Tally
Ho, The Fox!
Chapter
3
The Concept that
Determines Our Method Matthew 28:19 "Turn men into
disciples . . ." Matthew 28:19 If
we are to be thoroughly obedient to Jesus Christ and His Great Commission, we
must force ourselves to be technically accurate in understanding that
Commission. We cannot afford ourselves
the indulgence of ignorance or inaccuracy.
We live "by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of
God," and nowhere is that declaration more binding than with regard to
the Great Commission. Since the only
command in the Commission is to "turn men into disciples," it is
incumbent upon us to know our job description as fully as we can know it. What
is a "disciple"? What is it
to "make disciples"? I
cannot imagine any questions that are more important for today's church, else
we continue to ignorantly follow "Satan's subtle substitute"
instead of obeying the Savior's strategy. We
have seen how vital vision is to spiritual function, and we have examined the
Great Commission, the Commission which determines our Mandate. Now, we will investigate the
"Concept" that determines our "Method." The concept is that of disciple-making. In
order to understand the concept fully, we need to explore a family of related
words, some of which are actually used in the Bible, and some of which are
"coined" from the BIblical words and their use. Disciple-Making The concept that determines our
method is that of discipleship:
"Turn men into disciples," Jesus commanded. Several key words call for our best
attention. Disciple One is the word
"disciple." "Disciples
are both the people who please the Lord and the people who will reach the
world. Therefore, a clear
identification of a disciple is imperative.
Understanding what a disciple is and what a disciple does are top
priorities for the church. The irony
of the church is that we throw the word "disciple" around freely,
but too often with no definition. Such
a condition is like a shoe company trying to produce a product without
specifications. The product coming off
the end of the assembly line would be interesting." ( This word, "disciple,"
has been tragically reduced in the modern church, including everything from
"convert" to "professing believer." Usually, "making disciples" is
defined by "winning people to Christ." Soul-winning is a vital part, a beginning
part, a necessary part, of disciple-making, but it is only a beginning. If the process stops with soul-winning, the
sinner in question is not really "won" at all. In the New Testament, the word is
employed in several general ways, then in an increasingly narrow way. It is used, first, to describe a casual
listener. All of those who came to
hear Jesus at the beginning of His ministry are called
"disciples." Then, it is
used to describe a convinced listener, a person who consents that what
he is hearing is true, though it may not substantially change his life or his
lifestyle. Friends, the church today
is full of people who meet these two descriptions. This comprises the vast congregation of
"pew potatoes" who fill our churches Sunday after Sunday, but who
have no power with God in changing the world, because they are not truly and
deeply changed themselves. The third use of the word
"disciple" in the New Testament defines a committed, lifelong,
learner and follower. This last
use is the one Jesus intended in the Great Commission, and it constitutes our
marching orders. We are to go
everywhere and "turn men into committed, lifelong, learners and
followers of Jesus Christ." You
see, this meaning is inherent in the word "disciple." A disciple is an adherent (one who
adheres, like adhesive tape, to another), or an apprentice, of Jesus
Christ. Weigh each definitive word
carefully. Indeed, spend some time
exploring the words. A disciple is a person
in training. Tertullian,
one of the leaders of the early church, called Christians "pupils in
God's school." A disciple is
first born, then he is made. He is
born by the Spirit of God with the right factory-installed equipment. But, then he must be built, trained,
taught, and led to commitment to Jesus Christ. Waldron
Scott, a great disciple-maker, wrote:
"The very activity of developing new attitudes, acquiring new
skills, formulating new relationships, discovering, daring, exploring,
reforming, renewing in short, learning makes life the adventure Jesus
promises it will be. If you're not
learning, you're not living. It's as
pure and simple as that." However, even with such a quality
statement, and by such a quality man, we must be gravely cautious. One dimension needs to be emphatically
added to Scott's statement: the
focus of the learning and living is to be Jesus Christ, and the
outcome is to be practical likeness to Jesus Christ. A New Testament disciple is completely
preoccupied with Jesus Christ so that this preoccupation consumes all lesser
possibilities; and he is, thus,
becoming more and more like Christ in a practical way constantly teaching,
constantly ministering, constantly builiding people's lives,
constantly correcting where necessary, and constantly going after
the whole wide world! So, practical Christ-likeness is
not the meek-mannered, timid, tame, insipid sentiment that we have
thoughtlessly allowed in today's church.
