We Need Five Disciplers Not One
Why do you think more and more people in the United States no longer identify themselves as Christians (see this ARIS Study)? What is turning people off to the church, or at least some forms of the church? And why is the digital generation the least involved in the church? While there are no simple answers to these questions, I want to suggest that at the heart of the matter is the lack of mature missional disciples, not just as individuals, but also as communities of God’s people. We need to be more like Jesus as a body. More and more people are beginning to recognize that the most significant measurement of success needs to move beyond how many people come to a church service to how many mature missional disciples are living in the world for the sake of the world.
So how can the church become a faithful sign, a rich foretaste and powerful instrument bringing more of heaven to earth?
A passage that I have been reflecting on for the last 12 years has much to offer us. The Apostle Paul when writing to the church at Ephesus says, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:11-13).
For Paul, the maturity of the body is directly linked to the five different equippers living out their ministry in the body. Under the inspiration of the Spirit, Paul is letting us know that if we hope to have mature disciples we must be willing to recognize, receive and nourish each of the five equippers that Christ has given the church. For as the equippers incarnate their lives and ministries within the body, the whole body will be aroused and awakened to live out their sacred potential, and the body will grow in faith, hope and love.
Part of what this means is that our approach to discipleship must involve a communal dimension. We must include, but also go beyond the individualistic one-on-one approach to discipleship if we hope to develop mature missional disciples and communities. We need to let Paul’s wisdom guide us as we think about how to approach discipleship in such a way that the community become mature disciples.
This means we need to understand how each of the equippers uniquely disciple the congregation, so that we can identify and cultivate equippers in both our missional communities and congregation as a whole.
So what are the distinct ways that each of the equippers disciple missional communities and the church? What kinds of practices might they encourage the congregation to engage in, so that the community will reflect the full character and ministry of Christ?
Apostles as Dream Awakeners The apostles, who I have nicknamed dream awakeners, equip people to discover and live out their calling, in the world for the sake of the world. They help to cultivate a discipleship ethos and call people to participate in advancing God’s kingdom. They help individuals and communities live out the answer to Jesus’ prayer, “May your kingdom come, and your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10). Dream awakeners disciple people by helping them discover their primal passions, skills and gifts, and match them to needs in the church and the neighborhood. Apostles encourage people to engage in the thick practices of disciple-making and Sabbath. Sabbath is key because as we take time to be still, we are more likely to hear the call of God on our lives, amidst the many other voices that compete for our attention.
Prophets as Heart Revealers Prophets, who I have nicknamed heart revealers, seek to help people walk with God. Through their actions and words they reveal the heart of God and the heart of the congregation. They help the community live out God’s new social order and stand with the poor and oppressed. They train disciples to grow in sensitivity to the Spirit as well as develop hearts for those that the society and/or the church have branded as outcasts. Heart revealers help people become conscious of God through silence, solitude, prayer and fasting, and they help people to be devoted to the breaking of bread where the community remembers Christ’s death, celebrates his resurrection and lives as a resurrected community.
Evangelists as Story Tellers Evangelists, or whom I call story tellers, equip the congregation to incarnate the good news in the neighborhood. They equip the congregation to proclaim the good news by being witnesses and being redemptive agents, redeeming the various spheres of society. Evangelists disciple people by helping them turn their “secular” jobs into sacred callings. They encourage and equip people to practice hospitality in all its depth. They also help people engage in sharing the good news of God’s grace in such a way that the focus is more on transformation than decision; to share the good news in a way that not only talks about the after-life, but the missional life; and in a way that people see the individual, communal and cosmic implications of the gospel.
Pastors as Soul Healers Pastors, or whom I call soul healers, equip the congregation to pursue wholeness in the context of community. They help the congregation embody reconciliation and live emotionally healthy lives. Soul healers create a healing environment where people can take off their masks and be real. They help to create a family environment where people not only pray together, but play together. They disciple people by helping them engage in habits that refresh them physically, recharge them emotionally and renew them spiritually. They encourage people to engage in the thick practices of confession and peacemaking. They help people practice confessing both their failures and victories.
