Chapter 6 (Part 1) – Discipling Others – The Need for Discipleship
Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:19-20 New Living Translation)
If you always do what you always did
you’ll always get what you always got.
(Cowboy wisdom)
Have I been clear? You are the one who needs to be discipling people. Jesus last command while he was on earth was for us to disciple others. We also have seen that the first things a disciple must do is to repent, believe, and be baptized. Now what? For believers, if making disciples is Jesus’ command, then that’s what we should do. But how should we go about doing this?
Failure to make disciples has resulted in churches that are impotent and all but useless. Many churches just fade away and close their doors. Other churches sell their land and building to pay off debts and then close. Why didn’t these churches continue to grow and thrive? Maybe they lost sight of what the true mission of the church is – to make disciples. What many churches have done under the guise of discipleship simply does not work.
The church’s failure to disciple others has led to the ineffectiveness of her impact and influence on the culture. The salt has lost its flavor. Today, accountability has waned in modern churches. Church membership is a 20th century practice. Some church attenders act as they wish with no thought of what effect their behavior has on their church or the culture around them. In fact, many believers no longer consider themselves a part of a local church. Church shopping and church hopping has become the norm.
This does not have to happen. I’ve been a part of churches that had active discipleship taking place, and they were vibrant, living bodies. But I’ve also seen churches wallowing in mediocrity, slugging it out week after week, gasping for spiritual breath, trying to stay alive. In those churches, very little discipleship was happening other than attending weekly services and, perhaps, a few classes on Sunday morning.
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NEW BELIEVERS NEED A MENTOR
The new believer in Jesus is exactly that – new. He or she enters a new life and a new spiritual world. Navigating this world is like being in a land you’ve never seen before. New believers become like the four Pevensie children trying to find their way in the land of Narnia without Tumnus or Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. A new believer becomes an explorer in the kingdom of God seeing new things and feeling new emotions. This new land has a new language and new practices. This new world requires navigation to obtain its full riches. To be a disciple, the new believer needs a person to lead them – a discipler, a teacher, a leader, a mentor. The discipler provides the map of the kingdom, the understanding of this new spiritual world, and the leadership to prepare for the life here and hereafter.
Several books have been written about discipleship – great books – but these books were written between 25 and 50 years ago. These writers sincerely offered everything the church needs to know about leading new believers in the faith. However, like many books by Christian authors, they gained temporary popularity, trended for a while on best-seller lists, but they were soon set aside and ignored. This is so true about so many great books about Christianity. And when this happens, churches suffer.
Leroy Eims, in a groundbreaking book written in 1978 for The Navigators ministry, offered a few things to get a disciple of Jesus grounded in his or her faith. Some of his terminology is now antiquated, but his principles are biblical and sound. The heart of his material is still relevant today. In The Lost Art of Disciple Making, Eims explains that the new believer has needs:[i]
- New believers need assurance. They need to be affirmed in their decision to follow Jesus and their acceptance of a new life in him.
- New believers need acceptance. They need to feel that other believers love them and will stand behind their decision to follow Jesus.
- New believers need protection. The old life will call to them, and they need others to help them direct their choices and decisions toward God.
- New believers need fellowship. New godly friendships must be formed, and time must be spent with new friends to direct them to God.
- New believers need food. The food is the word of God. The word of God builds faith. Just like a baby needs milk to form strong bones, the new believer needs God’s word to form a strong foundation.
- New believers need training. This training is the teaching that must occur in order to make disciples. They must be taught to do the commands of Jesus. This entails a lot of “How-to” instruction for new believers who have never done this before. This is where the lifelong discipleship begins.
Many churches have the best intentions about discipleship. They attempt discipleship programs rooted in a classroom/Bible study format – a teacher/lecturer and an audience, and while these classes appear to work, the long-term effects fail to stick. The classes are called many things, but essentially they are the “follow-up” classes for new believers in the church. Such classes are good for disseminating the initial information a new believer needs, but the follow-up to the follow-up usually needs some work. How many times have you heard a story about someone who prayed to receive Christ, yet there was no fruit afterwards? The person stayed exactly like they were before praying the prayer or saying the words. This is rarely the fault of the person who prayed the prayer. Many times, the blame rightly lies right at the feet of the church in failing to do adequate, focused discipleship after their decision and failing to lead that person onto the path of godliness.
