The Radical Disciple

The Radical Disciple invites the followers of Christ to take seriously the scriptural mandate to love God and neighbor. The cost of contemporary discipleship is just as high now as it was in the early days of the Christian church. But the sharp edge of the gospel mandate has been watered down. The hard passages of the Bible have been ignored by a church that has become too comfortable with the economic and political status quo.

But when a disciple sidesteps the call of God to radically embrace the poor of the world, then that disciple also sidesteps the comfort and the inheritance that God holds for God's faithful people.

We Christians represent a radical alternative to the greed, complacency, and violence of our age. The promise for us is the promise of community and celebration, joy and peace. But we must follow the way of the cross,which is just as relevant and compelling for us as it was for Jesus two thousand years ago.

So we have set before us in these pages a prescription for the servanthood that is required of us. By assuming the yoke of a servant, we claim joy and purpose for our lives. Read this book and gain insight into the meaning of these words for Christians and the church today.

""I strongly recommend The Radical Disciple to every person who senses how terribly addicted to greed and violence our society and the rest of the world is becoming, and yet refuses to give up hope! This book is especially important to all who recognize that Jesus confronted just such a world and that he taught and demonstrated exactly how we should respond to it. Bill Doulos writes eloquently and with passion about such things precisely because he himself has been putting those teachings into practice in dramatic, concrete ways for many years.""
--Don Mosley, Jubilee Partners, Comer, GA

""In writing about faith, culture, justice, and power, Bill Doulos draws us to see ourselves and our neighbors differently. Jesus is among us, and he is in the midst of the silenced and often messy neighborhoods that are frequently marginalized by society's habits and the fears and addictions that too often accompany despair. Doulos believes we are invited to follow Jesus, and even though these essays were written in the 1970s they are clear and compelling today.""
--Mark Lau Branson, Homer Goddard Professor of the Laity, Fuller Theological Seminary; coauthor (with Juan Martinez) of Churches, Cultures and Leadership.

""I knew Bill Lane in college, and Bill Doulos in seminary. I have known him sporadically over the past forty years. Bill, as much as any person I have known, has tried to make his life cohere with his words. In this book we hear Bill forty years ago when his disappointment with the church and himself gave a hard edge to his presentation of the gospel message to give away everything that binds us to the world and follow Jesus. The offense that this message gives is not finally due to Bill's style, but to the unvarnished content of the gospel. And Bill gets that right. I like Bill's Afterword best. In it we hear him reconciled to the church and himself through the hard experience of living out the gospel. I hope we can yet hear the same gospel message from Bill enhanced by the experiences of the last forty years.""
--Jack Rogers, Moderator of the 213th General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); Author, Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church


Bill Lane Doulos is a deacon in the Episcopal Church who has worked with the poor and the homeless for forty years. He currently serves at the Church of Our Saviour in San Gabriel, California, as the director of Jubilee Homes, four facilities that house fifty adult men and women recovering from addiction. He is also the author of A Journey of Comp