11/8/2019 Imitate These Things (Not Those)

IMITATE THESE
THINGS (NOT
THOSE)
Not everything in church culture is good for us. How can we tell the
difference between authentic discipleship and unholy peer pressure?

JUNE 25, 2019

BY MICHELLE VAN LOON

K
atie had a solid Christian pedigree. She’d grown up in the
church, committed her life to Jesus at youth camp,
attended a Christian college, and married Jeff, her college
sweetheart, immediately after graduation. At the church
they’d begun attending, the couple served as Sunday school
teachers. Katie also made time in her busy schedule to volunteer with a
ministry serving the homeless in their new community. Yet after nearly
three years at their church, Katie told me she wondered if she’d ever fit in.
“I’m still treated as an outsider by the other women, and it’s not because

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I’m a relative newcomer. It’s because I work full-time outside the home.”
She explained that almost all the other women her age in the congregation
were stay-at-home moms who homeschooled their children, and a few
older women focused most of their attention on nurturing this group.
Besides meeting during the day for Bible studies on how to be better wives
and mothers, they often arranged informal play dates and field trips.
Katie’s work schedule meant she and her young son couldn’t join them.
But it wasn’t the lack of invitations from the other women that troubled
her.

After nearly three years at

their church, Katie told me she
wondered if she’d ever fit in.
“When we first came to the church, Jeff and I knew that my job put me in
the minority among the stay-at-home moms, but the pastor assured us it
shouldn’t matter, as we were all seeking Jesus together. We appreciated his
emphasis on discipleship. As the years have passed, however, I’m noticing
that most of the women seem to be copying each other in terms of
lifestyle, convictions, and calling. It feels more like a clique than a church,”
Katie said sadly. She and Jeff were considering leaving the congregation.

Scripture portrays discipleship as the way in which a mature believer lives

out faith in the everyday and ongoing companionship of a younger
student. This maturity references age, experience, and faithfulness. It’s a
description of the ongoing process of spiritual growth, not the arrival at
some state of spiritual perfection (Deut. 6:4-9). The late Dallas Willard
called this whole-life learning model apprenticeship, a word that is helpful
in translating an ancient concept into our modern context.

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Like my friend Katie, I’ve found that sometimes a Christianized form of
peer pressure takes the place of true apprenticeship. If your church culture
implies that all real believers end up looking, acting, voting, or talking the
same, pay close attention. It’s possible you’re seeing peer pressure at work.
And though it’s simply a more sophisticated version of what you may have
experienced in middle school, the social push to conform to a group’s
standards can be just as powerful. Some examples:

We tell new believers (or inquirers) that they need to learn to “act
like a Christian” in order to fit in at church.

We subtly (or not so subtly) discourage young believers from

pursuing careers in academia or the arts because those vocational
paths are “too secular.”

We shun or shame people who, on a theological non-essential—

such as politics—may not share the prevailing opinion of our
congregation.

The challenge for the more mature in an apprenticeship relationship is to

remember that learning happens in different ways at different stages of
our spiritual development. There is a time and a season in our spiritual life

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for imitation. Just as young children parrot sounds and words as they’re
learning to communicate for themselves, we learn how to walk with Jesus
by patterning our lives after those who’ve gone before us. Imitation serves
an instructional purpose.

Peer pressure has “fear of missing out” at its root, and not fitting into the
group is viewed as a cardinal sin. If you sense everyone around you
competing in an unspoken contest to conform to the group’s standards,
it’s a pretty safe bet you’re noticing the effects of peer pressure. The
imitation of godly women and men, on the other hand, teaches us
essential patterns and practices while honoring individual calling and
giftedness.

First-century rabbis would assess a potential apprentice via a long period

of living and learning together: They would look for someone who had the
capacity and desire to mold himself to be like his teacher. Author Doug
Greenwold explained, “Throughout the Gospels, the phrase ‘follow me’ is a
Jewish idiom used by the rabbis to mean, ‘Come and be with me as my
disciple, and submit to my authoritative teaching.’” Jesus’ words “follow
Me” mean far more than “join my team.” They are words that tell us He
believes we will seek to pattern every aspect of our life after His.

