As we are developing ministries for our new church in the Chicago suburbs we are starting from scratch. From leadership development, to worship, to mercy ministries, to discipleship we are not buying pre-packaged material or simply using someone else’s system. There are a lot of reasons for this that I will get into later, but one of the things I have been thinking a lot about is the issue of making disciples.
For many Christians, the idea of making disciples boils down to a kind intellectual development. I have been a part of churches that considered themselves “strong in discipleship” which meant they took theology seriously and taught their members everything from the nature of God, to the ordo salutis. While I believe this is a foundational component of discipleship, it is not the whole. And even when this emphasis on doctrine is present, there is often a disconnect between theology and experience; between knowing and doing. This obviously is not true of every church that emphasizes doctrine, but it is a common problem. The reality, of course, is that doctrine is necessarily connected to what we do and feel.
Dr. Richard Pratt teaches that our theology should establish orthodoxy (the truth about God and the gospel), orthopraxy (a life lived in harmony with God’s law) and orthopathos (religious affections). Others have said that the aim of theology is doxology, or worship. These are helpful and biblical ways of explaining the connection between Christian thinking, doing and feeling. How does this connect to making disciples? We cannot make disciples apart from teaching sound doctrine, but simple indoctrination is not enough. Our theology should give life to godly living and real affection. Jesus makes it very clear that discipleship is more than what we know. His disciples are those who know the truth, love genuinely and live obediently (Jn 8:31; 14:18-24; 13:34-35).
But how do we go about making disciples? I would suggest three simple principles.
1. Instruction. God has given us his word, which is the tool by which the Holy Spirit sanctifies us (Jn. 17:17, 2 Thess. 2:13). From preaching in the puplit, to the the class room, to small groups, and informal discussions with believers who can guide others on their way, instruction is a foundational element in making disciples. Theological instruction is fundamental to this task, as are instructions in keeping the commands of Jesus. A better understanding of theology will always produce a greater fervency in love and obedience. To make disciples we must teach. This is one of the primary tasks of our pastors/elders, but is also, in different ways, the responsibility of every Christian.
2. Observation. One of the more critical, and yet overlooked aspects of making disciples is that following Christ must be modeled. It cannot be fully taught theoretically. It is not enough to see one another merely in the church-classroom context to amass a knowledge base. We must see one another in the context of real life, where joy and sorrow, fear and courage, faith and failure can be seen. Paul spoke of the value of learning through the observation of the godly when he said,
You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.
1 Thess. 1:5-7
Making disciples demands that we get involved in each others’ lives, and allow people to see us work through life, ministry and faith. Opportunities for this will only be available as we intentionally create them. Just today I read an interview with Pastor Josh Harris on his blog abut his experience being discipled by CJ Mahaney. There he said,
CJ brought me into his life. So many things can’t be passed on through a book or a sermon. They have to be seen. They have to be modeled. Living with CJ’s family for over a year gave me an up-close look at his faithfulness as a husband and father. I witnessed his purposefulness in every situation. I learned from him the importance of taking initiative. How leading was serving and it required a willingness to expend energy and set direction for others to follow. CJ spent time with me.
(Read the whole thing, it’s fantastic.)
3. Practice. Just like with almost anything, we need to practice. To learn anything new requires us to work it out practically. Making disciples demands that we provide opportunities to get out to work, serve, and sacrifice, or to stay in to pray and fast. Consider the commands of Jesus. They encompass belief and behavior in private and public matters. They relate to work inside the church and outside of it. A church that is serious about discipleship will create the contexts in which Christians can practice, or work out, their faith.
It should be clear that making disciples is something that can only happen within the church. Sure, it is possible to grow in our understanding of theology apart from a church. And one can find opportunities to serve without belonging to a particular fellowship. But this is less about making disciples and more about some kind of personal development. Discipleship is not about doing for one’s self, but following another. And outside of the local church discipleship will fall short because of the absence of covenant and authority. Ligon Duncan recently wrote a post on the T4TG blog titled, “The Local Church, the place Jesus chose for discipleship.” In it he wrote,
Jesus wants us to be discipled in the context of the believing community where the vows of baptism are taken and where a whole fellowship of Christians is committed to mutual encouragement and accountability…
Making disciples must happen in the church because we need a community that is not only agreed on the gospel, but has covenanted together and can hold one another accountable for our confession and our conduct. If church discipline cannot be practiced, discipleship will necessarily be weakened.
Discipleship should be active and largely intentional, but not all of it needs to be rehearsed. Instruction, observation and practice should happen through both formal teaching, and informal experiences. For this to be a reality, the church has to become more than the place where we sing and listen to preaching together. It must be the family we are adopted into that shares the greater goal of loving God and neighbor.
Do you have a plan to make disciples at your church? At Redeemer we are in the process of detailing the various paths of discipleship or all of our members from the front door (first visit) to death. From our pulpit ministry, to evangelism, to recommended reading, to ministry teams and work, to leadership development, to small groups, to a culture of friendship where we share our lives together the task of “making disciples” must run through it all.
I would be very interested in hearing about the practices at your church as we are working out our own.