Teachers as Light Givers Teachers, or whom I call light givers, equip the congregation to inhabit the sacred text. They encourage people to immerse themselves in Scripture as well as live faithfully to the story of God and the God of the story. They disciple people by helping them approach the word of God as a voice to be heard and not just a book to be read. They equip people to approach the scripture for transformation, not just information. They encourage people to regularly participate in sacred assemblies, including weekly gatherings, regional gatherings, national conferences and international assemblies. They help people engage in future-oriented living, where they partner with God to bring his future into the present.
As we examine some of the ways that the equippers uniquely equip and disciple the body, we better understand why Paul strongly links the five equippers to the maturity of the church.
Until we understand, identify and nourish the various equippers that Christ has given the church, we are likely to have immature churches that are tossed back and forth by the latest spiritual craze.
But when we release the equippers to incarnate their lives and ministries in the church together, then the entire church will awaken to use their gifts in such a way that the whole body builds itself up in love and the church rises to her sacred potential, living as if Christ were living in them.
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JR Woodward is a dream awakener and co-founder of Kairos Los Angeles, a network of neighborhood churches in the Los Angeles area. He serves on the board for the Ecclesia Network and GCM. He has a Master of Arts in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary and will be pursuing a PhD in Europe. JR enjoys coaching and consulting with a number of churches and church planters. He blogs @jrwoodward.net and tweets @dreamawakener. He recently finished writing Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World, with InterVarsity Press, which is due to be released this summer (2012).
Be Fruitful and Multiply Disciples
Historically, movements have stopped because they were primarily leader-led information dumps. Information isn’t a bad thing, but information-driven movements are limited in influence. Why should we create disciple multiplying movements? How can we create them? It's What We Were Made For In the garden of Eden, we see that image bearers of God we were made to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:22, 26-28). By issuing his first "great commission," God did not merely intend for us to have more people over for Thanksgiving dinner. Rather, he wanted his beautiful image to fill the entire earth through the multiplication of his image bearers. But through Adam, we sinned and were separated from God.
In the attempt to author our own story, we sought center stage--pushing God's goals for us aside. We sought to multiply our image for the sake of our own fame rather than God's fame.
When someone repents and turns to God, it is our responsibility to show them their new mission by pointing back to the garden. We must show how their mission is all about multiplying for the sake of God's glory not multiplying a life that is all about them and their legacy.
Most small groups in churches believe their goal is to get to know each other or form a close bond. If this is the goal, multiplication will never be desired. Drawing close to one another is not the goal of missional community, but making disciples who make disciples is (being fruitful and multiplying images of Jesus). Drawing close to one another happens because Jesus has given us the same Father, and we are a part of the same family. So, forming a close bond is a bi-product rather than the goal of living together on mission as family.
This Must be on Our Lips If our goal is to make disciples who make disciples (to be fruitful and multiply), then this must be on our lips constantly. I tell those who aren’t even followers of Jesus yet, that we desire to see communities like ours across the world doing the same thing. So, when they join our community as a follower of Jesus, they’ve already been discipled to know that we desire multiplication.
But it doesn’t stop there. We continue to talk about it as a group and continue to seek to hear from the Spirit on his timing and his power to send us out. The best way I can describe this is by relating it to your child. Do you desire to see your child stay in your house until they die? Or do you desire to see them leave the house and have a family of their own? Do you then wait until they are 18 and spring this on them and then kick them out? Or, do you continue talking to them about it, train them and seek for them to be ready when the day comes to leave your house and go and be fruitful and multiply with their new family? This is the same thing we need to be doing with our church families. We need to seek to see them grow in maturity and grow in the gospel so that they too can lead a family of missionary servants to live out the effects of the gospel with those around them.
People often ask me how I make it easy for our groups to multiply. I say the same thing every time: You must regularly talk about multiplication and train the next group for its certainty. It must always be on your lips and prayers, and always on your people’s lips and prayers. If it’s not, then it will be very difficult when it happens--like kicking out your unsuspecting child and telling them it’s healthy.
Transforming and Transferable You will do well by building the foundation of multiplication. You will also do well by regularly talking about it and listening to the Spirit in the process. But what happens if you have no leaders to lead the multiplication? This is where many groups and movements fail. The reason is that people in the group look at the leader and think, “There’s no way I can do what he’s doing. This takes too much time and too much theological knowledge.” Not only that, but you’ve merely spoken about multiplication without transforming people’s hearts to seek it out.
Merely talking about making disciples is sometimes fun and it’s a great theological exercise for the mind. But mere talk and theologizing rarely inspire people to make disciples.
