MTD and discipleship

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

Sociologist Christian Smith wrote a few years ago that significant numbers of American Christians, especially adolescents, are only "tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition" and instead embrace "Christianity's misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is the set of beliefs that includes:

1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

...

As Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, recently noted,

The elephant in the Christian church today is that we are not seeing robust disciple-making taking place. You are more likely to find evangelicals affirming that there is more than one way to get to heaven today than you were 15 or 20 years ago. Why? We've done great at getting them in the door and occupying their spiritual appetites, but we've done terrible at actually growing them up and grounding them in the faith.

Although no tradition is entirely without blame, evangelicalism bears a large share of the responsibility. Many of our churches have wholly embraced therapeutic language and concepts while all but abandoning the role of catechesis.

Almost every nondenominational congregation has a worship leader, and yet only a few have a catechist. Sunday school classes may teach the young the stories of the Bible, but few provide in-depth teaching on theology. New adult believers have it even worse. They may be asked to attend a brief class, but doctrine is given short shrift, if presented at all. If they do ask about the content of their faith, what they are expected to believe, they may be given a pamphlet or a book recommendation and a map to the nearest Christian bookstore.

While we have mastered the task of making converts we are by and large failing, as Stetzer says, in our duty of making disciples. Teaching the basic doctrines of the faith is not an optional task, a project that we can undertake if we have time left over from our prayer breakfasts and small group meetings—it is a matter of eternal consequence. ...

Deists Who Love Jesus (and Talk Like Freud)  by Joe Carter
http://thegospelcoalition.org/article/deists-who-love-jesus-and-talk-like-freud/