TILL HE COMES Blog

So we’ve seen the two basic models of discipleship and the pros and cons of each. Ideally, there should be a way to blend the two so we keep the positive aspects of each while avoiding the negative. Here is what Matt Chandler is doing at his church: 

1. You must create an air that celebrates life transformation and change. These things must be championed and celebrated from the stage in the service every single week. Use video and testimony to celebrate growth, transformation, and movement. It cannot be a sermon series once a year. You have to constantly, constantly bang the drum of progressive sanctification. And you MUST celebrate more than just the “miracle.” Yes, put up the guy who drank and drank and drank, and then came to Christ, and hasn’t desired a drink since. But also, champion the guy who is still raw, who still struggles. You get a guy up there to say, “I’m struggling, but let me tell you where I see God.”

2. Have lots of “on ramps” and “off ramps.” Make it easy for people to get involved in various ways of spiritual transformation, and make it ways for them to just rest in what they have learned. Allow times when you just back away from everything, and not try to control things, and just let them sit, rest, and germinate.

3. Keep flexible. The mission and end goal is sacred, but nothing else is. Ask yourself: What stirs your affections for Jesus Christ? And what robs you of that affection? Almost all of us have different answers to these questions. You must be flexible enough not to dictate to the people in your church how they are to grow spiritually. Some read Edwards. Some play the piano. Some go to the graveyard. Some go the art museum. We’ve got to figure out how to give our people freedom to press on toward the Lord. You can lay some track for them, but you can’t punish people when they deviate off that track.

4. There needs to be a relational aspect to everything. Everything. Here are some ways to make things relational:

a. Home groups. You can’t just throw people in a room and have community together. We need to try to help people build community, but it is very, very difficult. If they already have community, encourage them to stay with that group. Tell the older people they have a fishing license, and you are giving them a stocked lake. Tell them to look around and invite a couple over for dinner so they can pour their lives into someone younger. If you try to assign people to relationships, it won’t work.

b. Recovery ministry. There are lots of “short circuits” that people need help with. Drug. Alcohol. Relationships. Porn. Anger. Eating.

c. Whatever teaching you do, be heavy on application.

d. Use film to teach theology. (But get a license to show these films.)

e. Children and youth. Don’t teach moralism. Don’t teach a fake, external morality. Teach strong doctrine, and then engage the parents in the process. Provide the parents tools to help teach the children. For example, suggest field trips they can take their children on and questions they can ask. If we teach the children at church, and this doesn’t get reinforced at home, all we are teaching our children is to compartmentalize their Church life from the rest of their life.

6. ALL OF THIS TAKES TIME. LOTS OF TIME. Find mature leaders. Pair them with 2-3 others, and tell them to walk together for 2-3 years intentionally. Then, these people turn around, and disciple 2 or 3 more, while they are still being discipled by those over them. So eventually, everyone is discipling and being discipled.

So, that is a broad-brush overview of what they are trying to do. He said to check back in 20-30 years to see if it worked. Do you have any ideas or suggestions on how we can encourage community while keeping people in the Word?

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The number one question in most churches today is “How can we properly, adequately, and effectively make disciples?” If this isn’t your church’s number one question, you should probably shut down the church and go read Matthew 28:19-20 again.

This was the topic of Matt Chandler’s session at the Regional Acts 29 Conference yesterday. (They recorded the session, and so if/when I find out how to obtain the audio, I will update this post with that information.) In the next three posts, I will review what he said. It parallells exactly what I’ve been thinking for about a year now, which is why it was so exciting to me.

Today, I will simply introduce in broad brush strokes the two most common methods of making disciples in our churches today. Tomorrow, we will discuss the pros and cons of each, and on Friday, we will present a few ideas for how to take the pros from both approaches and incorporate them into the church while avoiding the cons.

Organic Discipleship

Matt began by pointing out that there are two basic approaches to making disciples in churches today. The first is relational discipleship (which he called “organic”), where the church encourages people to get together in some sort of home groups where they hang out, develop relationships, and just trust the Holy Spirit to work in their midst bringing them into the knowledge of the truth. They will often have some sort of “designated driver” to lead the group in a particular direction, but often the leader doesn’t really know how to get people “home” or what that “home” is. This approach tends to generate lots and lots of numerical growth in a church, but very little deep spiritual growth.

Mechanical-Linear Discipleship

Then there is the content-based model of discipleship, which Matt referred to as the “Mechanical-Linear” model. It will often have certain steps and classes that a person has to progress through on the “path” of discipleship. In this approach, discipleship is often equated with learning. There will be notebooks full of notes, classes that people can take, and different levels to aspire to. This approach does not get the great numbers that the organic approach does, but does give a few people a lot of information and knowledge about the Bible and theology.

