The Importance of Discipleship
2/25/2008
Discipleship to me, is an older, more mature Christian, taking a younger, and less matured Christian under his or wing. The older more mature Christian (or the 'discipler') spends a very large amount of time with his or her disciple (due to my laziness (and not male shogunism) in the future I will refer to the discipler as a he). His life is completely transparent to the disciple. The discipler encourages and challenges the disciple in Christ. He does not force anything upon the disciple, but openly invites them to join in his faith, his prayer, and his understanding of the Bible. The discipler is to pick disciples based upon their willingness to learn and God's calling. This is oversimplifying, but this is the general idea.
I see a very large deficiency of this in the church these days.
It is almost comical to look at how differently the modern church approaches discipleship than Jesus does.
We speak of missions and going out in to the world and changing it. We speak of furthering Jesus' ministry. We speak of loving other people the best way possible.
Although, it is quite interesting to note that we pay little attention to the way that Jesus actually approached ministry. How is it that we think that we are loving people the best way possible if we are not doing it the way Jesus did it? Don't we know by now that God knows how to love his creation in the best possible way? I suppose we could attribute some of it to cultural changes, but this excuse does not suffice enough to change the overall basic structure of Jesus' ministry.
The fact is, Jesus did not focus on the crowds. He did not waist his time trying too hard to preach Himself to them. He did not waist His time doing miracles for them, just to impress them into becoming believers. Jesus' ministry was never a crusade to save as many people as immediately possible. He didn't go around in downtown Jerusalem, praying for people in tongues, touching their foreheads, and making them fall over.
If you analyze what Jesus actually did, you will see that what He did was quite different than all of that.
Jesus staked His whole entire ministry on 12 people. 12. People. If these 12 people failed in their purpose, then it would have all been for nothing. Jesus poured His life out for these people. They were His disciples. He was with them nearly 24 hours a day. He ate with them, slept with them, taught them, prayed with them, and even walked on water with one of them. Everything Jesus did was available for the disciples to see, and almost everything He did was available for them to do.
Jesus taught them about the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus taught them about the Torah, what it meant, and how to apply it to their lives. He taught them how to be effective communicators of the message that God had given Him to show the world. He entrusted the whole church to them.
He concentrated so much on these 12 disciples, that when He died, after all the miracles and wonders that He did, there were only about 500 believers. 500! You could get more out of a campus crusade event! But Jesus didn't seem concerned with this. He was sure that His disciples would take on disciples of their own, and then their disciples would take on new disciples of their own. This process was supposed to continue and continue as he commanded in Matthew 28:18-20: Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
The Church is not effectively doing it right these days. The most important part of this passage is just 2 words. "make disciples." Our view of ministry is a widespread outreach to hundreds or perhaps even thousands of people at once. And of course, why not? Jesus loves every single person in that crowd. He does now just as He did back when He walked the Earth in human form. But Jesus understood that in the long run, that is not the most effective way to love people. We know this because Jesus did not go out and save thousands at once. He started the long, hard process, of true and personal love. He modeled discipleship perfectly for us.
Don't get me wrong, we need to be bringing people in to the church from the outside and going out and effecting the community. Worship services are great. They have been vastly effective for evangelistic purposes in the past and they continue to be. I myself got saved at the end of a worship service. All I am saying is that Discipleship needs to be our #1 priority, because it was the #1 priority of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I was reading Velvet Elvis today. It is a great book by Rob Bell. I stumbled across a great thought that Bell had in the introduction:
Here's what often happens: somebody comes along who has a fresh perspective on the Christian faith. People are inspired. A movement starts. Faith that was stale and dying is now alive. But then the pioneer of the movement - the painter - dies and followers stop exploring. They mistakenly assume that their leader's words were the last ones on the subject, and they freeze their leader's words. They forget that as that innovator was doing his or her part to move things along, that person was merely taking part in the discussion that will go on forever. And so in their commitment to what so-and-so said and did, they end up freezing the faith.
Rob Bell is right. This process happens this way for one reason and one reason alone. It is a failure of discipleship. The pioneers in the church are just not adequately discipling leaders below themselves so that we can continue the church the way it was meant to be continued, in fulfillment of the Great Commission.
We need to start with discipling where we live (after all, Jesus started in Israel). If our own churches aren't doing discipleship right, then how can we logically expect to be able to raise up missionaries to go out and preach the Gospel?
So lets get out there and start this thing over. Let's try and be the most like Jesus that we can, even in our ministry.
So that’s all I have to say about that for now. More soon.
-Ryan
I see a very large deficiency of this in the church these days.
It is almost comical to look at how differently the modern church approaches discipleship than Jesus does.
We speak of missions and going out in to the world and changing it. We speak of furthering Jesus' ministry. We speak of loving other people the best way possible.
Although, it is quite interesting to note that we pay little attention to the way that Jesus actually approached ministry. How is it that we think that we are loving people the best way possible if we are not doing it the way Jesus did it? Don't we know by now that God knows how to love his creation in the best possible way? I suppose we could attribute some of it to cultural changes, but this excuse does not suffice enough to change the overall basic structure of Jesus' ministry.
The fact is, Jesus did not focus on the crowds. He did not waist his time trying too hard to preach Himself to them. He did not waist His time doing miracles for them, just to impress them into becoming believers. Jesus' ministry was never a crusade to save as many people as immediately possible. He didn't go around in downtown Jerusalem, praying for people in tongues, touching their foreheads, and making them fall over.
