Athol Gill worked in Australia as a professor of New Testament and a church pastor. Thus he is able to bring together the expertise of academics and the experience of practics in this book on discipleship, published just after his untimely death.
Using the "Life on the Road" motif, Gill takes the reader on a journey through discipleship, covering some important mileposts: the call, the cost, possessions, mission, power, prayer, and grace. The approach to each topic is a tribute to the author's skills in exegesis and exposition. Each chapter ends with questions for discussion, thus providing an easy format j for a seminar on discipleship.
The author has some challenging things to say, especially to Western Protestant churches. Charging them of tailoring the gospel to the needs of individualism and consumerism, Gill expresses his concern that there are very few "prophetic figures" living out gospel discipleship. He denounces materialism as irreconcilable with the demands of God. To him, disciple ship is "a reversal of value judgments about people, status, and titles."
I have three reservations on the book. First, the author sometimes re sorts to lengthy biblical quotations in the text. Second, like many other Christians with a genuine concern for the poor and underprivileged, the author makes God to be an exclusive God of the poor. God exists among the poor no doubt, but He also exists among every other group as well. Third, the author sometimes leaps from argument to conclusion, and one could query the content of the latter when strictly placed against the former.