However, His goal isn’t that we remain perpetual infants, repeating basic
lessons over and over again as though we’re in an endlessly looping game
of Simon Says. Instead, wanting us to move toward maturity, He
empowers us to then apprentice others who will delight in imitating Him
as we’re learning to do (Matt. 28:18-20). The writer of Hebrews expressed
frustration with his readers’ seemingly plateaued spiritual growth: “For
though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for
someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God”
(Heb. 5:12).

We see this pattern in action in Paul’s counsel to the church at Corinth. He

urges the young church to imitate him while learning to navigate their
lives as immature followers of Jesus: “Be imitators of me, just as I also am
of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). However, in the personal greetings he uses
to conclude the first letter to the Corinthians—those words we tend to zip

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past because they seem like personal bits of housekeeping—we see how
Paul celebrates the diversity of gifts and ministries among those who’ve
been mature leaders among those believers.

He asks the Christians in Corinth to treat his protégé Timothy with

respect, because though a different person than Paul, the younger man
was carrying on a similar, complementary ministry to the apostle’s (1
Corinthians 16:10-11). Without denigrating Apollos, Paul noted that this
co-laborer in Christ didn’t initially want to visit the church but then
reconsidered—a recognition that Apollos was his own man, with his own
mind and faith (1 Corinthians 16:12). Paul then offers a shout-out to
Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus. Their ministry to him came in the
form of practical financial assistance (1 Corinthians 16:15-18). Finally, he
mentions mature church leaders Priscilla and Aquila, who led a
congregation in their home, apprenticing young believers in the faith (1
Corinthians 16:19; Acts 18:24-26).

The pattern of follow-the-leader was formalized in the early decades of the

church. The Didache, a document that dates from perhaps as early as A.D.
100, is an example of an early catechism—a set of questions and answers
new believers had to learn or memorize as part of their membership
process in the local congregation. The Didache and eventually other forms
of catechesis were Discipleship 101 for the early church, focusing on both
the essential teachings of Jesus and the baseline practices of corporate
confession, communion, and the authority structure God has ordained for
life together. Young Christians learned to follow Jesus by following their
leaders.

However, imitation should never result in uniformity. Musician Steve

Taylor’s 1983 satirical song entitled “I Want to Be a Clone” named the fear
driving Christian peer pressure: “They told me that I’d fall away / unless I
followed what they say.” Aping the beliefs and behaviors of the influencers
in their church may seem to promise a sort of spiritual insurance policy
that will seal their salvation—or at least their place in the group. But a life
shaped by a healthy fear of God will produce very different fruit than one
shaped by fear of being excluded by the in-crowd. Fear of God offers us
freedom. Fear of others enslaves.

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A better “discipleship program” will not fix this problem, because it runs as

deep in each one of us as our fear of being abandoned or left behind. That
unexposed, un-discipled fear leaves us vulnerable to peer pressure
whether we’re a young Christian or a seasoned leader. As my friend Katie
and her husband assessed their experience at the church, they asked God
first to reveal their own fears of being left out or forgotten, and then to
confirm that they were being obedient in the ways their family was
serving Him through work, parenting, and lifestyle decisions.

Jeff and Katie were asking good questions. Those questions led to them
seeking the prayer and counsel of other mature believers—their pastor, a
friend at church, and other friends in their social network, including my
husband and me. The process clarified for them their own calling at this
stage of their lives. It also helped them to better recognize the unhealthy
peer-dependent dynamics among many of the young families at church.
Instead of feeling excluded or judged by them, Katie told me she found
new compassion for them. They decided to stay and brought their
concerns to the pastor, who told them he was noticing the same issues as
they were.

J. Oswald Sanders said, “No living thing comes to maturity

instantaneously. In the attainment of intellectual maturity, there is no
alternative to the student painfully working through the prescribed
courses. Nor is it any different in the spiritual life. Growth toward spiritual
maturity will of necessity involve moral effort, discipline, renunciation,
and perseverance in pursuit of the goal. There are no shortcuts.”

Christian peer pressure is a counterproductive shortcut. And recognizing

it for what it is becomes a powerful step in an apprentice’s journey toward
maturity.

 
Illustrations by Jack Richardson

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