Haphazard Discipleship

After over twenty years in pastoral ministry, it is my observation that most people in our churches have not been intentionally discipled. Rather, all too often the approach taken in our assemblies is one of osmosis. The unspoken but very real rule is, “If you hang around long enough you will catch on to how we talk and behave and, over time, you will begin to speak and act as we do.” This is true even though evangelical churches rightly make much of Jesus’ command to “make disciples.” We talk it, teach it, and preach about it, but we do not take the time to deliberate, plan, and implement a process to ensure that it happens. As a result, our process, if we have one at all, for this most important task is haphazard and our product is incomplete. One author has stated well, “The bare bones of obedience [to the Great Commission] is intentional effort to define a disciple, then to produce disciples through various vehicles of the church. This book will show various ways to get the job done. But a nonnegotiable is the intentional effort.”¹ Authors Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger recommend that churches eliminate all that is unnecessary to the disciple-making task, leaving what they call a “Simple Church”:

Simple church leaders understand that spiritual transformation is a process, but they also respond to this reality. They do so by implementing a ministry process to facilitate growth in people. They design a simple process and abandon everything else. They rely on their simple process to create environments conducive to spiritual growth.²

The Scope of Intentional Discipleship

An intentional discipleship program addresses the all-too-common assumption of many professing Christians that discipleship is not for them. This is based on the erroneous notion that justification and sanctification can be separated — that you can have the one without the other. Practically, many live as if making a profession is the extent of our purpose. That is, answering the question “Where will I spend eternity?” is all that really matters. The late Francis Schaeffer lamented this truncated approach to Christian living:

We must realize that while the new birth is necessary as the beginning, it is only a beginning. We must not think that because we have accepted Christ as Savior and therefore are Christians, this is all there is in the Christian life. … In one way, the new birth is the most important thing in our spiritual lives, because we are not Christians until we have come this way. In another way, however, after one has become a Christian, it must be minimized, in that we should not always have our minds only on our new birth. The important thing after being born spiritually is to live. There is a new birth, and then there is the Christian life to be lived. This is the area of sanctification, from the time of the new birth, through this present life, until Jesus comes or until we die.³

For those who believe the biblical doctrine of eternal security, the destiny of the genuine believer is a non-issue. It would appear, therefore, from the mere fact that we are still here, that God has other work for us to do.

The popular notion that “disciples are made, not born,”⁴ is not consistent with biblical teaching. The Scriptures teach that all believers are disciples. In fact, the word disciple is used consistently as a synonym for believer throughout the book of Acts (6:1, 2, 7; 11:26; 14:20, 22; 15:10).⁵ While it is true that the Great Commission commands us to “make disciples,” the process involves birth (e.g., new birth, born again) and growth. One becomes a disciple at the moment of salvation and is then to grow in the faith through obedience (baptism) and further instruction (teaching). Although the quality of the discipleship process is dependent on several factors (not the least of which is the availability of a disciple-making church), the status of the believer is not in doubt — he is a disciple (follower) of Christ in need of spiritual growth. Therefore, discipleship is not optional for the church or the individual believer.

Therefore, an intentional discipleship approach should oblige members to “opt out” of the process rather the “opt in.” That is, we should expect all to participate rather than only a select few. One concern sometimes expressed with an “opt out” approach is that it could be too heavy-handed. However, since all believers are disciples then it seems eminently reasonable to expect all to participate, at least as much as they are providentially able. And, in my experience most people appreciate having a track to follow rather than being on their own to figure out how best to grow.

The scope of intentional discipleship refers not only to who is involved (every member), but how people are moved to attending the church in order to gain a hearing for the gospel there and then progressing converts through the discipleship process. Deliberate thought must be given to how to reach the audience and provide pathways to growth for those whom the Lord draws to himself.

The Necessity of Intentional Discipleship

The failure to pursue intentional discipleship has ill effects on both the local church and its people. Our churches are largely populated by those who live with no sense of purpose in the here and now but are simply biding time until death or the Lord’s return. In the Midwest (I live in Michigan) we used to have a restaurant chain mostly frequented by seniors, so much so that it many called it, “God’s waiting room.” I have often thought our churches resemble such a waiting room. Though we may have various ages represented, they share a common malaise and passivity that goes through the motions of attendance and fellowship, with little or no sense of mission, calling, and purpose. Thankfully, by God’s grace, some have been brought up in a fully committed home environment where the osmosis approach has had a slow but sure effect, so that a new generation of committed disciples is produced. But they are the extreme minority, hence the oft-repeated lament: “20% of the people do 80% of the work.” When people do not serve, they are not fully functioning disciples because serving is part of what it means to “Obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt 28:20).

The dearth of discipleship is costly for our churches, but also for the people who comprise them. For the first-generation Christian, or those reared in the typical, passive evangelical home and church, they may well exhibit signs of having grown in grace, but most cannot point to significant areas of growth in recent memory. The new believer rather quickly came to understand that there were speech patterns and habits that he must discard, and relatively soon began to replace them with the lingo and behavior of those around him in the community of faith. But his growth slowed significantly after the first year or so, because he had gone as far as most of his church associates. Though many have been in the church for twenty or thirty years, they have the equivalent of perhaps one year of growth over that time. And those raised in the nominal Christian home and church do not fare much better because, after all, “A student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher” (Luke 6:40). If we assume (as I do) that genuine Christians want to please the Lord, then telling believers about the need for discipleship without providing the means to pursue it creates a thirst that is not satisfied. Hull has stated, “Christians are not well-trained, largely because pastors have not worked out a means of helping people do what He has told them they should. As a result, they feel frustration and guilt.”⁶

More to come.

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Ken Brown is the pastor of Community Bible Church in Trenton, MI. We republish his article by permission.

1. Bill Hull, The Disciple Making Pastor (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming Revell, 1988), 53. [↩]
2. Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger, Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), 60. [↩]
3. Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, in A Christian View of Spirituality, vol. 3 of The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, 2nd ed. (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1982), 200–201. [↩]
4. Walter Henrichsen, Disciples are Made, Not Born (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook Publishing, 2002). See also Bill Hull, The Disciple Making Pastor, 59. [↩]
5. John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 196. MacArthur notes that while every believer is a disciple, “it is apparent that not every disciple is necessarily a true Christian (cf. John 6:66). The term disciple is sometimes used in Scripture in a general sense to describe those who, like Judas, outwardly followed Christ” (196, fn. 2). [↩]
6. The Disciple Making Pastor, 21. [↩]