By Preston Ulmer
Why use the word apprentice over disciple?
Disciple and discipleship are beautiful words; I actually value them. In some ways, however, as they have been used over time, their meaning has been forgotten or misapplied. I do think there's been a history of seeing the words disciple and discipleship often used in the context of class, where it’s expected that we give you information as if you were in school: I teach, and you learn; now you are a disciple.
Jesus XP didn't come up with this idea of apprenticeship; it's simply Jesus's invitation to follow him. What's interesting about that language, too, is it doesn't note an end date. Jesus says, “Follow me.” Period. Not for the next three weeks, or ten sessions, or this year. Rooted within “follow me” is this notion of learning to live with me and like me and of becoming our full selves by being with Jesus.
From this place of spiritual formation in our apprenticeship, we are invited to go live out what we are learning from Jesus along the way. You've seen in Jesus the quality of life, the way of life, the ethic of life: go live that out. It is for this reason that we use the word apprenticeship because it implies a becoming journey. Spiritual formation is about becoming, not arriving. We never graduate from the Gospels, and at the core of each Gospel, we are pulled into the life of apprenticeship.
Jesus is the one who offers the invitation, and we're just trying to follow him. And as I’ve been going through Jesus XP, I've realized there are a lot of people way smarter than I am who would say that a better translation for the word disciple is, in fact, “apprentice.” It's not even a different meaning. Jesus XP invites us to say, “If I were with Jesus . . .”
The big idea behind this shift is the tradition of a rabbi-student or disciple relationship, which is—in our world today—apprenticeship. You get to be Jesus’ apprentice. You get to be formed by his invitation: “Follow me.”