If you desire to see others gripped to make disciples, you must not only penetrate their intellect. You must also aim at their hearts. If you merely aim at their heads with theological reasons why it’s good to make disciples, people will always come up with reasons why they are not convinced of its realities.
I think of Jonathan Edwards when he spoke of God’s holiness and grace and compared it to honey.[1]
In this way, he says, there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance. When the heart is sensible of the beauty and amiableness of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension. It is implied in a person's being heartily sensible of the loveliness of a thing, that the idea of it is sweet and pleasant to his soul; which is a far different thing from having a rational opinion that it is excellent.
So, we must, as leaders, show others what it means to make disciples. When a follower of Jesus sees new disciples being made, and they are a part of it, their heart will rejoice. And like honey on the lips, they will desire more honey instead of merely talking about honey. Jesus did the same with the blind man in John 9. He healed him, so that the blind man would taste and see that the Lord was good. Then he supported that heart-transforming act, to theologically tackle the implications of who Jesus was afterward in John 9:35-41. Notice the way the blind man desired others to taste and see that the Lord Jesus was good--because his heart was transformed.
Not only do we seek to transform, but we must also make sure what we do is transferable. I have many things I can share from experience that I believe are transferable for my people, but you must ask yourself these types of questions:
- Do I need a theological degree to lead the community like I do? Remember, not all people like to read and study as much as many of us pastors do. If we want to create a movement of disciple-making, then we have to move away from leading from a position of “trained” men, into leading like “untrained” men. (By the way, I’ve never been to seminary, nor am I paid by the church.)
- Do I need to be paid by the church to have the time to do what I do? See above.
- What resources are available to give future leaders so that they don’t feel like they have to think of new topics to discuss and study in their Missional Community? I do not do any book studies in the Bible that cause me to do an immeasurable amount of study and reading on my own. If I do, then people will see the group as one that can only be led by someone with my capacity. Instead, I use easily transferable studies (e.g., check out www.bild.org)
- How can I model all of this, so that I am going to be able to transfer leadership, instead of being the functional savior for our groups? Make sure you lead as you want others to lead. Don’t do studies that can only be led by a seminarian. Don’t do so many activities that can only be done by those with a job inside the church. Remember, as you lead, you are discipling those in your group on what it looks like to lead a group of disciple-makers. You can’t say one thing and model another. They’ll see right through that.
Because I have worked hard to hear the Spirit’s leading in this, 80% of those that are a part of the Missional Communities in my expression within Soma Communities desire to lead MCs at some point. When I baptized a new disciple, he first desired to lead a group of disciple-makers. He saw this as the only option for someone who was a follower of Jesus and, that it wasn’t anything special. In spite of being a new disciple, he didn’t see this as some “high calling” only for a few.
Since we want to lay the foundation of multiplication, we regularly talk about making disciples who make disciples. We seek to do this by modeling it for them in ways easily transferable. New disciples often can’t wait to lead others in the making of disciples who multiply to make more disciples.
So, go! Be fruitful disciples of Jesus by multiplying his beautiful image everywhere.
1 http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/edwards_light.html
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Seth McBee is the adopted son of God, husband of one wife and father of three. He’s a graduate of Seattle Pacific University with a finance degree. By trade Seth is an Investment Portfolio Manager, serving as president of McBee Advisors, Inc. Today, he’s a preaching elder, City Church leader and coach with Soma Communities in Renton, Washington. In his down time he likes to watch football, cook BBQ, host pancake ebelskiver breakfasts at his home and many other neighborhood events in his hometown of Maple Valley, Washington.
6 Resolutions of the Gospel-Wakened Church
1. We Resolve to Love Our Neighbor
Gospel wakefulness is not truly experienced if it does not open our hearts to others. A completely inward wakefulness is false wakefulness. While what Christ has done is the grounds of the gospel’s content, what Christ commands is the reference for the gospel’s implications, and from his own mouth we know that the greatest commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself ” (Luke 10:27).
The gospel-wakened church resolves to live for those outside its walls, to give herself away in love and on mission
The gospel-wakened church resolves to live for those outside its walls, to give herself away in love and on mission. She makes Christ’s business to seek and save the lost her business. When awe of Jesus captures a church, her people become missionaries to their own communities and contexts, making this vow: “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” And there is no greater good than Christ, no firmer foundation than him.
