3 Ways We Miss Seeing Discipleship as Church Strategy

Every church should embrace the mission of making disciples and implement a strategy to accomplish that mission. Because the mission of a local church is to make disciples, a strategy is how the church is designed to make disciples. If a church’s strategy is not grounded in making disciples, the church has abandoned the mission Christ has given.

Because discipleship is an ongoing process of becoming more and more like Jesus, a church’s strategy should be her discipleship process. In other words, a church’s discipleship process should be synonymous with her strategy. I wrote on designing a discipleship process just a couple of weeks ago.

As church leaders think about their overarching discipleship process, here are three common mistakes:

1. Viewing discipleship as part of your strategy/process

If discipleship is viewed as merely information, then people are likely to view a teaching environment as best suited for discipleship. If discipleship is viewed as merely behavioral modification, then people are likely to view accountability that is focused on what people are doing as the best expression of discipleship. However, if discipleship is viewed as transformation, then the totality of the church’s focus is on making disciples. Surely this includes people learning the Word, but it also includes people being shepherded in community, serving others, living on mission, and worshiping Christ with their lives.

Ultimately discipleship is about transformation, not merely information or behavioral modification. When you design a process for discipleship, view discipleship as the whole process, not merely a component in it.

2. Over-programming early in your discipleship process

A common mistake is when church leaders craft (or borrow) a new mission statement and quickly throw all their existing programs under the new statement. The old just gets baptized with new nomenclature. The problem with the re-categorization approach is that if leaders just place everything they are doing under a new phrase, they have not really designed a process for spiritual transformation. A major consequence is that church leaders will unintentionally stall people early in the articulated discipleship process. Because people only have so much time, over-programming early in a discipleship process prevents people from moving to steps placed deeper in the process.

For example, imagine First Community Church articulates their process as “exalt, equip, and engage.” Their strategy is to move people from large worship environments (exalt) to places of biblical community and instruction (equip) to places of mission engagement (engage). Sounds good so far.

But First Community Church merely re-categorizes all their programming under their new statement. They place Sunday morning worship services and Sunday night worship services under “exalt.” Under “equip,” they place Sunday school, discipleship groups, home prayer groups, men’s ministry, women’s ministry, and a plethora of other things. Each week in their worship services, the leaders compete for time to promote their “equip” programs.

Do you see the problem? If someone actually went to all of the programs promoted, the individual would be at six different things each week. And he or she still has not served nor engaged unbelievers outside the church. Over-programming early in your discipleship process competes with your process. Over-programming hampers the body by complicating the lives of church members to the point that there is no margin for service or mission.

3. Divorcing mission engagement from the discipleship process

If a church’s discipleship process ends with the church, missions and serving those outside of the church have been tragically separated from the church’s strategy. A church’s discipleship process/strategy may sound like, “Come to our church, get connected, and help us do church better.” If the end result of a strategy is a better church, the church has too shallow a view of discipleship. If you believe what William Temple stated, “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members,” then a church’s discipleship strategy must not end with the church. People must be deployed as salt and light in the world.

>Read more from Eric


Learn more about disciple-making as your church strategy. Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

 

Download PDF

Tags: , , ,

| What is MyVisionRoom? > | Back to Discipleship >

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Geiger

Eric Geiger

Eric Geiger is the Senior Pastor of Mariners Church in Irvine, California. Before moving to Southern California, Eric served as senior vice-president for LifeWay Christian. Eric received his doctorate in leadership and church ministry from Southern Seminary. Eric has authored or co-authored several books including the best selling church leadership book, Simple Church. Eric is married to Kaye, and they have two daughters: Eden and Evie. During his free time, Eric enjoys dating his wife, taking his daughters to the beach, and playing basketball.

See more articles by >

COMMENTS

What say you? Leave a comment!

Daniel J Snook — 10/07/16 9:26 am

Thank You!!!!!! Well said. I love the quote, "The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members." Now, how to transition an established congregation into that way of thinking...

Recent Comments
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for this information. I'm going to use this article to improve my work with the Lord.
 
— Abel Singbeh
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
— Dave
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
— Argaw Alemu
 

Clarity Process

Three effective ways to start moving toward clarity right now.