Growing a Culture of Discipleship

Growing a Culture of Discipleship

Jay Wegter, Editor, Compiler

Adapted from The Vine Project, a Book by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne

Here are some of the most common ways that churches attempt to produce a change in the direction of discipleship or ‘vine work’:

• Preaching a sermon on disciple-making,
• Start some one-on-one Bible reading,
• Add disciple-making to the goals of the church for the year,
• Try harder with welcoming newcomers,
• Run a course on how to share your faith with outsiders.

But, adding some alterations to the above ‘trellises’ usually does not produce true change because the trellises are not designed to optimize and facilitate vine work. The whole culture must change, but you can’t change the culture by working on the culture. Why? Because the culture is what you have become as a church, the whole way you do things, both formal and informal. Church culture is made up of decades of idea-driven practices at every level of church life. But you can work on the way people think (pp. 30-32). Most Christian shepherds are either strongly a Bible guy or a leadership guy. This means you are going to approach the problem of a lack of discipleship through your area of strength. Now because both are necessary, it is vital that we know the phases by which change occurs:

Phase One: sharpen your convictions—dig into the Word and theology; clarify what you believe about disciple-making, ecclesiology, and ministry.

Phase Two: Reform your personal culture; make sure that your convictions have penetrated the culture of your own life—that you are demonstrating your convictions by how you live and how you minister to others.

Phase Three: Loving, honest evaluation—undertake clear-eyed examination of everything that happens in the church to see how well or how poorly it accords with your convictions (i.e. what areas of ministry and activity best express the convictions, and what areas do not).

Phase Four: Work out what you are to stop doing and start doing; plan new pathways for disciple-making and how to work them out and how to implement them over time.

Phase Five: Maintain momentum—monitor and review how the project is unfolding; look at obstacles and work out how to overcome them.

PHASE ONE: Sharpen your Convictions

Clarity on core convictions is vital; a lack of shared core convictions will stymie what we are trying to do together under God. And, also because of a lack of alignment between convictions and practice it will generate a host of miscellaneous things that do not reflect your convictions. Only when we address both beliefs and practice, both convictions and structures, are you going to see real change (pp. 43-45). There are five core convictions built around five key questions related to discipleship:

• Why make disciples, and why is discipleship central in ecclesiology?
• What is a disciple as defined by Jesus and the Apostles?
• How exactly are disciples made, is it a passive or active process?
• Who makes disciples, does it take a disciple to make a disciple?
• Where do we make disciples? Primarily on the church campus?

In answer to why make disciples? We know that at one time we were darkness, and now we are light in the Lord (Eph 5:8). Our world, even with all its wonders and beauty and goodness and love relationships, is rightly described as ‘this present darkness’ (Eph 6:12). This is an important reason why disciple-making is God’s rescue mission for people trapped in escapable darkness (2 Cor 4:3). Our world is not neutral territory (1 Jn 5:19).

This present darkness constantly exerts a dulling shrouding effect upon our lives. It saps out of us the urgency of making disciples. It lulls us into self-protective complacency and a comfortable week-by-week church existence while the world around us is going to hell in a hand basket. So deep is this prevailing darkness that we sleep well at night without a thought of how lost and blind are neighbors and friends are and how desperate the plight is of the millions who remain in darkness. When we lose sight of the magnitude of the power of God in just one person’s conversion, we will tend to naturalize or humanize conversion (pp. 54-55, 57).

In answer to the question, what is a disciple? It is valuable to examine how a church made up of genuine disciples would look. If the majority of those who claim to follow Christ were nurtured to maturity through intimate, accountable relationships centered on the essentials of God’s Word, then self-initiating reproducing disciples of Christ would be the result (see this quote from Howard Hendricks note) (p. 61).

Is disciple-making primarily personal, intimate investment in another, OR is it also much more public in church life—joined to the everyday rhythms of church life? Certainly, the latter must be involved as a vital factor in rejuvenating churches (pp. 62-63). What is a disciple? That question is answered by the term, Christ learner. Rather than just mastering a body of knowledge from what is taught in a classroom, a disciple of Christ (as in the first Century) is one who learns from Jesus a way of life based upon an understanding of certain truths about reality. The goal was not only to know what their teacher knew, but to be like their teacher, to walk in his ways—in his knowledge, wisdom, his whole way of life (Lu 6:40. Thus, following him and being with him was the routine way that the teaching was conveyed and mastered. Thus, a disciple is someone who follows Jesus, someone devoted to Jesus (pp. 64-65).

To learn Jesus as a Christ learner is to submit yourself to His teaching, to walk in His ways—this will mean adjusting, and in some cases leaving behind your current loyalties and commitments. Saving your old life is not an option. Co-crucifixion severs us from the old life, co-resurrection raises to the new life (2 Cor 5:14-15). This involves a decisive turning away from the old understanding and life and then embarking on a new life learned from his teacher. Repentance is involved because it is the clear recognition that the old life was lived in selfishness, and rebellion toward God. Jesus requires a repudiation—a radical ‘unlearning’ of our former way of life—and then submitting ourselves to Him our divine teacher who speaks the very words of the Father. Learning as a disciple is not filling a blank slate; it is replacing the markings from the dark domain. We are to make Christ learners of all the nations. A Christ-learner gladly wears his Savior’s yoke (Mt 11:29-30). For the yoke signifies being under the authority of Christ, his teacher. A disciple is committed to transformative learning. As we repent, our understanding changes radically. Transformed understanding changes the whole person, which involves a new way of being and living. This new way of living is characterized by obedience—we are to know, love, and keep His commandments (Mt 28:19-20) (pp. 67-70).

A disciple as a Christ-learner is not going through a stage of Christianity, nor is he involved in some subset of the Christian life. No, a Christ-learner is on a life-long path to keep and to live out all the Lord’s commandments daily, weekly, for the rest of his life. To be a Christ-learner is simply to be a genuine Christian. A body of Christ-learners is what makes up the church. That is a gathering of people who are learning Christ together—it is a transformative learning community.

Where do we make disciples? Making Christ learners is not something a church takes care of in a Sunday school class, or in a Wednesday night program, or in assigning one-on-one Bible reading pairs. Everything we do as God’s gathered people (as church) should be an exercise in the transformative learning of Christ (pp. 70-71). Christ-learner passages include: Rom 16:17; 1 Cor 14:31; Phil 4:9, 11; Col 1:5-7; Eph 4:19-24; Titus 3:14. We can see from these passages that words spoken and taught and then received and learned are the foundation for a totally new repentant way of life—to kill off the old me and then with a renewed mind embark on a whole new existence (Eph 4:19-24).

Learner-ship is all but extinct in many modern churches. Churches are weak because they do not have a culture of transformative learning. Without focus on transformative learning through the Word of God in the power of the Spirit of God, churches will produce professors of Christianity but not disciples of Christ. So, what is a disciple of Christ? The answer is: a forgiven sinner who is learning Christ in repentance, faith, and obedience. Transformative learning touches every sphere of life, especially in the transformational learning community that we call church (see page 75 for common views of what discipleship is) (pp. 72-74).

How do we make a disciple? There is no holy grail of methodology for disciple-making. When the apostles circulated around to revisit the churches, they were strengthening and encouraging the converts (Acts 14:21-22). The Thessalonians were faced with the constant tendency to lose sight of what’s important, to be distracted by half-truth alternatives and to grow weary and lose heart amidst multiple pressures (2 Thess 2:13-17). The central activity in making disciples is the proclamation of the Word of God. The Word is the plan and promise of God, centered on Jesus Christ (see purpose of God paragraph, p. 84). We study, memorize, meditate upon, and obey the Word in view of the utter seriousness of the opposing threat of this present age of darkness (pp. 84-85).

