Trends come and go. Some are good and some are…not so good. The disciple-making trend, which can legitimately be called a movement is one of the most encouraging trends I’ve seen for a long time.
At its heart, the “new” disciple-making movement (or DM) is a shift back towards an understanding of the Christian life, an understanding of basic Christian discipleship, which gets disciple-making back into the Christian life paradigm. For far too long, evangelical Christian churches in the US have limped along with a model of the Christian life which involved some of the other basic elements of Christian discipleship but did not include disciple-making (which begins with evangelism) as a normal part of a healthy Christian life.
If you’re familiar with the Navigator’s wheel diagram for a balanced Christian life, there’s a spoke of the wheel called “witnessing.” I’m not crazy about the term “witnessing,” because “witnesses,” as in Acts 1:8, don’t run around witnessing, they testify to what they have witnessed. Nevertheless, I’m very big on the Navigator’s understanding of the Christian life. Evangelism, however challenging, is an essential aspect of the Christian life.
Disciple-making of course, is more than evangelism. Dann Spader explained it succinctly when he said that disciple-making consists of winning the lost, building up the believer and equipping the worker. But having said that, without the “winning” on the front end of the process, there are only so many people around to build up or equip. Somebody needs to be bringing in new believers, and if nobody’s doing it the old sheep and the old shepherds stand around looking at each other.
It’s a wonderful development to see that in 2025, a multitude of podcasters, writers, parachurch ministries and denominations are promoting vigorous versions of discipleship and helping churches of all sizes to get disciple-making back into their Christian life paradigms.
But there are challenges. Pastors and churches are struggling mightily with trying to help their rank-and-file members to understand that the life of the Christian disciple involves evangelism. Churches are adding discipleship programs, classes and groups on top of everything else they have, wondering why the turnout isn’t better than it is.
Worse yet, many churches are adding “discipleship pastors” to their staffs, expecting that the new hire, utilizing new programs, can substantially alter the priorities and the lives of their members. All too often, the new hire – and the church which hired him – end up disappointed.
So what’s the problem?
(1) The simplest explanation is that “you can’t teach old dogs new tricks.” When you’ve been told – for decades – that it’s okay to be a non-disciple-making disciple, you don’t take kindly to being told that your Christian life is deficient. Ordinary church members are left thinking that something called “discipleship” is an elite version of the Christian life that they don’t need to sign up for, like trying out for the Special Forces.
(2) Moreover, if your church’s leaders don’t appear to have changed their own Christian life paradigms to include intentional, time-consuming evangelism, it’s hard to even see how this “new” (old, actually) lifestyle is supposed to look. I endured years of frustration trying to get church members to do what I felt I was too busy to be doing myself.
(3) Complicating matters is the time factor. Laymen and paid church staff members alike have filled up their schedules to overflowing with “stuff;” activity of all sorts. Devoted church members, lay leaders and pastors have literally left their congregations and started over elsewhere as the only way they can think of to clear their schedules and get a fresh start. For me, a privilege of doing a succession of interim pastorates was getting one opportunity after another to improve my priorities and finally “get it right”!
(4) And then there’s the problem of our overall church paradigms. Even in evangelistic (not just evangelical) churches, we’re used to thinking of evangelism, as with everything else, happening through Beneath the paradigms are the presuppositions (assumptions buried too deeply for us to even see) that our Christian lives and ministries happen “in church,” meaning, at the church building. We worship “in church.” We grow “in church.” We evangelize “in church.”
The worst example of this I ever heard was the older gentleman who repeated the following mantra with great amplitude and certitude: “As I always say, ‘Sunday morning at the church! Sunday night at the church! Wednesday night at the church!’” Or, as another elderly church member put it: “The lost people in this community know that if they want to hear the gospel they can come here and hear it any time they want to!”
In a recent mailing, Will Mancini explained it in terms of computer programs (applications) and operating systems. Trying to tack disciple-making unto our pre-existing church paradigms is like installing a new program on top of an incompatible operating system.
The whole idea of limiting church “busyness” so that I have the time and energy margin to do personal evangelism is a shocking concept to many. In the tribe I was part of at one time, evangelism was something we did on Thursday nights or Sunday afternoons, not something we did on Monday or Thursday at work.
So what’s the solution? Is there a way we can make this work without scrapping our churches and starting new ones with the new/old disciple-making paradigm?
Join me in one week as we go to work – together – on this challenge.
QUESTIONS FOR AN UNCOMFORTABLE DISCUSSION:
- How many people in our church have evangelism as part of their healthy Christian life paradigm?
- How about our leaders? Is a balanced Christian life, which includes sharing the gospel with lost people, viewed as a prerequisite to leadership in our church?
- Would our people say that they are too busy doing church “stuff” to stop and share the message of Christ as they are living their day-to-day lives?
- Does our church primarily see the Christian ministry of its members happening through their lives or through church programs? (How much thought do we give to the idea that the people are the programs?)
