#5 Dave & Leah Versus the Sat Nav!

On being a disciple and default destinations

Once upon a time we decided to visit our friends in Bath. In order to get a head start, I asked my wife, Leah, to programme our Sat Nav in advance.

You can already guess where this story is going to end up.

As we began our journey, I mindlessly followed every navigation prompt whilst driving towards Somerset. After a couple of hours, I started to pay attention to where we were actually headed. Whilst the computer kept telling me we were almost there, all road signs pointed to the contrary.

Finally, the Sat Nav smugly informed us, “You have reached your destination!” 

To which I blurted out loudly, “No, we haven't!” 

The sweet sights of ancient Bath were nowhere to be seen. We had instead arrived outside Bristol Temple Meads Train Station! It turns out my wife had accidentally entered the incorrect postcode at the beginning of the day.  

Marital tension mounted.

In the end, we were only about thirty minutes off course, but that extra half hour was driven in deathly silence. As we came to our final destination, Leah turned to me and said, “Sorry I got us lost,” to which I replied, “Sorry I lost it with you.” 

Marital union was restored.

Here’s the thing: if you input the wrong coordinates, you will always end up at the wrong destination.

We had every intention of going to Bath. But our input caused us to end up in Bristol. Your inputs are always more powerful than your intentions.

When the rubber hits the road, we default to our programming over our purpose. And this is never more true than when it comes to the direction of our discipleship. 

Driven by Churchianity

If you've ever arrived home after a long car trip and not remembered the details of the drive itself, then you've probably been subject to what experts call ‘highway hypnosis.’ It happens when your attention becomes so preoccupied with other things that you are absorbed by the rhythm and not the route. In other words, you switch to autopilot. 

In the same way, it is easy for us as Christians to mindlessly follow religion and not really pay attention to where it is taking us. We show up week after week at a church meeting but our hearts can be elsewhere. We end up on spiritual autopilot. External activity doesn’t lead to internal transformation. Religious detours will keep people in holy hypnosis if we fail to keep Christ at the centre.

The Missiologist, Will Manchini, says in his book, Future Church, that the functional commission of many Western churches has effectively become something like;

“Go into all the world and make more worship attenders, baptising them in the name of small groups, and teaching them to volunteer a few hours a month.”

Rather than making better disciples, many churches settle for making better attendees instead. Whilst difficult enough to navigate this tension on our own, it has an even greater impact when we pick up passengers along the way.

Make a U-Turn where possible 

We have to be careful that we set new people on the right road. What is the journey we are inviting them on? I have lost count of the times I have heard Christian influencers refer to non-Christians by the strange term ‘unchurched.’ To me, it is a subtle way of saying, “Don't worry guys, let's keep walking with this ‘unchurched’ person for a while, and eventually we can make them ‘churched’ like the rest of us.” 

I love the local church, and am passionate about being part of it, but I pray God will deliver us all from being churched! As we make a U-turn towards God, we will inevitably become more connected into community, and not less. But it is not about conforming to church culture but transforming to the image of Christ.

Being a disciple was always about following Jesus until we become like him. As we begin to navigate towards God’s way, we will:

• Recalculate our minds until we think more like our saviour

• Reroute our attitudes until we behave more like him

• Recalibrate our speech until we sound more like Christ

• Redirect our actions until we live more like Jesus

This is what authentic spiritual formation looks like through the fuel of God’s spirit. These are the coordinates we should programme into our spiritual Sat Nav.

If we make becoming like Jesus our goal then we will always know which way to turn. So whether you are trying to help someone else, or wondering which direction to travel in yourself, it all points towards this end-point:

Christlikeness is the destination of our discipleship.

May we all move towards Christ being in the driving seat of our lives today.

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