Does Your Church Have a Discipleship Tradition? The way to Domesticate It

Years in the past, whereas nonetheless aspiring to native church ministry, a pastoral mentor advised me, “If I run into you years from now, I’m going to ask, ‘Who’re you discipling?’” I can not un-hear these phrases. As an area church pastor, I usually ask myself, “Who am I discipling?” and “Are the individuals I discipled discipling others?”

Discipling others is important to ministry. As one pastor effectively explains, “Church buildings don’t want packages a lot as they want cultures of discipling, cultures the place every member prioritizes the non secular well being of others.”

However if that is so, how can a church construct that tradition of discipleship?

What’s discipleship?

At its easiest, Christian discipleship means serving to others imagine and obey Jesus. A extra full working definition may be: Christian discipleship is non secular friendship, primarily within the context of an area church, grounded in God’s Phrase, aimed in a Christ-ward path, occurring over an extended time frame.

A handful of scriptural rules inform this definition. These embody:

1. Religious friendship is friendship knowledgeable by the gospel (John 15:15).
2. The native church is the first context for Christian life and discipleship (1 Cor 1:2).
3. Scripture is authoritative for such relationships (2 Tim 3:16–17).
4. The intention of those relationships is conformity to Christ’s picture (Eph 4:17–24).
5. Disciples are referred to as to endure and persevere (Heb 12:1).

What’s a discipleship tradition?

Assuming the definition above, a tradition of discipleship emerges when it turns into regular for a church to collectively worth serving to each other comply with Jesus. This shared worth will consequently form the norms, expectations, and practices in a congregation. The intention shall be to see each member (disciple) discipling and being discipled—forsaking no undiscipled disciples.

What commitments inform a discipleship tradition?

However what does it truly imply for a church to collectively worth discipleship? It doesn’t emerge accidentally. A number of commitments work collectively to foster this shared worth and expectation.

1. Phrase-centered gatherings

If discipleship is grounded on the authority of Scripture, then Scripture ought to rule our congregational gatherings. The Phrase needs to be entrance and heart in what the entire church reads, sings, prays, and preaches.

Furthermore, these items needs to be understood because the bizarre parts of Christian discipleship. What ought to members worth of their discipling relationships? The identical factor the entire church values after they collect: God’s Phrase. What ought to they do with God’s Phrase in these relationships? They need to principally do what the entire church does each Lord’s Day: Learn the Phrase, interpret and apply the Phrase, pray the Phrase, and even sing the Phrase.

2. Exposition of Scripture

On the heart of the church’s Phrase-centered gatherings is a dedication to expositing Scripture. I’m persuaded that proper and common exposition of Scripture is the best start line to form shared values, norms, and practices.

As such, expositional preaching ought to arguably function the conventional weight-reduction plan for a discipling church. One specific worth of expositional preaching is that it helps the congregation perceive Scripture for themselves and cultivates their confidence and competency to make use of it faithfully when discipling others. A discipling tradition emerges the place the Phrase is faithfully preached after which reverberates by means of the members’ ministry to at least one one other.

Tune in to David Helm’s interview on expository preaching.

3. Exemplary management

Tradition tends to circulation downstream from management. The church’s members will sometimes worth what its leaders worth, and never worth what their leaders don’t worth. As an illustration, non-evangelistic church buildings are sometimes led by leaders who don’t evangelize. So too, non-discipling church buildings are sometimes led by leaders who don’t actively disciple others.

So if leaders wish to construct a tradition of discipleship of their church buildings, they need to start with themselves: Can we apply what we preach? Are we at the moment setting an instance in our ministry for others to comply with, or are we asking others to do what we’re unwilling to do?

A church’s discipling tradition will solely go as far as its leaders are dedicated to actively discipling others.

4. Significant membership

One of the essential if underappreciated parts of a church discipleship tradition is significant church membership. Contemplate two essential implications:

First, Christian discipleship can solely be carried out by precise Christians as a result of being a disciple and discipling others are each non secular actions. People who aren’t indwelt by the Holy Spirit can not do that work (1 Cor 3:16; Eph 3:16).

Second, church membership strengthens a discipling tradition by defining who particularly the church is known as to disciple. Who’s particularly chargeable for discipling you? Your individual church. Who’re you particularly chargeable for discipling? Different church members.

What practices form a discipleship tradition?

With these commitments in place, what particular practices then serve to domesticate a tradition of discipleship?

1. Demystify discipleship

Again and again in ministry, I’ve heard individuals say, “I’d love to try this, however I can’t do what the pastor does.”

