How Gifford Claiborne Made a Christian Disciple Out of Me

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Pastor Foley

I did not learn discipleship in a book. Even the Bible is not intended to be a self-study course in discipleship. Instead, it contains sayings like this one from the Apostle Paul:

Imitate me as I imitate Christ.

Discipleship always comes with skin on (how blessed are even the feet of those who bear good news!), and in my case God sent Gifford Claiborne to make a disciple out of me.

Humorously (to Gifford, anyway), I was not much discipled when we met–this despite my having served for three years as an associate pastor just prior to our meeting for the first time.  I had bumped up against discipleship practices a few times at the church I’d served, most particularly as we implemented an Every Member in Ministry campaign. But I prized Every Member in Ministry mostly as a volunteer activation approach. The idea of teaching others to obey everything Christ commanded? That seemed to me to be a call to use the lectionary when preaching. That was about as deep as it went for me.

So when I went to work for Gifford at the Los Angeles Mission, he began a systematic process of helping me take discipleship beyond my head and into my life. He referred to that systematic process as “life.” The process was never pretty. I went along kicking and screaming, and poorly. (Disciplers, if a disciple kicks and screams and goes poorly, rejoice! For so have disciples persecuted their disciplers before you.)

One time Gifford and I were walking the few blocks back to our development office from the main mission building. Gifford asked me nonchalantly, “So what do you think about demon possession?”

“Oh, I think there are a lot of contemporary ailments that in Jesus’ time would have been called demon possession,” I said, always happy when I sensed an intellectual conversation dawning.

“Ah,” said Gifford. “Then it will be interesting to see what you do about this.” And with that a homeless woman was upon us. Howling. Distorted. Menacing us against a wall. She was like an actual person made of Silly Putty. All stretched out–over us, against us, on top of us, beside us, all at once. My jaw dropped. My brain froze. This was not a person with a contemporary ailment. It was a person with a contemporary Legion. I looked at Gifford to see what he would do. He looked back at me with the face of an angel, perfectly content to let me obey everything that Christ had commanded with regard to Ms. Legion. If only I could remember what Christ had commanded in situations like this one…

And that was the way Gifford discipled. It was never next to life, or outside of life, or reflecting on life. It was always in life–in real time. Obeying Christ without warning in whatever situation arose. And oh, the situations that arose! I would have been lucky just one time to sit and philosophize idly about discipleship with Gifford over coffee!

Gifford would take me to meetings with the many famous and desperate Christian leaders who were always seeking him out because they badly needed his help, typically in fund raising but often in very personal and private issues ranging from marriage to addiction to lawsuits. They were always very excited to see him. But when Gifford would show up with 22-year old me in tow, their response was always somewhere between puzzlement and resentment. They wanted private time with Gifford. I knew that. They knew that. But Gifford seemed oblivious to it. “This is Eric Foley,” he would say. “He is a student who will one day surpass the teacher.” He’d chuckle. They’d frown. And then they’d really frown when they’d pour their heart out to Gifford and he would turn to me and say, “What do you think they should do, Eric?” My jaw was permanently slacked around Gifford.

Gifford opened up each element of his personal and professional life to me, as if a very important reason he had a personal and professional life at all was to use it to train me. I simultaneously smile and wince as I think back on all the bad advice and prayers and ministry I dispensed to Gifford’s friends and colleagues as Gifford subjected all of us to his training me. He truly withheld no opportunity from me that he felt would help me grow in Christ.

I marvel at it still. It simply is absolutely true that no project was ever more important to him than discipling me and the others whom God entrusted to his care. I learned to take the same approach in my own life, specifically because Gifford lived it out in front of me.

I drafted a lot of fundraising letters and marketing materials in those days, and every time–every time–I sent a piece to Gifford for his approval, he’d send it back to me marked up with more red marks than the previous version I’d corrected just as his red pen  indicated I should.

One day I got fed up. “Why do you keep making new corrections on each version?” I sputtered. “Why can’t you just put all of your corrections on one version and I can make all the changes at once and we can get the work done on time? It’s piling up beyond belief.”

Gifford just chuckled. “You can stop submitting drafts to me at any point that you’re satisfied with whatever you happen to be writing,” he said gently, as always. “But every time you send me something, I will always look at it as if for the first time and ask, ‘How can I help him to become an even better proclaimer of the gospel?'”

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

17 Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

–The Apostle Paul, Philippians 3:12-17 (ESV)

Brothers, join in imitating me as I imitate Gifford imitating Christ. Make disciples in this way, the way of real life, drawing them out of their heads and into the craziest and scariest parts of the world God has made, for the sake of growing each of us, with the assistance of men like Gifford, to fullness in Christ.

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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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