A question we commonly ask ministry leaders that are interested in connecting with elementum is “What does disciple-making look like in your ministry?”
I’m consistently surprised at how few can give an immediate answer, much less one that aligns with the holistic picture of disciple-making that’s communicated and demonstrated in the New Testament. Answers are generally a mashup of things like a Sunday morning discipleship class, the preaching that takes place during their Thursday night gathering, and some sort of small group.
Those are all great things, but they aren’t all necessarily disciple-making things. Just because you’re labeling something discipleship doesn’t mean you’re actually doing the work of discipleship. You can have d-groups that are missing key ingredients. You can have a “discipleship” class that falls far short of Jesus’ mode and method of discipleship.
Here’s the challenge with many common systems in the ministries we work with – things like Bible studies, book groups, small groups, and mid-week services – they are distortions. Each contains a portion of what discipleship truly is, but they’re also not the whole. That’s dangerous. It causes people who are leading and those who are participating to believe that they’ve given and received something they haven’t.
A pizza makes a delicious, satisfying (maybe even healthy?) meal when it’s fully prepared. But you can’t give someone a container of tomato sauce, cheese, and several slices of pepperoni and say that you’ve given them a pizza. But that’s exactly what many churches and ministries are doing when it comes to discipleship.
Below are the four most common discipleship distortions that I’ve observed in my 15 or so years of ministry among college students and young adults, a lifetime in the church, and dozens of conversations with pastors and ministry leaders. These are by no means the only distortions and may not even be the most important, but they are prevalent.
The four distortions
1.Confusing discipleship with information transfer
This is, at least in the western church, by far and away the most common discipleship distortion. The church has bought into the enlightenment mindset that education leads to transformation. As a result the vast majority of our discipleship centers on getting more biblical information into the heads (and sometimes hearts) of those we lead.
How this plays out
Functionally, this looks like:
- The church that has a Sunday School class doing a study through a book of the Bible.
- The college ministry that has a semester-long book study on The Fuel and the Flame or some other great discipleship focused resource.
- The pastor who does a sermon series on disciple-making in the Gospel of Luke.
What’s missing: connection and implementation
All those are great things, right? So what’s missing? Connection and implementation are woefully absent. There’s little depth of relationship developed in a weekly group that is primarily focused on engaging with content. It’s surprisingly rare to find a Sunday school, small group, or Sunday morning church service that does well at empowering those who are a part of it to actually put what they’ve learned into practice.
Jesus makes it clear repeatedly throughout his ministry: it’s not enough to know the truth – we must also respond and implement what we’ve learned. See Matthew 7:24-26 for a good example of Jesus saying this explicitly.
Sunday school, book studies, and sermons are excellent things. However, the way they are implemented in most ministry settings makes them primarily about giving those involved more information about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Information is a crucial ingredient in our discipleship pizza, but by itself it’s worth little.
2. Confusing discipleship with spiritual activities
The second most prevalent discipleship distortion is what I’ll call doing spiritual activities or having spiritual experiences. Functionally this plays out similar to the above distortion, but the emphasis falls more on activity, participation, and experience than the actual content.
How this plays out
It might look like…
- A young adult group doing a twice-a-month service project in the community
- A church crafting and implementing a list of “spiritual practices” for the congregation to do on a daily or weekly basis
- A college ministry focused on getting people to their prayer and worship nights
What’s missing: information and implementation
The ministries that emphasize spiritual activities and experiences as central to disciple-making tend to be low on information. They prioritize people showing up and feeling something. As a result develop malformed disciples who run off of either a sense of duty or the emotional high of experience, neither of which will carry someone through the challenges that are promised for a follower of Jesus in a broken world.
3. Confusing discipleship with one-on-one mentoring
The churches and ministries that I see with a slightly more Biblical understanding of biblical discipleship tend to get stuck in this category – disciple-making becomes one-on-one mentoring.
We’re getting closer to the actual image of disciple-making that’s given in Scripture. The mentoring model provides depth of relationship (connection), truth being communicated (information), and the challenge and accountability of putting that truth into practice (implementation). But it’s still not a complete pizza.
What this looks like in practice
- A college senior meets one-on-one with a freshman regularly to discuss what they’re reading in their Bible
- The church creates an “adopt-a-college-student” program to help connect students with Christian families.
- An older man in the church meets each Tuesday morning with a newly married 22 year old to talk about life, marriage, and faith.
What’s missing: multiplication
Multiplication.
Read through the Gospels and try to find Jesus meeting one-on-one with anyone. Do the same with Paul in Acts and the Epistles. In both cases the instances are surprisingly few. Obviously it’s likely there were more instances of one-on-one interaction than are recorded, but if it was a crucial part of the disciple-making process, wouldn’t it be as intentionally communicated?
Instead what we see demonstrated in Scripture is a discipleship that takes place in a communal context. There’s almost always 2-3 people with Jesus at any given moment.
Why does this matter? The intent of disciple-making is multiplication. If you’re only discipling one person you’re merely doing addition. However, if you are doing so with two or three people at once, you’re setting yourself up for exponential impact.
4. Confusing discipleship with hanging out
This distortion is particularly prevalent in groups led by college students or young adults and tends to be in reaction to the first distortion (information transfer). Many younger Christians have realized the insufficiency of information transfer and swung too far in the opposite directions they search for true relational connection.
What this looks like in practice:
- The community group that gets together each week with no intentional space for engaging with God’s Word.
- The college student who’s ditched the church and says that they’re getting spiritually fed by having real, authentic conversations with their Christian friends.
- The young adult ministry that is built primarily around game nights.
What’s missing: information and implementation
Information and implementation. Relational connection is absolutely essential for effective disciple-making, relationships are never in place of information or implementation. Instead, the relationships become the context for the communication of life-changing information and the response that leads to obedience and integration of the truth into everyday life (implementation).
So what?
These four fundamental distortions of disciple-making are dangerously deceptive. It’s been incredibly rare that I’ve come across a church or ministry that has a fully-orbed understanding and system that is doing biblical disciple-making.
In the next post I’ll do my best to sketch a picture of an undistorted disciple-making process. A whole-pizza.
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