If you analyze what Jesus actually did, you will see that what He did was quite different than all of that.
Jesus staked His whole entire ministry on 12 people. 12. People. If these 12 people failed in their purpose, then it would have all been for nothing. Jesus poured His life out for these people. They were His disciples. He was with them nearly 24 hours a day. He ate with them, slept with them, taught them, prayed with them, and even walked on water with one of them. Everything Jesus did was available for the disciples to see, and almost everything He did was available for them to do.
Jesus taught them about the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus taught them about the Torah, what it meant, and how to apply it to their lives. He taught them how to be effective communicators of the message that God had given Him to show the world. He entrusted the whole church to them.
He concentrated so much on these 12 disciples, that when He died, after all the miracles and wonders that He did, there were only about 500 believers. 500! You could get more out of a campus crusade event! But Jesus didn't seem concerned with this. He was sure that His disciples would take on disciples of their own, and then their disciples would take on new disciples of their own. This process was supposed to continue and continue as he commanded in Matthew 28:18-20: Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
The Church is not effectively doing it right these days. The most important part of this passage is just 2 words. "make disciples." Our view of ministry is a widespread outreach to hundreds or perhaps even thousands of people at once. And of course, why not? Jesus loves every single person in that crowd. He does now just as He did back when He walked the Earth in human form. But Jesus understood that in the long run, that is not the most effective way to love people. We know this because Jesus did not go out and save thousands at once. He started the long, hard process, of true and personal love. He modeled discipleship perfectly for us.
Don't get me wrong, we need to be bringing people in to the church from the outside and going out and effecting the community. Worship services are great. They have been vastly effective for evangelistic purposes in the past and they continue to be. I myself got saved at the end of a worship service. All I am saying is that Discipleship needs to be our #1 priority, because it was the #1 priority of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I was reading Velvet Elvis today. It is a great book by Rob Bell. I stumbled across a great thought that Bell had in the introduction:
Here's what often happens: somebody comes along who has a fresh perspective on the Christian faith. People are inspired. A movement starts. Faith that was stale and dying is now alive. But then the pioneer of the movement - the painter - dies and followers stop exploring. They mistakenly assume that their leader's words were the last ones on the subject, and they freeze their leader's words. They forget that as that innovator was doing his or her part to move things along, that person was merely taking part in the discussion that will go on forever. And so in their commitment to what so-and-so said and did, they end up freezing the faith.
Rob Bell is right. This process happens this way for one reason and one reason alone. It is a failure of discipleship. The pioneers in the church are just not adequately discipling leaders below themselves so that we can continue the church the way it was meant to be continued, in fulfillment of the Great Commission.
We need to start with discipling where we live (after all, Jesus started in Israel). If our own churches aren't doing discipleship right, then how can we logically expect to be able to raise up missionaries to go out and preach the Gospel?
So lets get out there and start this thing over. Let's try and be the most like Jesus that we can, even in our ministry.
So that’s all I have to say about that for now. More soon.
-Ryan
Conversation
Wow well spoken and exactly
Wow well spoken and exactly what is wrong with the church today, but I would like to add a few thoughts in if you don't mind...
The church today is so seeker-friendly (meaning the idea is to bring all these non-christians to hear the gospel) that the gospel being taught is watered down and spoken so that it does not offend anyone. The problem here is that no one gets filled the believer or non-believer. Because of this the believers hear the same version of the gospel over and over which kills our fire so that is why you see such complacent christians today. And the non-believers get turned off because even if they accept the watered down version of the gospel they do not get an accurate view of the true costs it takes to follow Christ. They think that if they just say a prayer they will be saved.
In Matthew 7 Jesus says: "Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'" Think about this, who is Christ talking to here? American Christians today!! He can't be speaking to non-christians because they would not make this claim to him, we are judged by the fruit we bear which is produced by our heart. And many Christians today think they are saved because they said a prayer but that is not the only requirement, we must also have faith in Christ and take up our cross daily with him which is a cost many people are not bearing today. What kind of testimony is that to non-believers too? When Christians go to church on sunday but live for themselves every other day of the week?
We have it all wrong here and if everyone would start discipling someone and then that person disciples someone there would be an incredible and necessary revolution in the church.
I would also challenge you to read in Acts about what the church in Christ's life looked like. It was not some 32 million dollar building where 1200 people met, no they met EVERYDAY and wherever they could find room to worship the almighty God! People would walk by and think that they were drunk because the holy spirit had filled them so much that they could not contain themselves in the flesh.
The church today is run like a business with Christmas programs, thanksgiving dinners, loud worship it is all for entertainment to keep non-christians coming. The church used to be a group of BELIEVERS being discipled and then going out to reach anyone that would listen with the real gospel. This is happening in Africa they are baptizing 30,000 people a day and in China 50,000 because they have it right. They don't have the means to build huge mega-churches and are being persecuted for their faith so why is that not happening in America where we will not be persecuted for our faith (for now)? Because Satan has twisted the truth once again and the American church has fell for it hook line and sinker. God is pouring out his spirit now for Christ's incredible return and I challenge anyone who reads this... When you look at the almighty Savior what will he say to you? And are you sure??
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