Who makes disciples? Weak, non-discipleship churches only hear the Word from the pulpit and from classes. But the Bible calls for the Word to be regularly spoken one to another (Rom 15:14). For in this ‘re-speak’ of the Word of God we see the very essence of how we learn Christ (pp. 86-87). ‘Word-less-ness’ (characteristic of mundane conversation) is a sign of a sick non-disciple-making culture. In a healthy disciples-making culture all of God’s people have their mouths open to speak God’s Word by His Spirit—to one another. They will do so in different ways, and contexts, taking up different opportunities, with different levels of gifts.

To ‘re-speak’ the Word is a function of love to God and to others (Eph 5:18-21). We sacrifice our own interests and comfort for the sake of those around us. Love motivates us to reach out to others with the gospel and to see church as an opportunity for the up-building or those around us (Rom 15:1-7). Love compels us to persevere in laying our lives down and suffering for the sake of seeing people come to Christ and learn Christ (1 Jn 3:16) (pp. 92-93). Spiritual growth involves putting off the sinful deeds of the body and putting on the new self— who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Col 3:10). We learn to obey all of Christ’s commandments and the suffering we endure for Christ produces endurance, character, and hope (Rom 5:1-5).

This kind of conviction in action is transformational. Believers are at different stages of putting off and putting on. There will be struggling; we will be faced with the realities of weariness, failure, faint-heartedness. But we stress that Christ learners are made patiently, and perseveringly over time (pp. 94-95). Christ learning meets people where they are at and seeks to move them forward. One size fits all programs are doomed to fail—Christ learning has differentiated learning (p. 97).

Reformed pastor, Richard Baxter insisted that personal conference (or personal instruction) must accompany (or be along the side of) public preaching. Regular personal instruction or catechizing of the members of the flock is the vital duty of shepherds he argued. We as shepherds need to know what the forward steps are to Christian maturity (pp. 98-99). The N.T. is clear regarding an ‘every member ministry’. But, over the decades, involvement in one’s church has generally been reduced to mean any general act of service or help rendered for the sake of the church, set up chairs, organize a program, lead a function, help with food, etc. rather than the Four P’s of Proclamation, Prayer, People, and Perseverance. Just how central is the Word of God in growing Christ learners? It is primary. Under the subject of ‘conviction’ it is important to look at four questions:

• What does the Bible says about Christians speaking the Word?
• What does it look like in practice?
• How are inhibitions to be overcome?
• How does an expository pulpit work together with an expository church?

Who makes disciples? Our speech is to be transformed like every aspect of our lives by the saving work of God. God not only gives sinners the gift of salvation, He also “puts speech or song in their mouths, and tells them to speak over and over again about how amazing salvation really is.” (p. 104). Christians grow in Christ-like love when they increasingly seek to do good to others by the words they speak. They will desire to move Christ learners to the right, toward greater spiritual maturity. Paul summarizes this activity as, “warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom” (Col 1:28-29). The Word of Christ is to dwell in us richly so that we are teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom (See Rom 12:16; 1 Cor 1:10Col 3; Eph 4-5; 1 Thess 4-5) (pp. 108-109).In practice speaking the Word will fit into patterns of ministry and church life as ‘democratized proclamation’. How different is this than merely sitting beneath the proclamation from the pulpit. (See pp. 111-113 for different ways we can pursue democratized proclamation.) Without this corporate proclamation of mutual edification, it shows that we don’t value the Word enough and we don’t love people enough. Our refusal to speak the Word to our brethren is a heart problem. Consequently, our hearts are not sufficiently fired by the wonder of God’s mercies and the majesty of Jesus Christ; and our hearts are not sufficiently full of love and compassion for those around us (pp. 111-113).

The role of believer priests is to offer spiritual sacrifices to God—to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9-10). The glory of Christ in the gospel answers the question, “How can a loveless human heart be transformed?” Answer: by the power of the Word and the Spirit, ministered to one another in prayerful persevering proclamation by His people (see Paul’s two prayers in Ephesians chapters one and three). People’s willingness to speak the Word to one another tends to be short-circuited by feelings of inadequacy. Seek to build confidence to speak the Word, (pp. 114-115).

Where are disciples made? Conviction: disciple-making takes place in a relational space of mutual care among Christ learners. See Bonhoeffer quote on why we need to speak the Word of God to one another (p. 124). If believers began to prayerfully proclaim the Word to one another, helping each other take a step toward the maturity, it would go a long way toward becoming an expository church and not simply a church with an expository pulpit.

To become a disciple-making church, Sunday must become a ‘theatre’ for disciple-making (p. 126). Out of our conviction that we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, comes the conviction in action that we are a community of Christ learners—and that our calling is to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called us into His marvelous light (p. 129). We must get it out of our heads that we are to make disciples first in some far-off land. After all, we are ‘the nations’ in the Great Commission—we are the Gentiles in the utter most parts of the earth that the original Jewish evangelists of Jerusalem were to go forth and reach! We were the strangers to the covenants and promises, without God in the world (see Eph 2:11-12) (p. 130).

Where do we make disciples? The home is the context for being a Christ-learner, but it has all but disappeared—that is the household as the pattern for discipling. This is a disaster not only for families but also for the church and its mission to the world (p. 135). In the renewed household the home is also a laboratory in which Christian leadership was practiced and seen. In the pastoral epistles a man’s pastoral leadership in the Christian household was a pointer towards his qualifications for leading the household of God, the church (1 Tim 3:4-5).

As in ‘men on target’, the fact that elders, overseers, and deacons are appointed because of their example and leadership and teaching in the family is a strong indication that each household was to be led toward Christ-like transformation by the grace of the gospel. Baxter’s mission was to catechize families—dealing with prayerlessness, spiritual carelessness, and worldliness. If the God-appointed leader in the home excelled at promoting family religion, think of what good could be done (pp. 138-139). Home is the nexus where church and world meet. The home is the key location for that to take place. (See questions on how homes can be a place of Christ learning, p. 141) (pp. 139-141).

The ultimate reason we make disciples: God’s goal for the whole world and the whole of human history is to glorify His beloved Son in the midst of the people He has rescued and transformed (Rom 8:29-30). God is putting His plan into effect, by rescuing people out of this present darkness and placing them into the kingdom of his Son by his death and resurrection— people who are being transformed to be like Jesus and who now have a sure and certain place around Christ’s throne in a new creation where evil and death are no more (p. 143).

Church is a transformational learning community. Transformational learning is another way of describing the totality of the Christian life. The Four P’s accompanying disciple-making should be the goal of every form of Christian ministry:

• Proclamation of the Word in multiple ways (especially mutual edification)
• Prayerful dependence on the Spirit (an awareness that the Spirit animates our ministries)
• People are God’s fellow-workers (Christ’s call upon us as a priesthood of believers)
• Perseverance step by step (disciple-making is a difficult process in a fallen world)

What is equipping? We help one another take right steps toward spiritual maturity: these steps are engage, evangelize, establish, and equip. Initial steps involve an unbeliever meeting and engaging with a Christian leading to the step of evangelizing. Next, as soon as the person has responded to the gospel they are to be established as a Christian to begin to grow in godliness. As Christians are established and grow in love and knowledge, they will be increasingly concerned not only to take steps to the right themselves, but also to help others do so. They will benefit from being equipped to do so through teaching, encouragement, coaching and prayer.

