Attracting Crowds or Making Disciples?

Observing the life of Jesus in the gospels is often an abrupt and painful reality check, especially in our social media-saturated do-anything-for-fame ministry culture. I can’t imagine Jesus being obsessed with how many people “liked” his latest pithy post or how many people “friended” or “shared” his content.

His only obsession was to please the Father. We should be likewise obsessed.

Is Jesus' Mission your Mission?

Jesus is not after passive surrender. The cross was his instrument of world salvation, so to take it up means actively devoting your life to his mission.

So many Christians believe you must simply obey all the Ten Commandments and then go on with life as usual, unless God appears to you in a burning bush. But following Jesus means accepting his mission as your own and pursuing it wholeheartedly.

Escaping the Performance Trap

We don’t have to stay stuck in the endless loop of performing and pretending.

The religious life sometimes feels like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. Joby Martin says we are constantly fighting to keep our bad parts (temper, materialism, lust of the flesh, etc.) from popping out. Every once in a while we lose control and that sin nature wriggles free and pops up, sometimes several feet into the air—metaphorically speaking. It’s embarrassing, so we grab it and shove it back down under the water.

A Dream To Be A Disciple-Making Church

Think about your church. What do you long to see for them? What do you regularly pray over them? If God were to answer your deepest prayers for your church, what would happen? What would change?

If you don’t care for the poor, you don’t understand the gospel

Karl Marx famously called Christianity the opiate of the people, but I think it’s actually the smelling salts. Because when you really understand God’s grace, you wake up to injustice, and you are moved by compassion.

The reverse is true as well: When you are blind to the needs of the poor, it raises the question of whether or not you’ve actually ever believed the gospel, because you are unaware of your own pressing need for God’s merciful attention to you in your sin.

Attracting Crowds or Making Disciples?

Observing the life of Jesus in the gospels is often an abrupt and painful reality check, especially in our social media saturated do-anything-for-fame ministry culture. I can’t imagine Jesus being obsessed with how many people “liked” his latest pithy post or how many people “friended” or “shared” his content.

His only obsession was to please the Father. We should be likewise obsessed.

Discipleship is Simple

Most Christians agree that discipleship is important, even essential for Christian maturity; few understand biblical principles and even fewer apply a biblical process when it comes to discipleship. Biblical discipleship principles are universal and timeless, and they enabled the church I helped start in 1984 in Manila, Philippines to experience thirty-one consecutive years of growth.

Discipleship isn’t complicated, but it is often difficult. The difficulty lies in applying four biblical principles to each specific context. Simply put, here’s how anyone and everyone can make disciples.

The Great Commission is completed through multiplication, not addition

Jesus’ vision of the church was not a group of people gathered around one anointed leader, but multiple leaders going out in the power of the Spirit. It’s a claim that very few of us take seriously: Jesus literally said that a multiplicity of Spirit-filled leaders would be greater than his earthly, bodily presence (John 14:12).

Counterintuitive Discipleship Values

1. Go slow to go fast!

2. Outsiders raise up insiders – an inexperienced insider is more effective than a highly trained outsider.

3. Focus on a few to reach many.

10 Simple Discipleship Truths

Last month Deborah and I were in Indonesia, Singapore, and Taiwan teaching Asian pastors, church-planters, and missionaries about discipleship and leadership. Same ole boring strokes, again. After our Sunday night session a young Indonesian leader asked, “how do you define discipleship?” Good question. Here’s my answer, and more.

The spiritual discipline that impacts everything

In our research behind Transformational Discipleship, we discovered that engagement in one particular spiritual discipline positively impacts engagement in every other spiritual discipline (giving, serving, sharing the gospel, fasting, praying, etc.). In other words, while the other spiritual disciplines are important, engagement in one of these (from a research vantage point) does not necessarily increase engagement in the others. But there is one spiritual discipline that increases activity in every other spiritual discipline.

5 Broken Views of Discipleship and How to Fix Them

There is a lot of talk about discipleship these days — and it is about time. Jesus seemed to think discipleship was a big deal, putting it as the heart — and the verb — of the Great Commission to "make disciples of all nations." Yet, it seems discipleship has fallen on hard times in many churches in the West — for example, English-speaking places like the U.S., Canada, Australia, and England where there are Christians who are just not as desperate and committed as their sisters and brothers in the Two-Thirds World.

Reading the Bible through the Cross

If we study Scripture for the wrong reasons, we risk pride and self-righteousness. Reading the Bible through the lens of the cross helps us understand Scripture in context and teaches us humility and hope.

What is your motivation for reading the Bible?

Are we radical enough?

Over the last few years, I have been thrilled to watch an increasing number of American Christians explore the idea that their faith requires them to break out of the confines of their middle class lives. In response to a deep yearning and the clear message of some authors and speakers, many followers of Christ are adopting children, moving across town or across the ocean to minister to those in need, and discovering exciting new callings to live out the mission of God.

12 Principles of Discovery Discipleship

Discovery Discipleship seeks to empower emerging leaders to bring about sustainable transformation in society and to ignite self-sustaining, reproducing movements of Jesus’ disciples making more disciples, and through that, to build healthy reconciled communities and nations. Discovery discipleship is based on Biblical principles of personal and community obedience to Jesus Christ.

Discipleship is Intentional Relationship

As you know, I am passionate about discipleship. But it often happens that as soon as I speak my passion with some people they get a glazed look in their eye, and then start backing out the door! I think they feel some potential pressure and guilt coming their way, or maybe another program they need to give time to.

But, of course, those are things I don’t believe in. I love relationship.

We do not lose heart

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

2 Corinthians 4:16–17

How do you disciple new believers?

Discipleship is truth transferred through relationship. Discipleship involves a lot, but one of the most important things you can do with a new believer is read the Bible with them, teaching them how to read, understand, respond to, and apply God’s Word.

Lose your Life

Jesus’ secret to joy and life was simple: Die.

“If anyone would come after me,” he said, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34–35).

For disciples of Jesus, the gospel of grace not only plucks them from the easy path to hell but also places them on the hard path to heaven.

Key # 6: The Disciple Making Key

Disciple making is the heart of planting church planting churches and preaching the kingdom of God. Making disciples gets at the heart of being and doing church. There is no short cut and no substitute. There is no program or school that can disciple people. People make disciples, one person at a time.