Many Christians mistakenly scale back discipleship to formal instructing reserved for a small group of well-equipped and gifted specialists. But when discipleship merely means serving to others imagine and obey Jesus, then each disciple can disciple others in bizarre methods, resembling one-on-one Bible studying, prayer, hospitality, mutual encouragement, and extra.

A discipling tradition can solely emerge when discipleship turns into the bizarre ministry of all members, not simply the work of some “specialists.”

2. Shift mindsets

Years earlier than the COVID pandemic, Collin Marshall and Tony Payne offered a (then-)hypothetical scenario during which church buildings have been compelled to close down on account of a pandemic: “All your church’s public conferences and formal packages are cancelled indefinitely. No males’s or girls’s or kids’s ministry; no evangelistic programs; no outreach occasions. Nothing.” In such a scenario, how would your congregation develop within the grace and data of Christ? How would they be inspired to persevere in love and good deeds (particularly below such making an attempt circumstances)? What about evangelism? How would new individuals be reached and adopted up with? If ministry relied on each member—not simply the “professionals”—to minister to one another exterior of the church’s formal packages, would ministry proceed? Wouldn’t it flourish?

Would your ministry mannequin survive a pandemic? How we reply that (not-so-)hypothetical query can reveal our strategy to ministry.

Packages themselves don’t represent a discipling tradition. Nor does a discipling tradition want packages to outlive (at the same time as sure packages could also be helpful). A tradition of discipleship is one the place its worth and apply is woven into the bizarre lifetime of the church’s members. “Discipleship” shouldn’t be a category, program, or occasion they attend. A discipler is who they’re and discipleship is what they do.

Cultivating a real tradition of discipleship then requires shifting from a program-centric strategy to at least one that aspires for each member to be engaged in private discipling relationships.

3. Construct slowly

In response to their (on the time, hypothetical) pandemic state of affairs, Marshall and Payne suggest the next. They recommend starting with ten of your most mature Christians and assembly intensively with them to coach them in prayer and the way to learn the Bible. Their position would then be to satisfy with others within the church to coach and encourage them to do the identical, finally involving the remainder of the church in common Bible-based encouragement by means of these preliminary ten and people they subsequently prepare.

I’m not prescribing that actual technique (and neither are they), however the precept to be realized is that this: Begin small with trustworthy and mature believers. Prepare them to disciple their households and others, who then do the identical with others, and so forth. Over time, this multiplication ensures that each disciple is each discipling and being discipled.

What metrics consider a discipleship tradition?

However how are you aware a tradition of discipleship is definitely taking root in your church? The next questions will help you assess the outcomes.

1. Are leaders setting the instance?

If a member got here to you and requested, “What does it appear to be to disciple others?” may you say, “Have a look at elder so-and-so and do what he’s doing”?

Are your elders exemplary disciplers within the church? Are they discipling others? Does their discipleship equip and encourage others to do the identical sort of ministry?

2. Are members evangelizing?

Rising disciples aren’t simply hearers however doers of the Phrase (Jas 1:22). Consequently, as Christians meet collectively for discipleship, they may pray for open doorways to share the gospel with others (Col 4:3), whether or not personally or by inviting others to church. They can even joyfully share tales of evangelism and have fun God’s grace in one another’s bizarre faithfulness.

3. Are members assembly collectively?

For those who despatched a questionnaire to your members asking whom they usually meet with for mutual encouragement, prayer, and Bible studying—starting with their very own households—what would the outcomes be?

4. Is attendance growing?

One end result could also be that extra saints are dedicated to gathering with the entire church every Lord’s Day. As they develop of their data of the Phrase within the context of non secular friendships, they yearn to be below the Phrase with fellow members every week. They arrive to know that, if discipling relationships are the veins and arteries of the church, then the weekly Lord’s Day gathering is the heartbeat that circulates its lifeblood: God’s Phrase.

5. Are leaders multiplying?

A church with a discipleship tradition needs to be marked by a rising variety of competent and certified elders and deacons.

For those who’re a program-oriented church, your elders are doubtless program managers, and there are solely so many packages to go round. However when the entire church is engaged in discipling each other, probably the most godly, mature, and fruitful could be acknowledged and raised up as future leaders.

Conclusion

Mates, constructing a discipleship tradition in your church is potential—by God’s means and relying on God’s energy. Wherever people prioritize the non secular well being of others, a Phrase-centered tradition of discipling will emerge.

Each disciple discipling and no undiscipled disciples. That’s the purpose.

Jeff Wiesner’s instructed assets for additional examine

• Marshall, Colin, and Tony Payne. The Trellis and the Vine: The Ministry Thoughts-Shift That Adjustments The whole lot. Matthias Media, 2009.

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