7 Truths About Authentic Discipleship

by: Carey Nieuwhof

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One of the ways you know you’re making progress is that you stop having the same discussion over and over again.

If you’re discussing the same issues on your team or at home year after year, you’re probably stuck.

When it comes to much of the discussion around discipleship, I believe we’re getting it wrong in the church.

We’re stuck.

What if the popular understanding of discipleship is producing some of the ill health and even stagnation and decline we see all around us in the church?

And what if you could do something about it by rethinking what you mean by discipleship?

From my earliest days in ministry, I’ve had a conversation about discipleship that repeats itself again and again.

It goes like something like this:

Me: People need to reach out more and focus more of their time, energy and resources on evangelism.

Other person(s): That’s a great idea but what we really need to focus on is discipleship. There’s such an immaturity in Christians today that we need to focus on growing the ones we have first. And besides, evangelical churches are known for producing shallow, immature Christians.

Pretty compelling logic.

Unless, of course, it’s wrong.

I agree that often Christians in the West are immature. I agree our walk doesn’t always match our talk.

But I also think the average North American Christian is about 3000 bible verses overweight.

The way many leaders approach maturity is to assume that knowledge produces maturity. Since when?

It’s wonderful that people understand what they believe, but knowledge in and of itself is not a hallmark of Christian maturity. As Paul says, knowledge puffs up. Love, by contrast, builds up. And some of the most biblically literate people in Jesus day got by-passed as disciples.

The goal is not to know, but to do something with what you know.  I wrote more on why our definition of Christian maturity needs to change here.

Here are seven things I believe are true about biblical discipleship church leaders today should reclaim:

1.  Jesus commanded us to make disciples, not be disciples.

The way many Christian talk, you’d think Jesus told us to be disciples. He commanded us to make disciples. The great commission is, at it’s heart, an outward movement.

Could it be that in the act of making disciples, we actually become more of who Christ designed us to be? It was in the act of sharing faith that thousands of early Christians were transformed into new creations.

I know personally I grow most and learn most when I am helping others. It gives me a place to apply what I’m learning and to take the focus off myself and place it on Christ and others, where it belongs.

2. Discipleship is simply linked to evangelism.

The thrust of all first century discipleship was to share Christ with the world he loves and died for (yes, Jesus really does love the world).

You can’t be a disciple without being an evangelist.

And for sure, the opposite is true. You can’t be an an evangelist without being a disciple. But somehow many many people would rather be disciples without being evangelists.

3. A mark of an authentic disciple includes getting it wrong.

A common criticism of churches that draw in large numbers of outsiders and newer believers is that these new followers of Christ get it wrong as often as they get it right. They might not realize that reincarnation isn’t biblical or struggle to understand the faith they’re stepping into.

What if that’s a sign that their discipleship is authentic?

After all, Peter didn’t get it right most of the time when he was around Jesus. Many leaders in the early church needed correction. And even Paul would later confront Peter about his unwillingness to eat with Gentiles.  And yet Christ chose to build the early church on Peter and Paul. Imagine that.

4. A morally messy church is…inevitable

One stinging criticism of churches that are reaching people is that many of their attenders don’t bear much resemblance to Jesus.

These new, immature Christians can be

• swayed by powerful personalities
• still be sexually active outside of marriage
• have questionable business practices
• end up in broken families
• be too swayed by the culture
• not know how to conduct themselves in worship
• doubt core doctrines like the resurrection

If these issues remind you of why you so dislike growing churches or megachurches, just realize that I pulled every one of those problems out of 1 Corinthians. The church in Corinth struggled with every problem listed above and (I think) every problem growing churches today struggle with.

And last time I checked the church in Corinth was an authentic church Christ loved.

The fact that you have these problems may actually be a sign you’re making progress with the unchurched. You don’t want to leave them there, but when people really start engaging with Christ, tidy categories are hard to come by.

In fact the most morally ‘pure’ people of the first century (the Pharisees) were the very ones Jesus most often condemned. Go figure.

 5. Maturity takes time and is not linear

It would be great if there was instant maturity in faith and in life. But it never works that way.

You can’t expect a 3 year old to have the maturity of a 13 year old, or expect a 23 year old to have the maturity of a 43 year old. When you place expectations on people that they are just not able to bear, you crush or confuse them.

