Column Entry, “Living and Speaking as Disciples,” by Chris Hamstra

Column Title: Leadership Life Stories: Communicating and Leading through Your Story

Column Entry: “Living and Speaking as Disciples”

By Chris Hamstra, PhD, Davenport University

Description: There is a power when people come together to share stories. As people of faith, the practice and process of storytelling helps us understand ourselves, our communities, and our organizations. When combined with leadership, stories provide examples of how to serve authentically. This column brings people around the virtual campfire to explore the concept of leadership life stories and how to learn to engage people in the classroom and boardroom with wit and wisdom.

Discipleship as a Way of Communication

Since I published In Their Steps, my fascination with the twelve disciples continues to change and grow. Most importantly, as I sit with scripture and see how Jesus worked with the early disciples, I continue to learn what it means to be a modern-day disciple.

My original thinking as I wrote In Their Steps was that the disciples had plenty to teach us about communication and leadership. I tried to stay focused on the leadership question. As happens with any writing, my thinking is now moving into another area.

I wonder before the disciples became leaders, what did they need to learn as followers of Jesus? For us as communication scholars, I wonder if there is something here worth exploring.

From Followers to Disciples

The first words Jesus speaks to Peter and Andrew in Matthew are surprisingly simple: “Follow me” (Matthew 4:19). They immediately leave their nets and follow him. James and John respond in a similar way.

But following Jesus was not simply about walking behind him.

My sanctified imagination thinks about the next few years. The disciples watched Jesus respond to conflict and suffering. The disciples celebrated and asked questions. They listened to his teaching and sometimes understood. Often, they seemed to completely miss the point.

With these thoughts rolling around in my mind, I stumbled on this quote from Dallas Willard, “Disciples are those who, seriously intending to become like Jesus from the inside out, systematically and progressively rearrange their affairs to that end, under the guidance of the Word and the Spirit.” [i]

That phrase “from the inside out” sticks with me. As a person who sees aspects of communication in just about everything, I wonder what we can explore as modern day disciples?

Communication Within: From the Inside Out

Before we communicate with others, there is a conversation happening within us. I wonder what we are listening to?

For people of faith, internal communication includes Scripture, prayer, reflection and the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the ongoing process of asking: What is Jesus teaching me? Where am I being challenged? What am I resisting?

I think about Peter.

I write in the book that Peter could be titled the “Duh-sciple” because often he was quick to speak, quick to act and quick to misunderstand. Yet Jesus continued to teach. Peter’s development as a disciple included learning to listen, receive and reflect before simply acting on his first response.

This challenges me in the classroom and in my communication classes. I spend a considerable amount of time teaching learners how to develop messages, organize ideas, present effectively and communicate with an audience. Those are important skills.

I wonder if I could help leaners move towards discipleship by asking what comes before all of these skills? What are we becoming before we open our mouths?

I’m being challenged right now to emphasize that our field of Communication is much more than the message we deliver. It is also about the person we are becoming as we listen, reflect and respond.

Communication on the Outside

The second direction from the Willard quote helps me as we move outward.

Even with years of writing and thinking about the material, I’m seeing again that the disciples did not remain on the sidelines watching Jesus. They eventually had to go out themselves. They interacted with people, answered questions, experienced rejection and learned how to communicate what they had received from Jesus.

This brings me back to the communication classroom and that learners must communicate by communicating. This means by standing in front of the room but also having tough conversations, listening well to each other, considering their own stories.

I see this with the disciples as well. Jesus placed the disciples in places and situations where they had to engage other people, the humans, in the spaces. To me, communication then becomes a connection and a relationship.

I’m still holding on to Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm here. If humans are essentially storytellers, then discipleship gives us another opportunity to pay attention to the stories around us. We listen to the experiences of other people and consider how those stories intersect with the larger story of God’s work in the world.

From Leadership to Followership to Discipleship

This brings me back to In Their Steps.

I originally approached the disciples through the lens of leadership life stories. What can Peter, John, Matthew, Thomas and the others teach us about leadership?

I still think that is an important question. Maybe, the question that comes first is, what can the disciples teach us about following and discipleship?

I’m re-reading the early chapters in Acts right now. Before Peter became the leader who preached at Pentecost, he was a fisherman who heard two words from Jesus: “Follow me.”

I’m wondering in my life how I’m hearing those two words again in my life. Maybe this is the next step in my leadership life story. Maybe I’m learning that before I can lead like Jesus, I need to be a disciple.

Notes

[i] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teaching on Discipleship (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2006), 7.

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