No Part Lacking

One of the results of this last year’s leadership conference was that we took a look at how the different ministries at our church work together to fulfill the full mandate of the great commission to make disciples. This is not an easy task, since the natural direction of church activities is most often from the God-empowered making of disciples towards the people-powered sustaining of programs. Here is the foundational passage:

Matthew 28:18-20 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Although this passage (along with the parallel in Acts 1:8 where Jesus says: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”) has long been used as a rallying cry for the modern missions movement (not inappropriately), it is, at its heart, a call to making disciples wherever the Christian finds himself or herself. I might add that for the original listeners, what is now Washington State would have been just about as end-of-the-earth as things could get.

From this passage we learn that:

1) It Takes Disciples to Make Disciples

2) It Takes God to Make Disciples

3) It Takes Commitment to Be a Disciple

4) It Takes Teaching to Make Disciples

5) It Takes Obedience to Be a Disciple

6) Discipleship is Done in the Presence of Christ

If any one of these parts is lacking the whole discipleship process will fail to achieve what God intends it to accomplish. It is probably safe to say that the failure of most people’s discipleship attempts are a direct result of their lacking one or more of the above criteria. Suffice it to say that discipleship must take place in community, by God’s power, and with a heart that is willing to learn from others and submit to God. Otherwise it is doomed from the beginning to fall short of God’s desire.

Once this has been said, there are certain things that are concrete parts of the disciple-making process that need to be balanced in order to have a church obey the great commission effectively. For convenience I have broken theses into two separate categories: 1) those that help an individual progress from being a lost unbeliever to becoming a mature spiritual leader and 2) those things that are important for all people at all times in their Christian walk if they want to mature in Christ. The first should be more or less done in order (e.g. we should not spend our time equipping pagans to do effective ministry – should they at some point get saved; nor should we put in leadership people who do not have a strong foundation in their walk with the Lord). The second list contains those things that all believers need regardless of maturity.

Making Disciples

1) Evangelism (Helping People to Christ)

2) Assimilation (Helping People to Church)

3) Edification (Helping People to Follow Christ)

4) Equipping (Helping People to Be Ready for Ministry)

5) Leadership (Helping People to Lead Others)

Strengthening Disciples

1) Admonition (Helping People to Stop Sinning)

2) Encouragement (Helping People to Live Faithfully)

3) Education (Helping People to Know What They Believe)

4) Fellowship (Helping People to Build Christian Friendships)

5) Worship (Helping People to Approach God)

At a later date I intend (God willing) to dedicate a blog page to each one of these topics. I believe that the danger facing most churches is that they get good at one or two things from each list and then quit. There are a variety of reasons for this. Everyone prefers to do what they do well. People attend churches that do the things that they like well (and get upset when they see time, effort, and resources going to other things). Often the attitude is taken that there is a church or parachurch organization in town that does the other things well for us and people can go there to get what we lack. (A foot note: a parachurch organization is something that was designed to “come alongside” the church and help them do things that they couldn’t do alone. Included would be most mission boards, evangelistic crusades, youth organizations, Christian seminars, Christian conference centers, Christian counseling centers, Christian schools, and theological seminaries. I do not object to these groups filling special needs, especially the extreme needs or the needs that require extensive special training; it is when the church quits doing it’s own job in the wake of parachurch organizations that there is something wrong: to not evangelize because Billy Graham has done the job for you is just not right.) If we want to see discipleship done (even better: done well) we will need to make sure that we are doing the above tasks. Not every program or meeting can be expected to do all of them simultaneously (the best way to accomplish nothing is to try to accomplish everything immediately), but as a whole, what we do as a church should at different times and in different places meet the needs of those honestly seeking to be disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.