches (WCC) mission statement was presented to the member churches of the WCC at the assembly in 2013 in Busan, South Korea. The document, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL), was said to be pneumatological. From God’s mission, missio Dei, there was a shift toward the mission of the Spirit, missio Spiritus. The ecumenical world was introduced to a new mission concept: “mission from the margins,” according to which the Holy Spirit was empowering those in the margins. Five years later, in 2018, in Arusha, Tanzania, the WCC Conference on World Mission and Evangelism officially adopted a short mission document entitled “The Arusha Call to Discipleship” and another document, “The Arusha Conference Report.” The conference was said to have been influenced and inspired by TTL. However, in the conference documentation, the missio Spiritus seems to have been left aside. Thus, it would seem that in recent ecumenical missiology, there has been a shift from pneumatology toward Christology as the basis of individual and communal Christian life. In light of this, this article intends to compare the WCC mission documents of 2013 and 2018 and to show that there has been a shift toward the “Christ-connected way of life” of the disciple and how this Christ-connected discipleship is vulnerable and wounded, as it connects with the concept of kenosis.     

Living in Ambiguity: Mission Formation as Living among Counter‐communities

This article has been developed from a short response given to Prof Néstor Míguez's paper, “Mission Formation for Transforming Discipleship” (featured in this issue of IRM) at the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism's Consultation on Mission Formation, held in Matanzas, Cuba, from 10 to 15 September 2016. The article sets out to explore Míguez's concept of living in ambiguity as a call to mission formation to create transformative counter‐communities, which can equip people to live with the struggle of justice promised and justice denied. The paper explores this through a number of lenses. The letter of Jeremiah to the exiles in Jeremiah 29 offers a biblical context for creating communities which are counter to dominant and imperial values. The work of French philosopher Michel Foucault on heterotopias offers a philosophical framework for such communities.     

Making Critically Conscious Disciples: A Zambian Pentecostal Pneumato‐Discipleship Missiology

This article calls for rethinking of discipleship within missio Spiritus for political formation necessary for the viable functioning of Zambian Pentecostalism in the neo‐colonial context. It argues that the theme for the 2018 World Mission Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, “Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship,” calls for pneumato‐discipleship in promoting human dignity. Through an empirical missiological approach, the article analyzes interviews conducted with various believers in various Pentecostal communities to demonstrate the emerging missio Spiritus praxis among Zambian Pentecostals, which seeks to promote a missional ethics of resistance to neo‐colonial political culture. Pneumato‐discipleship, as pedagogy for critically conscious disciples, is geared toward realization of human dignity. It is the instrument of hope in the search for dignity and struggle against pervasive inhumanities.     

Human Agency in the Missio Dei and the Problem of Discipleship

At the heart of this article is an inquiry into the relationship between human and divine agency in the doctrine of the missio Dei and a critique of the turn to the language of discipleship in looking to articulate this agency. Taking the World Council of Churches’ Commission of World Mission and Evangelism's two recent documents, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL) and the “Arusha Call to Discipleship,” as a case study, this article will seek to articulate an account of human participation in the missio Dei which maintains the emphasis on spirituality in TTL. Through a close reading of TTL and the Arusha Call, the article will demonstrate that the introduction of discipleship language has not solved the issue of agency but rather has changed the account of agency and, as a result, the missiology. By turning to accounts of faithful participation from qualitative research into British Methodism, to John V. Taylor's Go-between God, and to Pope Francis’ Evangelii gaudium, I will suggest that a better account of human agency in the missio Dei can be developed by emphasizing the pneumatology of TTL and by turning to language of attentiveness, accompaniment, and discernment.     

