YEARS AGO, I read of a
new pastor in a church who was quite disturbed by what he saw
in his church. Over the years, the church had become bloated with
countless activities and programmes without a clear focus and
direction. The church was going in circles, like the desert wanderings
of the ancient Israelites. It did not have any impact in the surrounding
community. It was sinking under its own weight.
The pastor gathered his leaders to pray about the situation. They
realised that the church members were gathering within the walls
of the church building too frequently! The members should be out
there living their lives as witnesses of Jesus Christ instead
of huddling together in meaningless gatherings. The church then
decided that all members shall come to church only twice a week,
on Sundays to worship, and on Wednesdays for Bible study and accountability
groups. The leaders had to come an additional day for the leaders
accountability group. All other programmes ceased. Apparently
this slimming programme for the church had visible results.
One of the currently popular books in the Christian marketplace
is Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples
by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. Using their research on more than
400 evangelical churches in the United States, the authors claim
that the key difference between the growing churches and others
was the presence of a clearly articulated and effectively practised
simple process of disciple-making.
They call for a simplification of complicated processes and programmes
in the church. What is needed is a clear articulation of the church's
ministry - making disciples, and bringing all programmes and structures
in the church to be aligned to this simple mission, and doing
away with anything that does not fit in with this simple blueprint.
It is quite an appealing suggestion, though as Wesleyan scholar
Howard Snyder has noted correctly, there are some serious limitations
in the book's definitions and recommendations. What is immensely
helpful, however, is the call to focus on the essentials, and
one essential is certainly our calling to make disciples.
This becomes a clarion call in a day and age when the church has
become a place for religious consumerism and entertainment. Are
we serious about becoming disciples of Christ, and focusing our
ministry on disciple-making?
Even in our mission, we may have lowered our goals to something
that is far from what the Lord expects of us. We often use the
Great Commission in Mt. 28:18-20 as a rallying cry to mobilise
the church to do evangelism and mission. However, we must take
note that our Lord has commanded us to "go and make disciples
of all nations". It is far from merely winning converts,
important as that may be. For what good is giving anaesthesia
to a patient but failing to do the surgery?
It is possible that the church may limit its understanding of
the Lord's command to simply numerical growth that counts the
numbers of converts we are winning. Our statistical reports may
be designed more to measure numerical growth rather than other
more important forms of growth. We need to know the difference
between winning converts and making disciples.
Dallas Willard has called this tendency the "great omission"
in our understanding of the Great Commission (see his book, The
Great Omission). Because of our failure to recognise our higher
calling and greater mission, there is a "great disparity"
between what we profess as biblical teaching and how we live.
This, according to Willard, is reflected in three specific areas:
our inner life, our actual day-to-day behaviour, and our social
presence.
It is useful to consider each of these. To be disciples of Jesus
is to have our inner lives deeply impacted by the death and life
of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit. Superficial Christianity
has no place in true Christian discipleship. Without the deep
transformation of the inner life, we Christians will live lives
in the miserable puddles of nominal or superficially activist
Christianity when we should be swimming freely and wondrously
in the deep oceans of God's transforming power and love.
IS CHRIST the Lord of our inner lives, Lord of our aspirations,
ambitions, desires, and Lord over our struggles with sinfulness,
our anxieties, fears, wounds and duplicities?
If indeed Christ is Lord in the deepest parts of our hearts, then
it will show in our daily behaviour. We will reflect the Christlikeness
that identifies a true disciple of Jesus. We will show it in our
reactions, relationships, crises, in our conversations, our daily
activities and responsibilities.
If
we live as disciples of Jesus, we will clearly have an impact
in society. We will move away from self-centred, self-indulgent
lifestyles and obey God by loving our neighbours as ourselves.
Our basic life goal will not be survival and self-gratification,
but redemption and service that comes out from gratitude to God
and loving worship of Him. All this will be built on a deep devotion
and unstinting obedience to God, the determined pursuit of God
and His holiness, and the diligent practice of spiritual disciplines.
This is a high calling. Our Lord mentioned three groups of people
who cannot be His disciples: those who do not love Him more than
their families or themselves (Lk. 14:26); those who do not carry
their cross to follow Him (Lk. 14:27); and those who do not give
up everything they have to follow Him (Lk. 14:33). How many people
would be ruled out by these stringent demands? The standards of
Christian discipleship are indeed high.
Is that why many people would rather be just converts or church
members than be disciples of Christ? But we must resolutely move
away from reducing members to being consumers of religious services.
We must focus on making disciples. The one word that is consistently
used to describe believers in the New Testament is the word "disciple"
which appears 269 times.
It was Chuck Swindoll who said, "We are often so caught up
in our activities that we tend to worship our work, work at our
play, and play at our worship." It is so easy to get things
all mixed up, isn't it? It is important that we put the "great
omission" back into the Great Commission, and put our energies
into becoming disciples who make disciples.
QUOTE:
'If indeed Christ is Lord in the deepest parts of our
hearts, then it will show in our daily behaviour. We will reflect
the Christlikeness that identifies a true disciple of Jesus.'