Discipleship Is Not Spontaneous

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part VIII of our series on Making Disciples

We started off talking in our last post about the importance of an “aggressive, comprehensive, systematic plan for discipleship” before discussing the differences between therapy and discipleship.

Today, I want to start off by admonishing every Christian disciple-maker with this:

Don’t be spontaneous when it comes to discipleship.

This is not only the advice given by D. Michael Henderson, one of my favorite disciplers, it’s also spot on biblical.

Why do we learn the Nicene Creed? Because it is the church’s “bookshelf”—if someone gives you a “book” (some kind of theological truth) and it doesn’t fit on that bookshelf, then reject it; it’s not part of the “everything I have commanded you” that Jesus said forms the curriculum of discipleship. So Henderson says:

Regarding the subject of conversations, in one of my classes a student objected to what he considered regimentation of discussions.

“I just like to be free to talk about whatever comes up,” he said. “I don’t like to be bound by rules. I want to say whatever comes to my mind.”

To which I answered: “It’s not all about you.”

Lots of people want to talk, and they do. They drone on and on about whatever strikes their fancy. But self-centered conversations don’t accomplish much.

If we want to serve God first, others second, and ourselves last, we need to shape the direction of our discourse. 

Denying ourselves the ability to dwell on the daily duties of life and instead focus on the deep, voluntary duties of discipleship is a recurring theme for both Jesus and Paul. Like in Luke 9:57-62:

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

What sets the agenda in discipleship, according to Jesus?

  • Death does not.
  • Family obligations do not.
  • Personal doubts or religious questions do not.
  • Physical needs do not.

“Follow me,” says Jesus. “This is the Jesus Medical School of Discipleship. Today we study the circulatory system. You don’t want to study the circulatory system? You’d rather study muscles? Too bad. I know how to make you a doctor, so you’re going to need to follow my curriculum, not your interests or needs or wishes.”

That’s how Jesus rolls, and that’s discipleship.

So let’s switch gears and talk a bit about who we should be discipling.  Chances are, you’re not going to have people dropping out of the sky saying, “Hi.  I’d like to be discipled.”

Not even Jesus or the disciples had that.  But something they did have – and which we have, too – is friends, family members and neighbors. Remember the Gesarene demoniac? Jesus stopped him from getting in the boat and going with the disciples to disciple those who would have been complete strangers to him. Jesus says, “You have people to disciple here, Mr. Former Demoniac.”

That’s not an unusual exception. That’s the core of Jesus’ discipleship strategy!

Henderson puts it like this:

The method Jesus taught us is simple: help our friends follow Him. Encourage them to put into practice all He taught us about the kingdom of God. Jesus built His instructional system on the basis of His own personal friendships. He chose men to be His followers who were not only His friends but also already friends, relatives, and neighbors of each other. They were bound together by ties of familiarity, blood relationships, and hearty companionship—and most of them worked together every day.

Think about that. Jesus called as his disciples people from among his neighbors in Galilee. He did not seek out the super-spiritual. He simply shared with those who were already around him.

“Yes, but Pastor Foley, no one around me is jumping up and down for Jesus. Clearly no one in my sphere of influence wants to be discipled.” And James and John and Peter were super-spiritual Jesus-jumpers before Jesus recruited them by going aboard their boats?

Don’t discount that God has already given you a bumper crop of people to disciple.

“Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’” (Matthew 9:37-39)

In Jesus’ view, there is not a shortage of people interested in being discipled.  Or therapists.  Or even tables by the window at Starbucks.  There’s a shortage of disciplers.

Do you think most discipleship efforts tend towards being spontaneous?  What elements might need to be put in place to avoid “spontaneous discipleship”?

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The Difference Between Discipleship and Therapy

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part VII of our series on Making Disciples

If we could sum up the previous six posts and distill from them one major point, it would be this: equipping others to grow to fullness in Christ under the power of the Holy Spirit requires an “aggressive, comprehensive, systematic plan for discipleship.”

Those are the words of D. Michael Henderson, one of my favorite aggressive, comprehensive, systematic disciplers. A trainer of African church leaders and author of several excellent books on discipleship, Henderson says that discipling people is best understood as a curriculum in the truest sense of the word:

“Curriculum is a Latin word that means ‘racetrack.’ A racetrack has some basic elements: a starting point, a finish line, boundaries, and rules. Educational experts describe a curriculum in terms of its scope and sequence, that is, the range of material or skills to be mastered and the order. In most cases, a curriculum is a set of ordered steps toward a predetermined goal.”

Question: Is curriculum just for schoolteachers and educational experts or does it describe a genuinely biblical process?

Answer: It’s the Great Commission! It’s Matthew 28:20!

As we talked about last week, Jesus’ final words to the disciples before ascending into heaven in Matthew were in Matthew 28:20, “and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Notice that that’s something more than, “and share with them the plan of salvation,” or “and lead them to a saving knowledge of me.”He says, “Teach them to obey everything  I have commanded you.” There’s 28 chapters of everything, friend. And teaching it requires an aggressive, comprehensive, systematic plan.

Sadly, however, most of us have a discipleship plan that goes something like this:

  • Step 1: Listen sympathetically as a friend shares what they’re experiencing in life.
  • Step 2: Offer a relevant Bible story or Scripture to encourage or even challenge them a little bit.
  • Step 3: Repeat Step 1.

Do you see how this approach ends up being driven by the student’s needs and life and problems? Do you see how that’s not a fulfillment of the Great Commission command to “teach them to obey everything”?

