6: Making disciples

In Matthew 28:18-20 Jesus told his band of followers to go and "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." What does this mean for us today? Whose job is it to make disciples? How should disciples be "made"? This chapter examines these important questions. 

Disciple-making methods

Throughout church history various approaches have been used by different denominations and communities in their efforts to fulfill the Great Commission. Overall these various approaches can be grouped into three categories: programmatic, instructional and relational discipleship. 

Programmatic discipleship

Developing programs for helping people become better disciples is a popular approach used in the church today. Such programs often vary in their particular emphasis. Alpha International for example helps the local church grow through evangelism. The Navigators focuses on outreach and spiritual growth as key aspects of discipleship. Youth With A Mission provides training in evangelism and discipleship, but also includes hands-on experience in mercy ministry to help develop servanthood in participants. These are just three of the many different discipleship programs around these days. 

A professed advantage of this approach for the local church is easy on-ramping: by purchasing the materials and following the instructions, the result will be more members in your community. Also, your existing members will become more committed to the beliefs and practices of your community. Programs that include a practicum element like YWAM have the added advantage of bringing fresh experiences to participants by temporarily removing them from the staleness of what regular church life often feels like, especially to the young. 

While many Christians have indeed benefited much from participating in such programs, there can also be dangers associated with the programmatic discipleship approach. For example, the focus on efficiency, effectiveness and scale in the marketing literature of some programs suggests that they may be more rooted in the success culture of the modern business world than in the values and practices of historic Christianity. In addition, the short-term nature of these programs can leave participants feeling abandoned once they have finished the program. Unless of course they step up to the next level by becoming program instructors themselves—a step that in itself sounds admirable but smells a lot like multi-level marketing, a business practice with known tendencies towards abuse. 

Instructional discipleship

Perhaps least favored among discipleship methodologies is the instructional approach, epitomized in degree-granting Christian colleges and seminaries. The argument usually made is that such institutions focus more on molding the mind than the heart. Many Christian academic institutions have recognized such deficiencies and have taken steps to remediate them by adding mentorship and practicum elements to their curricula. Nevertheless—and despite what these institutions often avow in their marketing literature—the main goal of some students who attend such institutions may be just to get a degree for a full-time paid ministry position, not to become more Christlike. 

On the other hand, the New Testament itself shows us that instruction is an essential element of disciple-making. Wherever Jesus went he taught people about the kingdom of God (see Matt 4:23, 9:35). The Gospel of Matthew itself seems to have been conceived as a kind of discipleship manual as Jesus' teachings within it are organized into five sections covering Christian character, power evangelism, the kingdom of God, Christian community, and end times. In 2 Timothy 2:2-4 the apostle Paul charged Timothy to "Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths." Clearly then, well-conceived, thorough and methodical teaching is an important part of disciple-making. 

Relational discipleship

The main approach Jesus himself used for making his followers into fruitful disciples was by drawing them into intimate relationship with himself. Mark makes this clear when he says that Jesus "appointed twelve...so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons" (Mark 3:14–15, emphasis my own). The simple fact that Peter and the others were constantly with Jesus as he travelled around preaching, healing and casting out demons, gave those disciples a clear grasp of what Jesus was like. And since disciples, when fully formed, are supposed to be like their teacher, it also gave them a model of what Jesus wanted them to become. 

This kind of relational approach to disciple-making can be very effective when done properly. For example, Carol Wimber describes in her book The Way It Was how John learned from Gunnar how to become effective in winning people to Christ:

John started going with him [Gunnar] as he went house to house and went with him everywhere he could. He was like Gunnar's shadow that first year and a half – Shadow and Echo both – he talked like Gunnar, told Gunner's stories, shared the same Scriptures with others that Gunnar had shared with him and finally went on Gunnar's house-calls himself when Gunner couldn't go anymore.

