A Modest Proposal for Improving Discipleship: Ban Coffee Shop Meetings

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Close your eyes.

If I ask you to picture a meeting happening today where one Christian is discipling another, what image comes to mind?

Is there a Starbuck’s logo in it?

Now think back through all of the discipleship stories of Jesus that you can remember. How many of those could you fully transpose to a coffee shop and not lose the essential nature of the lesson Jesus is imparting?

  • Nicodemus comes to mind. That one could have, perhaps, happened in a darkened corner of an out-of-the-way Starbucks.
  • The woman at the well? Why not make it the woman in line ready to order her mocha frappuccino?
  • The rich young ruler could have walked up to Jesus’ table. “Good teacher, can you scoot over for a minute?”

But notice that these are all proto- or pre-discipleship conversations. With Jesus’ committed disciples there actually are a few moments that might work in a coffee shop, like the “Who do you say that I am?” dialogue. But what is noteworthy is how many of the discipleship experiences happen on the road. And this doesn’t mean on the tour bus–it means in the warp and weft of daily life, in the acts of preparing meals and eating them, paying taxes and avoiding them, going to weddings and funerals, and–yes, a hard one for us to comprehend these days–at work.

When you disciple at a coffee shop, you are on a retreat from daily life rather than engaged in it. Jesus preferred to teach his lessons in real time, as events were unfolding. At a coffee shop there is a tendency to reflect, discuss, philosophize. This drops considerably if you are discipling someone while they are working front counter at McDonald’s and you are slurping your shamrock shake to one side of the lobby as you observe them.

Discipleship is really intended to be like working out. If you are training someone to work out, you work out together side by side, often trading repetitions. You don’t work out separately and then get together later and talk about it.

So let’s stop meeting at coffee shops and philosophizing about discipleship. Let’s follow the Great Commission to the letter. The new ISV translation of Matthew 28:18-20 catches the essential nuance of the Greek when it says “as you go” in verse 19 rather than simply “go”:

Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore, as you go, disciple people in all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. And remember, I am with you each and every day until the end of the age.”

Discipleship happens on the road. Those you are discipling live life with you as you go. They watch you and imitate you as you imitate Christ.

Save money on the coffee. Cancel the meetup at Starbucks. Instead, ask yourself, “Where will I be today and what will I be doing such that I can call the individuals I am discipling to join me and observe me in that situation as I carry out the command of Christ?”

I challenge you to make one such call today. And then I challenge you to make this your default way of discipling others.

In our next post, I’ll tell you about the man who discipled me that way, and who I consciously imitate as I disciple you.

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Is There a Difference Between Coaching, Mentoring, and Making Disciples?

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Yes.

Mentoring is imparting to you what God has given me;
coaching is drawing out of you what God has put in you.
–Dale Stoll, in Tony Stoltzfus’ Leadership Coaching

Discipleship is a systematic and comprehensive process of teaching you to obey everything that Christ commanded, in the presence and power of Christ.

This doesn’t make coaching and mentoring un-Christian processes. But it doesn’t make them discipleship, either.

  • In coaching, the apprentice sets the agenda.
  • In mentoring, the mentor sets the agenda.
  • In discipleship, the commands of Christ are the agenda.

In discipleship, therefore, the process is intentionally, surprisingly uninformed by the life circumstances, goals, and personality makeup of the disciple.

The commands of Christ come to us as ill-timed and impractical, out of sequence of our lives and out of step with our plans and goals. In the coaching and mentoring processes, the subject can first bury his own father. Not so the disciple. 

Likewise, in mentoring and coaching the scale and scope of the process are established by negotiation and mutual goal setting. But the scale and scope of discipleship are non-negotiable. We are called to learn everything that Christ commands. This makes disciples generalists, not specialists, as we’ve previously discussed (here and here, for example).

  • “Helping people find and fulfill their calling” is the language of coaching and mentoring.
  • “Growing people to fullness in Christ” is the language of discipleship.