Jesus was very responsive to people’s needs. But that’s not what he called discipleship.

Discipleship is not the process of meeting people’s needs. It’s the process of learning to obey everything Christ commands. And if you’re a discipler whose discipleship agenda is set by your student, you’re not going to achieve that.

Brian Eckhardt, the General Superintendent of the Evangelical Church, says it’s like being a student in medical school. If a student enrolled in medical school, it’s pretty much a given that the curriculum is not going to be set by his interests.

“Yeah, I’m not really interested in learning about the circulatory system. I’m really much more interested in starting with the muscle tissue, because I have this really sore back, and…”

Huh?

This would never happen in a medical school, but it happens all the time in Christian discipleship. The teacher ends up acting as a counselor, and the discipleship relationship ends up being therapy.

Therapy is not discipleship. In fact, it’s the opposite.

In discipleship the teacher sets the agenda and makes sure to teach everything Christ has commanded. But in the backward process, the student sets the agenda and the teacher becomes a dispenser of advice—like a Pez dispenser only with advice coming out. Like Christ is a Magic 8 Ball.  Remember those? Have a problem in life? Shake the Magic 8 ball and see what the answer is.

“Maybe.”

“Probably.”

“Don’t do that.”

But Christ never permits himself or the things of God to be jumbled around like a Magic 8 Ball. Take, for example, his conversation with the woman he meets at the well in Samaria.

In just a few short verses, Jesus crosses social boundaries, reveals himself to be the Messiah, and talks about salvation.  But the conversation doesn’t progress like you might think.  Jesus takes the Samaritan woman’s question and flips it around her, telling her what she should be asking.

“If you knew who it was to whom you were speaking…” he says.

And then she says, “Say, there’s something we’ve always wondered about. We Samaritans say we should worship here, and you Jews say you should worship there, and—”

“Wrong question,” says Jesus. I set the agenda here.  I need to teach you even the right questions to ask, because you will not stumble onto even the right questions based on your own needs and circumstances.

Discipleship is not about us answering the questions that interest others about Jesus.

It’s not about us doing Scripture therapy to apply the right verse to whatever else those who speak to us. It’s about Jesus the medical professor. He sets the curriculum. We teach it. Others learn it. We all apply it.

“Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

That’s how we roll. We surrender the agenda of our own needs and concerns in order to prioritize growth to fullness in Christ. And that means disciplining ourselves to sacrifice chatty personal conversations and have redemptive, Christ-centered ones instead.

What do you think? Are there other differences between therapy and discipleship?  Do the two ever overlap and, if so, where?

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How to Disciple Others in Prayer (It’s Not as Hard as You Might Think)

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part VI of our series on Making Disciples

Few of us have been intentionally discipled in the area of prayer; fewer still equipped to disciple others in the same.

That’s a problem.

That’s why today, I’d like to do a little discipleship-via-blog so that you may go on to disciple others in this area.  We’ll use a process called guided prayers.

The goal of guided prayers is this: for a more mature Christian to be able to teach a less mature Christian how to pray.

How?

By showing them how to collect and form their spontaneous thoughts into prayer that’s comprehensive.

Laurence Hull Stookey is the professor emeritus of preaching and worship at the Wesley Theological Seminary. Let me share with you how he teaches parents to guide their children in how to pray. Whether you’re guiding children or adults, the process works the same way.  This is what he writes in the purchase-worthy book, This Day: A Wesleyan Way of Prayer:

In moving from prayers children overhear adults say to prayers that even children utter on their own behalf, there is a crucial intermediate step that can be called “guided prayer.” It may best occur as the closing event of family prayer just before the child’s bedtime, and it can arise out of a simple review of the child’s activities that day:

Adult: What happened today that made you happy?

Child: We had fun playing outside this afternoon.

Adult: Then let’s thank God in this way: “God, thank you for the warm weather, for the green grass, for times of laughing and having fun. Thank you for the friends and playmates you give.”

[Once the child becomes familiar with the procedure, the child may be encouraged to speak the prayer phrase-by-phrase after an adult.]

Stookey suggests the adult also ask the child, “What happened today that made you unhappy?” “Did you do anything today for which you are sorry?” and, “Whom do you love and care about, who needs God’s help?”

In the course of this brief activity see how the child has been introduced to thanksgiving, petition, confession, and intercession. Over time children will learn to form their own short prayers, with the adult asking only the leading questions, followed perhaps by.

“Now how will you talk to God about this?” 

Regrettably, the only time most Evangelical Christians experience this kind of guided discipleship in prayer is at the very inception of their faith when they are led to repeat “the Sinner’s Prayer” phrase by phrase. For all the problems we’ve covered on this blog about using that kind of an approach to evangelism, one of the good things about it is the way it models for the new Christian something of how to pray.

Sadly, however, it is likely the last guided prayer that most new Christians will have the benefit of praying.

Well, except for one other one. You may recall how Jesus responded when his disciples asked him, “Will you guide us through the process of learning how to pray?” And he said, “Imitate me as I pray: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven…’”

In so doing, he poured out a little bit more of his relationship with the Father into his disciples, and that has been poured faithfully and carefully through every generation in Christian history right on up to you.

So, steward it well. Don’t spill it! Use the Lord’s Prayer and guided processes of prayer to teach others how to pray.

When you do, you will be faithfully carrying out part of the Great Commission of teaching those whom the Lord gives to you everything he commanded you.

How often have you prayed, or trained others in praying, using guided prayers?  What were the results?  

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