What is the best program for making good disciples? In other words, how can a person be adequately trained and prepared to be a follower of Jesus?
If you check with the local Christian bookstore, you will find that the most common way to disciple someone is to take them through some sort of discipleship manual. This book or workbook is designed to teach the person some basic biblical and theological truths as well as some instruction on basic Christian disciplines like praying, reading the Bible, attending church, and tithing. This is why discipleship almost universally takes place in a “discipleship class” and is often a subset of the “Christian education” department.
I’m not against such methods…except that they don’t seem to work. Very few people who go through such programs actually end up acting much like Jesus. If the goal of a discipleship program is to help a person act like Jesus, then our discipleship programs are failing.
Discipleship = Serviceship
The best discipleship program is one that follows the actual method Jesus used in making disciples. Did He teach His followers the Bible, how to pray, and what to do with their money? Absolutely. But unlike most discipleship programs today, Jesus always taught His followers within the context of service. They would go feed 5000 people, and then He would teach them. They would go heal the sick and then He would teach them. He sent them out two by two, and when they came back, He would teach them. Teaching was almost never isolated from mission and service.
You want life transformation to result from your discipleship programs? Add mission. Add service. Don’t just teach; obey (Matt 28:20). I have often thought that a better word for discipleship might be serviceship, or better yet, apprenticeship. How does an apprentice learn best? By doing.
All Together Now!
And this service and mission is not a later stage or second step to discipleship. It’s not (1) learn, then (2) serve. Ideally, learning and service go together. However, we often banish new believers off into the endless cycle of Bible studies so they can learn basic Christian doctrine before we let them serve. And instead of taking the class, and then going out and serving, they often just move from one class to another. They emerge thirty years later with a well-worn Bible, bloodshot eyes, and a hyper-critical, judgmental, puffed-up personality and ivory-tower attitude that is no longer useful for service.
To maintain a soft heart, a proper discipleship program trains both the head and the hands.
Jeremy,
Good post. I think I read some stats recently that churches which have the baseball diamond (four bases of fellowship, discipleship, ministry, evangelism) find a lot of drop off in between discipleship and ministry, and even more drop off between between ministry and evangelism.
So let’s say 100 new people join the church (fellowship), maybe 70 of them will sign up for discipleship classes. Of these 70, only about 10 will join the ministry team (10% of the church does 90% of the work), and of these 10, only 2 will enter the evangelism program.
I like what you present here, since it seems that all aspects of discipleship will be taking place simultaneously. It’s not first join, then learn, then serve in the church, until you are finally ready to share the gospel. Instead it’s, let’s go serve and share from day one, and you can ask questions along the way.
William,
And the genius with letting the disciples “aks questions along the way” is that they will generally ask questions that they need to know in order to continue serving. This will not only enable them to serve more effectively, but will also give them excitement, and immediate practical application to what they are learning. Both of these things, of course, makes what they learn much more memorable.
Remember the disciples? They had seen Jesus pray and realized that it was one of the secrets of His power, and so one day they come to Jesus and basically said, “How can we pray like you?”
Jesus didn’t sit them down on day of the “Jesus discipleship program” and say, “Okay, today we’re going to learn how to pray, and tomorrow how to study your Bible.” No. He just went out with them and ministered with them and when they realized that prayer was so essential, they came to him to learn how to pray. And I guarantee that they began to practice what He taught.
Thank you for the post. We’re in the beginning stages of planting a church. I’ve been reading quite a few blogs about church planting. I like what I’ve been reading for the most part. My biggest challenge/question to date has been how do we convince the “regular” church people that they need to leave the building in order to follow Christ? I just think they’re missing out on what it means to really impact the world. The “build it and they will come” philosophy just isn’t working anymore — if it ever really did.
Katdish,
Is your plant connected to Vince Antonucci somehow? I saw on your own blog that you link to his blog.
Your question is so good, I’m going to do a post on it today. So check it out!