Carol's story is an example of relational discipleship at its best. Just as Jesus taught his disciples by modelling for them, sending them out to do the stuff, giving them feedback when he saw them having difficulties, and finally releasing them to continue his ministry, John learned from Gunnar how to lead hundreds into a personal relationship with Jesus. "As the Father sent me, so send I you" is a clear mandate for relational discipleship. 

But there can be problems and even dangers associated with this kind of approach to disciple-making. For example, if the disciple-maker is not himself mature then he won't be able to model what being "like Jesus" is to those he is trying to disciple. One might think that pastors would be the best people to disciple others since (one presumes) pastors are usually mature in Christ. But most pastors are busy people who are weighed down with staff meetings, sermon preparation, counselling, and countless other activities (while trying to maintain a healthy family life and getting enough rest) so they generally don't have the time or energy to do this kind of discipleship effectively. 

More serious with relational discipleship is the danger of spiritual abuse happening in the relationship between disciple-maker and disciple. Denominations and sects where members are required to obey their leaders in all things can result in ruined lives, broken marriages and other damage because of controlling leaders exercising excessive authority over peoples' lives and relationships. While it does say in Hebrews 13:17 that we should obey our leaders and submit to them, this must be balanced against Christ's directive that we should call no man our master, teacher or father except God and our Lord Jesus (Matt 23:8-10). Both Ingrid and I have seen many instances of this kind of abuse occurring over the years in various churches; we've even experienced some of it ourselves. 

An integrated model for disciple-making

If it is your intent to try and make disciples to fulfill the Great Commission, it can be helpful to begin by identifying some of the key Biblical principles and values that underlie disciple-making. In our opinion the best way to proceed in this regard is to use the approach developed by John Wimber. 

In chapters 9 and 10 of Wimber's book Power Healing he describes an "integrated model of healing" he developed that has helped so many of us learn how to enter into power ministry. We believe that a similar approach can be used to develop a model for effective discipleship training. Wimber's approach was to build his healing model using five elements: principles, values, practices, programs and personnel. He describes the first three elements of his model like this (I've paraphrased slightly):

Principles are to a healing model as the foundation is to a building. The first task a builder performs is to excavate and lay a foundation. The deeper the foundation, the higher one can build. 

Values are to principles as supporting walls are to a foundation; they are visible extensions of our basic principles. Values determine the direction and flow of our limited resources of time, energy and money. In other words, values determine what one does.

Practices are like the plumbing, heating and air-conditioning systems, and electrical wiring in a building. Healing practices are the skills, attitudes and activities that keep divine healing a growing and vital ministry in the church. 

The sections below describe what we believe are some of the key principles, values and practices that must underlie Biblically based disciple-making. 

Disciple-making principles

The first guiding principle is simply that the intention of disciple-making is to help people become more like Jesus. This has already been demonstrated in the previous chapters, so we don't need to discuss it any further here. But you do need to believe it (!) and keep foremost in your mind that your goal is to help people become more like Jesus, not more like yourself. 

A second key principle is that we cannot make disciples without the help of the Holy Spirit. After he rose from the dead, Jesus instructed his first followers to wait for the promised Holy Spirit who would grant them power to be his witnesses to the world (Acts 1:4-8). The Book of Acts demonstrates powerfully how the gospel can advance under the leading and empowerment of the Holy Spirit and not just the programs and efforts of human beings. 

A third principle is that the job of making disciples is the responsibility of the church, not just of a few key people. Churches often operate on a hierarchical basis where the leadership team develops and implements programs for the congregation under the oversight and direction of the head pastor. While lip-service is frequently given to the leadership being "servants" of God, the reality is often that they function like management in a corporation where the pastor is the CEO, and the congregants are like employees who "serve" the interests of the company. 

The Biblical basis sometimes used to justify this approach is Ephesians 4:11 where it says Jesus "gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers" which suggests a five-fold leadership model for running God's church. But this neglects the verses that follow which indicate that the purpose behind the Lord giving these giftings or roles to the church is "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (v.12-13). In other words, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers—and any other gifted and anointed people in the church—must view themselves as servants whose job is not to build and promote their own ministries but to help everyone else in the church learn how to do what Jesus did so they can become disciples "like" their Teacher. 

