In this five-part series from Justin Gravitt, author of The Foundation of a Disciplemaking Culture, you’ll learn why a disciplemaking culture is needed now. In the last post, we learned what a disciplemaking culture looks like. In this post, we’ll explore four common myths of a disciplemaking culture—and the problems they can bring.
Before we look at these common motivations, I want to emphasize that the purpose isn’t to critique the church/ministry models represented, but to highlight the ways your motivation will impact how that culture ends up being built. Taking the time to reflect on your motivation will help you adjust and build more skillfully.
Survival
A ministry leader who looks to disciplemaking to survive faces a problem of priority. Pursuing a disciplemaking culture in order to gain members is dangerous because there’s a significant qualitative difference between a church member and a disciple.
In a culture that highly values assembling masses, the membership model is a good fit. Pastors are often evaluated by counting butts, baptisms, and bread ($). When the numbers are favorable, pastors are patted on the back and rewarded with raises and opportunities at larger venues. On the other side, parishioners get to count without paying the price that the cross demands. By being faithful members, the spiritually immature end up in places of honor and leadership in the church community. In other words, it’s a win-win; the people get religion without obligation, and the leaders get to lead without the hassle of loving like Jesus did.
The primary problem of the membership model is the culture it creates. When the goal is masses, not maturity, the church develops an unhealthy, ingrown culture.
By contrast, a disciplemaking culture initially draws people inward, but only for the purpose of propelling them outward. The inward movement develops the disciple for deployment outside the organization. The initial call of a non-disciple is to follow. The continuing call of a disciple is to follow and bear fruit. Again, the type of individuals the culture celebrates is telling. In a disciplemaking culture, individuals who follow and bear fruit in the context of the lost (regardless of whether or not those reached ever join the culture) are the ones who are celebrated. Since the disciples are moving outward, they expect to go to those they seek to reach. As they go, the organization intentionally grows the Kingdom and fulfills Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations. Pastors and churches must be evaluated based on the kind of disciples they send out into the world. Each and every Christian is called to be a disciple and to make disciples. There is no exception.
Attraction
The second common motivation is attraction. The root of this motivation is similar to the first—a need for more people. The problem most attractional ministries share is its “back door”—people who had been engaged wind up leaving. But the landscape of church engagement makes it harder and harder to attract new individuals. So the response from attractional churches is to constantly work to offer
the best worship experience, the most engaging preaching, and the most innovative and interesting programming.
Those motivated primarily by attraction face a problem of scale. Attractional churches thrive on lots of events that can touch everyone (themed Sunday services, community engagement events, etc.). These events are planned by staff leadership and are designed to be executed by willing, but unskilled volunteers. Disciplemaking, by contrast, is a slow-to-unfold process that takes years to impact the whole culture. It doesn’t take place on an events timetable.
Leaders of attractional ministries often go to great lengths to speed up the process of building a disciplemaking culture. They may create a curriculum that subdivides the disciplemaking process into bite-sized elements, hold short and narrowly focused training classes, and then simply turn the willing loose to go “disciple” anyone who is interested. (By which I mean taking them through the curriculum.) Such efforts, though well intended, flood the culture with individuals with a view of disciplemaking that is overly structured and formulaic—“spiritual mentoring” that lacks the vitality, vision, and ability to impact generations. Worse yet, those narrow views of what constitutes discipleship are what get reproduced in others.
Spiritual Growth
A third common motivation leaders have in building a disciplemaking culture is to grow spiritual leaders. Typically, these ministries are stable, but they face the challenge of replacing aging leaders. For years, they’ve had trouble developing younger leaders, but the bigger problem is getting older leaders to invest in younger ones. A generational component is at work here.
The problem that accompanies this motivation is a problem of vision. The strategy of helping older spiritual leaders invest in younger leaders is often successful in the short term. But unless the older leaders model an outward ministry mindset (often lacking from the outset), the result of this disciplemaking motivation ends where it began, with new spiritual leaders who lack vision for the greater mission.
Jesus’ way of training and development bears witness to His outward mindset. He came for those who were sick, not those who were healthy, (read Luke 5:31) He appointed them to be with Him so that He could send them out to preach and “to drive out demons,” (read Mark 3:15) and He left them the mission of making “disciples of all nations.” Read Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 1:8) Each step of their training moved them outward, not inward.
Missional
The fourth motivation is missional. As church attendance declines, many Christian leaders realize the need to move out into the culture—a good aim. Not only has attendance been in decline, but so has the degree to which Americans use the Bible. Since Scripture is central to the life of Christ followers, a decline in Bible engagement is arguably a better indicator of faith than church attendance. While the population of
engaged disciples declines, the growing unreached population grows. Leaders who observe these two realities often see a disciplemaking culture as a way to equip people to be sent out into missional initiatives.
The problem of a missional motivation is a problem to love. To be clear, it doesn’t have to be this way, but frequently, when evangelistic motivation drives disciplemaking, it narrows the gospel and distorts the church’s responsibility to grow immature disciples to maturity. Put another way, if leaders are too focused on reaching the lost, they run the risk of neglecting those they are called to serve. (Read Ephesians 4:11-16; Colossians 1:28-29) Instead of loving others within their own relational network, people settle for serving people far removed from their context. Such nonrelational ministries aren’t wrong, but they aren’t Jesus-style disciplemaking. In fact, the Scriptures hold no examples of this kind of relationally disconnected serving. Instead of inspiring these young servants to mature so that they can help others know Christ and grow to maturity as well, they enable the illusion of Christlike love without the sacrifice that Christlike love demands. Disciplemaking requires more. Disciplemaking requires people to know and love those they are serving. Each of these motivations spring from the genuine desire people have to do the best they can with the training they have received. Christian leaders rightly desire to reach the unreached and to build their church or ministry, but these motivations alone will not lead to a lasting disciplemaking culture. This means that whatever disciplemaking impact they have will have a lean to it.
JUSTIN G. GRAVITT
Justin G. Gravitt has been on staff with The Navigators since 2000, where he has planted or grown disciplemaking ministries on multiple college campuses, overseas, and most recently has helped churches across the United States grow intentional disciplemaking cultures. He and his family live in Dayton, OH.