Eugenia Price was within range of a great truth when she said,
"The greatest sin of today's church is that it has tamed Jesus
Christ." Sam Shoemaker, about
whom Billy Graham said, "He probably meant more to the institutional
church world-wide than any man of his generation," once wrote: "It is not the main job of the church
to turn out a lot of work, list a long string of members, or raise a lot of
money. It is the main Job of the
church to fashion people who behave like Jesus Christ and that is not a mild
lifestyle, nor is it a way people don't act. These Christ-like people cannot be hewn out
of mediocre mass wholesale, but only one by one." Contrast our churches and their
strategy today, in which the procedure is something like blowing up a
mountain of granite and expecting to get a number of polished statues. Shoemaker continued: "Our churches should be stripped down
to miniature organizations and thus afford pastors and laymen the opportunity
to learn the great spiritual art of winning and training others. It seems an almost universal experience
that unless one puts this kind of work first in his life, it will be crowded
out entirely. Our minds, our emotions,
the hours of our days, should be filled with a special group of individuals
at all times individuals we seek to win, individuals we seek to train in
taking responsibility, individuals to whom we look ourselves for spiritual
fellowship and help." This
lifestyle was, of course, originally modeled be Jesus, and it should be
mastered by us, also. Knofel Staton wrote insightfully
and incisively when he said, "Who is a disciple of Jesus and how do we
make one? Without a clear picture of
our objectives we will spin our wheels, use up our time and energy, and still
not make any disciples." The word
"disciple" is used 270 times in the Gospels and in the Book of
Acts. The word does not occur again in
the remaining 22 books of the New Testament.
What is going on here? Why does
the word disappear? What is the Holy
Spirit saying? In Luke 6:40, Jesus
said, "When the process is completed, the pupil will be like his
teacher." So, we should expect
some terms to emerge which picture advancing likeness. And, indeed, the "Christian"
begins to be used. The word
"saint" one completely set aside to Christ's control begins to
emerge. Discipler A second key word is the word
"discipler." A discipler, or
disciple-maker, is a person who "turns men into disciples." A discipler is merely a maturing disciple,
for one surely cannot be a disciple of Jesus while ignoring the only marching
orders Jesus gave to His church. In
short, it would seem to be impossible to be a disciple without being a
discipler. A discipler is a co-learner
who recruits and leads others as they are learning together. Discipling A third key word is the word
"discipling." The command of
Jesus to "make disciples" is loaded with implications based on
Jesus' example and teaching. Discipling
is the process of building men into disciples. Christopher Adsit, in his book Personal
Disciple-Making, defines it as "seeking to fulfill the imperative of
the Great Commission by making a conscientious effort to help people move
toward spiritual maturity drawing on the power and direction of the Holy
Spirit, utilizing the resources of the local church, and fully employing the
gifts, talents, and skills acquired over the years." Discipling is done by someone,
not by something. It is done by
persons, not by programs.
It is accomplished by individuals, not by institutions. Technically, discipling is one Christian
person imparting his whole life to another, by example, leadership, and
relationship. It always involves life
transference. There is a great deal of
difference between disinfecting sinners and discipling saints. Most church work pastoral work, worship,
educational efforts, promotional efforts, etc. results in the occasional
disinfecting of sinners, but there is pitifully little true discipling of
saints. Proof of the point? Very simply, most Christians in most
churches have no more "spiritual clout" for Christ than they did
the day before they were saved! Disinfecting of sinners gets the
sinner saved, then puts him in a spiritual safety deposit box from which he
emerges as a tamed and decent human being.
Discipling of saints, on the other hand, involves the qualitative
construction of a saved individual so that individual will change the
world by continuing the process. The difference may be seen in this
illustration. It involves a comparison
between preaching and disciple-making.
Suppose you have a person standing behind a line, holding a bucket of
water in his hand. Twenty feet beyond
the line, there are 20 small-mouth milk bottles. Preaching is like throwing the water out of
the bucket from behind the line, hoping that some of the water enters the
bottles. However, the efficiency of
such a technique is fairly predictable:
not much water will get into the bottles. Disciple-making, by comparison, is like
taking the bucket of water to each milk bottle and pouring the water in
close-up until the bottle is full.