Moving in the Spirit

Together towards Life (TTL) holds together a theology of the God of life and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit with the renewal and transformation that begins with a commitment to justice and peace at the margins and anticipates the eschatological vision of the renewal of the whole creation. The theme of the forthcoming World Mission Conference in 2017 in Arusha (Tanzania), “Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship,” marks the intersection between TTL and the Busan call for the pilgrimage of justice and peace. The theme invites participants to advance reflection on the life‐giving power of the Holy Spirit and the role of transformative communities moving together in hope of God's reign to come. The example of the World Council of Churches’ work on a Theology of Life shows that choosing this direction has implications for the practices of doing theology and even the organization of the forthcoming World Mission Conference. A fascinating task indeed!     

Lewis,Change and Temporary Intrinsics

This is an attempt to sort out what is it that makes many of us uncomfortable with the perdurantist solution to the problem of change. Lewis argues that only perdurantism can reconcile change with persistence over time, while neither presentism nor endurantism can. So, first, I defend the endurantist solution to the problem of change, by arguing that what is relative to time are not properties, but their possession. Second, I explore the anti-perdurantist strategy of arguing that Lewis cannot solve the problem of change, for he cannot account for how some properties are possessed by objects in time. However, I argue that this strategy fails, for if by saying that objects in time can have properties ‘timelessly’ we mean “at no particular time” and “tenselessly”, only objects outside time can have properties in that way; but if we mean “for all the time they exist”, or “essentially”, perdurantists can account for this. Finally, I argue that actually perdurantism cannot solve the problem, but for different reasons: for either it sweeps the problem under the carpet, denying change, and in general subverting our conceptual scheme in a dangerous way, or it becomes equivalent to the endurantist picture that properties are had at times. Nor perdurantism is justified by the Relativity Theory or the B-theory of time, because while endurantism is certainly comfortable with presentism, it need not be committed to it; and even if it were, presentism need not be refuted by the Relativity Theory.     

“Equal Discipleship”

Feminist theology is known for its various critical principles and methods of biblical interpretation. In the process of doing feminist biblical interpretation, feminist theologians have started to build their theological frameworks. This article takes the feminist biblical scholar Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and her construction of the New Testament as an example. In her book Discipleship of Equals, Schüssler Fiorenza put forward the important viewpoint of “equal discipleship.” This viewpoint provides a dialogue between Schüssler Fiorenza and the theological concerns of women in China. Like Schüssler Fiorenza, Chinese theologians have also noted the testimonies of Chinese women Christians in the development of the church. These can help female Christians realize who they are and the significance of being a member of the church. Christian Chinese traditional culture still influences the understanding of women's identity. This will be a significant challenge and task in practising Chinese feminist theology.     

“A GREATEST MIRACLE”: STANLEY CAVELL,MORAL PERFECTIONISM,AND THE ASCENT INTO THE ORDINARY

What to make of “the ordinary,”“the everyday,” and their common “eventfulness”? What to think of what Veena Das, in her recent book Life and Words, prefaced by Stanley Cavell, has called our need to “descent into the ordinary”? Is there a parallel figure of “ascent,” again, into the same “ordinary,” that we might we want to juxtapose with it and that resembles the motif of “change,” even “conversion,” that Cavell analyzes at some length in The Claim of Reason and throughout his oeuvre as a whole? And what could be our reasons for doing so? This essay will draw on Cavell's reading of Ibsen's work in the volume Cities of Words to spell out what such an “ascent” might mean.     

Champions,Converts, Doubters,and Defectors: The Impact of Shifting Perceptions on Momentum for Change

Maintaining momentum is a key influence on the ultimate success of large‐scale change. In this paper, we develop theory to explain how stable versus shifting change‐supportive perceptions over time differentially influence the perceived momentum associated with goal‐directed change (i.e., change‐based momentum). We use cross‐level polynomial regression and data obtained early and 1 year later within an organization implementing a lean manufacturing transformation to model changes in individual perceptions. Results suggest that momentum perceptions are higher for “Champions” (stable and high perceptions over time) as compared to “Converts” (increasing perceptions over time), but momentum perceptions are lower for “Defectors” (decreasing perceptions over time) as compared to “Doubters” (stable and low perceptions over time). We find that even if participants converge upon change‐supportive perceptions later in the change process, early divergent perceptions influence subsequent momentum for the change. These findings highlight the important role of temporal shifts in perceptions for organizational change processes.     