And yet we do that in the church all the time. People grow and mature over time. And our progress isn’t always as linear as a 101, 201, 301 progression would make it. In fact, I know some 23 year olds who are more mature than some 43 year olds.

Expose new Christians to the love of God and community, to great teaching, great relationships, and solid accountability and over time, many will grow into very different people than they were when they first came to Christ. They may grow at different rates and in different measures, but I believe Jesus talked about that. Just don’t judge them after a few months or even a few years.

6. Christian maturity was never about you anyway.

Christian maturity has never been about you anyway. It is certainly not about how awesome you are compared to others, how smart you are, how righteous you are, or how holy you are.

It is about Jesus. And it is about others.

It was never about you anyway.

7.  Love compels us

If you love the world, how can you ignore it? Jesus said the authentic mark of his followers is love. He defined the primary relationship between God and humanity as one of love. The truth he ushered in is inseparable from love.

The primary motivation for evangelism and discipleship is the same; it is love. That should characterize both the discussion about evangelism and discipleship and also the way we go about both.

This isn’t an exhaustive treatment of discipleship and evangelism, but in the time it takes to sip a coffee I hope it helps some way advance the conversation about evangelism and discipleship in your church.

And if we advanced our understanding of discipleship in the church, maybe the church and our culture would be transformed.

> Read more from Carey.

 Would you like to learn more about authentic discipleship? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

Tags: Carey Nieuwhof, Discipleship, authentic discipleship

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Back to School Lessons for Personal Spiritual Growth

by: Michael Kelley

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This fall marked the beginning of another school year in the Kelley household. This one’s a bit different than in years past because this year, we’ve got a middle schooler. That means two different school start times, two different drop-offs and pickups, and two different sets of expectations and apprehensions. But despite all those things, we made it through with minimal anxiety and bloodshed. And as I think back across this week, I am filled with admiration for my children.

I admire their attitudes and excitement. I admire their desire and individuality. I admire their ease in making friends and trying new things. And I have admired the way they’ve asked us to pray for them about specific things this week. I’ve seen so many things in them this week that have caused me to give thanks, but have also challenged me. I’m not starting school this year, but in a sense, we are all in the school of discipleship. It’s a progressive school where we are moving further and further toward Christian maturity, learning and changing and repenting and going at it again along the way.

I’ve seen in my children, the way they have begun this year, a few things that ring true about the school of discipleship as well. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned from them as applied to my own ongoing spiritual growth:

1. Routine can bring freedom.

We have been pretty set in our morning and afternoon routine these past few years, mainly because it was relatively familiar to us. But with the advent of middle school, we have had to reevaluate how things function in our home. When are lunches made? How is homework done? What time do people get up in the morning? All those things play into establishing a routine. And because this year is different, we had to somewhat turn over what we were formerly doing and start over. But a few days in, and the new routine has been established.

And in that routine has come freedom. Expectations are set, and they are met, and when they are, there is a lesser amount of anxiety and franticness. Routine allows a slower and more intentional pace because you don’t feel like everything has to be done right now. Such is the case with discipleship.

Routine builds our expectations and it allows us to anticipate the right things at the right time. When we, for example, have a routine about the way we read the Bible and pray, then our minds click into gear with the time is right. We don’t feel the pressing tyranny of the urgent because we know that there is a time for everything, and the time now is sit and read. Of course, routines are made to be broken. And in the school day as well as discipleship, it takes wisdom to know when the routine has stopped serving you and when you have started serving it.

2. Together is better.

We have had sweet times together over dinner this past week. Part of that is because of the newness of school – when everything is the most amazing and awesome in the world. I’m sure that will change soon enough. But those times will be sweet in a different way, for those are the times when we have the privilege of not only laughing together, but crying together as a family. The key word here is “together,” and together is better.

Such is the case with discipleship. Together is better here, too. We often think of our spiritual development in isolation, and that’s good and right so far as it goes. But God has been building, for all time, a people for Himself, together worshiping Him for all eternity. When we come together regularly with the people of God, unified by the truth of the gospel, then we are able to laugh, weep, rejoice, and bear each other’s burdens. We are able to encourage and remind each other of the promises of God so that we might press onto another day in faith.

