Tag: disciple-making

Building a Discipling Culture (review)

Posted on December 11, 2011

This is a review of Mike Breen’s Building a Discipleship Culture. (Available only as an eBook. It’s worth your $7.49.)

I appreciate Mike Breen’s radical focus on discipleship. He points out that many leaders in the West, while often well-educated, are poorly trained for disciple-making. In seminaries we learn exegesis, systematic theology, church history, and pastoral duties but all too often the basics of making a disciples are left out. While there are exceptions, in general, he’s right. It’s true. Things do need to change.

Some Strengths of the Book

Build a discipleship culture. This is what Breen does well. Build. Equip. Change. If you’re looking for a book to help you to create a discipleship culture, look no more. He does this through structure and insight. The second half of the book is devoted to discipleship structure. He calls for Huddles, small groups of disciples who meet regularly to encourage and disciple one another. These huddles have multiplication built into them. They are kind of like Fight Clubs but with much more structure and intentionality.

What I enjoyed most about this book were the discipling insights, things like Invitation and Challenge. Invitation and challenge was one way Jesus made disciples. He invited them into his life, but not just to be his buddies; he also challenged them. Too much buddying is done in the name of discipleship. We need to deepen in our security in Christ to love others enough to exhort, challenge, and correct them with grace and truth. Breen notes that Jesus created a “highly supportive but highly challenging culture.”

I was teaching through a holistic discipleship class in our local church while reading Building a Discipleship Culture, and to my surprise, there were a lot of overlaps in our structures and insights. This was affirming, as Mike has been at it a bit more than me. Discipleship, if it is going to be true to God’s intention, has to be intentional, integrated, and informed. Mike says roughly the same thing when he calls for three environments: Classroom, Apprenticeship, and Immersion. Most Westerners never get beyond the classroom. Discipleship remains at arms length idea, not a personal investment.

Now, don’t jump to conclusions by lumping Mike into an anti-theology camp. He says teaching and doctrine are “incredibly important”, but goes on to point out how Jesus taught important doctrines in the context of relationship and ministry immersion. So, in building a discipleship culture its important that we integrate information with intentionality in the context of relationships. I really like this statement:

“The best discipling relationships always have an intentional, ‘organized’ component to them, as well as a less formal, ‘organic’ component.”

It’s true. Go all organic and its hard to grow well. Even plants often need support. Go all intentional and relationships can be reduced to meetings and information transfer. We need both intentionality and relationship. For these insights and many others, Building a Discipleship Culture is worth reading!

Overstatements in the Book

Now, Mike and I have exchanged a few winsome emails about some things he says in his book. And, if I understand correctly, he has a tendency to overstatement (of course none of us do!). In light of that, here are a few that I think need qualifying:

  • “Disciples are the only thing that Jesus cares about, and its the only number that Jesus is counting.” Really? Jesus doesn’t care about our doctrine or church polity? And is Jesus counting disciples because he’s basing our worth as a disciple on how many disciples we have, or is he counting because he died for his disciples? Counting can be a dangerous thing.
  • So what is the engine of the church? Discipleship. “If you make disciples, you will always get the church. But if you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples.” There’s some truth to this statement, but it’s not a truism. Disciples have been made without making churches throughout church history. Very often they end up as cults. Alternatively, many churches are started that don’t mature and multiply disciples but instead gather Christians to Sunday events. This probably needs nuancing.
The Engine of the Church
If discipleship is the engine of the church, we put our hope in pragmatism, albeit Jesus imitating pragmatism. But the hope of every disciple and would be disciple is not the method of discipleship but the might of the gospel! The gospel, not discipleship, is the engine of the church. I asked Mike about this and he gave a helpful response:

All metaphors break down at some point and I’m sure saying discipleship is the engine breaks down on many levels, though i think it works on many levels too. I don’t know that I was trying to make a significant theological statement so much as point to a reality of causation that I believe exists/doesn’t exist in the church. I think you could say discipleship is the fuel and the Gospel is the engine and the point is still proven. Without fuel, the car is still going no where, just as it wouldn’t without an engine.

