Steve Cutts, an edgy UK video artist and animator poignantly snapshots today’s digital society in his YouTube production “Are You Lost in the World Like Me?” Zombie-like crowds, enchanted by gadgets and devices in the video are oblivious to the loneliness, needs and pain around them – and in them. Aldous Huxley, in “Brave New World foresaw the same thing – people rendered vapid by their addiction to mass production entertainment, leisure and laughter. Cuts’ offers a blatant warning: “These systems are failing!”.
Christian leaders must grapple with this warning. The productionized systems we use in making disciples in modernity are far afield from Christ’s method, and the modern version is failing disciples. Entertainment productionized is weariness. Discipleship productionized – into programs, large gatherings and mere academics – is more like cloning than relationships, a fragile and brittle caricature of what disciples are fully intended to be by Christ. Yes, we must learn, develop and mature. Yes, we must gather and serve Christ in worship and missions and ministries. But these are not the fountainheads of discipling, they are the results. To reverse the order means these systems will fail disciples, they will orphan disciples. And these mass-produced and largely abandoned disciples will wonder “Are you lost in the world like me?” as they wander off. It is already among us.
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