3. Mercies are new every morning.

They are indeed. Thank the Lord. I shouldn’t make it sound like this first week has been perfect; far from it. We’ve had arguments, and discussions that turned into arguments. But at least for the time being, the kids have come downstairs each morning cheerful and ready for a new day. It has been a reminder to me that a good night’s rest is an amazing antiseptic – nothing looks as bad as it does at midnight, and everything looks a little better in the morning.

I don’t think this is just “self-help” rhetoric – I think it is because, for the Christian, we know that God’s mercies are truly new every morning. And that when we wake up, we can be confident that this is the day the Lord has made, and we should be obedient to rejoice and be glad in it. The kids, even though they might not recognize it, are showing me this discipline with the way they are coming downstairs even if the night before has been difficult.

For the disciple, every morning is a new day. And with the new day comes the choice to believe that God is not absent, but instead has filled that day with good works for us to walk in. We can, then, as a matter of discipleship to look on the coming day as an opportunity to embrace His work in and through us.

4. In the midst of complexity, return to the basics.

This year is going to be complex. Jana and I have already discussed how our new middle schooler is within weeks of aging out of our ability to legitimately help him with his math homework. It’s going to be complex, and math is just the beginning of the list of reasons. How will we handle all that complexity in school, relationships, and dynamics? I don’t know specifically, but in general, I think we will go back to the basics again and again. We will have dinner together. We will pray together. We will laugh together. We will be safe together.

This is one of the glories of home – that no matter what else is happening in the world, home is where you come back to and leave all masks and pretense at the door. Home is where you are you, and you are loved. That’s returning to the basics.

The same thing is true in discipleship, for there are certainly complexities in the world for the Christian. There are moral complexities, societal complexities, and relational complexities. There are also theological and doctrinal complexities. What, then, can we do in light of these things? We can return to the basics.

For the disciple, that means coming back to the home of the gospel. It means returning again and again to the simple and unchanging truth that with Jesus, we are eternally safe because He has loved us even unto death.

>Read more from Michael.

Tags: Back to School, Michael Kelley, spiritual growth

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Six Keys for Whole-Church Discipleship

by: Brandon Cox

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I grew up attending church a lot. I was in a church classroom a lot. When I was a kid, my family attended Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night preaching and prayer services, plus Sunday school, plus missions education programs and Vacation Bible Schools. But… I didn’t grow spiritually, didn’t really experience spiritual depth, and didn’t really learn what following Jesus looked like outside the walls of the church.

When I hit adulthood, I started to grow spiritually, but I would say it was still rather slow going. I started attending church with my wife and soaking up biblical knowledge like a sponge. I entered ministry and attended Bible college and developed the spiritual disciplines. But something was still missing.

Finally, several things happened that prompted a complete perspective change in me and kickstarted my journey toward being more like Jesus. In particular…

• I walked through pain – depression, specifically.
• I began to repent of pride, self-centeredness, and other sins.
• My wife and I began to have tough conversations.
• I went on staff at a church with a strong culture of discipleship.
• We joined a small group of people who cared a lot about doing life together.

After a year in that atmosphere, God led us to Northwest Arkansas to plant a church and gave us a passion for creating a place where people could truly grow. We started planting Grace Hills with some particular convictions about the role of the local church in discipleship, such as…

• The local church, as a community of believers, was always integral to Jesus’ plan for discipleship.
• The local church should balance the five purposes of worship, evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, and ministry.
• The local church should also be balanced in ministering to the community, the crowd, the congregation, the committed, and the core.
• If the local church is going to facilitate discipleship, it has to be more than a classroom. It has to be a community of people who are coming to know Jesus together and serving one another for God’s glory.

In the last few years, we haven’t gotten everything right. In fact, I think it would be easier to write about our mistakes than our success. But I’ve watched our staff and volunteer team make disciples well, and I can point to at least six specific ways we’ve been setting the table for discipleship to happen.

1. From the pulpit, a vision is cast and an example is shared about the role of spiritual disciplines.

It’s not just about conveying information in a “deep” sermon format. It’s about creating a hunger and getting practical in terms of how each message should be lived out, and how every person can go deeper beyond Sunday. I spent 15 years doing deep, expositional preaching, but failed to call people to really develop their own faith at home. One of my newer goals is to help people, through my preaching, to become self-feeders by talking about the value of the disciplines as well as the how of them.

