I have this feeling that we all live with a paradox about Jesus. On the one hand, we feel confident, every one of us, that we could actually answer that question What Would Jesus Do? And, at the same time, when pressed on what Jesus’s most important message is, we shuffle our feet, look at the sky, and whistle “She’ll be comin’ ‘round the mountain”.

How is it that we can be so very confident that we know what it means to follow Jesus and yet so unable to speak about it? Or be specific? Perhaps it is because we often have an easier time saying what Jesus is not about than what He is.

The church has always had a communication problem. Primarily because in the gospel accounts, Jesus very rarely answered specific questions for His followers. Instead, he told stories and taught them to come at the problem from a different way.

We also receive in the stories about Jesus, moments that were not direct teaching for His followers, but moments in which He confronts the religious authorities or crowds based on how they interpreted Holy Scripture. Usually challenging their hard-hearted approach or blindness to hypocrisy.

In the end, Jesus didn’t build a church, elect a vestry, write up by-laws or canons, or register as a non-profit with the federal government. Just like the way He taught, His expectation was that He would teach people how to bring the Kingdom closer, give them the authority to do it, and it became their responsibility to actually do it. He showed them a pattern of relationship that they could follow. And they did.

That pattern can be found in Jesus’s parting words (according to the writer we call Matthew):

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Jesus’s presence or saving grace isn’t the thing, but the thing remembered. The thing is making disciples of all nations. In the wrong hands, these words become abusive, coercive, and destructive: demanding obedience to a particular doctrine. However, in the right hands, they reveal the very character of Jesus’s ministry, with the conviction that we are to do the same.

This way Jesus communicates the Gospel means that we primarily communicate through discipleship, after we become disciples. For we can only know Jesus’s intent as we better know Jesus. The same, then, can be said about our church.

Many communication problems are actually intimacy problems. These are times when we aren’t following Jesus together or making new disciples. We aren’t taking on the Great Commission for ourselves or wearing the very character of the apostles.

Trying to see Jesus’s expectation for us by rote memorization or simplistic platitudes is like teaching your child to ride a bike with posters from Successories.

The funny thing, however, is the child’s learning only comes through doing. She has to move the pedals and propel the bike and make her muscles work. She has to build the patterns herself. Less teaching at and more teaching with.

It is through these postures and practices that we can better understand what Jesus is talking about in the parables and get a better picture of Jesus’s view of the world.

Jesus teaches us that the Good News is heard and shared. We learn and teach. We follow and bring in other followers. The communication isn’t the thing, the intimacy is the thing.

Step one: find someone to learn from or teach. Then we’ll worry about step two.