Shepherds by their preaching, teaching, training, and example equip every Christian to help those around them take a step to the right through the Four P’s. Growing Christ learners is not just something that happens to new believers. It is the basic activity that should be at the center of everything we do as a church. Sunday church ought to be a theater for disciple-making (pp. 147-149).

PHASE TWO: Reform your Personal Culture

The goal for learners of Christ is not just to know and remember Christ’s commands, but to obey them to live for Christ and seek to be like Christ in every word and deed. We cannot make Christ learners unless we show by our lives what learning Christ means (‘imitate us’—1 Cor 4:16; 1 Thess 1:6) (pp. 156-158).

The culture of the church will not change unless there is a critical mass of Christ learners who have caught the vision of moving themselves and others toward maturity. It takes sober self-examination to step up as an agent of change. The change you are proposing is not the change of program, structure, or model. It is fundamentally a transformation of lives by God through His Word and His Spirit. Positive transformational learning depends upon decisive unlearning of the false knowledge and life we once lived, and committing ourselves to learn Christ in a lifestyle of repentance and transformation (pp. 158-159).

The more spiritually mature we are, the more we will desire to ‘pick up the pace’ leaving behind our old life and counting as loss what we once considered to be gain. As we move toward maturity, the more starkly we will perceive the contrast between the light and darkness that remains in our lives (p. 162). Hearing, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting is not to be a solitary endeavor. All parts of the process can be usefully practiced in fellowship with others. The more we absorb and digest the truth of God’s Word, the more our trust and dependence upon God and His Word is nourished and strengthened, and the more we will be moved to cry out to God in intercession for our families, our neighbors, or friends and for the whole community of Christ learners. Prayer is central in the transformation of hearts. No strategy will avail without it (pp. 164-165). Begin to put into practice your sharpened convictions, you will want to see Sunday church become a theater for disciple-making; you will become a catalyst (p. 172). (transformation context, pp. 165-167) (A personal plan to redeem the time in learning Christ and to help others learn Christ, pp. 169-171).

PHASE THREE: Loving, Honest Evaluation

Is our own comfort and satisfaction more important than the salvation and growth of others? (p.

178. If there is to be change, it is essential to align Sunday church with your convictions. There is no point in an elaborate plan for change if it does not start with the messy reality of where people are. Each person is at a different stage of learnership. Thus, the first stage of evaluation is determining where your people are in terms of spiritual maturity. This list of degrees of spiritual maturity is designed to help you meet each person at his maturity level:

• Don’t know, vague: no one on your Vine Team knows where the person is spiritually.
• Engaged: non-Christian people who have come to your church within the last year.
• Evangelized: non-Christian people who have heard the gospel and a call to faith and repentance within the last year.
• Established, new: someone who has become a Christian within the last year.
• Established, stuck, static, or struggling: a person who has been a Christian for some time but seems to be stagnating spiritually or really struggling in their faith—showing no obvious signs of growth or of understanding godliness (no willingness to serve others).

• Established, growing: someone who has been a Christian for some time and shows signs of ongoing growth and godliness including a willingness to serve others.
• Equipped, ad hoc: someone who shows evidence of helping other Christ learners in the engaged, evangelized, or established stages to move them to the right through the Word, and prayer, but who has not received any particular training or help in doing so.
• Equipped—trained: someone who has received or is receiving training to help other learners move toward maturity through the Word and prayer, whether in a formal ministry structure, such as a small group, or informally.

Evaluate your ministries to map out a pathway to maturity: Print out a list for your entire congregation or groups, then, do your best to locate everyone in one of these stages of learnership (see p. 184 for list of levels of spiritual maturity). You must make sure that there is an absolute commitment that these stages of growth do NOT become a source of gossip. Keep this evaluation process prayerful. Once you have conducted the evaluation, determine what the results indicate about your church. Determine who has moved toward maturity at least one stage within the last year. Know the signs of someone being spiritually stuck and or really struggling (pp. 184-187). How effective are your regular church programs and activities at moving people to the right? What you are looking for is a determination of just how much or little each of your church ministries produces the real fruit of moving people to the right (the Four P’s).

Evaluate each of your church activities according to the categories below:

• Engaging: getting to know non-Christian people by opening conversations with them about spiritual matters.
• Evangelizing: actually, explaining the gospel clearly to non-Christian people.
• Establishing those new: helping new converts become firmly grounded in the faith.
• Establishing growing believers: helping well-established Christians to keep growing in their understanding and godliness.
• Equipping: teaching and training Christians to move others toward maturity in the other three categories: engaging, evangelizing, and establishing.

For real change to take place, Sunday must become a ‘flagship’ of learning Christ. The church gathering must be regarded as the key place where our people learn Christ—where they are moved to the right (maturing) through prayerful proclamation of God’s Word in the power of the Spirit week by week (pp. 188-189). (See overcoming kinds of roadblocks, pp. 194-196).

PHASE FOUR: Innovate and Implement

No matter how carefully and thoughtfully you manage an effort to change, some of your people will have negative feelings. It is an inescapable part of human nature. Start something new and people will be suspicious, resistant, or cynical. Some will complain they prefer the way it was. Yes, we must plan carefully but we must also pray hard. This phase of change is tough because execution is always hard. We must recognize that turning plans into reality takes longer, costs more, and is filled with more obstacles than we thought possible. If you are going to see significant culture change in your church over time, you will need to generate and implement significant plans in at least these four areas:

1. Your main gathering in Sunday church must function as a ‘flagship’ by means of Body life for the culture of disciple-making you want to create.
2. The rest of your church life including your programs, ministries, groups, activities, and home life of each member must provide clear and effective pathways for moving people to maturity.
3. Your long-term plans for growth must include anticipating and preparing for the growth your plans will produce.

4. Your communication and common language must provide new ways of thinking and talking about disciple-making and ministry so that this language becomes normal in your fellowship (pp. 200-202).

Sunday must change church into a place where people experience their convictions and ours. There must be a new emphasis introduced on transformative learning in Christ; we call this ‘taking a step to the right’. Sunday gatherings must be places where transformative learning takes place through the Word of God and prayer. The whole church culture which we want to foster needs to be modeled, expressed, championed, and propagated. Our Sunday gatherings need to become places where people experience our convictions and ultimately live and breathe them. (p. 206). (Page 238 on how to make Sunday a flagship for disciple-making.)

Despite our best and most careful efforts some of our plans won’t work. Don’t be too tied to your plans or invest them with too much importance. A trellis, a plan or structure is not alive, it is a construction that can be dismantled and disassembled. The trellis is meant to support the vine and not determine precisely where all vine growth will happen (p. 244). Leaders and co-workers don’t magically grow on trees but they do grow. They grow in the same way all other growth happens, through the work of God in their lives as His Word takes root and bears fruit by the Spirit over time. This is why the equipping stage is perhaps the most important in designing pathways to move people to maturity. By equipping we mean that phase of Christian growth where believers embrace the concept of helping others grow up into Christ.