Point taken! Then I say, “Let’s start the engine, fill it up, and start making disciples!” Let’s build discipleship culture with the gospel of Jesus right in the middle of it!

Making the Gospel Viral (via discipleship)

Posted on September 28, 2011

I’m incredibly excited about what is happening in our church right now. We’re really dialing in on discipleship, more than ever, in a variety of ways. As we assessed the health of our church, we evaluated the four “selfs” of a viable church plant.

  • Self-Governing – a church led by a plurality of elders
  • Self-Sustaining – a church financially supported by its own people
  • Self-Reproducing – a church that multiplies disciples, missional communities, and church plants
  • Self-Gospeling – a church that is equipped to apply the gospel to itself and to its own cultural context
Our Steps towards Viral Discipleship
After sharing our progress on each “self” on a Sunday morning, we have focused in on Self-reproducing. In order to avoid becoming a church that has a shelf-life, we need to reproduce on a micro and macro level. We need reproductive gospel DNA. Although our staff and some of our leadership were practicing reproductive discipleship; it was not viral. Therefore, I wrote a paper on “The Missing Ingredient of Reproductive Discipleship” and discussed it with our elders and staff. Then, after refining our thoughts, we then turned our attention to practical steps for cultivating reproductive discipleship. Those steps included:
  1. Casting Vision to our Leaders about Reproductive Disciple-making
  2. A message on The Mission of Making Disciples
  3. Working through a Gospel/Community/Mission Primer in our missional communities.
  4. Our MCs making a missional commitment to disciple-making.
  5. Identifying & training disciples through 12: Making the Gospel Viral
We’re hopeful that this will lead to viral discipleship and missional faithfulness in passing the gospel of Jesus on. Pray for us if you think about it.

New Article: Failed Disciple

Posted on June 25, 2009

Boundless is running a new article (Failed Disciple), a version of a post I wrote a few weeks back on Creation Project called Confessions of a Failed Disciple. This article was adapted from the introduction to my forthcoming book Fight Club: Gospel-centered Discipleship, which is getting very close to being finished! An excerpt from the article:

“Along the way, I’ve come to understand that following Jesus alone is not really what it means to be a disciple. Both the church and the parachurch taught me that being a disciple means making disciples. I was told that this meant two primary things. First, I should be active in “sharing my faith.” Second, I should find Christians who are younger in the faith to tell and show what it means to be older in the faith.

It took me quite a while to realize that this practice of making disciples was incomplete. Making disciples requires not only “sharing my faith,” but also sharing my life — failures and successes, disobedience and obedience.

Making disciples is not code for evangelism, nor is it a spiritual system whereby professional Christians pass on best practices to novice Christians.”

Confessions of a Failing Disciple

Posted on May 29, 2009

Over the past three decades, I have failed in countless ways in being a disciple of Jesus, in obeying and honoring him as my Redeemer and Lord. I have wandered the wasteland of religion in an attempt to earn the un-earnable favor of God. I have chased the pleasures of the world, in an attempt to satisfy my infinite longings with finite things. Neither the legalistic rules of religion nor license from rules in worldly living have satisfied. These twists and turns on my discipleship path have not honored Christ. Yet, despite my failures, year after year, the desire to honor and obey Christ has not withered. In fact, it has grown even amidst failure.

“Sharing Your Faith”

Along the way, I’ve come to understand that following Jesus alone is not really what it means to be a disciple. Both the church and the parachurch taught me that being a disciple means making disciples. I was told that this meant two primary things. First, I should be active in “sharing my faith.” Second, I should find Christians who are younger in the faith to tell and show what it means to be older in the faith. It took me quite a while to realize that this practice of making disciples was incomplete. Making disciples requires not only “sharing our faith”, but also sharing our lives— failures and successes, disobedience and obedience. Making disciples is not code for evangelism, nor is it a spiritual system whereby professional Christians pass on best practices to novice Christians.