During my five years as a pastor, I adopted and leaned heavily upon the Mechanical-linear model. I even spent time in certain sermons and Bible studies to criticize and condemn the Organic model. Now, three years out of pastoral ministry, and looking at heading back into it through church planting, I have been able to think, reflect, watch, and study these two models at work, and see numerous pros and cons to both. Tomorrow, I will review the pros and cons of each model that Matt Chandler has seen. 

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We in the Free Grace camp need to think BIG about the future. I am not sure if I mentioned in my post about the Acts 29 conference I went to, but my biggest ache on that day was that all these men were going out to plant churches, and they were all Lordship/Calvinistic. In my post on Emergent Immersion, Don made the following comment which I thought was so good, I would post it here:

To be perfectly honest, I cannot stand any of the churches in the area. In the Philadelphia area, there are really no good churches. ALL and I mean ALL the “good” mild lordship Bible believing Baptist churches have gone totally reformed over the last 30 years (yes I was born and raised here). There are a few mild lordship Bible churches, but the vast majority are hardline lordship. Then there are the KJV only, legalistic kind of churches.

I agree with this 100%. Thank you Don! 

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I went to a church planting event today sponsored by the Acts 29 Network. It was attended by 200 or so young men who want to plant churches around the county. I came dressed in wrinkled Dockers and an untucked collared shirt. I was the best dressed person there. It seems the dress code requirement for future church planters of America is sandals, khaki shorts, wrinkled t-shirt, and a baseball hat, with a tall Starbucks in one hand, and an iPod in the other (soon to be replaced by the popular iPhone).

Also, looking around, I think I was the second oldest person there. There was one guy older than me. He had gray hair. Also, incidentally, he was better dressed than me. His shirt was long-sleeved, and tucked in. After registering, I noticed him up on the stage. The young guy next to me, who looked like he just rolled out of bed, was talking with another young guy (who was barefoot!), and said, “Who’s the old guy on the stage?”

I smiled, because I knew who it was. It was Aubrey Malphurs, the speaker for this church planting event. He is one of my professors at Dallas Theological Seminary, and his books are some of the best that are available on church leadership and planting. His book, Doing Church should be read by every Christian, whether they are a pastor or not.

But I thought it was interesting, especially as Malphurs took the stage, and ran into some technology problems, to watch some of the young punk pastors around me, sit back in their chairs, fold their arms, and basically shut off. You can almost hear their thoughts: “What can this old guy tell me about church planting? He can’t even work his microphone, or keep his Powerpoint on track with where he is in the notes. We’re a different generation, man. I’d leave now, but I want to stay for the free lunch.” The guy in front of me even pulled out a book and started reading.

Sure, Malphurs made some “mistakes” in talking to this younger generation. He began right off by apologizing for having bronchitis. This immediately cemented in our minds the stereotypical “old guy” who spends half his time talking about all his aches and pains. After this, he launched into a commercial for three of his books. He held the books up, and gave a brief summary of each one, and how we could purchase them at the book table. For the young pastors in the group, this smacked of self-promotion, and Malphurs seemed to sense this, because when he was done, he said, “Well, enough of selling my own books.” The guy behind me whispered under his breath, “Amen.” I rolled my eyes at him…but since he was looking at the back of my head, didn’t see me do it. I am very brave.

This is when it dawned on me. We’re a bunch of arrogant fools. I’m including myself in this, more so than the others. They may have been critical of Malphurs without knowing much of anything about him, but I was being critical of all of these pastors for being critical of him, and I don’t know anything about any of these guys. Most of them, probably, had time in the Word with God this morning, and I didn’t. Most of them probably shared Christ with someone at Starbucks this morning, while I just glared at the guy in front of me at the Seven Eleven for asking stupid questions about AAA batteries to the Muslim man behind the counter who clearly knew nothing about batteries. And the young barefoot pastor? Well, those of you who know me know I hate shoes. I wish I had thought to come barefoot. Regarding Malphurs and his books, the truth is that we were all just jealous of his many books. I know I am.

The truth is that us young bucks can learn a lot from the older generation, but at the same time, many of the older generation need to be more like Aubrey Malphurs. He is a student of culture, an expert on the church, and knows the difference between the Biblical theology of the church, and the historical tradition of church. He knows that most of what passes for “church” in Christianity, is far from what the church is meant to be. He knows that most of what is “sacred” in churches today, needs to be tossed into the trash.

And most of all, each and every one of us, myself more than others, needs to be less critical of one another. To our own master we stand or fall. If I’m going to criticize someone, I need to criticize me. Take the plank out of my own eye, and all of that. Each of us must remember what we learned in kindergarten, that when I point the finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointed back at me. The best thing we can remember when we criticize someone else is, “We’re all idiots. And if I feel I’m better than all of them, it is only because by the grace of God, I am chief among them.”

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