Following Jesus is a wild, demanding call that refuses to be tamed by comfort, respectability, or institutional maintenance.
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Understand
Overview
The Wildness We've Been Avoiding
I came to faith in a house full of ex-prostitutes, drug dealers, gays, punks and goths. We stumbled into a little fundamentalist church in Melbourne and somehow stayed. Those older folk had no clue what to do with us, but they did know how to love and how to pray. They somehow managed to reach across the cultural divide to lovingly embrace us and include us in the bigger church family. The early years of our discipleship were worked out in the context of that little church. That is what Untamed Discipleship looks like at ground level: ordinary people crossing uncomfortable distances because the love of Jesus is stronger than the fear of the unfamiliar.
Alan and I eventually led South Melbourne Restoration Community for over sixteen years. We soon became known as something of a "freak" church, a haven for people who didn't fit in at regular churches. "South" lived the raw stuff of the gospel. With Jesus firmly at our center, we had an open-table policy, all the weird and wonderful were welcome. Our experience taught us that most people needed to feel a sense of belonging before they believed. And they needed acceptance before they could even begin to understand what repentance or transformation might look like. When you invite the messiness of broken humanity, you also invite amazing grace.
Alan and I eventually led South Melbourne Restoration Community for over sixteen years.
The Western church has quietly traded that kind of life for something far more manageable. We have constructed churches that reflect our culture, filled with people who look just like us, built around what it feels like to be safe rather than what it means to be sent. Untamed Discipleship is the reckoning with that trade. It confronts the idols of comfort, respectability, and institutional maintenance that paralyze us, and calls us back to the wild, demanding way of Jesus, the one who practiced active proximity with the bungled, the broken, and the bent, and trusted his message into the hands of believers, doubters, ex-terrorists, prostitutes, and a betrayer.
The usual question
How do I grow as a Christian and find a church that meets my needs?
In what ways have we domesticated our image of Jesus to fit our need for personal safety and social comfort, and what would it cost us to follow the real one?
Jesus modeled a different type of purity — a holiness of engagement, not exclusion.
Deb Hirsch, Redeeming Sex
The Model
The Untamed Triad
The Untamed Triad is not a curriculum to be completed but a reckoning to be lived. Each movement builds on the one before it: you cannot unmask your domestic idols until you have genuinely encountered the wild God who refuses to confirm them, and you cannot live sent in everyday culture until you have let that encounter do its destabilizing, liberating work in you.
01
Encountering the Wild God
The Jesus who hangs around believers, doubters, ex-terrorists, prostitutes, and a betrayer, and trusts himself and his message into the hands of these types of people, is not the Jesus most of our churches have on offer. Encountering the wild God means sitting with the ragtag bunch of folks that hung around him in those three world-changing years that were his ministry, and asking honestly whether the Jesus we follow would be welcome in our own congregation. This encounter is where Untamed Discipleship begins, and it is rarely comfortable.
02
Unmasking Domestic Idols
Most of our churches are structured around what social set theorists call bounded sets, hard at the edges, soft at the center, built around conformity to accepted beliefs and behaviors. Substituting the checking of boxes for active relationship with Jesus always leads toward a coercive and controlling religion. Unmasking domestic idols means tracing how our love of the familiar over the unknown, the local over the universal, has become a substitute for the kingdom. It is honest, often painful work, because the idols are usually dressed in the language of faithfulness.
03
Living Sent in Everyday Culture
Jesus the Holy One often went out of his way to connect with, or be seen with, those who the holy ones of the day would have never thought of entertaining. Living sent means doing the same in the streets, households, and neighborhoods we actually inhabit. It means discipling our noses, training our bodies to get beyond our psychological and visceral responses, so we can move toward those we feel uncomfortable with. The message of the gospel propels us toward connection, not managed distance.
Domestic Familiarity vs. Wild Discipleship
Domestic FamiliarityWild Discipleship
The center of community lifeDomestic FamiliarityRules, regulations, and behavioral checklists that mark who is in and who is outWild DiscipleshipJesus as the absolute epicenter, a living, dynamic center that draws people rather than fences them out
How holiness worksDomestic FamiliarityHoliness as separation, keeping a safe distance from the unclean to protect purityWild DiscipleshipHoliness as engagement, a redemptive, world-embracing holiness that does not separate itself from brokenness but liberates it
The shape of discipleshipDomestic FamiliarityA cookie-cutter spiritual production line where everyone gets processed in the same way and at the same timeWild DiscipleshipA journey that honors the uniqueness of the person, their story, and their particular angle of approach to God
Who the church is forDomestic FamiliarityA sanitized gathering for those who already behave correctly, with the messy quietly discouragedWild DiscipleshipA haven for the weird and wonderful, people who needed to feel belonging before they could believe
The role of the leaderDomestic FamiliarityThe control freak who takes it upon themselves to correct people's lives and put them back on trackWild DiscipleshipThe priest who introduces people to Jesus and then gets out of the way, trusting that Jesus is better at changing people than we are
What motivates changeDomestic FamiliarityGuilt, suspicion, and conditional approval that demand behavioral conformity before offering belongingWild DiscipleshipGrace, the sheer costliness of it, which, when truly encountered, leads to response-ability in its truest sense
The Western church has largely traded the apostolic risk of the first followers for the managed predictability of religious consumers. Untamed Discipleship names what was lost and calls us back to the untamed and vibrant way of following Jesus that no bounded set of rules can contain.
