When Jesus said "follow me" he meant it. Lots of us Christians don't really get that. We are pretty happy to declare that he is the boss on Sunday morning services, but I think we have stopped short of really following him.

I've read a lot recently from people like Rob Bell, Steve Chalke and Shane Claiborne that Jesus really meant what he said about peacemakers being the children of God. Was his world-saving demonstation of non-violence just for him in that situation, or was that something he meant for us to follow him in?

In a recent article in Christianity Today, Ron Sider has challanged us to take this seriously:

If Christians with both just-war and pacifist convictions truly mean what they have been saying for centuries about war and peace, then they have no choice. Nonviolence has worked. It's time to invest large amounts of money and time in serious training and deployment. We cannot know ahead of time what will happen. But we already know that unless we do this, our Christian rhetoric about war will be both hypocritical and dishonest.

I keep thinking to myself, what would the world look like if the church actually looked like this? And where do I start in getting there?