OUR DESIGNER DISCIPLE: Strategic Planning Template #4

 “Designer disciple” is not a great term. It conjures up all sorts of images and most them are not good.  But I’ve never heard a better term, so for the moment, we’ll stick with it.

The concept is not to be confused with the “Saddleback Sam” or comical “Green Bay Gary” type character who is an iconic version of the target group  which a church has decided to focus on.  (This – I believe, sound – concept will be addressed in a subsequent strategic planning template.)

The concept, if not the term, is promoted by many leading thinkers in the area of church health and strategic planning and here’s why:

• Jesus told us to make something: disciples (devoted followers)
• Those who set out to make something or someone – houses, cars, computers, doctors, lawyers, truck drivers – don’t just fly into action without a plan. I remember boyhood friends working with me to try to build “shacks” in that manner.  We got some old wood and some nails and just started whacking away, but we never finished anything.
• Part of that plan is a picture or description of the finished product. Whether it’s a blueprint, a scale model or just a written description, those who want to produce something good  start with a plan  that includes a picture.
• What did Jesus have in mind when He told us to make disciples? More than likely, every church in your town has a somewhat different idea of what Jesus wanted and many members of your church have differing ideas as well.  The “ideal disciple” at one church might be a fanatically separated, negative, self-righteous person.  The preferred model at the church across the street might be a liberal humanist whose idea of social justice is helping teens to procure abortions.  Need we say more?  Before you design a strategy to make disciples – and I hope you do this – you need to define your church’s idea of what a growing Christ-follower looks like.
• Creating your designer disciple is not difficult, it will bless the people who participate in the process and it has several good uses in your congregation.

HERE’S A PLAN:

1. Gather your dream team, transition team or whatever you call the group of people who are working together on strategic planning. Give yourselves at least a couple of hours for the process.
2. Explain what you’re there to do (if you haven’t already explained the process at an earlier session), give your folks some ground rules, spend some serious time in prayer and set to work.
3. I like to send groups of no more than five or six people into separate rooms with their own Bibles and flip charts. Ask them to work together at listing the character traits and discipleship skills that Jesus is looking for in His followers.
4. Ask your groups to cite a verse or passage for every characteristic they name. This will protect your group from reverting to legalism or culturally defined ideas of Christian discipleship, such as going to church every time the doors are open, not having a TV set, or never setting foot in a business that sells alcohol.   
5. Encourage participants who know the Bible well to help those who don’t necessarily know how to find the “chapter and verse” for the Biblical character traits and skills they are thinking of.
6. At the end of the session or in a subsequent meeting, merge the material from the flip charts into one. Do this publicly and with enthusiasm.  There will likely be a great deal of common ground between the flip charts and this will be exciting for your people to see.
7. Time permitting, “cook down” the results into a few good, strong, Biblical traits. As above, you will likely list both character traits and discipleship (Christian life) skills and habits.
8. Perhaps in a smaller group, or as the strategic planning process leader, turn your list into something as short and memorable as possible. Creating an acrostic or a picture makes for a great result. Some churches choose to reduce their characteristics to four or five memorable categories while others end up with closer to a dozen.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THIS?

1. Do not just file it away in a drawer. Use it!
2. Use it to create your disciple-making strategy. Aubrey Malphurs (A New Kind of Church) suggests that strategic planning participants review their church’s ministries (programs) one at a time, to determine which ministries already are or could be used to create the various traits of the designer disciple. Ministries which make no contribution to the “production” of the disciples whom Jesus wants should be jettisoned.  Rainer and Geiger (Simple Church) would say that strategic leaders should begin their ministry strategy designing process with a clean slate, as opposed to trying to make existing ministries fulfill new purposes.  Realistically, the Malphurs process is more realistic for an existing church.
3. By all means use your designer disciple description in your introductory sessions and membership classes. Let your new attendees know what kind of person this church is going to try to turn them into.  It will tell them a lot about the true “flavor” of your congregation.
4. Turn it into a sermon series. One week on each characteristic each year would be good.
5. Even better: Some pastors base all of their preaching on their designer disciple description.  One pastor takes about four traits (out of about twelve) per year and turns them into sermon series.  This does not necessarily require topical preaching.  The trait of “joyfulness” could be addressed by an expository series on the book of Philippians, for instance.