2. Lay counseling and counseling-as-discipleship is utilized to disciple people through crises.

We must develop a culture and a system for involving people in the messes of other people. The broken-and-healing need to be pouring into the broken-in-need-of-healing. And the most effective counseling we can do is essential discipleship. Some of the best marriage counseling we can do is having a man disciple a husband and a woman disciple a wife. I’ve learned to lean heavily on my wife, Angie Cox, an LCSW and a master at empowering lay people for counseling.

3. The importance of micro-groups or groups-within-groups is talked about.

It’s usually when a group gets smaller that real discussion happens. This happens when men and women divide during group time. It also happens when two or three from a group grab coffee to get more personal. So we encourage group leaders to encourage group members to get together beyond the weekly meeting to dive deeper into specific struggles.

4. Everybody is challenged to join a ministry team.

A ministry team is like a cohort of people who are in proximity to each other as they serve. This creates an atmosphere for on-the-job discipleship. People sharpen one another in the trenches together, so we let ministry teams function a little bit like small groups. It’s been thrilling to watch people sharing their stories and challenging one another while serving together.

5. Schedules are simplified and families are encouraged to do discipleship at home.

Some of the most important discipleship work that a church can do is by empowering fathers, mothers, and guardians to make disciples of their kids, as well as their neighbors’ kids. We fight against busyness so that families have time away from church together.

6. Pastoral ministry becomes personal ministry carried out within small groups.

Groups are challenged to provide care for one another. People pray over fellow group members before or during crises, deliver meals, and keep tabs on one another. No promises are ever made that the church staff will be doing “pastoral ministry,” even though we often do.

We don’t do any of these perfectly, but where we see them happen, we see them working. And we hope to do more of each of them. Jesus never intended us to try to carry out the work of disciple-making while ignoring his primary engine for the task – the local church.

Tags: Brandon Cox, Discipleship, Whole Church Discipleship

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Fine-Tune Your Team’s Vocabulary to Shape a Creative Culture

by: VRcurator

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To  change attitudes and behaviors, it helps first to change the vernacular.   – David and Tom Kelley, IDEO

Language is the crystallization of thought. But the words we choose do more than just reflect our thought patterns—they shape them. What we say—and how we say it—can deeply affect a company’s culture. To spark innovation, it helps to influence the dialogue around new ideas.

David and Tom Kelley are the founders and partners in IDEO, one of the world’s leading innovation and design firms. According to the Kelley’s, IDEO’s favorite antidote to negative speech patterns is the phrase “How might we…?”  It was introduced to them by Charles Warren, now salesforce.com’s senior vice president of product design, as an optimistic way of seeking out new possibilities in the world. In a matter of weeks, it went viral at their firm and it’s stuck ever since. In three disarmingly simple words, it captures much of IDEO’s perspective on creative groups:

• The “how” suggests that improvement is always possible. The only question remain­ing is how you will find success.
• The word “might” temporarily lowers the bar a little. It allows you to consider wild or improbable ideas instead of self-editing from the very beginning, giving you more chance of a breakthrough.
• And the “we” establishes own­ership of the challenge, making it clear that not only will it be a group effort, but it will be our group.

Using this phrase is not just a matter of semantics. Thoughts become words, and words become deeds. If you get the language right, it affects behavior.

Defenders of the status quo often say, “We’ve always done it this way” or “Nobody does it like that.” With a series of “why” questions, an eight-year-old could disarm such defenses.

But adults sometimes forget the simple power of words.

Try fine-tuning your group’s vocabulary, and see the positive effect it has on your culture.

Adapted from Creative Confidence, by David and Tom Kelley.

Would you like help in fine-tuning your team’s vocabulary? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

Tags: Awareness, Creative Confidence, Culture, Tom and David Kelley, team culture

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When You Need a Discipleship Strategy But Don’t Know Where to Begin

by: VRcurator

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Below is a new weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders. SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; and each solution is taken from a different book. As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

How do churches make disciples?

It is perhaps the central question churches face, and only some of them actually have a well-defined answer. As Mike Breen says, “The problem is that most of us have been educated and trained to build, serve, and lead the organization of the church. Most of us have actually never been trained to make disciples.”

Do we now define disciple as someone who attends worship somewhat regularly, gives to us financially, and engages in acts of evangelism and kindness every once in a while?

Solution: Lead people to know God, not just know about God.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Building a Discipling Culture, Mike Breen

Building a Discipling Culture is the product of more than twenty-five years of hands-on discipleship practice in a post-Christian context that has turned into a world-wide movement, dealing specifically with making the types of missional disciples Jesus spoke of.