Professional Disciples vs. Novice Disciples

But I preferred only to disclose my successes, to pass on my accumulated wisdom and knowledge, while hiding my foolishness and ignorance. It’s not that I wasn’t making disciples; people gobbled up my platitudes and piety. The problem was the kind of disciples I was making, disciples who could share their faith but not their failures. Why did I embrace this kind of discipleship? Should blame be laid at the feet of the church or parachurch? Not really. It was my fault. My motivation for obeying Jesus (in this case, making disciples), had shifted from attempting to earn God’s favor, to earning the favor of my disciples. “Disciple” had become a way to leverage my identity and worth in relationship with others. As the dispenser of wisdom and truth, I was comfortably placed on a pedestal. The more disciples I made, the better I felt about myself. My motivation for discipleship was to receive praise, worth, significance. I was a disciple lacking authenticity and community, motivated by a mixture of genuine love and lust for praise. Now, don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of good intentions and a lot of good fruit from these relationships, but in a sense, I was still following Jesus alone. The professional/novice relationship created a comfortable distance, not only from admitting my failures but also from genuine community. I stood at the top of the stairs of discipleship, instead of sitting in the living room with fellow disciples. I put the best foot forward and hid the ugly one behind me. Disciple had become more of a verb than a noun. Less about a community centered on Christ and more about an activity centered on what I know.

The Gospel is for Disciples Not Just Sinners

Fortunately, Jesus is big enough for my misunderstanding of what it means to follow him. As I continued to “disciple” and read the Bible, I was struck by the fact that the disciples of Jesus were always attached to other disciples, that they lived in community. This community was authentic. They confessed their sins and struggles alongside their successes. But they also seemed to continually come back to Jesus, not merely as their example, but also as their identity, their entire sense of self. The New Testament is filled with exhortations to keep Christ at the center of our discipleship, not only for instruction but also for transformation. I began to realize that Jesus is not merely the start and standard for salvation, but that he is the beginning, middle, and end of my salvation. He is my salvation, not just when I was six, but every second of every day.

Contrary to the unforgiving demands of religion, Jesus forgives us when we fail. He doesn’t kick us when we are down, but dies to lift us up. Unlike the deception of worldly pleasure, Jesus offers true satisfaction and joy. Instead of wooing me into death, he leads me into life, his resurrection life. It slowly became apparent to me that the gospel of Christ was where I was meant to find my identity, not in impressing God or others. Refusing to share my life with others, especially my failures, was a refusal to allow the gospel of Christ to accomplish its full breadth of redemption in my life. Very simply, God was leading me into a kind of discipleship with the gospel at the center, a constant, gracious repetition of repentance and faith in Jesus, who is sufficient for my failures and strong for my successes. Jesus frees me from trying to impress God or others because he has impressed God on my behalf. I can tell people my sins because my identity doesn’t hang on what they think of me. I can be an imperfect Christian because I cling to a perfect Christ. As it turns out, the gospel is not just for sinners; it’s also for disciples, disciples who sin.

Discipleship with Jesus in the Center

This kind of discipleship is, in the end, not about what I do but who I am—an imperfect person, clinging to a perfect Christ, being perfected by grace. And in this I am not alone. I am one disciple among many. I no longer stand at the top of the stairs but sit in the living room, where we share our faith and our un-faith, our obedience and disobedience, our success and our failure. With Jesus at the center, we can encourage one another to persevere in faith, to endure in suffering, to increase in love, to multiply in mission, bypassing the professional/novice distinctions. With Jesus at the center, we can obey from our acceptance not for our acceptance. With Jesus at the center, we can be the church to one another and to the world, without bearing the burden of perfection, a burden reserved for the Spirit, who through through grace, makes us more and more like Christ. With Jesus at the center of discipleship, I immediately enter into grace and into community, where making disciples flows from being a disciple.