This growth takes place when the ‘penny drops’ and they realize the love which God has poured into their hearts pushes them outwards to other people, therefore they will long to see other people come to Christ and grow in Christ. The most basic step to help Christians make this particular move to the right in their understanding is this: to grasp that Christ’s purpose for me is that I seek with all my heart to move others to the right in whatever way I can. So, where such Christians are taught, trained, mentored, and supported there will be outward looking ministry to others. In many respects the equipping stage is an aspect of establishing believers. But this equipping unto usefulness is not neatly sequential; one must be established as a Christian for a certain probationary period of time before you can qualify to be equipped to minister to others. (pp. 273-275)

There are some basic kinds of competencies or skills every believer should have in their toolbox. These are basic equipping skills:

1. How to speak the Word of God to yourself so that reading the Bible prayerfully is a regular part of life.
2. How to speak about Christ with non-Christians both one’s testimony and providing a simple explanation of the Gospel.
3. How to answer common questions and objections that are raised concerning Christianity.
4. How to read the Bible one-on-one with someone whether Christian or non-Christian friend.
5. How to follow-up a new convert or Christian personally.
6. How to encourage and minister to others on Sunday.

7. How to minister to your spouse and children.

Once you learn the above-mentioned forms of equipping, there are some specializing skills that follow. These may require extra training for particular tasks or ministries. The most common would be:

1. How to lead a small group.
2. How to lead in children’s ministry or Sunday school.
3. How to lead and minister in youth groups.
4. How to give Bible lessons or sermons (pp. 275-276).

As you set up a structure for establishing believers this will include putting better equipped leaders and equippers in place along the pathway. If you have a group of say ten people for four months you should expect as you move them through these levels of equipping that at the end of a year you should have six significantly matured leaders ready to help you equip others through small groups. You can keep these leaders growing by mentoring them even as they start equipping people in small groups. In time additional potential leaders will emerge from those groups. Some churches take potential new leaders out of their normal small group and spend six months training them in leadership. This leadership training group functions as the leader’s small group for that six-month period. (pp. 278-279) (See page 288 for a pathway of equipping from new convert to leader).

The latter half of the 20ᵗʰ century in evangelicalism was characterized by the dominance of the church growth movement. By contrast, when we look at the ministry of Jesus, we see that big numbers and big plans are not what inspired and motivated people to get involved. Real Gospel growth comes through Four P’s of ministry, and no other way. You can’t market your way to discipleship change. You can build structures and pathways and various trellises to facilitate and drive the growth you aspire to (p. 298).

Vision casting language is exceedingly important. Not only do you need a plan for change, but you also need to work out a plan for comprehensively communicating the vision you have crafted for becoming a transformative learning community, i.e. moving to maturity. It’s time to start communicating these convictions and this new way of thinking about learning Christ and the pathways to move people forward from engaging all the way to equipping.

Here is a grid that will help you form your vision-casting language:

1. What sort of church does God want us to be. We often call this ‘vision’, and it is driven by the theological convictions we have sharpened.
2. Under God how are we to get to that future, a community of Christ learners? This question deals with the means or strategies we are going to use. Again, these flow out of our convictions about the Four P’s of ministry of moving people to the right.
3. What are our specific goals for growth in the next five years?

4. What are our specific priorities for reaching those goals? These plans are focused by making Sunday church a ‘flagship’ for discipleship and by designing pathways to maturity with the practical steps required. Vision casting involves implicit deliberate communication. You will have to change the names of some of your ministries and activities so that they reflect the pathway to spiritual maturity. (pp. 306-309)

In understanding obstacles to change, the way things have been done for decades will not alter quickly or easily. The shared language, practices, habits, structures, activities, and traditions have all been bedded down over decades and in some cases centuries. Therefore, change is not like a commando operation, it is more like an extended land war in Asia. `

Shared language is a huge replacement task. But let’s be ruthlessly honest, there is a real reason we don’t obey our Lord’s command in the Great Commission. The fundamental reason why church cultures are not aligned with Great Commission convictions is not historical or circumstantial, it is spiritual. It is a lack of trust in the Word of God, a lack of dependence on the Spirit of God, a lack of Christ-like love for those around us, and a lack of hope in the eternal kingdom of Christ as our true home. If our convictions are correct the kind of change we are talking about is not just organization realignment or a new strategy, it is repentance towards God, confessing our lack of Christ-likeness (pp. 316-317) (See pp. 318-319 for diagnosing obstacles)

It is all very well to talk about training people to be disciple-makers, but countless pastors are saying, “I feel like our people are just struggling to survive from one day to the next. It is hard enough just getting them to show up most Sundays, let alone start anything new or extra.” Therefore, the most important thing to say is that we must understand the pressure our people are under theologically, in terms of what the Bible says about this fallen world. The kind of pressure we are talking about in this situation is normal in this present darkness. And its most significant effect is the temptation it brings to abandon sacrificial loyalty to Christ and to retreat into darkness to give up hope and to yield to complacency or despair, but we can’t go back to Egypt. In other words, learning Christ is not an academic or theoretical exercise. Learning Christ means precisely learning to trust Him, put our hope in Him during all the complications, troubles, and pressures of life.

Growth in Christ-likeness in the midst of life’s pressures is exactly what being a disciple is all about. So, helping people do this through the Four P’s of ministry is precisely what a transformational learning community is all about. I hope we’ve made this clear. We must not compartmentalize disciple-making as a certain set of activities to be undertaken by the truly committed, or those who have their lives all together. The transformational learning we’ve been talking about invades and changes every facet of our lives including how we deal with the trials of life (pp. 324-325).

ASSIGNMENTS:

1. Write a manifesto which sharpens your five convictions. A manifesto in this c context is an internal mission statement that expresses your purpose. It also reminds your members what you are about as a church. Write your summary of what you believe about discipleship and making disciples. What you are trying to express is your ‘theological DNA’. (See page 151 for elements in casting a vision) (pp. 148-151).

2. Identify your core beliefs. Locate problems or obstacles. Establish a critical path to get to the goal. What are the action steps? Spend time on the portion of disciple-making people tend to leave out, i.e. soul care. Reform your own personal culture. What areas of change in your life and ministry are needed so that what you do will reflect your convictions? (p. 155).
3. Evaluate your ministries to map out a pathway: Print out a list for your entire congregation or groups, then, do your best to locate everyone in one of these stages of learner-ship (see p. 184 for list of levels of spiritual maturity). You must make sure that there is an absolute commitment that these stages of growth do NOT become a source of gossip, so keep this evaluation process prayerful. Once you have conducted the evaluation, determine what the results indicate about your church. Also determine who has moved toward maturity at least one stage within the last year. Know the signs of someone being spiritually stuck and or really struggling (pp. 184-187). How effective are your regular church programs and activities at moving people toward maturity? What you are looking for is a determination of just how much or little each of your church ministries produces the real fruit of growing disciple-making disciples (the Four P’s). Evaluate each of your church activities according to the categories below:

• Engaging: getting to know non-Christian people by opening conversations with them about spiritual matters.
• Evangelizing: actually, explaining the gospel clearly to non-Christian people.
• Establishing the new: helping new converts become firmly grounded in the faith.
• Establishing the growing: helping well-established Christians to keep growing in their understanding and godliness.
• Equipping: teaching and training Christians to move others to the right in the other three categories: engaging, evangelizing, and establishing.

Gospel for Life’s Mission Statement (E-4)

Training Ephesians 4 pastors to grow Ephesians 4 churches

By Jay Wegter

We at Gospel for Life are partnering with Christian leaders at home and abroad who want to renew their commitment to obey our Lord’s Great Commission found in Matthew 28:19-20. Our first mission’s trip to Nepal in 2013 was aimed at strengthening churches in the fundamentals of the faith. We titled our conferences, “Guard the Harvest.” Now our purpose has become even more focused; it is to help train pastors in disciple-making. This training is needed because first and foremost, it takes a disciple to make a disciple’—disciples do not spontaneously appear in our churches.

