The Great Omission

In preparation for a few days off after Christmas we stopped by the local branch of our public library to pick up some light fiction for the trip. On our way in I glanced over the religion section of the new books and spotted The Great Omission by Dallas Willard. No one could ever accuse Willard of producing “light reading,” but I recalled someone recommending the book so I checked it out with a couple of odd mystery novels.
It turns out Willard’s book was not that new. In fact, it is a collection of essays, articles and addresses given over a number of years. All the content is around Willard’s passion – discipleship. The title of the book is, of course, a commentary on the Christian church’s failure to take Jesus at his word: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
While Willard does eventually get into the topic of what discipleship looks like, the topic of spiritual formation, one consistent theme in the earlier portion is the criticism that the church has made discipleship an optional extra. Yet nearly all of Jesus’ teaching in the synoptic Gospels is about the life of a disciple. The absurdity of the situation should bring us to our knees.
Looking into the sources of the various chapters, it seems most of Willard’s audience are Christians from evangelical traditions. Yet his indictment stands for evangelicals and mainline churches, for Protestants and Pentecostals and Roman Catholics and Orthodox. However, rather than flog ourselves or blame others for this state of affairs, we can benefit from Willard’s approach and start learning about how to be disciples and then doing it. Which brings me to our Community and the Aidan Way of Life.
If discipleship is not an “optional extra” for those who like or have time for that sort of thing, what does that say about the Aidan Way (or any other religious community)? As I am reading Willard, I find that most of what he describes as the path of discipleship is contained in our Way. The Way then becomes one way of doing what all Christians are supposed to be about. Further, the flexibility of the Way means that any congregation of any tradition can find it an open door for correcting the “great omission.”
I’m not suggesting that the Aidan Way is the universal solution, only that it is one currently extant way to aid Christian communities. The important thing for members of our community to note is, given the Lord’s universal call to discipleship, the primary importance of our community is not it’s rooting in the Celtic saints, nor even in the aspect of wholeness it represents. Our primary importance is that members, by becoming members, have also signed on as disciples of Jesus Christ. That alone gives value to the distinctiveness of the Aidan Way.