3 things to watch if you want more effective discipleship in your community.

If you’re reading this, then there’s a good chance that you’re a church leader with a passion for reaching people who don’t know about God. This article is for you if you don’t just want to see them born again, but to also grow into the fullness of the new life that they’ve been born into.

The challenge we’re exploring is that spiritual maturity doesn’t move along at a constant and predictable pace, like physical ageing.

The Covid years showed us that plenty of Christians who had been attending our church services for decades hadn’t been discipled at the rate we’d imagined. And they suffered for it. The storms of adulthood came and they were too young to face them well.

It was like our children had left home only to discover they were utterly unequipped for the world outside the house.

“With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone”.

These words from Oscar Wilde aren’t just true in life but in faith. When looking back on your own journey of learning to live in God’s kingdom with Him, is it a fixed and steady process or do you remember moments of intensive growth and transformation mixed in with others of slower or steadier development?

For you, a year passes in 365 days like everyone else’s, but how much we grow up in that time changes year to year and person to person.

In Hebrews 5, the writer says “Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths… you need milk, not solid food.”

In other words, you’ve had plenty of time to grow up…but you haven’t.

In the rest of this article, I’d like to share 3 things that church leaders might benefit from looking at, that I believe will help us, and the people we serve, avoid growing older without growing up in our faith.

Because reaching more people is great, but they’ll be missing out on so much if we don’t help them grow up too. And that’s not going to happen without some intentionality.

1. Practice the basics till they become second nature.

Athletes in almost every sport spend the vast majority of their training time practising the basics so that they become second nature. This is because when faced with the pressure of game time, they need to be able to reach for the most foundational movements of their sport instinctively. A football player doesn’t practice five-yard passes to get better at them; they’ve mastered the move long ago. They keep practising so that the movement becomes natural for them.

Jesus spoke against using outward practice as a substitute for inward transformation. A regular reminder that outward practice exists to help transform our inner self will help us avoid hypocrisy and that feeling of having to keep ourselves on a short leash, lest what’s really in our heart gets out into the world.

A new heart, a new nature, that’s the goal here.

Speaking and living with this reality in mind will help us to invite God to engage our inner self in a way that leads to long-term change. When we focus primarily on outward behaviour, we tend to find our practice fails us when faced with our own version of game day pressure.

Question: Do you speak of behaviour change primarily as a goal or as a practice and marker for inward transformation?

Example: Think of the secret prayer and hidden generosity prescribed by Jesus during the sermon on the mount. He wanted to focus people’s attention on who they were becoming and not just what they were doing.

2. Make sure the story you tell about the good news includes discipleship.

John Ortberg in his book Insurmountable makes the case that your understanding of the gospel determines what you think the goal of the Christian life is.

If you aren’t naturally inclined to pursue spiritual transformation after hearing the gospel, then perhaps there’s greater understanding of the gospel to be sought out.

A fairly typical understanding of the gospel may go something like, “I have been saved by Jesus from my sin, which kept me from God. Now God is with me, and I will one day be with him in heaven.” If someone’s natural response to hearing this presentation of the gospel isn’t the pursuit of spiritual transformation, then you’d understand why, right? Discipleship isn’t a part of the story when it’s formulated in that way.

Coming to believe something more like, “Jesus is the king of an everlasting and all-encompassing kingdom, and that through him we have and are being unified together with God as a new people of a new creation that has now begun.”, may well lead someone to explore discipleship, because it’s a part of the story here. It becomes more reasonable to expect not merely acceptance of a new reality, but a willingness to become a participator in it.

If we see discipleship as a “thank you” that we ought to offer because of what Jesus has done for us, we’re not able to see discipleship as part of the gift he has given us.

Does your explanation of the gospel to kids, young people, and adults reflect discipleship as part of the good news, or is your presentation leaving people feeling uplifted but without the desire to pursue greater transformation and participation within the kingdom of God?

3. Position your church organisation as a helper and not a replacement.

This is where things get a little controversial…

Ancient Israel was surrounded by peoples who sacrificed to their gods but weren’t required to do much else. Israel’s God was different; he wanted them. The sacrificial system established for Gods chosen people was distinct amongst the nations and pointed to something greater, not just for Israel, but for all the nations. Ultimately, this sacrificial system ended when Jesus gave his life on the cross. Jesus was established as the final high priest and king over all, expanding Gods point of dwelling from the temple and the nation of Israel to the whole of creation through his new people, the church, which is Christ’s body.