The Christian church in Nepal is relatively young. It has not had time to ‘fossilize’ its practices into deadening rituals and formalism. Therefore, many Christian pastors in Nepal who have been faithfully grounding their members in the essentials of the gospel are asking, “What is next?” Of course, the answer is: in obedience to our Lord, learn to be disciple-makers. Our Lord’s last command, ‘make disciples of all the nations’ starts at home. Christ’s command concerning disciple-making ought to be the controlling mandate of His Church. Therefore, a healthy local church will be an obedient church that equips its members for ministry (Eph 4:11-12). Obedient churches will experience multiplication of disciples, and its members will mobilize themselves to reach the countless souls immersed in ‘this present darkness’.

This entire disciple-making mandate flows from the glorious goal that Christ has for His people—that they should ultimately be conformed to their Head in holiness (Rom 8:28-30). Thus, Christ is expressing His great love for His people through disciple-makers who labor to bring each believer of His Body to maturity (Col 1:28-29). The great end is that Christ’s glory in His Church should communicate the perfections of the Godhead (Eph 3:20-21).

Why is our focus at GFL to train church leaders to become disciple-makers?

• When Christ’s last command is our priority, we are demonstrating our allegiance to Christ as our King (Mt 28:19-20).
• By following Christ’s pattern, disciple-making churches become healthy, caring communities that manifest His virtues to the watching world (Jn 17:20-23; Eph 4:12-16).
• Through disciple-making believers experience the privilege of growing the next generation of true worshippers (Jn 4:23-24).
• Disciple-making is how the church is equipped for ministry, and how her members are mobilized to reach a lost and dying world (Mt 28:19-20).

• Christ loves His people so much that He desires each one be brought to maturity through discipleship and conformed to Christ in holiness (Col 1:28-29).

How are we at GFL training pastors to be disciple-makers?

• By providing a clear pathway to spiritual maturity which takes believers from conviction, head—know the truths of God’s Word, to character, heart—love and apply the truths of the Word to all of life to competency, hands—communicating the truth of God and love of God to others in Christian service and teaching (Col 1:9-14; 2 Pet 3:18).
• By exercising life-on-life soul care disciples are nurtured and instructed in the core truths of the Word of God (CONVICTION) (Eph 4:12).
• By training disciples in righteousness in a relational space of love and accountability they learn to observe and obey all that Christ has commanded (CHARACTER) (Mt 28:19-20; 2 Tim 3:16-17; 1 Thess 2:7-13).

• By entrusting the truths of God’s Word to faithful believers, they in turn will entrust them to other faithful believers (COMPETENCY) (2 Tim 2:2).

What is the result or goal of training pastors to be disciple-makers?

The result we are seeking to accomplish is the training of Christian leaders who will manifest the following qualities:

• They are faithful expositors of the Word of God (Eph 4:11; 2 Tim 2:15).
• They are examples to the flock of Christian virtue and character and fruit-bearing (Jn 15:8; 1 Thess 1:7; 2:14; 1 Tim 3; Titus 1; 1 Pet 5:3).
• They are equippers of the saints to do the work of the ministry (Eph 4:12).
• They are committed to the Great Commission as Christ’s pattern for His church—they see His last command of disciples-making as their priority and the only way to effectively build with Christ (Mt 28:19-20).

• They understand that spiritual maturity is the Lord’s mandate, thus, meeting the qualifications for eldership ought to be the goal of every believing man.

The default or heretical ecclesiology so common today has always been some form of clericalism. In clericalism there is a pronounced clergy-laity split in which the parishioners are merely spectators or passengers. In an unbiblical ecclesiology, ministry is centralized in the pastor and not conducted by church members. This error flies in the face of Christ’s pattern for His church found in Ephesians chapter four. Christ’s pattern incorporates an every-member ministry or fully ministering laity. That is precisely what the N.T. sets forth as descriptive of a normal healthy local church. But so pervasive is the heretical ecclesiology today that many pastors worldwide have never heard of the Ephesians four pattern, nor would they recognize it if they saw it. As a result, there is a great need to train pastors globally in what it means to be an Ephesians four pastor. Thus, our vision for church revitalization involves a return to Christ’s blueprint for His church. This strategy focuses upon training church leaders to be Ephesians four shepherds so that Christ’s ministry pattern in Ephesians four is realized.

The following portion is adapted in part from material by Steven Van Horn, of International Training and Equipping Ministries, Portland, Oregon. There are three essential areas of emphasis in equipping which can help church leaders grow into ‘Ephesians chapter four’ shepherds. 1) The training needed to be an expositor of Scripture, 2) The training needed to be an example of Christian character. 3) The training needed to be an equipper of the brethren.

These three areas of training: expositor, example, and equipper form a strategy to move a shepherd in the direction of full compliance with Ephesians chapter four. As a leader develops in his ability to exposit Scripture, he will have a very high regard for inductive Bible study. Faithful exposition means locating the meaning of the text of Scripture—thus, the original scriptural author’s intent will exert a controlling priority in sermon preparation.

The ‘pastor-teacher’ described in Ephesians 4:11 is a faithful steward; he handles the Word of God accurately—He studies the Bible inductively under the eye of the Lord to exposit and apply the Word of God (2 Tim 2:15). The international mentors we raise up to train pastors in this area need to be highly competent at the level of exposition. An effective approach in teaching exposition, when working with national pastors is to assign to them the task of crafting preaching outlines from the books of Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, and Colossians.

The second area of faithfulness in serving as an Ephesians four pastor is Christian character. For shepherds to function effectively, they must be an example to the flock as well as an expositor and an equipper (see our material on Christian character: ‘19 Spiritual

Qualifications’ Article).

The Great Commission is about training and equipping disciples of Christ in all the nations so that they learn to obey or observe all that Christ has commanded (Mt 28:19-20). Therefore, growth in Christian character involves personal instruction in what it means to obey the Savior. Shepherds encourage their disciples in ongoing repentance so that the disciple’s walk becomes ever more consistent. Shepherds help monitor the disciple’s obedience by providing accountability, feedback, correction, counsel, encouragement, and exhortation, etc.

The third area of competence is that of an equipper. The role of an equipper is that of a shepherd imparting core values from Scripture—he does so within a close relational space that could be accurately described as ‘spiritual parenting’. This form of spiritual nurture is laid out in detail in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-20 in which the Apostle Paul provides a testimony of how he mentored), or discipled the Thessalonian converts.

Equipping has a goal—spiritual stability, Christian character, maturity, and fruitful reproduction. As set forth in Ephesians 4:12, shepherds are to equip the members of the body to do the work of the ministry, thus equipping is the preparation of church members to begin ministering effectively. The work of an equipper is exemplified in the activity set forth by Paul in Colossians 1:28-29: “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me” (Col 1:28-29).

The Great Commission is about training and equipping disciples of Christ in all the nations to learn to obey or observe all that Christ has commanded (Mt 28:19-20). The best way to teach pastors the ‘art’ of equipping is to personally equip the pastors themselves until they begin to demonstrate that they are applying what they are learning in their mentoring of others. It is extremely common for pastors in developing countries to be unable to define what a disciple of Christ is.

If they do preach from Ephesians 4, they will tend to address the spiritual gifts but completely skip over the following key portion on maturity found in verses 12-16. “. . . for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love” (Eph 4:12-16).

Therefore, it is evident that training in equipping is a crucial need among pastors both domestically and worldwide. In the Ephesians four passage above the shepherd’s role in ‘equipping’ (v. 12) is how the Body is furnished for ministry. The shepherd who equips members of the flock makes it his objective to spiritually invest in faithful men—entrusting to them the great truths of the Word of God that they may entrust them to others. This is the very essence of spiritual multiplication (2 Tim 2:2). This is also how our Lord intends those churches to raise their own shepherds.

