WHY I AM A DISCIPLE-AT-LARGE

“I give you a new commandment: love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another. If there is this love among you, then all will know that you are my disciples.” (John 13:34-35).

How wonderful it is to be a disciple of the Christ! It means more than to be a pupil at the feet of the Master, for it means to be his follower in his work of love. To the Jews who had believed on him, Jesus said: “If you dwell within the revelation I have brought, you are indeed my disciples” (John 8:31). To be a disciple indeed, what a blessed relationship!

To be a disciple indeed might well involve being a disciple-at-large. By “at large” I mean ecumenical, and by that I mean being in the fellowship with all those who are in Christ, with no lines of brotherhood being drawn because of differences in interpretation.

I find this approach a bit confusing and embarrassing to my associates in all of discipledom. People like for things to come in neatly tied packages and with proper labels of identification. Most of us have a lot of pigeon-holes in our mental makeup, and we like for things to fit into their proper slot. Men and things that do not fit get in our way. Thinking is less complex and easier when everything fits. For it to be otherwise is like having pieces left over in a jigsaw puzzle.

So insistent are people for the stereotypes that they themselves will affix a label on the man that chooses to wear none. It is not that they mean harm by this always, but rather that they do not know how to think any other way. Everyone must be tagged with some sectarian label. They cannot see that it makes any sense otherwise. I myself have had some interesting experiences along this line, choosing as I do to be a disciple-at-large.

Born and bred as I was in the anti-instrumental wing of the Restoration Movement, I have for most of my years been easily identified as “Church of Christ”, a label I wore with little or no reluctance. But once I began to roam “at large” and discovered a greater brotherhood, I issued a disclaimer, insisting that the “Church of Christ” concept of fellowship is much too restricted. The loyal papers, meaning “Church of Christ” journals, announced that I had “gone to the Christian Church”, though some were less sure as to where I had gone, one announcement using the caption, Garrett is gone!

So well spread was the news that I had gone to the Christian Church a few years back, that when I returned from Illinois one summer to a lot of my old haunts I did not find one person that had not heard it. It became a source of both amazement and amusement to my wife and me. When we drove into the backwoods to see a sister who we supposed never got out of her neighborhood and hardly ever saw a brotherhood journal, my but they had to stick me in some classification, so I had to be “Church of Christ”. My wife remarked that it was all contradictory: one group charging that I had gone to the other, while the other group insisted that I belonged to the group I had “left”!

At least one brother, however, has clearly understood my position as a wife remarked with some assurance, “Well, here’s one old friend that will not have heard that you’ve apostatized to the Christian Church!” But sure enough she had! We hardly got into our visit with her before she said, “I hear you’ve gone to the Christian Church.” She must have wondered what a digressive preacher was doing coming to see her!

At this same time I was filling speaking engagements at a number of Christian Churches as well as Baptist, Methodist and others as opportunity afforded. It was this kind of behavior on my part that quite obviously set up the rumor that I had “gone” somewhere, for loyal gospel preachers simply do not do things like that. But the interesting point is this: these Christian Churches thought of me as “a Church of Christ man.” Even when I was professor at Bethany College I was never accepted as a “Disciple” in the International Convention sense. During my second year at Bethany I was invited to speak at the Memorial Christian Church, which is the only church of any kind in that little hamlet, and which incidentally has a sign that reads “Church of Christ”. On the printed programs that Lord’s Day I was introduced not merely as professor of philosophy at Bethany College, but as “a Church of Christ minister”.

My wife and I got a charge out of that, for I had made it a point to be simply a disciple of Christ, refusing to identify myself with any party within discipledom to the exclusion of others. Despite my efforts I was categorized. The good Bethany brethren were well aware that I had not joined the “Disciple” party, as the “Church of Christ” party had charged, disciple-at-large. I was at a unity gathering at the Disciples of Christ Historical Society a year or so ago where several groups of “Campbellites” had sensible and helpful discussions on fellowship and brotherhood, but they were mostly “Disciple” and “Independent”, though they were trying to get away from these labels and rightly so. During one of the sessions a professor from Cincinnati Bible Seminary looked across at me and said something like this: “Take brother Garrett there, for example. You can’t call him a ‘Disciple’ or an ‘Independent’, and I know for a fact that the ‘Church of Christ’ won’t claim him. And yet he accepts all of us as his brothers. What is he if he is not simply a disciple-at-large, as he puts it? While he fully accepts all of us, none of us seem to be able to fully accept him since he does not identify himself with any of us. Maybe we need to be like he is.”

One thing is certain about all this: if one does not line up with a party and be a party man, he will never be accepted by that party. Moreover, he should not expect to be. Logic is against one who would have it any other way. If one is a free man, he cannot expect the treatment of a party man. Parties would lose their reason for existing if it were any other way. A party can tolerate anything except a free man, whether it be grain storage scandals or a total collapse of personal integrity. Things can be patched up or overlooked so long as one is loyal to the party, but once a man behaves as one who might have a liberated mind, he must be cut off at once, regardless of any intellectual excellence or personal magnanimity he might have.

This means that the party will from time to time lose some of its keenest minds, but it has no choice but to do so, for if it tolerates free thinking it will destroy itself. It will of course talk glibly, and sometimes even profoundly, of freedom and liberality, and even of liberal education, but it cannot possibly take such talk seriously. While it is in order to give lip service to Christian liberty, no party man can afford to do anything about it. If he does, he will be destroyed, for the party machinery is so effective that a brother can be “marked” overnight, with proper scriptural precedent of course.

When a party man writes for one of the journals, speaks at one of the college lectureships on an assigned topic, or preaches a trial sermon, he knows exactly what he will say before he ever prepares his lesson: he will follow the party line! It is understood by all concerned: those who assign him his topic also know what he will say, and those who listen or read know what he will say. He may provide a slightly different approach or a different emphasis or offer some new illustrations, but it most certainly will be parry stuff. It is always interesting when that one man in a thousand, supposed to be a party man, turns out to be free. It can electrify something like a college lectureship, such as it did in Abilene a few years ago when a brother from Colorado departed from the party script.

It is always predictable what will happen to such a one. Just now there is a brother in a party different from the Abilene group who is speaking freely to his people, who are of course right about everything while the rest of us are wrong, and who for that reason will not have anything to do with anyone who does not interpret the Bible as they do.

He asked me what I thought would happen to him with his people. There is absolutely no question about what will happen. Just as our physical body rejects any foreign substance that is incompatible with it, so does a party throw off any element that threatens to destroy it. It cannot behave otherwise and remain a party. How quickly will this happen? Just as quickly as it becomes clear that one is not a party man any longer. The party will allow one of its adherents to be a little cantankerous and critical. A little individuality may even be encouraged and appreciated. But one certainly cannot depart either from the spirit or the doctrines of the party creed, whether written or unwritten. It would be suicidal.

An interesting thing about the party mind is that it cannot see itself as factious and divisive. The party man who reads this article is hardly able to apply it to himself. A party is incapable of seeing itself as a party. Such self-evaluations as loyal, faithful, and the Lord’s people are sincerely employed. Others are necessarily heretics or dishonest — or perhaps simply not as intelligent as the ones who have “the truth”.

I have said all this in order to point out that I am a disciple-at-large so that I can be a brother to all God’s children, including those that cannot accept me because of their party affiliation. If my discipleship were restricted by party lines, then I could receive only those who wore the same label as myself. — The Editor