I am the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship; husband to Jen; Dad to Katherine, Elias, Madeline, and Kilian. If you're in town you can probably find me in the local coffee house or running through the neighborhoods.
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I love the graphic. I didn’t know that Jesus used PowerPoint!
OOh. Sorry. Glad to have you blogging again. Now to actually READ the article!
Joe, thanks for this man! It’s very helpful and something I’ve been working through in my mind for some time now.
I’m a college student in Tennessee and in our college ministry at Belleaire Baptist Church our best attempt at this is probably our “Care Family” ministry. It’s where families in the church volunteer to have between two and ten college students over to their house one night of the week. Once there they sit down to dinner and do anything from a Bible study to their laundry, if needed. It fosters an environment for the student to simply “do life” with a family centered on Christ, much like Josh Harris’ relationship with CJ. This is often a foreign concept for the incoming student but has proved to be a pivotal ministry in our church family.
Welcome Back!!!
Joe, welcome back. Great insights.
Our church community out here in Oregon is attempting to do just what you write about, namely making disciples in an authentic way. Difficult to measure in some ways, but the fruit is evident. More and more we’re finding that the “organic” approach (rather than only copying curriculum from elsewhere) is most effective for us, but our young church lacks enough teachers to effectively do this well. Borrowing from your terminology above (nice summary by the way), we are mostly weak on Instruction (other than Sunday morning, which is strong at certainly aimed at transformation in addition to recollection), but it appears we may be stronger in Observation (modeling growth and godliness and “doing life” together) and Practice. Can’t help by think and pray and realize that as we grow in our intentional outpouring into one another’s lives in Instruction, Observation and of course Practice we will see genuine maturity springing up (and that growth often comes by frustration). Our formal instruction times have been helpful particularly for leaders, but it seems that the informal experiences of being the church and living life as a community are where the real and lasting life change is taking place.
There’s a healthy tension there and it seems to be messy for a reason. More than that, our leadership keeps reinforcing the importance of the process rather than attaining to certain levels (the latter being more measurable, such as how many come on Sunday morning or have been through a certain class, but process is a better emphasis for we are looking for a godly trajectory in people, not just ones who have attained).
Keep giving us more of your insights.
This is good stuff. My passion as a church planter is discipleship. I think that is largely because if it were not for key men in my life who taught me and trained me I would not be were I am. None of these relationships were ever labeled as formal discipleship relationship, but instead just older guys befriending and hanging out with a younger guy.
Often times in the church we miss the ideas of observation and practice like you mentioned. I believe this is because we are working of the presupposition that right thinking will lead to right practice. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but many of us know way more about christ and theology than we are obedient to. At the same time I don’t want to swing to the other side of the pendulum and say right practice will lead to right belief, because I don’t think that works either. I think it is somewhere in between and that is why you must have theological training as well as practical training in discipleship.
The analogy I use with people is that if you have only theological training you would be a like a child with a huge brain but no muscle mass and completely useless. If you have only practical training and no theological you would be like a huge brute with no brains which at best is dangerous.
Great post Joe. Something we all need to think through in our churches, and something I’m actually working on this fall for my church. I’d love to hear more about what you are planning at Redeemer.
We should get together, eat tacos, smoke cigars and brainstorm about it all man. But I do plan on blogging what we are doing as things develop.
We just launched a new approach at our 3 year old church, and the response has been good in some areas, not so good in others.
We’re a PDC, so we use Warren’s 101,201,301,401 classes, but we use them only as a starting point. We also offer other classes, and some one-on-one mentoring, but our big push lately has been getting people involved in each others lives through the use of 3 person cell groups.
My IMB brother-in-law had been pestering me for a year about looking into this thing called Life Transformation Groups, put forward by Neil Cole. My wife and I finally read his book Cultivating a Life for God and loved the focus on making scripture the central part of an accountability cell group. We also liked that other than creating some structure to create and enable the groups, they take on the personality of the groups members, and not some program structure.
We kicked this off 3 weeks ago, along with the other discipleship classes. Our worship service has an attendance of roughly 130, and so far we have 5 women’s cell groups, and 2 mens groups.
I’ve been encouraged by the response by the women, and a bit discouraged by the men. I’m the discipleship director and I’m in one group, and the senior pastor is in the other.
We’re still gonna plug away at it. We have some big classroom based teaching coming up, so we’ll also use that time to encourage the attenders to join or create a group.
Personally, I hope to see some responses in this thread about how other churches are intentionally developing leaders, and how churches can foster an environment where theology is not the proprietary domain of professionals.
Along with everyone else, “Welcome back!”
Glad to hear you’re taking some steps to bring disciple-making (after too many years of indoctrination as a Southern Baptist, I can no longer use the other “d” word that ends in “ship”) back onto the radar screen of your local body of believers. How about a couple of suggestions from an older brother in the faith?
Just keep it simple and remember that it’s not a church program! And it’s not something that belongs exclusively in the pastor’s toolkit or job description. Every believer is called to make disciples and should be encouraged to do so. When that starts happening, you’ll be running to catch up with a church planting movement.
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