Category Archives: disciple

Don’t Make Disciples

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I’ve noticed a trend in American churches over the past fifteen years or so: an increased focus on discipleship as the core of our mission[1]. I haven’t studied enough church history, either early or recent, to know if this is a new or a renewed focus; in either case, it is a good thing. After all, didn’t Jesus commission the apostles, and therefore the church, to “go and make disciples”?

Well, yes… and no. As the late missiologist David Mays states, “Make disciples is NOT the core of the Great Commission.” Mays suggests that “make disciples” is at best a poor translation, and explains the grammar of the Greek text to provide a more accurate rendering of the heart of Matthew 28:19: “disciple all nations.”[2] That doesn’t change the church’s mission, however. Mays acknowledges, as do I, that the church is certainly in the business of making disciples, and that one of her biggest failings is her failure to do that well. His concern, though, was that the church has focused her disciple-making efforts locally and neglected the global—the “all nations”—emphasis of Jesus’ command.

I agree with Mays’ global concern; it is one of my passions as a disciple and as a pastor. But for the present I want to focus attention on a different result of the poor translation of Jesus’ words. When we focus on the two words, “make disciples”, we put ourselves in a production mindset. We identify a product, disciples, and the characteristics the product should have; then we build a production cycle to turn out that product. An unfathomable array of books and manuals and programs is offered to churches and individuals to guide, streamline, and improve the efficiency of the production.

But we are not producers, we are reproducers. In the English Standard Version, the word disciple appears 269 times: once in the Old Testament, in Isaiah 8:16; 238 times in the gospels; 30 in the rest of the New Testament. The overwhelming majority of those references are simply identifying a certain group of people—Jesus’ disciples, John’s disciples, the disciples of the Pharisees. Very few provide either description or prescription about what a disciple is or should be; fewer than a dozen, in fact. in other words, Scripture offers no schematics, no blueprints, no engineering plans detailing what the product—a disciple—should look like.

Yet we have systematized the Great Commission. We have laid disciple-making on an assembly line, trying to turn out disciples the way Henry Ford turned out Model T’s. Think about this, though: you’ve never seen an assembly line in a hospital maternity ward. Babies are not produced. Adolescents are not “new and improved” versions of their younger selves. (I can here all the parents of teens shouting “Amen!”) Adults are never finished products. The linear, piece-by-piece-by-piece assembly line that revolutionized manufacturing production is a miserable failure in the reproduction of disciples.

If the church is to recover her discipleship mission, she must shift her mindset from production to reproduction. She must view the Great Commission (Matthew 28) through the lens of the first commission (Genesis 1:28): Be fruitful and multiply. Indeed, some of the most helpful passages to guide our thinking about discipleship use this word “fruit”; it is the language of farming, not the language of manufacturing. Paul calls both Timothy and Titus “my true son” [1 Tim 2:2, Titus 1:4]; he likens himself to a nursing mother and the Thessalonians as his own children [1 Thess 2:7]. These are not images of manufacturing, but of parenting.

When churches emphasize making disciples, we get sidetracked by discussions that never crossed Jesus’ lips. When we strive instead to reproduce disciples, it will change our language, our perspective, and our efforts. Next week I will look at some key differences between making disciples and discipling—between production and reproduction.

[1] This post is an expansion of thoughts originally posted online in response to a blog from Ed Stetzer, “Overcoming the Discipleship Deficit“.
[2] David Mays, “Shooting Sacred Cows,” Keynote address, Harvest Conference, San Jose, CA, May 1, 2010.

© 2015 by Randall J. Ehle. All rights reserved.

Legacy

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Cru logoOver the past week, I have been enjoying a vacation reminiscent of summer trips my family took when I was young, but unlike any that my wife and I have taken with our own kids. Starting out in San Diego, we have visited the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde National Parks, stopped briefly to walk through Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico at Four Corners National Monument, watched as the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad train began its slow trek into the mountains, and rode the newly-rebuilt Royal Gorge Aerial Tram a thousand feet above the Arkansas River in Colorado.

For the past few days we have been with my parents, a treat that only happens every couple years. Many of our conversations have been about church ministry, family, current events, and the staff conference from which they’d just returned. There has also been plenty of catching up on old friends (“do you remember…?” or “have you heard from…?”) and reminiscing about the adventures we had as a family or that my parents have had in the thirty-plus years since I (their youngest) left home. And the adventures have been many, but far more than mere adventure….