Examine
Historical Context
Where This Restlessness Comes From
Untamed Discipleship did not begin as a theory. It began in a community house in Melbourne, Australia, where ex-prostitutes, drug dealers, punks, and goths were finding Jesus together, and nobody had a tidy plan for what came next. Alan and I wrote Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship (Baker, 2010) out of that lived pressure, the pressure of leading South Melbourne Restoration Community, a so-called "freak church" that became a last-stop haven for people who couldn't survive Christianity anywhere else. The seed of the idea was also carried into Redeeming Sex (IVP, 2015), where I argued that following Jesus in a radically untamed way is the only honest response to a world drowning in sexual confusion and religious performance. The restlessness behind Untamed Discipleship is ancient. The desert fathers and mothers fled the institutional comforts of fourth-century Christianity to seek God in the wilderness. Francis of Assisi stripped off his wealthy inheritance and walked straight into the leper colonies his culture feared. The Celtic missionary monks crossed the most inhospitable borders of the known world, carrying the gospel not as a program but as a life. What links them all is a refusal to let respectability domesticate the call of Christ. That same refusal is what Untamed Discipleship asks of us now.
4th century
The desert fathers and mothers abandoned the settled comfort of institutional Christianity to pursue God in the wilderness, pioneering a pattern of holy dissatisfaction with religious domestication.
Early 13th century
Francis of Assisi surrendered his inheritance and embraced lepers and the poor, embodying the border-crossing mission that Untamed Discipleship recovers.
1900s
Early 1990s, Melbourne, AustraliaAlan and Deb Hirsch began leading South Melbourne Restoration Community, a "freak church" that became the lived laboratory for what an untamed, apostolically resilient community could look like.
2000s
2010Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship (Baker Books), co-authored with Alan Hirsch, gave the movement its name and its framework, winning wide recognition across the missional church world.
2015Redeeming Sex (IVP Books) extended the Untamed argument into the most avoided territory the Western church faces, insisting that discipleship without honesty about sexuality is not discipleship at all.
Field Studies
When the Wild Way Worked
Untamed Discipleship is not a slogan; it is a practice that leaves marks on real people in real places. These stories come from the communities where Alan and I tested whether any of this was actually true.
Case study
The Freak Church That Became a Family
South Melbourne Restoration Community became known as a "freak church", a last-stop haven for people who didn't fit in at regular churches. With Jesus firmly at the center and an open-table policy, it drew ex-prostitutes, schizophrenics, LGBT folk, and disillusioned Christians who were barely hanging on to their faith.
Case study
Pat and the Pajama-Top Disciples
Before South, a group of about twelve ex-prostitutes, drug dealers, gays, punks, and goths walked into a conservative fundamentalist church one Sunday morning. The pastor, Pat, chose embrace over exclusion and turned a prayer meeting's answer into a discipleship community.
Case study
Stuart, Ben, and the Kingdom Value of Listening
Stuart and Ben both worked as prostitutes on a street corner near where Deb lived. When they hit an impasse in their relationship, Deb sat in the middle of their argument and taught them to listen, be kind, and forgive, all kingdom values, without leading with a moral lecture.
Apply
Formation
Living Sent, Starting Now
Step 1
Step 1
Name the comfort zone you have been protecting; bring it honestly before Jesus before you do anything else.
Step 2
Step 2
Identify one person in your neighborhood or workplace you have been avoiding; take a step toward them this week.
Step 3
Step 3
Practice active proximity: eat a meal, share a table, listen before you speak or explain.
Step 4
Step 4
Invite the mess. Open your home to someone whose life does not fit the tidy picture of your current circle.
Step 5
Step 5
Orient everything toward Jesus as center, not toward the rules and regulations that too easily replace him.
Step 6
Step 6
Let people journey in a way that makes sense to them; introduce them to Jesus, then get out of the way.
