Bill Hull - Choose the Life: Exploring a Faith That Embraces Discipleship

In a churchly culture of many decisions but few disciples, Bill Hull challenges us to exchange ingrained patterns of unfruitful mediocrity for the paradigm of radically following Jesus on the path of transformational discipleship. If faithfully heeded, Choose the Life will revolutionize the people of God.

B RUCE D EMAREST , PROFESSOR OF C HRISTIAN THEOLOGY
AND SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION , D ENVER S EMINARY

Hull, I believe, correctly identifies that though there is a growing concern among some evangelicals about the lack of true spiritual formation, this is a problem of a more fundamental nature that has been with many of us for much longer than many of us realize, namely, a vapid version of the gospel. He makes a compelling and inarguable case that the cross of Christ requires us to restore the crucial dimension of discipleshipa long obedience in the footsteps of Jesusto our proclamations and invitations. I couldnt agree with him more. Until we make the crucial correction, its useless to think we can expect our people to get excited about things like serving the overlooked or racial reconciliation.

K EN F ONG , SENIOR PASTOR , E VERGREEN B APTIST C HURCH , L OS A NGELES

Bill Hulls Choose the Life is a wonderful book for those tired of ho-hum Christianity. He gets right to the heart of what being a disciple of Jesus Christ means. With the drastic drop of the number of evangelicals in the last ten years, he sounds a wakeup call for the church and addresses some of the reasons for this from both a biblical perspective and his very personal account of Gods work in his own life.

C LYDE C OOK , PRESIDENT , B IOLA U NIVERSITY

It is a joy to commend this book to all Christians, and to all who want to learn what Christianity really is whether you are a believer or not. Bill Hull has genuinely revealed his soul and his experience as a pastoral leader, but more than that, he has gotten to the heart of things in a rare way.

R ICHARD E. A VERBECK , PROFESSOR OF O LD T ESTAMENT
AND S EMITIC LANGUAGES , T RINITY E VANGELICAL D IVINITY S CHOOL

In a fresh new way Bill challenges us to look again at the mandate to make disciples of all nations. This book will challenge you, refresh you, and stir the passions of your life to the greatest of all causesGreat Commission living.

D ANN S PADER , FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR , S ONLIFE M INISTRIES

Other Titles by Bill Hull

Building High Commitment in a Low-Commitment World

The Disciple-Making Pastor

The Disciple-Making Church

Jesus Christ, Disciplemaker

Revival That Reforms

7 Steps to Transform Your Church

Straight Talk on Spiritual Power

Right Thinking: Insights on Spiritual Growth

Anxious for Nothing

2004 by Bill Hull

Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com

Ebook edition created 2012

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eISBN 978-1-5855-8155-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Illustrations are from Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol, and Ken McElrath, The Ascent of a Leader (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999). Copyright 1999. Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Unless otherwise indicated Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture marked NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked RSV is taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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CONTENTS

F OREWORD

T here are now signs that significant groups among professing Christians are ready to take up discipleship to Jesus as the core of their religious life. A realization has been setting in that the redemption Christ offers is for all aspects of life, from the deepest parts of the human being outward to the last details of our actions. Many who previously had only a superficial connection with Christ are coming to understand that whole-life discipleship to him is the easy way to live: the easy yoke and the light burden that Jesus promised to those who step into the yoke with him to learn of him.

We will see great progress for Jesus work on earth, and great blessing upon the lives of groups and individuals, if this new seriousness about discipleship stays focused on three things.

First, there must be no mistaking the fact that discipleship to Jesus means primarily learning from him how to doeasily and routinely dothe very things he said for us to do. Obedience is the only sound objective of a Christian spirituality. Of course, we do not obey to earn anythingearning is out of the questionbut we obey because doing the things that Jesus said is what is best for us and for everyone around us.

Second, we do not become able to obey by trying to obey, but by becoming the kind of person who naturally does obey. That means our intention is to acquire, by intelligent effort and grace, the inward character of Jesus Christ himself. We think and feel like him; our will has his habits of choosing; our very body is poised toward righteous deeds; and our way of relating to others is governed by his kind of love.

Third, the activities of our fellowship groups and their leaders are explicitly designed to make disciplesnot some lesser version of Christian, but genuine apprentices to Jesus in kingdom livingand to teach everyone in the group to do the things Jesus said. Leaders do this by bringing their fellowship groups through effective processes of inward transformation of the dynamics of human life.

In this way we will do what Jesus told us to do: Make disciples as you go, submerge them in the Trinitarian reality, and train them to do everything that I commanded you (paraphrase of Matt. 28:1920). That is what it means to choose the life. The ills of the church and of the individual derive almost totally from the simple failure to do what Jesus told us to do in the Great Commission. There is no excuse whatsoever for not doing it, and every rationalization is simply a wound to our own souls, an injury to our groups, and an insult to the Christ who told us what to do.

Bill Hull has learned a lot from his years in the church as a pastor and leader. Most importantly, as this book shows, he has learned about himself. He has a vivid sense that what matters is what you are on the inside; that is the place where discipleship takes hold and where the only possible foundation for uncomplicated obedience is laid. He is delightfully candid and fresh, and conveys profound substance with stark clarity. You will wince as he relates painful experiences incurred while trying to lead his church to great things with thoughts and feelings remaining un-Christlike. But you will see with joy how characternot just bright ideas and slick techniqueshas genuine power in human relationships under God.