As I’ve discussed the making of disciples with church planters and church leaders and they admit disciples are not being made I find myself saying this line over and over again (Your discipleship tools are too weak). This is the diagnoses I find most accurate for so many churches and ministries. Their discipleship is Sunday worship, community groups and a class a year. I find myself wanting to ask, “are you really TRYING to make disciples or are you trying to check it off the list so you can get on with what you believe is the REAL mission?” (which is usually either “being missional” or balancing the four E’s or the the 4 W’s or some other construction of 4 different missions).
So what is the test of an effective discipleship process? How do you know when your process is intense and complete enough? Jesus gives us that answer in the Great Commission when he describes discipleship as “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Notice –
- “teaching them to obey” means teaching without obedience is not really a part of discipleship (which passes for the vast majority of what we think of as discipleship). There’s a word in English for teaching with a direct outcome focus and that word is training. If your discipleship isn’t training (if it’s only teaching) it’s not discipleship.
- “obey everything I have commanded you” which means discipleship must be comprehensive. Most people ignore this line with a “sigh” and saying to themselves “see, its impossible”. We have an enlightenment definition of comprehensive knowledge but I think both Jesus and the disciples thought this was entirely possible maybe in a 1-2 year process. Paul says to the Ephesian elders after 2 years “I didn’t shrink from declaring all that God wants you to know.” (Acts 20:27) So we move on to part 27 in our 49 part series through the book of Luke not considering that we are actually responsible to train each disciple in our care to obey “everything”. This requires an aggressive, comprehensive, systematic plan for discipleship.
So let’s try this approach. Erase from your mind what is “practical” in your church or context and let yourself dream for just a moment. Five brand new Christians come to you for training. You have no tools yet (no worship service, no small groups, no classes etc.). What would you design that would turn these 5 into fully trainied and obedient disciples? When you’re done architecting the process ask yourself why we are not willing to sacrfice our sacred cows to weild tools strong enough for the task we are given. Until we are we’ll never stop being baffled by why our weak tools simply don’t work.
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