We all want to make disciples – most of us are just unsure how to do it.

Jesus did not command us to build the church; He called us to make disciples. Building a Discipling Culture shows that effective discipleship creates the church, not the other way around.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

The truth is that many churches equate discipleship with knowledge. Churches who view discipleship as simply information to be transferred want to cram as much biblical knowledge into as many people as quickly as they can.

The command of Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20 is to “Go…and make disciples…teaching them to observe everything I have commanded.” The end goal of discipleship is not merely knowing all Jesus commanded, but obeying all Jesus commanded.

And that is a big difference.

The truth of Scripture is meant to be worked out in us, not something that we hold as an abstract reality.

Why are we assuming that simply by giving people information (e.g. pray, read the Bible, read doctrinal statements, be a part of a small group) they actually know how to do it or can figure it out by themselves? I can read a book on how to perform open heart surgery. If you go into cardiac arrest, do you want me to operate on you?

We have become so acculturated in our Cartesian, Western world that we believe knowing about something and knowing something are the same thing. What we have managed to do is teach people about God. Teach them about prayer. Teach them about mission. The point isn’t that they would just know about it but to know it.

Discipleship isn’t a random assortment of facts and propositions and behaviors, discipleship is something that is you to the core and is completely incarnated in you. If it is information, it is information that has worked its way into you and is now part of you, in the same way that John talks about the logos being wrapped up in the person of Jesus: “The Word became flesh.” It goes from being information to being knowledge.

Mike Breen, Building a Discipling Culture

A NEXT STEP

The discipling relationship you must have with God is a real and personal one. The Scriptures contain many examples where individuals and groups had a real, personal, and practical relationship with God. They knew God, not just about Him. What was true in the Old and New Testaments remains true today.

• Briefly describe an experience in your life when God was real and personal in His relationship with you.
• As you recall that experience, what key words or phrases stand out to you that demonstrate your knowledge of God, not just a knowledge about God?
• What challenges do you face in growing a real and personal relationship with God?
• What intentional actions must you begin in order to sustain a real and personal relationship with God?

To learn more about developing your discipleship strategy, start a conversation with the Auxano team today.

Taken from SUMS Remix 10-2, published March 2015

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Tags: Building a Discipling Culture, Leaders are readers, Mike Breen, Readers

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Every Leader’s 3-Step Formula for Multiplication

by: Jeff Meyer

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And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.  2 Timothy 2:2

What qualifies someone to teach others?

Advanced biblical training?   Theological degrees?  Titles?

Anyone can teach.

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.  Acts 4:13

One of the major reasons why we are not seeing multiplication in our churches is because we are teaching people to do what we think they need to do instead of what we ourselves are doing.

3-step Formula for Multiplication

> Figure Out What You Are Doing

Recently, in an effort to equip our preachers to write sermon series, I had to sit down and figure out the process I followed to write sermon series.  Something I had been doing for years needed to be translated so that someone else could do what I had been doing.  That is, if I wanted to share the wealth.

> Name It

Put down the process in terms that someone can understand.

> Share It

Give it away.  Paul tells young Timothy to “entrust it” to reliable people.  Let others try.  Show them what you wrote down.  Better yet, show them, let them watch you.  Then, let them try, and you watch.

Here’s the thing I’m learning about multiplication:  everything can be taught using this 3-step Formula.

Here’s a rapid-fire-off-the-top-of-my-head list:

• Managing finances (at church and at home)
• Praying out loud, having a “quiet time”
• Engaging in conversations with strangers
• Riding a bike
• Choosing healthy foods at the grocery store
• Exercising
• Setting the table (at church and at home)
• Cleaning up after dinner (at church and at home)
• Reading the Bible
• Preaching
• Teaching
• Running a backyard VBS
• Video editing
• Worship leading
• Being able to recognize how God is working
• Prayer walking
• Serving in the community
• Sales
• Cooking…

Here’s an assignment:  Name one area in your leadership (at church or at home) today that you would like to give away/ share with someone else.

Once you’ve identified it, try out the three step formula.  

1) Figure out what you are doing.  

2) Name it.  

3) Share it.

> Read more from Jeff.

Tags: Jeff Meyer, Multiplication, Multiplying Leaders, giving ministry away

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