The Importance of Values in Shaping the Culture of Your Church

The Power of a Discipleship Culture

Our visitors commonly ask, “How much staff does it take to run a church of this size?” They’re often surprised to learn it’s less than 400—less than half a percent of the number of people who attend our services. It’s a telling illustration of the power of discipleship. In our experience, because the church is full of disciples, we don’t struggle with volunteer shortages for kid’s ministry, worship leading, ushering, administrative services and other activities. And from this pool of disciples, we are able to raise up future church planters, missionaries and pastors.

Disciples have clear values and don’t need coaxing, intimidation or manipulation to get them to serve. They willingly give of themselves to the work of ministry. They do it because it is valuable to them. It’s their culture. Even more amazing is how discipleship happens at every level of the church.

I recently heard a story about how a 12-year-old girl who serves in our kids’ ministry engaged her next-door neighbor. In time, the girl invited her neighbor to church and also took the responsibility of making her friend a follower of Christ. After her friend received the Lord, she invited her parents to come. Initially, they were reluctant, but they eventually came and are now members of the church. Her father has become a follower of Christ who now makes disciples.

Then there’s the story of a businessman in the city who heard of an opportunity to play his beloved instrument during our Sunday worship. After signing up as a volunteer, he was asked if he had gone through “One to One” with anyone—our starting point for engaging visitors that eventually leads into a small group and the rest of the discipleship process. Today, he plays on Sundays and he, too, makes disciples.

Our church has thousands of similar stories of discipleship. The point I’m trying to make here is that stories like these happen just as a part of our church’s culture. While these two stories centered on Sunday morning, the majority of them take place in the course of people’s day-to-day lives.

Now imagine if your church had a culture of discipleship and that every year 20 percent to 25 percent of these disciples made disciples. At this growth rate, your church could double every 3 1/2 years. This is the power of discipleship.

Developing a Discipleship Culture

Over the last five years we’ve all heard the discussion about Western Christianity’s decline. I tend to think that even as cultural, popular Christianity wanes, a burgeoning of true Christianity is happening—the kind that makes disciples. But to see this growing shift expand, we need to make changes. As I said earlier, the starting point is a change in values among leaders and members because values deal with the heart. As long as we value comfort and convenience, money and materials over our relationship with God and people, nothing much will change.

I like how Kevin York, the executive director of Every Nation Ministries (the churchmovement I’m privileged to be a part of), fleshes out the discipleship and values connection: “As long as you aim for your values, you will most likely hit your vision, mission and programs.”

He explains that having discipleship as our main value allowed us to come up with the right vision, mission and programs. Many discipleship ventures fizzle out in churches and among Christians because they are vision-based, mission-focused and program-driven rather than centered on values.

It’s from our values that we glean the appropriate principles and processes. Let me give you a few examples:

● Financial principles are based on monetary and gold values.

● Corporate principles are based on their founders’ and boards’ values.

● Marketing principles are shaped by customer values.

● Christian principles are founded on what God values.

So what does God value?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joey Bonifacio

Joey Bonifacio

Joey Bonifacio is Director for Asia of  Every Nation Ministries. Every Nation is a worldwide family of churches and ministries that exists to Honor God by planting Christ-centered, Spirit empowered, socially responsible churches and campus ministries in every nation. He is a member of the team that oversees  Victory, a local church in Manila and a movement of churches in the Philippines and the Senior Pastor of Victory Fort at Bonifacio Global City. He is Chairman of the Real Life Foundation, a Philippine based NGO that provides educational scholarship to the underprivileged. He is happily married to Marie for 30 years now and has three adult sons, Joseph who is married to Carla, David and Joshua. And adopted a cute little dog named  Vito.

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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
 

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