Here’s what I’m concerned about…
In the New Testament, sharing one’s faith, personal efforts to make disciples by individual disciples, is the norm:
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Jesus wasted no time in sending the twelve, and then the seventy, into Judea and Galilee.
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As busy as he was, Jesus regularly modeled personal disciple-making for his 12 men-in- training (John 3:1-21; John 4:1-42; Luke 19:1-10).
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Sending us out to testify as witnesses of what we’ve seen and experienced (Acts 1:8) implies personal testifying. Witnesses don’t give testimony in groups.
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Acts 8:4 tells us about scattered rank and file Christ-followers proclaiming the message wherever they went.
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Peter insists (I Peter 3:15) that believers be ready to explain the reason for their unusual hope, and to do so with gentleness and respect.
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In Philemon 6, the clear implication is that we must be active in sharing our faith in order to have and maintain “a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” If this is true – and of course it is – we understand what we have in Christ by way of the Holy Spirit’s illuminating work (Ephesians 1-3) and through sharing it with others. Nothing gives you that “new believer feeling” like telling somebody about Christ.
The campus ministry that led me into a personal relationship with God through Christ – the Navigators – had (and has) an illustration called “the wheel” which depicts disciple-making as a normal and vital part of the Christian life. For the Navigators, a disciple is a disciple-maker. If you’re not a disciple-maker, you’re not a disciple, or at the very least, you’re not a healthy disciple.
In the language of the most commonly cited “Great Commission” passage, Matthew 28:18-20, teaching a new disciple how to obey everything Jesus commanded implies teaching that new disciple how to make disciples.
But in 2021, in America (I have not lived elsewhere), in many Christian circles, faith-sharing has become optional. One spoke out of four has been removed from the wheel. In many churches only those few brave souls who are highly gifted as evangelists are sharing their faith and that’s considered to be an acceptable situation. Those regularly involved in disciple-making are viewed as a little bit odd, “out there,” “on the fringe.” You can be a deacon, a ministry leader, a church board member or even a fulltime pastor, who isn’t involved in disciple-making outside the church walls.
Here’s how this happened…
I’m sure I don’t have all the answers, but let me suggest three factors:
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In some Christian circles there is so much fear of contamination by ungodly people that personal disciple-making is almost impossible. If we do anything at all by way of personal message-sharing, it is confined to gathering within the walls of the castle on Thursday evenings, letting down the drawbridge over the moat, charging out into the evil world for a couple of hours, only to quickly return to the safety of the castle. In some churches the more isolated from non-Christians you are, the more holy you are assumed to be. Christians who “hang out” with unbelievers are considered to be “worldly.”
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The attractional model. By the time I joined a church in 1973, most evangelical congregations were deep into the concept of pulling out all the stops to get people into our buildings to hear the gospel. The ways in which we attracted people to our services then were different than what we do now, but it was the same model. It seems unthinkable, but we didn’t even have coffee!
We did have rousing music, church buses, sensational testimonies, contests, “special music,” evangelistic crusades, tents, flyers, brochures and newspaper ads, all designed to get people in the doors. When the attractional model was working, it didn’t even seem necessary to try to make disciples on our own. We had our hands full dealing with the people coming to our buildings. The attractional model led naturally to…
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Extreme Christian busyness. When you’re at the church building (mistakenly referred to as “the church”) most of the day on Sunday, as well as on several evenings per week, the idea of connecting with co-workers, neighbors, people you see in the retail world or other soccer moms, was out of the question. Hurrying past the guy lying in the ditch on our way to our service at the “temple” was the norm.
Here’s why we must get disciple-making back into our discipleship model…
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It’s what God wants. See the material at the beginning of this post.
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The Christian life doesn’t work right without it. Again, revisit the thoughts I shared from Philemon 6. Comprehending what we have in Christ (see Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:15-23) and apprehending what we have in Christ (see Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21) will always be incomplete if we’re not personally involved in telling people about Christ. Church leaders who are too busy with “church stuff” to be involved with lost people are cheating themselves out of one of the great joys of the Christian life. Could this be a factor in pastoral burnout?
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The attractional model isn’t working as well anymore. In May of 2021, this has become self-evident. We can blame the COVID pandemic all day long but that won’t change the fact that our Sunday morning church attendance numbers are way down.
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The reputation of Christianity can only be overcome by individual lives. While many Americans express disdain for evangelical Christians, they are still just as attracted as ever to the individual lives of living, loving, caring, sharing Christians. Here’s a phrase you may have heard in your workplace: “I’m pretty turned off by Christians, but not you! You’re different!” In a cynical world, God-touched souls are still thrilled to discover authentic, joyful Christ-followers. Nobody speaking through a screen can do what a live believer in the secular workplace can do.
