I have never watched a full episode of the reality TV show, The Apprentice, but I can imagine the pressures the people are under to perform well. They are each competing for a promising business position. However, being an apprentice was never about competition, it was about learning.
Typically, in medieval Europe, a master craftsman agreed to instruct a young man, to give him shelter, food, and clothing, and to care for him during illness. The apprentice would bind himself to work for the master for a given time. After that time he would become a journeyman, working for a master for wages, or he set up as a master himself. [1]
In today’s world an apprenticeship has given way, for the most part, to Vocational Schools, however some highly skilled occupations still employ a modernized version of the system.
Dallas Williard in his book, The Great Omission, says that in fact every Christian should be an apprentice of Jesus. Just as medieval peasants would bind themselves to a master to learn a trade, we are to bind ourselves to Jesus to learn (the meaning of “disciple”) what it means to live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God in a fallen world.
Sadly, Willard goes on the say, for many professing Christians today “the assumption is that we can be ‘Christians’ forever and never become disciples” (p. xi). This happens when we talk more about forgiveness than obedience and stresses making a decision for Christ over becoming disciples.
The first disciples were apprentices of their Master, Jesus. They spent time with him every day for about three years and learned who he was and what it meant to submit to the Father in heaven in every area of life. They learned to incorporate the practices of Jesus’ life into theirs. On the day of the Pentecost, those disciples who lived with Jesus and learned from him, were filled with the same Holy Spirit which energized them to act Jesus. They, then began to do what Jesus did.
But how does that happen? It’s not like we can move to Jerusalem and take up residence with Jesus and allow him to teach us. It happens because we do what the first disciples did – spend time with Jesus, incorporate the disciplines of his life into ours and choose obedience over comfort.
In short, if we are to become disciples in deed, instead of disciples in name, we must plan for it. Being a disciple does not happen automatically. Discipleship happens when we deliberately incorporate the disciplines of Jesus’ life into our own lives and grow in obedience to him.
Let me encourage you to not to live the normal Christian life, but to become a disciple, an apprentice of Jesus Christ. Then, go another step and ask, “What can I do to help others do this as well?”
Pastor Alan
[1] ̌ Paul Lagass and Columbia University, The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. (New York; Detroit: Columbia University Press; Sold and distributed by Gale Group, 2000).