Some things should change; some should not. In the 2,000 years of the church, have we focused on changing the wrong things? We’ve updated our liturgy, worship styles, and qualifications for church leadership. We’ve even updated the Gospel itself in hopes of making it more relevant and palatable to our listeners (not that I agree with this in the slightest). But, one thing we’ve updated very little is discipleship, specifically the process of creating and developing disciples.
In many cases, we’ve eliminated any real requirements for discipleship. Many have deemed discipleship as being too “costly” (to use the word of both Christ and Bonhoeffer). Therefore, we reduce its necessity in a believer’s life or remove it altogether.
What if the issue isn’t the relevance of worship styles or the Gospel message? What if the problem is how we do discipleship? What if we changed our thought process for cultivating disciples?
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from the old ones.
What if we looked at discipleship radically differently? Does the discipleship process need a reboot? Instead of long, drawn-out classes, what about short life experiences of learning and applying? Can we accelerate discipleship—its depth and impact?
A lot of questions without answers, but the wheels in my mind are spinning.
Reader interactions
4 Replies to “Letting Go”
Very interesting. The SABA here in Dothan are about to have conferences regarding the very same thing you are talking – having meetings to increase the enrollment in churches. I truly think that is just too much talk and a waste of money and time. There have been workshops in the past but I haven’t seen any enrollment changes. I think you are right about finding the resource of training and studying it more – the Bible.
As you can see from an additional post (Antiquated Church Metrics), I don’t believe enrollment is a satisfactory metric for measuring the health and well-being of our churches. Enrollment forces us to focus on quantity over quality, and all of our activities drive us to this end. Churches ought to re-evaluate what they are measuring to ensure that congregations are growing in personal depth and community impact versus simply attendance counts.
Precisely.
It is so much easier to have great well-formatted programs to teach discipleship, than it is to really apply it – I confess I rarely saw discipleship go beyond the training workshops, conferences and Sunday school rooms (and I include myself in the too-much-study-too-little-action team).
Perhaps we can learn a thing or two with eastern cultures – in my case in special the Japanese “sensei” model, which is more focused into learning by example and by repetitively doing than by siting in a classroom-shaped setup.
Back to the business world references, many companies have adopted in the recent years the “Shu-ha-ri” (learn-detach-transcend/improve) method brought from the Japanese martial arts monasteries. For so long in church we’ve been stuck in the “shu” part and rarely moved forward. The learning process has its value, but it has little value unless really put into practice.
I’ve wasted too much of time doing too little… I’m eager for real, live, 1-1, life-on-life relationships that transform lives for eternity.
Thank you for provoking reflection and change.
I would agree to some extent. However, if we aren’t doing, are we really learning?
For example, I can teach my son to take out the garbage, and he knows how to take out the garbage. Intellect and process knowledge aren’t the issues. However, actually learning to take out the garbage (on his own) is a different story.
For many of us, I fear we’ve been taught how to “do” discipleship–and we know how to too well. Unfortunately, we haven’t be taught to do as it translates to actually performing the work.