Peter’s painful struggle to accept “the strangeness of the other” is very much our struggle today.1 These last two weeks following the war between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia and the reports of atrocities, I have been torn inside by conflicting loyalties and overwhelmed by sadness, indignation, powerlessness, and guilt.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
— Alison Krause

Within a family of churches whose modern obsession has been adding new people to the church membership rolls, discipleship has taken a back seat to conversion.

Jesus was famously uninterested in adding converts. At the end of three and one-half years of ministry, he had a net gain of eleven disciples.

Today we focus on being called by Jesus Christ. A few key elements will receive special attention.

Called by Jesus.

The call to Christian discipleship is not simply a call from someone who has hit upon a good idea and invites other people to learn about that idea, and who then decides to help promote it. When Jesus calls people to be his disciples, the call deals primarily with attachment to his person.