Vilification and Values

Social values are an important foundation of political attitudes, yet political controversies often embody conflicts between values, placing the citizen in an awkward position of having to prioritize competing values. One strategy is to consider the groups that are symbolically associated with the competing values. Groups held in high esteem will enhance associated values; groups held in disregard will diminish associated values. Persuasive communicators exploit this process by assailing groups that have been publicly associated with certain issue positions or values as “extreme” or “radical.” Even if the group represents a consensus value like equal opportunity, the extremist label suggests the group's agenda embodies an excessive and uncompromising imposition of this value. This article reports on four experiments that investigated how the extremist label can undermine support for a group's position. We further examine how reputation affects judgments of value priorities.     

TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE: ON DREAMING THE IMPOSSIBLE

Abstract. My comment on Ethics in an Age of Technology, volume 2 of Ian G. Barbour's Gifford Lectures, acknowledges the excellence of Barbour's depictions of the social-cum-technological problems facing humanity in the coming millennium. Barbour's proposed solutions, too, are reasonable—but usually presuppose fundamental reforms in social values, especially within the powerful industrialized societies. Without further analysis of technology and values, this seems to make such solutions “impossible dreams.” My thesis is that clear analysis of the ideal aspects of technology (as itself the embodiment of knowledge and values), plus clues from Alfred North Whitehead on the dynamics of social change, can reinforce hope even in “impossible” dreams. First, technology, though embodied in solid material machinery and powerful social institutions, is no more “solid” than constant reaffirmation of the values behind it (as was the case with the Berlin Wall). Second, great ideals, over time, have the power to help create the conditions of their own possibility. Social change is both “pushed” by coercive forces (e.g., climate changes) and “pulled” by great values (e.g., human dignity). Therefore there are practical benefits to be gained from attending to, and celebrating, even currently “impossible” dreams as they work to make themselves possible.     

Dissonance motivation: Its nature,persistence, and reinstatement

This paper examines whether arousal is a necessary component of the motivation to reduce dissonance. Alternative responses to attitude-behavior inconsistency include attitude change, explaining the behavior by a consonant cognition (i.e., low choice), and attributing the dissonance-induced state to an alternative source, such as the purported side effects of an ingested “drug.” For conditions in which there are few consonant cognitions (i.e., high choice), a comparison of different “drug” conditions in which attitude change does or does not occur was expected to clarify which components of the dissonance-induced state mediate attitude change. Attitude change occurred in high choice conditions where the “drug” was described as pleasant, but not in high choice conditions where the “drug” was described as unpleasant or in a low choice condition. In addition, when the “drug” was descibed as arousing there was, if anything, more attitude change than when the “drug” was described as nonarousing. These results suggest that unpleasantness and not arousal per se is the motivating factor in dissonance reduction. The effects of the passage of time and reinstating the counterattitudinal behavior on the alternative responses to attitude-behavior inconsistency were also examined. Subjects returned 2 weeks later, stated their attitudes, recalled their original counterattitudinal essay, and again stated their attitudes. Although there was a general decrease in attitude change during this period, the pattern of attitude change remained basically the same. Attitude change following reinstatement increased from its original level only in those conditions where it had been initially attenuated through misattribution or a consonant cognition.     

Christ's Love and Borders

This article is a keynote address given at the Global Ecumenical Theological Institute (GETI) held in Karlsruhe, Germany, August-September 2022, on the theme “Christ's love (re)moves borders” and organized in conjunction with the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches. The article argues that around the world, political borders are being cemented by populist nationalisms even as pandemics, capital flows, and climate change ignore them. If Christians are to resist such ideologies, they must recover a robust incarnational theology and their fundamental identity as members of the worldwide body of Christ. Simultaneously, even as borders between people are being reinforced, the border between people and machines is blurred by transhumanist and posthumanist agendas. Such paradoxes will continue to abound in an intellectual landscape where what is distinctively human is obscured by technological hubris and philosophical naïveté.     