Next year, my parents will celebrate fifty years on staff with Cru (known until four years ago as Campus Crusade for Christ). Those years have taken them from their childhood homes in Michigan to live in California, Minnesota, Texas, British Columbia, Germany, and Colorado. But they have served even more broadly on four of the world’s seven continents: Africa (Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, and North Africa, to name a few), Asia (Mongolia, Siberia, and China), Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, England, the Netherlands, and Russia), North & Central America (Canada, U.S., Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, and Cuba).

And they have shared their faith in Jesus Christ more broadly still, with global ambassadors and diplomats, national presidents and prime ministers, business executives, college students, athletes, and military leaders. They have trained thousands of men, women, and children, whether through a Sunday School class with six teenagers or a Dallas Cotton Bowl stadium with 85,000; in a church with a few hundred adults or a dinner with dozens of international diplomats. Mom has taught hundreds in an international women’s Bible study and Dad has talked about Jesus one skier at a time as he rode chair lifts with strangers for forty years.

During many of the conversations with my parents the past few days, our daughters have read books or played games on their phones. But they have also heard the stories, the names, the challenges and blessings. And as they’ve walked through Oma and Opa’s condo, they’ve seen the evidences of these lives lived for God: memorabilia from their travels, gifts from friends, photos of family. And I think my girls have caught something of the legacy they are inheriting—a legacy of faith and faithfulness, of devotion and obedience, of love for God and people. My prayer is that they will see a similar legacy in my wife and me, even if it will look different than their globe-trotting grandparents.

Dear Pastor

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Old BibleDear Pastor,

Last week I wrote to Youth Pastors asking them to encourage kids to bring their Bibles to church—and to use them there! Not because it makes them look holy, or just because it’s a good habit, but to help them learn to read, know, and understand God’s Word. I acknowledged the changing technologies (from scrolls to books to smart phones) and the changing cultures (from oral to visual and, some say, a return to oral).

Now, thanks to one of those Youth Pastors, it’s time to put in a request to you: encourage us to bring and use our Bibles at church; help us as adults also learn to read, use, know, and appreciate God’s Word. This idea isn’t mine; one of my former pastors put it in my mind when he stood in front of the church and announced that we would no longer be projecting the day’s Scripture reading, for just those purposes: to help train us. Here are some practical suggestions:

  • Don’t put the main Bible passage on the screen. Instead, ask people to use their own Bible, whether print or electronic. Make sure there is enough light for people to read by. Verses read during the message may be projected, but not the whole text.
  • Have Bibles available in the sanctuary. If you don’t have Bibles in the seats, be sure they are readily available at the entrance doors. For a while, you may even offer a Bible to each person entering, along with the bulletin or other printed materials. Well before you are ready to read the passage, ask if anyone needs a Bible, and have ushers ready to pass them out. Oh, and be sure they are all the same translation and format (see next point).
  • Announce the passage at least twice. Make sure the reference is in the bulletin and put it on the screen.
  • Help us find the passage. Tell us the page number in the available Bibles, but also give some hints on finding it in our own Bibles (e.g., table of contents, general location, major books before or after the passage, etc.). Give us time, too! You may even print a QR code in the bulletin, linking to the passage in an online Bible such as www.biblegateway.com. (QR codes are easy to generate and can be used to link to just about any website. But be sure to test it each week, or you might end up with some surprises.)
  • Give a Bible to anyone who wants one, no questions asked! This should be the first priority in your annual budget, or at least a non-negotiable. They don’t have to be high-quality leather Bibles; inexpensive paperbacks are fine. But be generous with God’s Word!

One last thought: Ask everyone to stand up when reading the main passage. In this we follow the example of the people of Israel, who stood in honor of God’s Word when Ezra opened the Book of the Law (see Nehemiah 8).

If God’s Word is worth proclaiming each Sunday, and worth teaching our kids, then it’s certainly worth these simple steps. And you just may convince me, too, Pastor, that knowing and listening to God is even more important than listening to you!

Believe – Obey

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I grew up in a church world that stressed, with the Reformers, “solo gratia” – grace alone. That is, salvation is possible only through God’s grace, which we receive through our faith. That’s pretty much what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8. Also stressed was the corollary from two verses later: salvation is not attained through “works;” that is, by what we do (going to church or helping old ladies across the street) or by what we don’t do (swearing, smoking, drinking). I never heard that what we do doesn’t matter or isn’t important, only that it doesn’t impact salvation one way or the other.

While in the Air Force I studied, with help, the apparent discrepancy between Paul’s views and James’, who said “You see that a person is justified [read, saved] by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). It was fairly easy for me to reconcile the two: Paul never argued that works are unimportant and James never said that faith is unimportant; James simply emphasized that faith—real, living, saving faith—would be marked by what we do.