As cultures in the world continue to disintegrate morally, a faithful equipper will focus even more upon the eternal objective of making disciples amidst this world’s present darkness (Eph 6:12). Like the Apostle Paul, equippers are driven by the hope of glory (Col 1:27). Hope is a spiritual barometer—hope affects the way we live today—how we steward our time, talent, and affection. Hope imbues us with heaven’s values. Hope moves us to assist the brethren in working through the implications of the gospel for everyday life. Our role at Gospel for Life in training pastors internationally is to develop trainers who will systematically work with pastors who show the promise of becoming Ephesians four pastors. For, there is no other way to grow an Ephesians four church than to grow Ephesians four pastors.

How to begin Disciple-making in your Church

Jay Wegter, Editor, Compiler

Adapted from “Getting Discipleship into the Bloodstream of your Church,” Andrew Arcilla, Exalting Christ Conference, 2016, Community Bible Church, Vallejo, CA

1. Contemplate the dilemma that your ministry probably faces; you have far more work than workers. The problem manifests itself as you keep bringing the weight of ministry needs to the same tiny group of workers. They become bent over as they seek to shoulder more of the labor. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few (Mt 9:37). It was a deep compassion for people which motivated Jesus’s shepherding words. He said we should beseech the Father to send laborers into the harvest. Remember, it is God’s field, not your own field (v. 38).

2. Confirm your convictions and vision regarding disciple-making ministry. You need a proper biblical understanding of discipleship as clearly spelled out by our Lord in the Great Commission (see also Colossians 1:28-29; and 1 Thessalonians 2:1-13; 1 Timothy 2:2).
3. Recognize that the Great Commission is your church’s primary business. We must understand the significance of Jesus’s last command. Here is how you are to live, because Christ is anointed King. Therefore, this is how you are to serve the anointed King: make disciples in obedience to Christ. We cannot truthfully say we are serving the King unless this command of His is our priority. Discipleship is the obedient response to who Christ is as Lord.

4. Remember that you are serving the Lord Jesus Christ. Obedience to Him begins by recognizing that he has asserted his rightful authority and lordship over us. “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Christ is saying, “I should have your reverential fear and respect. I bought you and paid for your sins with my life blood. You must submit and obey me and be spent for your King.” This starts by the determination to obey Him in all things, and to be teachable and available.

5. Regard this command to make disciples as a task for all believers, and not just Christian leaders. The Father is gathering worshippers to worship and serve the Lamb (Jn 4:23-24). Thus, our soul-winning, training, teaching and equipping involves fitting people to be true worshippers. Disciple-making is a task for all believers. All true Disciples of Christ are disciple-makers. Therefore, disciple-making is the task of every true believer; if you love the Son of God, you are to commit yourself to complete the task (Col 1:28-29).

6. Respect the entire process of disciple-making from beginning to end. Jesus commands us to go. That means we must take the initiative to make disciples beginning with preaching and sharing the gospel. To baptize means these are newly saved converts. It is your task to instruct them to obey/observe all that Christ has commanded. To follow Christ is to keep Christ’s commandments and to live them out in daily life. We are not done in this endeavor until that person stands in Christ’s presence. Be faithful in every step in the discipleship process:

a.) Learn to engage the lost. This creates an opportunity to evangelize them.

b.) Learn how to share the gospel in a conversation.

c.) Establish new believers by teaching them to observe what Christ has commanded. Teach them the fundamentals of the faith and the key truths of Christianity. Help them start consistently observing spiritual disciplines of prayer, study of the Word, meditation and memory of the Word, evangelism, fellowship and worship, etc.

d.) Equip new believers in the essentials of the faith so that they may edify others. Equipping is training in righteousness—cultivating consistent obedience to what Christ has commanded. Help them learn to assist others in their growth in the faith. Again, the wonderful benefit of obeying the Great Commission is the fruit of this entire process is that you will get deacons, elders, and shepherds. You get more workers for the harvest!

7. How would disciple-making look if you had a discipleship-minded church? First you must ask where your church is weak. Is the weakness in engaging the lost? Is it in evangelizing the lost? Is it in establishing and equipping new converts to observe all of Christ’s commandments? Is it in equipping church members and training them for the service work of ministry? Is it in providing a clear pathway to ministry and maturity?

A very important question for developing shepherds and leaders in your church is as follows: Do you believe that there are clear pathways in the ministry in your church to move a new convert all the way to serving as an elder? Envision how this might work in a discipleship minded church. Consider setting up a class that shows how a newly saved person can deepen their commitment to Christ. Establish a class on marriage and family. Establish a class on how to lead a home fellowship. Set up a two-year program to train people to be Bible study leaders.

8. In order to grow shepherds and leaders in your church, you must have a pathway for them to grow and to be developed. Then, the people in your church must know that these pathways to maturity exist. They must become familiar with these pathways. The problem in the church globally is that there is far more work than workers. A ministry lacking workers needs a clear visible available pathway to get there. Both Jesus and Paul ministered by a pathway—they gave special attention to a small group of men all before setting them loose in ministry.

9. Embrace a vision for discipleship which includes a pathway, and start making some necessary changes:

a.) Clarify your convictions. State what you believe about disciple-making. You’ll only be convincing if you are clear and passionate about the mission. Do not wait for people to come to you. Pursue them and train them. Start with the key people who have caught the vision for disciple-making. Do not try to convince the entire church. Focus on the ones who will be ready to own discipleship. Concentrate and invest in those who are your current leaders as well as your potential leaders.

b.) Convince key leaders to hold the same convictions about discipleship. They’ll be able to convince others. This will result in an army of people at your side to help you disciple. You can raise up disciples by mentoring within small group ministry—this creates a desire in individuals for discipleship. In that context people will be convinced of the necessity of personal involvement. They will act out the same convictions that you are modeling. As they grow as disciples, teach them how to make appointments with church members in order to check on their spiritual health, and to pray with them. Remember, disciple-making is nurturing, and monitoring, and teaching obedience to Christ’s commands.

c.) Consider everyone in your ministry and how to help them grow in the discipleship process. We call this ‘mapping’. We want to determine where they fall on the maturity pathway, or maturity map. The basic regions of the maturity map are: conviction; character; competency. This pathway to maturity is also designated as head, heart, and hands. Workers can be assigned to help occupy each ministry step necessary to help people along the spiritual path to maturity. These “path-guides” are stationed at points along the way.

d.) Once the above is in place, you can chase after this vision corporately. This is the wonderful benefit of obedience to the Great Commission. Then, the day will come when you won’t have to hunt for workers because you have grown them in your church. These workers are then implemented into specific ministries; the entire life of the church thrives. Unleashing workers to ministry is mediated by the mentoring that takes place in discipleship, not by programs. The greatest progress in spiritual growth is always traceable to the investments made through personal development—that involves hands on, life-on-life equipping and soul care.

10. Why does growing a culture of discipleship in your church require such a massive mind-shift? First, what is the missing “X-Factor” in the church the today that is neutralizing obedience to the Great Commission? Answer, church members are warehoused because the church has forgotten the corporate dimension of sanctification. The church seems to have lost the truth that the believers’ progress towards spiritual maturity is deeply tied to the contributions they each make to spiritual growth of one another.