Reflection
Where Has Comfort Tamed You?
What image of Jesus have you constructed that conveniently never asks you to cross a cultural, social, or relational line?
Where have you substituted checking theological or moral boxes for an actual, living relationship with Jesus and the people he loves?
Is your church 'welcoming and mutually transforming,' or has welcome become a word that means something far smaller than what Jesus practiced?
What would it look like for your community to practice active proximity, to go out of your way to be seen with those the 'holy ones' of your day would never entertain?
When you think about the people your community currently does not include, what is the honest reason they are absent?
Go deeper
Watch for the Distortion
How We Tame the Wild Call
Every generation finds its own way to domesticate Jesus and call it faithfulness. Untamed Discipleship names those distortions plainly, because the cost of leaving them unnamed is that suffering people keep getting driven away from the very One who could heal them.
Holiness as quarantine from the unclean
This reads holiness as fragile, something preserved by keeping safe distance from the wrong kinds of people. But the holiness Jesus modeled was redemptive and world-embracing, not self-protecting. He practiced active proximity with those the religious establishment would never have entertained. When our purity instinct becomes a purity barrier, we have exchanged the holiness of Jesus for a counterfeit form of moralism.
Belonging conditional on prior conformity
This version of discipleship demands that people clean up, sort out, and sign on before they are welcomed in. It reverses the order Jesus practiced. At South Melbourne we learned the hard way that most people need to feel a sense of belonging before they believe, and acceptance before they can begin to understand what repentance or transformation might look like. Conditional belonging is not the gospel; it is a theological litmus test dressed up as one.
Activity without proximity
It is possible to serve the poor from a very safe distance and never actually encounter them. Untamed Discipleship requires more than giving; it requires getting up close and personal. If our visceral responses, our discomfort, our noses, our fear, are restricting us from engagement, then those responses need to be discipled. We follow a Jesus who bridged the gap between the us and the them, and we are called to do the same.
Theology formulated without relationship
Many people have formulated their theological positions devoid of any real contact with the very people those positions are about. But theology is supposed to be worked out in the robustness of human relationships, with all the love, pain, and angst that accompanies them. Radical engagement and genuine love of the other earns us the right to speak. Theology that is pre-pain must be treated with suspicion.
Q&A
Where the Wild Things Begin
Getting Started
This sounds demanding. Where does someone actually begin?
Start with honesty. Name the comfort zone you have been protecting and bring it to Jesus before you try to dismantle it. Untamed Discipleship does not begin with a heroic act; it begins with the willingness to look at what we have been quietly defending, and to ask whether Jesus would recognize it as faithfulness.
Does Untamed Discipleship mean abandoning structure and community?
Not at all. It means placing Jesus, not our cultural expressions, not our rules, at the absolute center of community life. The call is to be welcoming and mutually transforming: genuinely open to all people while remaining committed to Jesus and his way. Structure that serves that center is life-giving. Structure that replaces that center becomes a cage.
The Church's Role
What does a church shaped by Untamed Discipleship actually look like?
It looks like a community where the weird and wonderful are welcome, where people feel they can be real without risking rejection, where the table is set low and open. At South Melbourne we learned that when you invite the messiness of broken humanity, you also invite amazing grace. A missionary tribe is not tidy, but it is alive.
How do we stay theologically grounded while being this open?
By keeping Jesus, not our moral policies, as the solid, vibrant center. A centered community has a well-articulated theological heart and soft, permeable edges. The more messy the community, the more the members rely on the strength and conviction of the leadership to keep pointing everyone toward Jesus. Openness and conviction are not opposites; they need each other.
Personal Discipleship
What does it mean to 'disciple my nose', to train my body for proximity?
It means recognizing that our psychological and visceral responses, discomfort, fear, even physical repulsion, can keep us from the very people Jesus went out of his way to reach. If those responses are restricting our engagement, they need to be brought under the lordship of Christ just as much as our thoughts and words do. The gospel propels us toward connection, not comfortable distance.
Is it possible to lead with embrace without abandoning conviction?
Yes, and it is necessary. Embrace is not the absence of conviction; it is the precondition for it to be heard. As one of my friends puts it, embrace is theology. When we lead with genuine love and active proximity, we earn the relational trust that makes honest conversation possible. Leading with position before posture has cost the church far more than it has ever gained.
If something in this pathway has made you uncomfortable, that discomfort is worth paying attention to. Untamed Discipleship begins not with a program but with a person, Jesus, placed firmly at the center, and one deliberate step toward someone you have been quietly avoiding. That step, taken in his name, is where the adventure starts.
