Willard's book is a strong call for churches to recover their chief purpose, the "making of disciples." Discipleship is the basis of the call of the ministry of Jesus Christ and the Great Commission. It is discipleship that permits, in a tangible way, heaven reality on earth through the lives of those striving to be like Christ.
"A fundamental mistake of the conservative side of the American church today, and much of the Western church, is that it takes as its basic goal to get as many people as possible ready to die and go to heaven. It aims to get people into heaven rather than to get heaven into people.
Now, the project thus understood and practiced is self-defeating. It implodes upon itself because it creates groups of people who may be ready to die, but clearly are not ready to live.
The way to get as many people into heaven as you can is to get heaven into as many people as you can -- that is, to follow the path of genuine spiritual transformation or full-throttle discipleship to Jesus Christ. When we are counting up results we also need to keep in mind the multitudes of people (surrounded by churches) who will not be in heaven because they have never, to their knowledge, seen the reality of Christ in a living human being (Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, 238-9)."
