Wednesday, 09 May 2012 08:54 AM EDT J. Lee GradyNewsletters - Fire In My
Bones
Reclaiming the process of discipleship will require a total
overhaul of how we do church.
I get funny looks from some charismatic Christians when I
tell them I believe God is calling us back to radical discipleship. Those in
the over-50 crowd—people who lived through the charismatic movement of the
1970s—are likely to have a bad taste in their mouths when it comes to the
dreaded “D word.”
That’s because the so-called Discipleship Movement (also
known as the Shepherding Movement and the VINEYARD church) turned a vital
biblical principle into a weapon and abused people with it. Churches that
embraced the warped doctrines of shepherding required believers to get
permission from their pastors before they bought cars, got pregnant or moved to
a new city. Immature leaders became dictators, church members became their
loyal minions, and the Holy Spirit’s fire was snuffed out because of a
pervasive spirit of control.
"Reclaiming this process of discipleship is going to
require a total overhaul of how we do church. Do we really want to produce
mature disciples who have the character of Jesus and are able to do His works?
Or are we content with shallow believers and shallow faith?”
I don’t ever want to live through that again. I know
countless people who are still licking their wounds from the spiritual abuse
they suffered while attending hyper-controlling churches in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Some of them still cannot trust a pastor today; others walked away from God
because leaders misused their authority—all in the name of “discipleship.”
Yet I’m still convinced that relational
discipleship—a strategy Jesus and the apostle Paul modeled for us—is as vital
as ever. If anything the pendulum has now swung dangerously in the opposite
direction. In today’s free-wheeling, come-as-you-are, pick-what-you-want,
whatever-floats-your-boat Christianity, we make no demands and enforce no
standards. We’re just happy to get warm rumps in seats. As long as people file
in and out of the pews and we do the Sunday drill, we think we’ve accomplished
something.
But Jesus did not command us to go therefore and attract
crowds. He called us to make disciples (see Matt. 28:19), and that cannot be done
exclusively in once-a-week meetings, no matter how many times the preacher can
get the people to shout or wave handkerchiefs. If we don’t take immature
Christians through a discipleship process (which is best done in small groups
or one-on-one gatherings), people will end up in a perpetual state of
immaturity.
David Kinnaman, author of the excellent book un-Christian,
articulated the problem this way: “Most people in America, when they are
exposed to the Christian faith, are not being transformed. They take one step
into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or
equipped to love or to think like Christ. Yet in many ways a focus on spiritual
formation fits what a new generation is really seeking. Transformation is a process,
a journey, not a one-time decision.”
Reclaiming this process of discipleship is going to require
a total overhaul of how we do church. Do we really want to produce mature
disciples who have the character of Jesus and are able to do His works? Or are
we content with shallow believers and shallow faith?
A friend of mine had to face this question while he was
pastoring in Florida. As a young father, he had a habit of putting his infant
son in a car seat and driving him around his neighborhood at night in order to
lull him to sleep. Once during this ritual the Holy Spirit spoke to this pastor
rather bluntly. He said: “This is what you are doing in your church. You are
just driving babies around.”
My friend came under conviction. He realized he had fallen into
the trap of entertaining his congregation with events and programs, even though
the people were not growing spiritually. He was actually content to keep them
in infancy. As long as they filled their seats each Sunday, and paid their
tithes, he was happy. Yet no one was growing, and they certainly were not
producing fruit by reaching others for Christ.
How can we make this paradigm shift in to discipleship? How
can we add “the D word” back into our vocabulary?
Churches must stop exclusively focusing on big events and
get people involved in small groups, where personal ministry can take place.
We must stop treating people like numbers and get back to
valuing relationships.
Leaders must reject the celebrity preacher model and start
investing their lives in individuals.
When we stand before Christ and He evaluates our ministries,
He will not be asking us how many people sat in our pews, watched our TV
programs, gave in our telethons or filled out response cards. He is not going
to evaluate us based on how many people fell under the power of God or how many
healings we counted in each service. He will ask how many faithful
disciples we made. I pray we will make this our priority.
J. Lee Grady is the former editor of Charisma and
the director of The Mordecai
Project. You can follow him on Twitter at leegrady. His latest book
is 10 Lies Men
Believe (Charisma House).
