Chuck Lawless - Disciple: How to Create a Community That Develops Passionate and Healthy Followers of Jesus

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Disciple: How to Create a Community That Develops Passionate and Healthy Followers of Jesus

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ISBN 978-1-4964-6464-4

Build: 2022-07-08 10:10:58 EPUB 3.0

To Pam,
my partner in all I do

and

to all the men
who have invested in me
over the years

I WANT TO start by asking you three questions.

First, how would you rate your church in the areas of worship, evangelism, fellowship, discipleship, prayer, and ministry? Which area would you rate the highest? The lowest?

Next, which of these areas in your church (if any) would you consider healthy? Unhealthy?

Finally, which area do you think most churches have consistently ranked the lowest for the twenty-plus years Ive been doing this type of survey?

I have consulted with churches for almost three decades. For most of that time, Ive used a 160-question Church Health Survey (now the Know Your Church Report) to learn a churchs perception of its own health in the same six areas mentioned above. We have used the survey with churches of all sizes, in several denominations, all around the country. Almost without exception, churches have reported that they are weakest in the areas of evangelism and discipleship. I cannot remember the last church I surveyed where that was not the case.

Those findings probably shouldnt be surprising. Depending on the study, anywhere from 65 percent to 85 percent of Protestant churches in the United States have plateaued or are declining. And I suspect these issues have not improved much since that study:

• Church leaders admit that churches are not discipling new and young leaders very well.
• Participation in discipleship activities such as Sunday school, spiritual mentoring, or group Bible studies tends to be weak.
• Church leaders say that busyness and a lack of commitment to discipleship are the two biggest barriers to developing strong discipleship strategies.
• Programmatic approaches to discipleship have not been effective.
• A lack of equipped leaders willing to disciple others is a significant issue.
• Overall, a lack of priority for discipleship at the individual and corporate levels has led to general apathy about spiritual growth.
• Most churches have no means to evaluate whether their members are growing spiritually.

Clearly, we have not produced communities of passionate followers of Jesus. And we have a long way to go if we want to grow disciplemaking churches. At best, our discipleship efforts have been superficial. As Ive surveyed churches, Ive discovered at least six reasons that churches dont disciple well. Do any of them describe your church?

1. Many church leaderspastors includedhave never been discipled. That was true of me when I started pastoring more than forty years ago. Youre not alone if thats your story too. If we knew the truth, I suspect the number of pastors who have not been intentionally discipled would be surprisingly high.
2. In many cases, church leaders find more reward in reporting new believers. Some denominations, for example, ask for reports about new converts. Some give recognition to congregations that apparently evangelize well. Sometimes we pastors like to talk about our churchs good evangelistic numbers. What we seldom report, though, is the number of believers intentionally being discipled in our congregations. The number is often low, and the incentive for strategically reviewing this number is equally low.
3. Discipleship is tough, tiring, messy work. To disciple well means you have to walk with people in their everyday faith. You must be willing to encourage and lead through defeats and victories. You must be patient but persistent. Sometimes its just easier not to do it.
4. Weve reduced discipleship to a series of courses. Discipleship is life-on-life guidance; its not simply completing a number of courses (and sometimes earning some kind of certificate). As an educator, Im not opposed to curriculum as part of discipleship. But courses alone are not enough to produce devoted disciples of Jesus.
5. We leave little room for struggle and growth in new believers. Instead, we expect them to just get it and grow in Christlikeness almost immediately. When they dont grow quickly enough, too often we judge them before we help them. We might grant grace to new believers on the mission field who struggle with leaving behind their non-Christian worldview and habits, but we offer little grace to our new-believer neighbors who face the same struggles.
6. We dont always teach the high demands of the gospel. When we fail to talk about things like Jesus requirement that we deny ourselves and take up our cross (Luke 9:23), we teach a watered-down gospel. Consequently, people dont see the need for someone to walk with them in true discipleship.

What I didnt include in this list is the problem underlying most of these issues: Many churches simply havent given much intentional thought to disciplemaking. They may have tried some programs, but any success was short-lived. Church leaders may have read books on the topic, but reading a book is quite different from implementing a strategy. They may have had conversations with other leaders about becoming a disciplemaking church, but the initiative ended with the conversations.

On the other hand, leaders of strong discipleship ministries (called discipleship exemplars in the Barna/Navigator study) said two factors contribute the most to strong discipleship ministries: (1) support from senior leadership, and (2) a clear plan for developing disciples. My own research has shown that when leaders do not publicly prioritize discipleship, their churches wont either. They may talk the talk, but anything less than obvious support from leadership will hinder a churchs discipleship strategy.

Discipleship exemplars in the Barna/Navigators study also pointed to the significance of a clearly articulated strategy, though church leaders still recognized a need for much improvement in this area. Strong discipleship ministries know what their purpose is, understand where they want the ministry to go, and have a clear plan to get there. But its not easy to find a church that has developed and implemented a clear pathway for believers to grow to be more and more like Christ. Few churches have mapped out an intentional path to maturity.