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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What is Your Plan to Teach Someone to Obey Everything that Christ Has Commanded You?

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Today begins our annual month-long focus in the blog, the .W Church, and the Whole Life Offering training project on the Work of Mercy of Making Disciples.

Turns out they haven’t added any new books to the Bible this year, which means the operative Scriptural principle this year remains Matthew 28:18-20 (ISV):

18Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore, as you go, disciple people in all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, 20teaching 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.”

Teach them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. He said it like it was possible–like, in fact, it was something you could do, in Jesus’ words, “as you go.” The command is fascinating when you compare it to other possible formulations Jesus could have used, like:

  • “As you go, look for opportunities to make and meet with Christian friends at Starbucks, hearing where they’re struggling in life and looking to provide them relevant, Biblical counsel.”
  • “As you go, exposit the Scriptures verse by verse with (or for) people, providing relevant teaching for real-life application.”
  • “As you go, study the Bible through a variety of lenses, especially in a small group context. Keep it fresh, changing up the content often. Usually 8- or 10- week studies work really well and are practical because then you can take a couple of weeks off a year from meeting, like during the holidays or the summer when people are on vacation.”

Jesus’ admonition, in other words, is not to help Christians acquire general facility with the Scriptures (that’s necessary but not sufficient), nor to aid them in thinking Scripturally about the challenges and opportunities they’re facing in life (that’s helpful but at times alarmingly backwards, since “real life” becomes institutionalized as the core focus and the teachings of Jesus become the supplement). Instead, Jesus’ admonition is that as you go, you disciple people. This consists of baptizing them in the name of the Trinity and then teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded.

We spoke earlier this summer about baptism (most particularly here and here), so this month we turn to the teach-everyone-to-obey part. We begin with the question titling this post:

What is your plan to teach someone to obey everything that Christ has commanded you?

Answering this question would mean that you have identified someone, that you are committed to teaching them, that you have identified all that Christ has commanded, and that you have a plan to impart this to them. Given that Christ has given this to us as a command, we have significant motivation to undertake it with the utmost seriousness.

If you are lost in accomplishing this, you are not alone. The idea that Christ has enjoined on us something specific, rather than just a general call to personal religious observance, is a surprisingly radical notion. Don’t despair over that. My experience has been that more  Christians than one might expect actually do find this call compelling and appealing. They simply have no idea how to carry it out. Given the general lack of campaigns being undertaken by denominations, churches, or nonprofits to help in this regard (there are a lot of Bible reading campaigns and a lot of mentor-style discipling programs, but few campaigns strategically committed to equipping Christians to carry out the simple and specific directive to teach others to obey all that Christ has commanded), that is understandable.

So let’s work on changing that this month by doing a better job at it ourselves. Where do we begin? With what I think may be the most often overlooked discipleship passage in the modern history of Christianity–one that tells us exactly where and with whom to begin undertaking the Work of Mercy of making disciples. We’ll take a look at it in our next post.

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