The Importance of Worldview Change in the Discipling Process

Recent events in the Seventh-day Adventist Church have demonstrated the need and importance of discipleship. However, the discipleship process can have a variety of emphases such as change of behavior, change of beliefs, and change of the underlying core worldview values. This paper seeks to emphasize the importance of worldview change in the discipling process. Before getting into the paper it is important to define three terms that will be used throughout. 1. Worldview—“The fundamental cognitive, affective, and evaluative presuppositions a group of people make about the nature of things, and which they use to order their lives. Worldviews are what people in a community take as given realities, the maps they have of reality that they use for living” (Heibert 2008:15). Worldview involves the core values, premises, and constructs that create a person’s view of reality. 2. Disciple—“A follower who was committed to a recognized leader or teacher” (Wilkins 2000:278). “Jesus’s disciples were those who heard his invitation to begin a new kind of life, accepted his call to the new life, and became obedient to it. The center of this new life was Jesus himself, because his disciples gained new life through him (John 10:7-10), they followed him (Mark 1:16-20), they were to hear and obey his teachings (Matt. 5:1-2), and they were to share in Jesus’ mission by going into all of the world, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and calling all people to become Jesus’ disciples” (278, 279). 3. Discipling—The process during one’s life of becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. Over the years I have observed several situations where established Seventh-day Adventist communities that demonstrated Seventh-day Adventist behavior and beliefs completely failed when a crisis came. The