In coaching and mentoring the role relationships are established by the participants, but in discipleship they are established by the Lord. That gives us uncomfortable layers of mutual accountability that we can’t turn off  or channel into certain “areas of life” that we want to “work on.” Discipleship is like a mesh that lays over the top of everything. It’s alarmingly out of our control. And yet we enter into it and remain in it voluntary.

What many churches and Christian leaders call discipleship is actually coaching rather than  discipleship. Most Christians prefer that. There are a lot of fathers to bury, after all.

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Before You Go Disciple the Nations, You Might First Consider Discipling Your Own Children

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Pastor Foley

The most neglected passage of Scripture related to the Work of Mercy of making disciples?

1 Timothy 3:1-5 (ISV):

1This is a trustworthy saying:

The one who would an elder be,

a noble task desires he.

2Therefore, an elder must be blameless, the husband of one wife, stable, sensible, respectable, hospitable to strangers, and teachable. 3He must not drink excessively or be a violent person, but instead be gentle. He must not be argumentative or love money. 4He must manage his own family well and have children who are submissive and respectful in every way. 5For if a man does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?

The logic behind verse 5 is as compelling as it is neglected: If we have not first undertaken to teach our own children to obey everything Christ has commanded us, how could we possible be successful in teaching that to others?

I learned to preach first in seminary and later (and still now) in front of my own children, and there is no comparison as to which makes one a more effective preacher. And by preaching in front of my own children I don’t mean conversations around the dinner table in which I help them to splice Scripture together with their lived experience as they tell me about the problems and opportunities they faced that day. That’s a vital part of Christian family life, but it’s not preaching. By preaching I mean a prepared message. You know, the gospel. And teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded me.

And by teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded me, I don’t mean family devotions. Family devotions can be good, but they can also reinforce in children and young adults the idea that the Christian faith is a kind of multivitamin supplement to reality.

By teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded me, I mean a systematic plan. The   Whole Life Offering project and the .W Church both began as Mrs. Foley’s and my plan to teach our children everything Christ had commanded us. According to 1 Timothy 3:1-5, it really had to be that before it could be used by churches and discipleship programs around the world.

Now, that being said, I’ve also seen some Christians use their own children as an excuse not to disciple others. As in: “I can barely even keep my own kids in line. What business do I have discipling other people?”

But that’s to misread 1 Timothy 3:1-5. If in a church a member falls into sin, the pastor does not resign. The pastor and the congregation members disciple the one who has fallen into sin. Same thing with children. Don’t wait until your children are perfect to engage in Christian service beyond your family. Scripturally, you’ll be waiting until Jesus comes.

The question is: Is your primary relationship with your children a discipling relationship or a flesh-and-blood parenting relationship? 1 Timothy 3:1-5 commends the former and sees this as preparation for discipling other of God’s children. So when your children sin, always treat them first and foremost as budding disciples of Christ placed under your care. When you do that, you’ll know what to do when they sin: Continue to disciple them. They’ll continue to sin and you’ll continue to disciple them on through the remainder of their days. And if as dependent children they fall into habitual patterns of sin and disobedience while under your care, then go to the person who is discipling you to obey all that Christ commanded and ask them, “What am I missing here?”

So don’t settle for family devotions. Christ doesn’t command us to have devotions with our family. But he does hold us accountable for teaching others to obey everything he has commanded us, and 1 Timothy 3:1-5 puts our children front and center in that process.

That’s why when people ask me, “How can I prepare for possible future Christian persecution in the United States?” my response is almost always two words:

Family worship.

So as we kick off this month’s focus on making disciples, do yourself a favor and buy this book–the best one on family worship, which, fortunately, is also one of the slimmest books you’ll read in a long time. It’s Donald Whitney’s Family Worship. While it doesn’t contain a plan for teaching your children everything Christ commanded, it will help you establish the framework in which you can successfully carry out such a plan.

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