I’ve been in lots of conversations around the subject of discipleship or disciple making in recent days. It’s prompted a lot of thoughts around the whole idea of making disciples. How do you know whether or not your congregation or ministry is actually making disciples? How do you measure it? How do you know whether or not you’re accomplishing the mission that Jesus entrusted to his followers?
I think most of us embrace the idea of making disciples. I think we know we’re supposed to be about making disciples of the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus commanded us. Such ideas or concepts are often embedded in our mission statements and organizing documents and even adorn the walls and hallways in our facilities.
So how do you know whether or not you’re getting the job done? I think in the past, we’ve made certain assumptions about discipleship that haven’t necessarily helped us in the work of making disciples. I want to explore a couple of those today.
First, I think we’ve often assumed that work of discipleship was taking place if people were showing up to the various programming efforts of the church. Are people coming to our weekly worship services? Are they plugging into various Christian education efforts, whether it be Sunday school classes, special seminars, small groups, children or youth ministry programs, vacation bible school or the like? I think we assumed that if people were showing up for the programming offered, then disciples were being made. We assumed that participation equated to discipleship.
There’s another interesting aspect to our view of discipleship that I think needs to be explored. Often, we have divided the work of evangelism and discipleship. I was raised with the idea that evangelism and discipleship were two different efforts in the ministry of the local church. Evangelism was the work of reaching people who did not follow Christ – demonstrating and proclaiming the Good News of Jesus and calling unbelieving folks to put their faith in Christ. Discipleship was the work of spiritually growing the folks who had already made the decision to trust Jesus. Evangelism got them in the door, discipleship grew them into maturity. We assumed that evangelism equated outreach and discipleship equated growth or maturity.
Additionally, in our efforts to disciple folks, there was often an assumption that more knowledge or information would lead to greater maturity in Christ. Biblically illiteracy is rampant and if we just get these folks to understand their Bible, they’ll become more mature as followers of Jesus. If we can get them to “know” more about their faith, then they’ll live it out more faithfully. Here’s the problem with that line of thinking: I know a lot about health, nutrition and fitness but that knowledge doesn’t necessarily impact the way I live most of the time (blasted tasty and tempting cinnamon rolls!). It hasn’t changed my weight or my waistline. We assumed that knowledge equated obedience.
There’s a lot to explore just in these three assumptions alone. In the coming weeks I want to spend some time fleshing out what it means to make disciples and how we can become more faithful and effective in the work that Jesus calls us to do.
Christ’s Peace,
Lance
CGGC eNews—Vol. 15, No. 34
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