Robert Coleman is a proponent of focused discipleship. In his book, The Master Plan of Evangelism from 1963, Coleman observes this very phenomena: [ii]
“When will the church learn this lesson? Preaching to the masses, although necessary, will never suffice in the work of preparing leaders… nor [will] occasional prayer meetings and training classes for Christian workers do this job. Building men is not that easy. It requires constant personal attention, much like a father gives to his children. This is something that no organization or class can ever do…. There is a lot of talk in the church about evangelism and Christian nurture, but little concern for personal association when it becomes evident that such work involves the sacrifice of personal indulgence. Of course, most churches insist on bringing new members through some kind of a confirmation class, which usually meets an hour a week for a month or so, but the rest of the time the young convert has no contact at all with a definite Christian training program, except as he may attend the worship services of the church and the Sunday school…. There is simply no substitute for getting with people, and it is ridiculous to imagine that anything less, short of a miracle, can develop strong Christian leadership. After all, if Jesus, the son of God, found it necessary to stay almost constantly with his few disciples for three years, and even one of them was lost, how can the church expect to do this job on an assembly line basis a few days out of the year?”
Larry Crabb echoes both the observations of both Eims and Coleman and a need for discipleship that differs from traditional Christian education models. In his 1999 book titled Becoming a True Spiritual Community, Crabb looked at the traditional classroom approach to spirituality and called for ‘turning our chairs toward each other” and developing spiritual friendships within the church that center around a spiritual director. A regular classroom faces its chairs all in the direction of a single teacher/lecturer. Crabb exhorts the church to face each other and get honest and down-to-earth about living life as a Christian.
“A pastor who ministers to small groups in a sizeable church recently told me, ‘People in our home fellowships do what the manual instructs them to do. They tell personal stories, share prayer requests, discuss interesting things, reflect on biblical texts, worship together, sometimes even weep for one another. But something’s not going on that should be, something everyone wants. I don’t know what it is, but it’s missing.’
…Another small group pastor said to me over lunch, ‘We’ve got to move to another level. Good things are happening in our groups, but not what most needs to happen, not what I know somehow could happen.’”[iii]
The kind of discipleship described by these three authors is not found in a class or a program. Discipleship happens within a relationship – the same kind of relationship that God has with us.
Pay attention to this truth: Discipleship must be embedded within relationship; relationship is the key to effective discipleship.
(I’m restating Coleman here…) Most churches, at least, have a follow-up class that instructs the new believer about what he or she must do to follow Jesus. Yet when the class is over, very little accountability is required. Some churches have a baptism class that explains what baptism is and how baptism “cements” the decision to believe in Jesus or serves as a public display of a spiritual decision. After that, the new believer may be invited to join a Bible class (or a Sunday school class – if they still exist), but beyond that little is offered. The new believer is often released into the world to find their own way. “Good luck!” says the church. However, no one takes their hand and says, “This is where we are going next. Follow me in order to follow Jesus.” Sunday school classes are not focused, relational discipleship. Bible classes are not focused, relational discipleship.
New believers need a mentor – a person who is a spiritual director, a spiritual guide, a spiritual teacher. The church is filled with potential mentors because each person who has been a Christian longer than six months can lead a new believer. Yet very few church-goers are ever personally challenged to fulfill the last words that Jesus said on earth. Bible classes do not replace a mentor. Sunday school classes do not replace a spiritual guide. Weekly sermons do not replace a personal, spiritual teacher. New believers need someone to guide them.
There is a need for focused, personal discipleship in the church. A weekly Sunday sermon will not do it. Sunday school classes will not do it. A weekly co-ed Bible study will not do it. Let’s try something old – personal, relational discipleship, and let’s start today.
Onward, forward!
[i]Eims calls the new believer a convert; the term is now antiquated. Leroy Eims, The Lost Art of Disciple Making. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978, 62-67.
[ii] Robert E. Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism. Tarrytown: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1964, 47-48.
[iii] Larry Crabb. Becoming a True Spiritual Community. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. 1999, XIII.