The organisations we refer to with the term “church” that are created by ministers, and, like any business, consist of the team, the brand, the assets, and the products or services, exist to serve the church (this new people of God) in their development and unity as this people of God.

This organisation does not exist to be the church, but to serve the church.

This subtle distinction matters for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, Paul is careful to pay his way whenever he feels there is a hint of danger that, by asking for money and support, the reception of the message will be affected. If support, financial or otherwise, in Paul’s ministry is essential for receiving the good news of Jesus’ Kingdom or for living in it, then it is not the true message. He didn’t leave that vague in the hopes he would gain greater support; he was crystal clear even when it cost him.

You don’t pay your way into this kingdom, and Paul and his ministry were not the way into this kingdom.

Honestly, how many of the people in your community feel that making a regular sacrifice of money, volunteering, or attendance at your services is essential for living in the kingdom of God as one of his people? You may never have said that explicitly, neither had Paul, and he was still careful to make sure people had no doubt that what God required was a living sacrifice. Nothing less or more than their very lives given to God. We can’t require people to participate in our ministry in order to participate in Gods family.

While they think these two things are synonymous, what it means to be a Jesus follower is too small.

Secondly, God’s kingdom is for the whole world and for all people to participate in equally. The temple veil was torn, and his people sent, indwelled by God’s spirit, to the ends of the world as a living temple. No mediator but Jesus, and no place that wasn’t being caught up in God’s coming kingdom rule.

If engagement with our organisation is essential, if being part of our church organisation is what it means to be part of the church, then this access each person has to God’s transforming spirit is mediated and limited through the church team or leader and their events and teaching. When this happens, we lose the scale, the “all people” and “all creation”, and replace it with people involved in the church organisation and the places this organisation can affect change in.

It’s true that it’s essential to hold everything in common as the church, but it’s not essential that the church leader and their organisation is at the centre of that process. It’s true the body must gather physically, but it’s not true that they must do that at a church leader’s service.

Clarity around this distinction between the church as the body of Christ and the church as the name of an organisation with a leader and a building allows all people fuller access to God’s life giving power in every moment of their lives, and helps to maintain a view of the whole world and everyone in it as a part of God’s kingdom which is being brought into unity through Jesus.

Monday to Saturday becomes as sacred as Sunday, and our neighbourhoods become as sacred as the 10 a.m. service, and so life with God fills our lives rather than part of our weeks, and we find unity around our King, rather than our church organisations, strategies, initiatives, and leaders.

Honestly, do you speak more about God’s kingdom or your church organisation (or do you even speak as if they’re the same thing)? Do you inspire and equip people of all ages in your community to live as the church 24/7, or is your focus more on who they are when they’re under your supervision at a service? Do you allow people in your congregation the impression that they are closer to God at your services than any other moment in their lives when they’re living according to the spirit within them? Or that church jobs and activities are more sacred than other jobs and activities? Is it not God who makes a thing sacred, and is God not alive within his church, even when the service is over and the building gone?

If there is any truth at all in this last thought, it will take immense humility and confidence in our only true identity, not as church leaders but as children of God, to find it, and perhaps great cost to apply it. If I’ve shared this idea in any way unhelpfully, then I ask for your forgiveness. Please don’t let your first reaction, if it was one of offence, stop you exploring what truth may be in this idea. John the Baptist was expected to have been a priest in the temple; he wasn’t. Jesus was expected as a rabbi to live within a particular system instead of out in the world the way he did. The woman at the well was told a time was now here when she no longer had to get to the temple to stand face to face with God. That seems like enough to at least open the conversation about whether our many meanings for the one German-born word “church” may have become muddled, right?

In conclusion, discipleship is about the people we are all becoming in Jesus and is a part of the good news. Anything that limits the scope and scale of that, or gives some people more opportunity to participate than others or places some people and places over others, makes the good news appear as less than it really is. Discipleship is something God invites every human being into for their entire lives. As leaders, we are joining and serving others on that journey, not issuing a competing or replacement invitation to something else. The world is his, and we are all equal before God and one in his son, Jesus.

Thank you for reading.

If you have any questions or comments about the article we’d love to hear them!

Please email matt.banks@furtherfaster.network