What does it mean to obey?

A few years ago I was asked that question. It has stuck with me; not exactly like a popcorn kernel stuck between my teeth, which is simply annoying; it’s more like my wedding band: a quiet but ever-present reminder of something profoundly important and significant.

The question stems from Jesus’ “Great Commission” in Matthew 28:20, “…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Some translations read obey in place of observe; in context, I think it’s a fair translation.) In the ensuing discussion and over the years since, I have noticed how much obedience is commanded in the Bible. And it’s not just in the “Old” Testament:

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life;
whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life….”
(John 3:36, ESV; emphasis mine)

These two complementary statements are both critical; they cannot be separated. Just as we cannot live without both food and water; just as we require both blood and oxygen; so eternal life is dependent on both belief and obedience—both of which, let us not forget, are possible only by God’s grace (cf. Philippians 2:13).

The persistent battle between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day was against their legalism—they overemphasized obeying the rules. The evangelical church in America sounded like those religious leaders for much of the 20th century (and, in some cases, still today). But there has been an equally misguided—and misguiding—trend over the last three or four decades. Born, I think, out of the phenomena of mass evangelism and mega-churches, this is the trend toward calling for a “decision” or “profession of faith” separate from obedience. We say, in effect, “pray this prayer of faith, but don’t worry about how you live; that will come later.” The problem is that most of us, having purchased the insurance policy, have precious little motivation to change our behavior.

That was not how Jesus approached would-be followers. He did not shy away from the hard call to make a change first. Think of when he called the first disciples: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). It sounds simple, but it wasn’t; following meant drastic change: “Immediately they left their nets and followed him” (verse 20). The simplicity of that sentence masks the true impact; these were fishermen by trade who dropped their tools, walked out of the business, and gave up everything.

Or when the rich man asked Jesus how to gain eternal life; first, Jesus said to obey the rules, which the man said he already did. So Jesus upped the ante: “sell everything, give it to the poor, then follow me.” Unlike the fishermen, this man couldn’t do it; Luke 18 says he was “extremely rich” and a “ruler,” and although it made him said, he nonetheless found it easier to walk away from Jesus than to walk away from his lifestyle.

One of our troubles in the western church is that we do not want people to walk away sad. To avoid that, we lower the bar. We praise God’s grace, we call for faith…but we do not call for life change. The result is churches filled with people “who say ‘Lord, Lord,’ but will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (see Matthew 7:21). And those of us who are pastors will be held to account for our messages that call for decisions and professions, but not for obedience.

Solo gratia? Yes, by grace alone are we saved, But it is a grace that brings both faith and obedience, and we need to call for and live out both.

Sabbath: Trust and Rest

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After 400 years of slavery, they were finally free. It had taken some doing – infestations of frogs and insects, illness and agricultural devastation, and ultimately death – but God had rescued his people. He had brought them out of Egypt, he had made a way across the sea (on dry land, even!), and he had wiped out the pursuing enemy. Now he was leading them to their own land. Unfortunately – from the peoples’ perspective, at least – the path led through the wilderness.

Imagine the scene: over a million people, driving flocks and herds of livestock, carrying all they owned on their backs or on carts, walking into the barren Arabian wilderness. No paved roads, no rest areas, no fast food restaurants, and watering holes that are few and far between.

At least in captivity there had been comfort in the familiar and the certain. Beneath the whips of their oppressors, the Israelites still knew there would be food and water at the end of the day. In the wilderness, though….

Less than a month into the journey the grumbling began. What’s amazing to me is that God heard the grumbling and provided what the people wanted – water and food. I’m pretty sure He planned all along to provide those, but the people didn’t know the plan and so they didn’t trust Him to provide. And when he did “rain bread from heaven,” the people didn’t recognize it. In fact, when they saw what he provided—which looked like “a flake-like thing, fine as frost” on the ground—they asked, “what is it?” Or in Hebrew, “manna?”

How like me that is. I trust God to provide, as long as I know ahead of time how he’s going to provide. I trust him to take care of me, as long as he does that in a way I’m familiar with. I trust his timing, as long as it doesn’t take too long!

Exodus 16 tells the story of how God provided bread and meat for his people as they traveled in the wilderness. Here the idea of Sabbath is introduced, a day of rest. But Sabbath is not only about rest; it is about trust. It is about trusting God to provide, in his way and in his time. And Sabbath is not only about resting from work; it is about resting from worry.

Jesus said,
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28–29, ESV)

To rest is to trust God. To trust God is to rest. Neither is easy. Both are necessary.