Funko Pop Discipleship

I never really cared much for Funko Pops. Being a Gen Xer they didn't simply resonated with me. I preferred more realistic collectibles. Until my wife and kids gave me a Gandalf Funko Pop as a gift. But what really got me converted to the Funko craze was their Christmas/birthday present of the entire Jaws movie Funko Pop set (one of my favorite movies of all time, by the way). Needless to say that the set has become one of my most treasured possessions.

But Funko Pops not only remind me of the things I enjoy more from pop culture but they also remind me of a tendency I find within youth ministry when it comes to the spiritual formation of our students: what I call “Funko Pop Discipleship.”

What is Funko Pop Discipleship?

Put simply it is an approach to discipleship that reduces it to providing information to students and specifically, doctrinal or theological information. In other words, this is an approach to discipleship primarily oriented to our students´ heads.

Funko Pop Discipleship is being increasingly seen as the remedy to the entertainment-driven-and-saturated-youth ministry that has been the norm for so many years, and to the reality of biblical and doctrinal illiteracy in large numbers of Christian students today.

While it is true that our youth ministries need to be more theologically grounded and oriented, and while it is also true that our students need more biblical and doctrinal knowledge, there is a problem with this approach to discipleship.

The Problem with Funko Pop Discipleship

Funko Pop Discipleship is problematic in two fundamental interrelated areas. First, it is based on an inadequate view of the human person. Behind every approach to discipleship there is a set of assumptions about the nature of human persons, that is, the kind of creatures we are.[1] Funko Pop Discipleship views students as having a really, really big head and a little tiny body. In other words, it reduces students to “thinking things.”

However, according to Scripture, the essence of the human person is not the intellect but what the Bible calls “the heart.” This is not a reference the blood-pumping organ nor is it a reference to our emotions but to the seat of human life, the core of our being from where our thoughts, emotions and actions come from (Matthew 15:19).

Secondly, Funko Pop Discipleship is also based on a faulty understanding of what theology really is. What I mean by that, is that this approach to discipleship understands theology as having the “orthodox” (the right theological thought and knowledge) as its goal. While this is true that right doctrine is essential to discipleship we must not reduce it to orthodoxy. Theology has other goals besides right theological thinking. Theology has the right practices and right feelings also as its goals.

Thus, these two inadequate understandings form the basis for Funko Discipleship. It views students as primarily “thinking things” and the goal of discipleship will be to supply the right kind of theological propositions for them to have the right theological knowledge. But this leads to a faulty view of sanctification known as intellectualism – as if our students grow because of the increasing amount of right doctrinal knowledge they possess.

For example, it is not uncommon to find that this approach to discipleship produces students that have an impressive knowledge of the doctrine of prayer, but these students have an almost non-existing prayer life. Other students in this approach to discipleship can explain the meaning of the “regulative principle of worship” while they are apathetic or indifferent or emotionless when it comes to worship the Lord.

A More Balanced Approach to Discipleship

We need a more holistic approach to discipleship. That is, a discipleship that views our students not only as big heads with tiny bodies but one that recognizes that discipleship involves not only information but spiritual transformation in all the areas of their being: mind, heart and hands. In other words, we need to address not only the head or the intellect, but also the heart´s affections and the will, that is, behavior and actions.

Those who minister to students, whether it is parents or youth pastors, need to remember that the goal of discipleship is for our students to love the Lord their God with “all their heart and with all their soul and with all their might” (Dt. 6:5).

Every time I look at the Funko Pops in my office I am reminded of the danger of Funko Pop Discipleship in my own student ministry. Perhaps, regardless of how you feel about Funko Pops, it will not be a bad idea for you to get one, or if you already have one or more, let them also serve as visual reminders of this faulty approach to student discipleship.