Jesus was so passionate about this mission that he followed its trajectory to the pouring out of his very life. Gospel wakefulness facilitates Christlike mission, because it creates both the humility and the confidence intrinsic to willing sacrifice. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” (Rom. 15:3)
2. We Resolve to Look Foolish
What do we see in Romans 15:3? Jesus was so aligned with God that he took our animosity toward God upon himself. He takes the reproach from God for sin. Paul is quoting Psalm 69:9, a rather powerful gem of Scripture, if you think about it:
for zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me. (niv)
Are we so consumed with zeal for God’s presence and his kingdom—for God’s house—that we are willing to take the hits meant for God himself? Are we willing to so identify with the Christ who identified with us that we will take up his cross, the object of scorn and shame and derision?
A gospel-wakened church is a resolute church that embraces the loss of her reputation for the gain of God’s glory. She is willing to look stupid, irrational, impractical, silly . . . for the right reasons. She will be dragged into the street, absorbing the insults of those who insult God, in efforts to turn the world upside down. She will spend as much or more time and money on others as she does herself; she will send her people into the farthest reaches of the world to die; she will eat and drink with sinners; she will welcome the broken and weary; she will favor the meek and lowly; she will cherish the powerless; she will serve and suffer and savor the sweetness of the good news.
A gospel-driven church resolves to look foolish to those to whom the cross is foolishness. Because she knows it is the power to save. Those who are astonished by the gospel aren’t more interested in anything else, so they are willing to take criticism, ridicule, and even persecution for the cause of Christ. He has become all-satisfying, which makes him of surpassing worth to any other loss. For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. (Rom. 15:4)
3. We Resolve to Trust God’s Word
Gospel wakefulness endures, and it produces endurance. The gospel-wakened church doesn’t burn out, but instead commits to that which is eternal—namely, the word of God. We find our encouragement there, and our hope. The gospel-wakened church returns to being a people of the Book. She relies on the external word from God, not the internal word of creative ideas.
The gospel-wakened church doesn’t burn out, but instead commits to that which is eternal—namely, the word of God.
The gospel-wakened church has come to the end of itself and finally beheld the sustaining power of the Savior. She knows where truth is, she knows where hope is, she knows where wisdom is. She trusts no other words but the Scriptures. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus. (Rom. 15:5)
4. We Resolve to Live in Christ-Centered Harmony
The gospel-wakened church knows that self-help doesn’t work. The concept of self-help is like putting your broken hand in a garbage disposal, flipping the switch, and expecting it to be healed. We know that help comes from outside of ourselves, from our loving God via the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ dispensed by the Spirit who is not our own.
Gospel wakefulness brings us to the end of ourselves, but also to the beginning of our true selves, the image of God in us that is being restored and begging for reconciliation not just with God but with our neighbors.
The gospel-wakened church pursues unity, then, as an appetite, as an instinct. She needs no artificial program or incentive of success. She is awakened to love, compelled to reconcile, so she does. With Christ’s glory beheld by mutual vision, the gospel-wakened church is harmonized, each distinct voice and gift joined in the unity of the gospel. That together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom. 15:6)
5. We Resolve to Be Worshipful
The gospel-wakened church can’t help but worship. Her affections are renewed, her sense of worship is wakened to the one true God above all gods. She has seen the antiglories of her own degradation; she has felt great shame. But she has experienced the covering approval of Jesus Christ. She has been healed! So she rises, walking and leaping and praising God. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. (Rom. 15:7)
6. We Resolve to Glory in the Gospel
How did Christ welcome us? With grace, despite our sin. With embrace, despite our demerits. With cover, despite our shame. With love, despite our animosity. With sacrifice, despite our unworthiness. That is how Christ welcomed us. The gospel-wakened church welcomes each other in that way, for God’s glory.
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An excerpt from Jared Wilson’s recently published book, Gospel Wakefulness.
Jared C. Wilson is the pastor of Middletown Springs Community Church in Middletown Springs, Vermont. He is an award-winning author whose articles and short stories have appeared in a number of periodicals, and has written the popular books Your Jesus Is Too Safe and Gospel Wakefulness, as well as the curriculum Abide. Wilson lives in Vermont with his wife and two daughters, and blogs daily at GospelDrivenChurch.com.