There is little question where the greater efficiency lies. Or, preaching is like holding an
eyedropper of medicine out a third-story window and dispensing it onto the
street below, hoping some of it will hit somebody in the eye. Disciple-making, on the other hand, is
personal, close-up application, like dispensing the medicine from the tip of
the eyedropper directly into the needy eye. Without a constant standard of
discipling, we dispense the truth in a mass way and count the people though
we may be producing very few people who count. Discipling in a style like that of Jesus
will correct that problem. When the
disciples heard Jesus say that they were to "turn men into
disciples," they had to interpret that to mean that they were to make
out of others what Jesus had made out of them. Discipling includes the entire
disciple-making process, from conversion to trained disciple-maker. This is the very heart of what Christ
expects of His church. Disciplines A final key word is the word
"disciplines." Disciplines
are the areas of life that reveal the cost of discipleship. Hedson Taylor, the founder of the China
Island Mission and one of the greatest visionary missionary-statesmen who has
ever lived, wrote: "A man may be
consecrated, dedicated and devoted, but of little value if
undisciplined." How serious is Christ's
mandate? How extensive and serious is
the church's failure to obey the one command of the Commission? Is there real evidence of such
failure? I believe the evidence is
prevailng and pervasive. I was in a meeting years ago with
a veteran, white-haired Christian who has long ago gone to Heaven. He and I were alone in his office for
awhile, at which time he asked me what I was "doing these days" in
the church of which I was pastor. I
replied, "I'm doing everything I know to do to turn church members into
world-visionary disciples who are, in turn, reproducers of other
world-visionary disciples." He
sadly replied to me, "Brother Hodges, I never had any success producing
reproducers in any church where I was pastor." I asked, "Then what did you
do?" He sadly replied, "I
just went ahead and tried to do all the work myself." I cannot imagine a sadder self-judgement! I was seated in a restaurant with
three pastors as we were waiting for lunch to be served. We were talking (I suppose at my lead)
about disciple-making. One fine pastor
in the group made an honest assessment of his ministerial history (and he was
a fine, leading evangelical pastor):
"Herb, I look back over two long pastorates and I can only see
two men in each of the two churches who might qualify as the kind of men you
are defining." He was not in
protest nor in anger when he spoke, only sadness. How tragic, but how typical! At best, we have been producing "good
Christians," which often means extremely introverted people, instead of
world-impacting, reproducing disciple-makers. The apparent goal of Jesus was to
produce "disciples" who would become "disciplers,"
engaged in a lifetime vocation of "discipling" others and
practicing the daily "disciplines" which are necessary to fulfill
that purpose. Disciple-Making
That Produces a Ministry of Multiplication Then the New Testament adds
another crucial dimension to our vocation.
We are to be engaged in discipleship THAT PRODUCES A MINISTY OF
MULTIPLICATION. It was clearly
Christ's intent that each disciple be engaged in a multiplying ministry. What is multiplication? Multiplication is when disciplers start
producing other visionary, world-impacting disciplers. You see, God's plan is to reach the
world exactly the same way it was populated by multiplication. In Genesis 9:1, God said, "Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Someone said this was the first order ever
given to man, and the only one he has obeyed. Jesus' evangelistic mandate is essentially
the same as God's biological mandate. Why do men fail to multiply
biologically? 1. Some
never marry, or there is no union of the sexes; and, thus, multiplication
does not occur. 2. Some
suffer from disease or impairment to some vital reproductive part of the
body. 3. Some
don't multiply because of immaturity.
You simply don't know any three-year-old fathers! The reproductive organs are present, but
they are not sufficiently developed to allow reproduction. Babies don't reproduce. The same deficiencies account for
the failure to multiply spiritually.
When there is no union between a Christian and Jesus Christ on a
consistent basis, there will be little or no spiritual multiplication. The presence of sin in a believer's life
will also impede the process of multiplication. And, the stalemating of a Christian in
spiritual babyhood will prevent multiplication. Paul said, "I wrote unto you as unto
Babes in Christ." And the baby
Christians in Spiritual multiplication is God's
planned vision for reaching our present world and all future generations
through those we win and train now.
The strategy of Jesus' ministry was evident: He looked at the masses through the man;
then He built the man to impact the masses.
He ministered to everyone before Him but He only recruited for His
Kingdom's sake. How we have distorted
these standards in building institutions instead of individuals. Jesus loved each individual, to be sure,
but He always looked beyond His disciples to the men they would reach and
train (see John 17:20). In Acts 2:41, 47 and Acts 5:14,
the word "added" defines God's mathematical strategy at the very
beginning of church history. However,
in Acts 6:1, we read that "the number of the disciples was multiplied
greatly so that a great company of priests . . . " Then, by Acts 9:31, we read that "the
churches . . . were multiplied."
Apparently, the church never returned to mere additions unless it went
out on the frontier and had to begin all over again, and even then it quickly
moved back to multiplication. When a person my age is reunited
with a college of seminary classmate whom he hasn't seen since school days,
several key questions are usually asked:
"Are you married?"
"Do you have any children?"
"How many children?"
"Do you have any grandchildren?" And, if the persons are old enough, they
ask, "Do you have any great-grandchildren?" When we stand at the Judgement
Seat of Christ, we may well hear these same questions: Do you have any children (and if not, why
not)? How many children? Then the real test of our participation in
Jesus' plan begins: Do you have any
grandchildren, people who are Christians because of the way you built your
own spiritual children? And, do you
have any spiritual great-grandchildren?