The church has a desperate need to recover deep community. The biblical pattern for the Body of Christ is that church members are to challenge one another to live out the implications of the supremacy of Christ in every area of life. This is our mandate— that our Savior may be seen as infinitely beautiful before one another. We are to live out the great story of Christ’s achievements for unworthy sinners.

But personal shepherding is needed for this to happen—sitting beneath a pulpit alone won’t make this take place. We must help one another live out the implications of the gospel in our relationships and vocations. Therefore, the life of the body exists to manifest lifeon-life soul care unto the glory of Christ and the maturity of the saints. This means it is New Testament normative for us to prayerfully speak the Word into one another’s lives with accountability, transparency, and with ‘sermonizing’ communications of mutual edification.

Without a massive mind shift, the default mode is spiritual passivity. The nerve of the Great Commission is severed when the congregation believes that only a professional clergy is qualified to build up, teach, admonish, and contribute to each person’s spiritual maturity. This default mode of visualizing solely a professional ministry kills the perception of the priesthood of the believer. And when the priesthood of the believer is obscured, it becomes incredibly problematic to advance the Great Commission.

Career pastors are inadvertently contributing to this problem because they have not thought out and cast a vision for shared ministry with non-vocational shepherds. Vocational pastors may speak about a fully ministering church, but in practice they may feel more carnally secure when the clergy-laity divide is separated by a no-man’s land. If we are to faithfully cast this vision for discipleship, we must fervently communicate what Christ requires of His true followers. Thus, the terms of discipleship as laid down by our Savior ought to be accompanied by the teaching that we have every resource in Him that is necessary to fulfill what He requires.

11. Major ‘drivers’ of biblical discipleship in the church:

a.) Intentionality, there are no coincidental disciples. We must be utterly deliberate in our disciple-making to ‘hit the target’ outlined by the Great Commission.

b.) Christ’s pattern for His church is an ‘every member ministry’ with no spectators. How we ‘do church’ must be a theatre for what it means to obey the Great Commission.

c.) Discipleship mediates ministry, ministry is not mediated by programs. Disciple-makers equip and then unleash their disciples to ministry. It is through the personal training and development provided by discipleship that the members of the body of Christ are equipped to do the work of the ministry.

d.) Disciple-making envisions and depends upon a continuum of mutual edification. A fully corporate commitment to mutual edification means that the life of the body exists to nurture disciples at each stage of spiritual growth. Therefore, every true Christ-follower is contributing to the spiritual growth of other believers. It takes disciple to make a disciple (Note the clear chain of entrusting: Christ entrusting truth to Paul, Paul entrusting God’s truth to Timothy, Timothy entrusting to faithful men, faithful men entrusting to others—2 Timothy 1:12-14; 2:1-2).

e.) Disciple-making according to our Savior is how we will plant churches and how we reach the world. We cannot improve upon our Savior’s mission strategy. The Great Commission is how we are to multiply disciples (2 Tim 2:2).

Is your Church’s Membership Class designed to make Disciples?

Adapted from Jeremy Haynes, Pastor of Discipleship, Calvary Community Church, Westlake Village, CA. Jay Wegter, Editor, Co-author

How do we as disciple-makers challenge members of the Body of the Christ to live as true disciples of Christ? It must begin with vision-casting. We must be explicit in stating what Christ requires of every genuine convert. Every true believer is called to live as Christ’s disciple. This is what our Lord meant when He spoke of following Him: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me’” (Mt 16:24). Our Lord has laid out very specific terms of discipleship in passages such as Luke 9:23-26.

We cannot live effectively as His disciples without a commitment to spiritual disciplines. The more spiritually disciplined you are, the more usable and available you will be to God. The spiritual disciplines include, faithful study, meditation upon, and personal application of the Word of God; regular consistent prayer; fellowship in the Body of Christ for the purpose of mutual edification; corporate worship, and personal evangelism.

A true servant of Christ is both available and is growing in his competency to communicate the Word of God—this is intimately tied to being spiritually disciplined. For, Christ has called us to continually speak and ‘re-speak’ the truth in love (Eph 4:15; 5:19).

The central term, or requirement of discipleship given by our Lord is cross-bearing, or self-denial (Mt 16:24-26). We may define cross-bearing as follows: it is doing whatever it takes to make Christ first place in your life, so that His authority as King and Master is uncontested (2 Cor 5:15). Cross-bearing does not terminate upon private piety, as if that is the end goal. No, the greatest mark of cross-bearing is the believer’s availability to others for the sake of their edification (Rom 15:1-2).

Those who bear the cross of Christ are committed to develop others spiritually, contributing to their growth (Rom 15:14). Now this kind of challenge to live as Christ’s obedient disciple overturns the error that your relationship with Jesus can exist in a private, anonymous container.

One of the great benefits of disciple-making is that the hearer, the one discipled is continually confronted with what it means to be a doer of the Word (Jas 1:21-24). How are we to teach others to observe all that Christ has commanded without discipleship relationships? It is next to impossible without discipleship. For, only through the soul care found in discipleship are the relational structures in place for accountability, nurture, and the actual monitoring of obedience. Effectively serving your brethren through discipleship flows out of a life in which your personality, desires, experience, and gift mix are dedicated to Christ for His use (Rom 12:1-2). That is what it means to be available to Christ.

The shepherding or pastoral dimension of discipleship involves helping the sheep build meaningful connections and spiritual partnerships. Rather than solely building dependent relationships upon himself, a truly strong shepherd helps others in the body form relationships with one another for the purpose of spiritual growth. This is vitally necessary in our consumer-oriented culture, which tends to privatize every aspect of life. By contrast, shepherds help the sheep keep understanding that Christ, the Chief Shepherd wants them to enjoy life-on-life, one-on-one, soul care for the purpose of mutual edification.

Life-on-life discipleship is intensely practical. Every bit of our personal instruction must be wedded to implementation. Here are the four points that will assist us in our efforts to join every biblical truth we teach to all of life: 1) strive for simplicity, 2) always emphasize the head-heart connection, 3) always flesh out specific application for every truth, 4) be sure to merge the godly masculinity of men’s ministry with disciple-making, for men’s discipleship looks much different than women’s discipleship.

The priority of the Great Commission is central in answering the following questions: 1) What kind of believers are we growing in our churches? 2) Are we absolutely committed to making Kingdom people committed to the mission of the church as defined by Christ? 3) We reiterate that today’s pervasive consumerism tends to privatize religion. That kind of attitude stunts growth: “What will help me?” “How can I stay within my comfort zone?” Christ taught the opposite—death to the dominion of the flesh, death to the self-directed life: “And He was saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it’ (Lu 9:23-24). “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him” (Jn 12:25-26).

The Christian life has a remarkably public dimension. The passages about walking worthy of the Lord are fleshed out in a corporate manner (Eph 4:1-3). Your life as a Christ-follower is very public. Confessing Christ as a lifestyle is a public exercise with an extensive corporate dimension (Mt 10:32-39; Lu 14:25-35).

One who begins as a Christ-follower is compared to someone building a tower. If he quits halfway that half-built tower will mock his hasty efforts, his poor planning, and his unwillingness to pay the cost (Luke 14:28-30). Therefore, Christ-followers need to know right away that every single Christian is a minister of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:17-21). They need to know what the cost is of following Christ.

In Scripture true believers are depicted collectively Christ’s Body on earth. There are to be no passive ‘body parts’. In this analogy from 1 Corinthians chapter 12, when a body part is healthy and functioning the rest of the body enjoys the vigor, support and contributions of that member. But if a part of the body is paralyzed; atrophied, or non-functional, such as a finger, an arm, an eyelid, then the rest of the body must favor and carry that inactive part. How powerful this metaphor is, for every member of the body exists to nurture disciples and move them closer to Christ (Eph 4:20; Col 2:19). There must be no fruitless spectators or ‘passengers’.

