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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Prayer: The Neglected Area of Discipleship

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part V of our series on Making Disciples

“Did you teach them how to receive all the grace that I poured into you?”

That, as we learned in our last post, is the question each teacher will have to answer on the last day.  And one of the most fitting applications is prayer.  It goes without saying that we ought to be discipling less mature Christians in prayer, pouring our experience out into them.

But, surprisingly, prayer is an area that receives comparatively little instructional attention at an individual level.

Arthur Paul Boers is pastoral theology professor at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and he points out in a well-crafted Christianity Today article that our individualism these days makes us reluctant to use the method Jesus used to train people how to pray:

Imitation.

We think if you don’t come up with all your own words it’s somehow insincere. What a weird modern idea! Of course you learn how to pray by imitating other Christians! And that’s why Christians need to pray together, out loud, with more mature Christians guiding the process. Sadly, that’s just not the way we pray today. Here’s what Boers writes:

Too often, people who pray do so only briefly, without discipline or organization. They pray “on the fly,” winging phrases toward God while commuting, or squeezing in an occasional devotional. Such prayers are ad hoc and self-directed: made up along the way, according to mood, and not paying attention to the Christian year.

Rather than having help, support, or direction from others with maturity or experience, many Christians decide on their own what to do. As a result, they find themselves increasingly disconnected and isolated from other believers. They are subjective; guided by their feelings of the moment, they freely abandon prayer modes (confession, praise, intercession). In the end, these Christians find themselves increasingly disconnected from God.

The question is not whether Christians ought to pray written prayers or spontaneous ones.  Rather, it’s:

How can Christians be discipled to grow in the Work of Piety of prayer?

Written prayers are one possible tool, but they can just as equally inhibit growth if we read them without learning how to imitate them in our own prayers.

Guidance on how to do that is key.  In our next post, we’ll see a real-life example of what it looks like to guide someone through the process of imitation in prayer.  Don’t miss it.

What about you?  How did you learn to pray?  What authors, books, pastors, or verses played a key role in your own prayer life?

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