It will not be satisfying to know that we ministered to vast numbers
and a few became producers. It will
only be satisfying if we have spent our lives seeking to make out of our
disciples what Jesus make out of His. In order to be sure we see the
true standard and understand the seriousness of failure to follow it, let me
conclude this chapter on a very serious, even negative, note. The well-known book, The Bridge Over the
River Kwai, was made into an even better-known movie by the same
title. They were suggested by Ernest
Gordon's excellent book, Miracle On the River Kwai, although the book
and movie about the bridge are fictional take-offs from the original. The Bridge Over the River Kwai tells
the story of a British colonel captured by the Japanese during World War
II. In the concentration camp in a
Burmese jungle, hundreds of hopeless prisoners languished near death. The English officer came up with a creative
plan to improve morale and give the captives something to love for. Near the camp, the enemy was constructing a
railroad bridge. The prisoners would
take over the task. They would work
with arrogant efficiency and show the Japanese what English ingenuity could
do! Dedicating himself and his
soldiers to the job, the British leader saw morale change. The goal of building the bridge became his
magnificent obsession. Finally, the
crossing was finished. As the first
Japanese supply team chugged across the structure, the proudly-patrolling
colonel spied Allied commandos in the river bed under the bridge about to
demolish the bridge. Because of his
private obsession, he screamed to warn the Japanese commander and ran
frantically down the river, trying to stop the saboteurs. Isn't the analogy clear? Many churches languish near death, so their
leaders come up with one plan after another, program upon program, to improve
morale and give the members something to keep them motivated. In short, they engage in survival
strategies, a classic example of institution-building. Just as in the story, the enemy has his own
program, and he is happy to enlist us in its "fulfillment." We often take over his plan with a
vengeance. The goal of "building
the bridge" becomes our magnificent obsession. When anyone suggests that this is more of
Satan's substitute than it is the Savior's strategy, we turn on him as if he
were our enemy. So obsessed have we
become with institution-building programs that we have forgotten that there
is a battle bigger than the bridge going on. Like little children playing make-believe
games, we skip breathlessly through life largely missing the original mandate
of Jesus. In the spring of 1991, I spent a
week in a "Thank you for
the extra time you've spent teaching us about discipleship. I'm afraid I'm a lot like the brother who
confessed in tears in a noon service that he had been a Christian for a long
time, but had never really discipled anyone.
I've witnessed to several after learning and being with our pastor,
but I'm now anxious for my first disciple to come into my life. This week has been a turning point
in my life, and I appreciate you letting God use you to minister and
challenge me. I plan, with Jesus
working through me, to make you a spiritual great-grandfather. Thank you so much for coming! Your sister and Grandchild in Christ,
(signature)." The practical New Testament
realities suggested by the sentiment of that letter comprise the marching
orders Jesus gave to His church. Add the
dimensions of spiritual reproduction, world vision, and the practical process
of making disciples, and you have made a giant stride toward the fulfillment
of His mandate. In May of 1983, a Southern Baptist
seminary periodical carried a sad, even tragic story. I will withhold the names of the persons
involved, though they were recorded in the story. "When missionaries . . . wrote a book
about being thrown out of . . . , they were forced to ask themselves what
they really left behind. The answer
knocked the wind out of them. They
realized that they had only scattered seeds, not planted them. Even more sobering was their realization
that Christians everywhere were making the same mistake: baptizing multitudes, but not making
disciples. 'We haven't made
disciples,' the missionary told a chapel audience. 'We have simply had professions of
faith. We have them sitting in pews
all over This account probably generalizes
the problem as if all Christians were equally blameworthy, and it surely
oversimplifies the solution. This book
is also guilty of both faults.
However, it does address a crucial failure in the church at large, and
it does remind us of the one strategy Jesus gave. It is never too late to begin
doing what is right what we have been commanded to do. Anyone can "go back to Square
One" and begin the multiplication process. However, most of us would need to give
ourselves immediately to a vocation of studying the life and ministry of
Jesus, asking, "How did He do it with His men?," and studying also
the great works on the disciple-making, multiplying process. I would suggest beginning with Robert
Coleman's Master Plan of Evangelism, then Leroy Eims' The Lost Art
of Disciple-Making. These need to
be read over and over. From that
point, the specialized works available today would occupy the most serious
disciple-maker for the rest of his life. I can envision a growing army of
world-visionary, world-impacting, reproducing multipliers whose entire
history is a commitment to Jesus' Commission to "turn men into
disciples." May God recruit and
deploy that army before our very eyes. |
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Copyright © 2005, by ToBeLikeHim Ministries