Viewpoint: Apprentice to the Master
What words or phrases do you use to describe your life of faith: I’ve used the word ‘Christian’, I sometimes say ‘follower of Jesus’ and have heard others saying disciple and even pilgrim. Maybe you use some other word? Each of these words can serve us well and capture what it means to live our lives with Jesus at the centre, and we may feel like each brings a specific emphasis on an aspect of our faith journey.
Recently, one specific word for me has caught my ear a number of times. It has been emerging in conversations, books, sermons and podcasts. This is not a new word, but it’s conveying something new to me as I think of what it means to follow Jesus. This word is “Apprentice”.
The word apprentice fits naturally with the language of vocation, the vocabulary of the marketplace. A word that we are familiar with in our professional contexts. It also conveys the centrality of a relationship (apprentice to Master), a process (learning and doing), and time (an enduring practice of honing a craft). In the life of faith this apprenticeship is a lifetime of relationship and a process, where the apprentice matures over time. Eugene Peterson captures it well when he said “it is a long obedience in the same direction”. An apprentice is committed to a craft—nurturing, deepening and maturing their practice over time.
Dallas Willard shared this view when he said “In the New Testament, discipleship means being an apprentice of Jesus in our daily existence. That was the teaching of the New Testament”.
When you process this verse from Colossians through that lens it brings into focus that we need to be intimately acquainted with who Jesus is and how he does things. ‘Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Colossians 3:17). Being an apprentice means doing everything in the same way we have observed our Master doing things, in Scripture and then by the guiding of His Spirit.
So, what might it look like to approach today as an apprentice? Being mindful of your identity as an apprentice and following the way of the Master. I’ve been struck that the outworking of this apprenticeship is not simply head knowledge but hands on activity in the places where we spend time, and for most of us that is going to include our work contexts. I’m also reminded that this is a process shaped and refined over time—a lifetime and a lifestyle not a programme.
As apprentices may we be attentive and open to what the Master is showing us today and then get on with living that out!