The Purpose and Process of Discipleship

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20

The Command
Jesus commanded his followers to make disciples. This is an all-encompassing command. It is not merely one command among several, but the goal of the other commands. We evangelize, gather to worship, teach & preach the Word, gather in community, and show mercy, all for the purpose of making disciples. If we are not making lifelong disciples of Jesus, we are doing the wrong things. We are likely building with wood, hay, and straw. But if we are making disciples, then what we do will last for eternity, and result in greater glory to God, and greater joy and reward in heaven.

The Question
Therefore, everything we do must be evaluated by the question of “How does this make disciples?”  If done rightly, we will evaluate every program, every meeting, every event, every expenditure, and even every staff position, by asking how it serves to make disciples. Some things will be affirmed and bolstered. Others will need to be tweaked. And some will need to be axed. Good things may need to be eliminated if they don’t serve the goal of making disciples.

Discipleship is not only our purpose, but should also be our process. Our purpose and process should be one and the same. This is the “Simple Church” ethos in a nutshell: that your purpose statement not only tells people what you’re about, but also how to get there.
Even if we generally do a good job at communicating our purpose to those we minister to, this doesn’t magically appear as a clear plan for discipleship.  If it doesn’t, we’ll see the fallout from our failure to adequately disciple in at least four areas.

The Fallout
1. Instead of Clarity, Confusion: There is great confusion about how we want to see people grow in their walk, because we haven’t had a plan, and we haven’t communicated anything consistently or coherently. People expect more from our Home Meetings or Sunday worship than we can currently give. They grope around for books or other venues for discipleship.

2. Instead of Movement, Paralysis: After large group or gathering events, we lack clear ways to help people grow. We don’t keep them moving, keep them growing in their walk. Spiritual growth becomes stifled. People remain in immature states for a long time. New believers (and old believers) fall away. Those who are committed lack the necessary Gospel foundation for their service, and predictably burn out.
3. Instead of Alignment, “Subluxation”: Even young, anti-programmatic ministries discover how easy it is to jump to the latest thing or pet project. We find that our passions and burdens are sometimes working at cross-purposes, but we lack the mechanisms to bring our efforts into alignment. Thus we feel that we’re pushing really hard, but because we’re sometimes pushing against each other and not in the same direction, we’re not really getting anywhere.
4. Instead of Focus, “Church ADHD”: We don’t know why we do some things, & why we don’t do others. We don’t know why we used to do things that we don’t do now. We don’t even have clear criteria for what gets announced and promoted. We ask the wrong questions when we decide about potential events or efforts: “Can we pull this off?” instead of “how does this serve our purpose of making disciples?” No wonder we feel spread too thin. We’re constantly busy, but lack focus in what we do.

The net impact of this fallout is that leaders and staff suffer from the same confusion, paralysis, subluxation, and ADHD as everyone else.
Consequently, we need to ensure that we are making disciples. Only when we do so will our efforts become worthwhile, and we’ll have something worth reproducing.

We Need a Plan
We need a plan to make disciples. The plan should be clear. It should be simple, easy to explain, easy to remember, & preferably easy to illustrate. Simple is good. It is not the same as simplistic. A simple discipleship process will be identical to our purpose.

The plan should facilitate movement. This means it needs defined stages, so that everyone knows where they (and others) stand, and where they’re going. It’s not enough to simply tell people “get involved in a small group.” It’s not enough to tell people we want to make disciples. We need to tell them how we plan on doing that, & how to get there.  Therefore good plans should be sequential: the next stage flows out of the previous one. I’ll be fleshing that out tomorrow.
The plan should lead to alignment, to everyone pulling in the same direction.
The plan should, at some point, lead to the evaluation of everything that we do, and result in bolstering in some things and eliminating others. We will commit to only doing a few things, doing them in the right place and the right order, and doing them well.