Day,Night, or Dawn: Commentary on Paper by Steven Stern

It was in the years immediately following World War II and through the 1950s that the psychoanalytic establishment officially defined psychoanalysis as a subspecialty of psychiatry, and it was in that context of the professionalization of American medicine that they codified the distinction between psychoanalysis and (psychoanalytic) psychotherapy. In this commentary on Steven Stern's “Session Frequency and the Definition of Psychoanalysis,” I deconstruct a series of binaries that was built into the analysis/therapy distinction and that has plagued our discipline. It is argued that psychoanalysis identified itself with the culturally “masculine” and heterosexual values of autonomous individuality (the intrapsychic), while it split off all that was relational and social (interpersonal), marked as “feminine,” homosexual, and “primitive,” onto psychotherapy, which it then devalued. The paper then examines the implications for practice and psychoanalytic education.     

Kane,Luck, and the significance of free will

Abstract

This paper raises a pair of objections to the novel libertarian position advanced in Robert Kane's recent book, The Significance of Free Will.The first objection's target is a central element in Kane's intriguing response to what he calls the “Intelligibility” and “Existence” questions about free will. It is argued that this response is undermined by considerations of luck.The second objection is directed at a portion of Kane's answer to what he calls “The Significance Question” about free will: “Why do we, or should we, want to possess a free will that is incompatible with determinism? Is it a kind of freedom ‘worth wanting’... and, if so, why?” A desire for “objective worth” has a featured role in his answer. However, a compatibilist can have that desire.     

The Directionality of Verbal Probability Expressions: Effects on Decisions,Predictions, and Probabilistic Reasoning

Verbal phrases denoting uncertainty are of two kinds: positive, suggesting the occurrence of a target outcome, and negative, drawing attention to its nonoccurrence (Teigen & Brun, 1995). This directionality is correlated with, but not identical to, high and low p values. Choice of phrase will in turn influence predictions and decisions. A treatment described as having “some possibility” of success will be recommended, as opposed to when it is described as “quite uncertain,” even if the probability of cure referred to by these two expressions is judged to be the same (Experiment 1). Individuals who formulate their chances of achieving a successful outcome in positive terms are supposed to make different decisions than individuals who use equivalent, but negatively formulated, phrases (Experiments 2 and 3). Finally, negative phrases lead to fewer conjunction errors in probabilistic reasoning than do positive phrases (Experiment 4). For instance, a combination of 2 “uncertain” outcomes is readily seen to be “very uncertain.” But positive phrases lead to fewer disjunction errors than do negative phrases. Thus verbal probabilistic phrases differ from numerical probabilities not primarily by being more “vague,” but by suggesting more clearly the kind of inferences that should be drawn.     

Learning about Spirituality Together with “Seekers”

The present era, often referred to as post‐secular, has in many places seen a resurgence in spirituality. Nevertheless, the contemporary quest for spirituality is unique in the sense that many people do not expect to have their spiritual needs fulfilled within the structures of organized religion, starting on a journey of their own explorations instead. Sociologists of religion, therefore, tend to employ the “dwellers” and “seekers” paradigm to account for this phenomenon. This paper will explore this phenomenon in the context of the Czech Republic, whose citizens are frequently characterized as distrustful toward institutional religiosity, through the lens of the recent World Council of Churches' affirmation on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL). For our purpose, the statement's emphasis on both “transformative spirituality” and “mission from the margins” will be of central importance. Using the notion of transformative spirituality as the energy engendered by the Spirit for the transformation of life and creation, it will be suggested that “seekers” can be agents in God's mission of liberation, reconciliation, and transformation, despite their inability or unwillingness to identify themselves with the church as institution. Keeping in mind ethical considerations, the paper will not seek to make a case for a forced “christening” of the seekers. Rather, it will argue that they can become partners in missio Dei, thus giving the notion of “mission from the margins” a new, contextually relevant dimension.