There is a logical pathway for bringing each member to maturity. But most churches leave that pathway unmarked and undefined. If we were to state the pathway to maturity in somewhat general terms, we could say that an immature believer begins attending church at first as a part of the crowd. If he is to grow, he must become part of the community where meaningful and vital relationships are formed. Next out of these meaningful relationships he becomes committed to growing and helping others grow. Out of that commitment to help others grow he becomes part of a core that is characterized by a very visible lifestyle of ministry and spiritual leadership borne of equipping.

Now every true believer is somewhere on this maturity spectrum. But our job as under-shepherds who serve Christ is to help each believer along the path of maturity so that we may ultimately present every man complete in Christ (Col 1:28-29). We should station people along the path of maturity to help disciples at every stage of growth.

Here are ‘eight M’s’ most found in 2 Timothy 1-3, to help us plot a path to maturity: 1) meet the disciple to form a spiritual partnership, 2) map his level of spiritual growth by the biblical metric, 3) mentor him, training him in righteousness from the Word, 5) train him in righteousness to mortify sin as a lifestyle, 5) model discipleship so that he can see as well as imitate the example of your life, 6) cultivate a missional mindset in him so that he understands his growth exists to help others grow in Christ, 7) teach him that discipleship mediates ministry because as his mentor you are most qualified to mobilize him and unleash him to the ministry opportunities that are uniquely fitted for him, 8) multiplication—show your disciple that the growth he has experienced is intended for him to make another disciple who can make another.

Now what is vital here is that this cannot be reduced to hard edge steps or to an annual church program. Growth as Christ’s disciple is holistic—it is organic like a living thing. It is inseparable from the race we are running—it is our union with Christ lived out in relationships of mutual care and edification. There will be stops and starts; times of decline and renewal; fruitfulness and fallowness. But growth is certain to come because discipleship involves running the race with endurance—it is long obedience in the same direction aided by life-on-life soul care (Heb 3:12-13; 10:23-25; 12:1-6). Love, faithfulness, and truth form the soil of growth. Disciple-making is Christ’s pattern for our lives. Every believer is organically joined to Christ who is ‘our life’ (Col 3:4). Disciple-making is how we express this reality of being alive in Christ. It is how we reflect and live out Christ in us (Col 1:27ff.).

The disciple-making challenge we issue to the body of Christ begins with understanding our identity in Christ. Every genuine believer is part of the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:11-14). We have a gospel in common, a Savior in common, and indwelling Spirit in common, a mission in common, and yet each member is unique. In examining this uniqueness factor, we would stress that a life direction of faithfully confessing Christ is not divorced from the believer’s authenticity (Rom 12:3).

As the believer expresses his commitment to Christ through faithfulness in the spiritual disciplines, he becomes increasingly available and useful to the Master. But his sharing of spiritual truths is not merely a rote regurgitation of what he has been taught. No, his sharing is joined to his personality, his experiences, his desires, and his gifts. As ministry increasingly becomes the believer’s lifestyle, he is not only sharing spiritual truths, but also out of the overflow of his Christian Walk, for out of the abundance of our heart the mouth speaks (Mt 12:34). Even though Paul was an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, he was eager to fellowship with the Roman believers, knowing that he would be encouraged by their faith as it was expressed by their uniqueness, experiences, gifts, and spiritual passion (Rom 1:11-12).

Now concerning the masculine nature of ministry, as brothers in Christ we are increasingly shaped and formed by the gospel so that our masculine gifting to influence and lead becomes available to Christ. When the gospel has full sway, the courage to pursue one another for the sake of building with Christ will become normative for believing men. Godly masculinity cannot flourish if a man remains within the confines of his comfort zones. Yes, there is a risk factor in ministry—but it is a glorious one because the Holy Spirit meets our efforts with His enabling power. As men, we must push ourselves and dedicate ourselves to developing others. Finding joy in giving of ourselves and our resources will gradually become the ‘sweet spot’ for a true Christ-follower (1 Thess 2:1:6-10; 2:14).

Christ’s blueprint for His church is the Great Commission. The Master has mandates for every church member, and these spiritual imperatives are intimately joined to the work of disciple-making. There are more than five mandates, but we can summarize them under five heads. 1) maturity, present each member complete in Christ, through proclaiming Christ, teaching and admonishing, 2) be renewed in the spirit of your mind, be transformed by the Word, 3) engage in mutual edification, contribute to the growth of others, 4) walk in holiness with the Holy One, for there must be a very clear echo of holiness in those who walk with the Lord, 5) pray without ceasing and bear one another’s burdens which is Christian love.

Discipleship involves teaching one another to obey what Christ has commanded of His people (Mt 28:20). These mandates listed above are best learned in a relational space of discipleship. “Teaching them to observe . . .” (Mt 28:20) takes place through mastering, mentoring, modeling, and monitoring obedience. In mastering and modeling, we think of Ezra’s commitment to diligently study the Word of God to practice it (obey it). “For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7:10).

In the church, both older and younger faithful men are to be examples (modeling godliness): “Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, in love, in perseverance” (Titus 2:2). “Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe” (1 Tim 4:12). In disciple-making relationships, the factor most easily neglected is the monitoring factor. For, that is where high accountability enters in. But we really begin to see the monitoring factor at work in the apostles’ discipling of the Thessalonian believers:

For you recall, brethren, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and so is God, how devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behaved toward you believers; just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. For this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe (1 Thess 2:9-13).

Jesus has told us that in disciple-making a full embrace of the reproduction factor is backbone of multiplication: “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher” (Lu 6:40) (see also 2 Tim 2:2). Spiritual parenting is the normal way of relating in discipleship (1 Thess 2:7-12). Spiritual parenting is ‘broad spectrum’—it includes all four dimensions: mastering, mentoring, modeling, and monitoring obedience.

Living one’s life as Christ’s disciple represents a vast paradigm shift, for historically the church has often failed to define its mission by the Great Commission. But if the church has not defined its mission by the Great Commission it will tend to see disciple-making as a necessary duty, perhaps like an annual flu shot, as if a little token attention to discipleship is all that is needed. In a healthy church where ministry is characterized by disciple-making, home fellowships and cell groups will tailor their ministry emphasis so that they serve the Master’s plan to make disciples. This ‘cross-pollination’ of disciple-making with home fellowships is essential if the Great Commission is to be mainstreamed.

It only takes ten percent of a church to be completely onboard with disciple-making for that mandate to become a movement. Ten percent seems to be that magic number where momentum can not only be maintained but grow. This is great news, because you, as a Christian leader don’t have to convince every single person in your church of the necessity of disciple-making. Once you reach a few key people with the discipleship vision, they in turn will become vision-casters who begin to model disciple-making for all the church to see. This represents an ‘ah ha’ or eureka moment when church members begin to understand that you cannot take discipleship out of the center of the mission of the church.

For, our commitment to Christ and His Great Commission is inseparable from who we are, what we do, how Christ is formed in us, and how we accomplish His mission. This ‘ah ha’ moment creates a mind shift in which brightly illuminates God’s purpose for our lives (Rom 8:28-30). For, the gospel’s intent is not only to bring us to God, but also to make us like Jesus, and that can only happen if we have shepherds, mentors, and disciple-makers who will teach us to observe what Christ Himself has commanded.