Equipping the Saints is of course a foundational value of the Vineyard, so we don't need to discuss it further here. Let's move on now and examine some of the core values that should underlie Biblical disciple-making. 

Disciple-making values

Our values determine what we do with our time, energy and money. Another word that can be used to describe values is priorities; our priorities are things we feel are most important for us. In Wimber's model, the values he presents flow directly from his guiding principles for healing the sick and demonized. We will follow a similar approach here: our values for disciple-making flow directly from the guiding principles we expressed above. 

The first value we identify is that the number one priority for a disciple-maker is to strive hard to become like Jesus. You cannot mold others into the likeness of Jesus if you are not like Jesus yourself. To effectively disciple others, we ourselves must walk like Jesus, talk like Jesus, think like Jesus, and be able to do (at least to some degree) the things that Jesus did. 

And which he still does today, for it is only Christ in us that enables us to do the works that he did when he was living in the flesh among us. Which brings us to our second value for disciple-making: learning to listen to the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that he could do nothing by himself; he only said and did what his Father told him to say and do (John 5:19, 12:49, 14:31). If this was true for Jesus, how much more is it true for us? Spending time in God's presence, asking him what to say or do in a situation, and patiently waiting for the Spirit to lead us—these are as critical to discipling others as they are to healing the sick and demonized. 

Our third value is to provide a healthy environment for effective discipleship. Churches and ministry organizations often develop detailed, structured programs and activities to help their people grow in discipleship. If crafted with care to include elements of formal teaching, hands-on experience and supportive mentoring, such programs can achieve some measure of success. 

Our experience however is that disciple-making is often most effective when done in home fellowships. There are several reasons for this, but perhaps the key reason is because home fellowships are where the Body of Christ is best expressed, where each member can learn to receive and use the gifts of the Spirit to help build one another up into the image of Christ (Eph 4:13). In a healthy home fellowship, some will be more gifted in teaching, others more in prophecy; some will be able to demonstrate how to pray effectively for the sick; others will be more gifted in pastoral care. In this way everyone will be able to help each other grow in Christlikeness. For more on how to build and plant healthy home fellowships, see our free book Simple Kingdom: Home Fellowships which is available on our website buildplant.org. 

Disciple-making practices

If you concur with the disciple-making principles and values that we have expressed above, it should be simple for you to identify some of the key practices you need to follow in order to effectively help others grow as disciples. The following is a short list to get you started:

Prayer. As I try to witness to people or help other Christians grow in different ways, I constantly find myself praying one of Wimber's famous prayers: "Help!!!"

Constant prayer in fact has almost become the norm for me nowadays whenever I'm out in the world. In almost every situation I find myself praying "Help, Lord!! What should I say? What should I do? I need your help!" In fact the more "mature" I become as a Christian, the more utterly dependent on God I feel. 

Reading the Gospels. When I was a young Christian, my goal was to understand Paul's letter to the Romans because knowing that would apparently not only help me conquer sin in my life but was also the Holy Grail for Evangelical Christians wanting to enter ministry.

How wrong I was. Now I spend most of my time reading (and re-reading, and re-re-reading) the four Gospels. Why? To get Jesus' words deep into my heart and mind so that when I am witnessing to someone and they dispute what I'm saying, I can reply with, "Well, Jesus said..." instead of engaging in fruitless argument. 

Taking risks. The only way you'll know whether you heard the Spirit correctly in a situation is to take the chance and go for it, be bold, tell them what you think God wants you to say to them. In the Vineyard many of us have learned to do this when we pray for the sick, but risk-taking is just as important when trying to disciple someone—as long as it's done in love. 

Where to go from here

I'm going to stop at this point and not try to develop a program for disciple-making ministry like Wimber did for healing ministry in his book. Others (perhaps like yourself) who are wiser and more experienced than me can expand on this subject. Think of it like I've done the framing work for the building; you can now finish it off by putting up interior walls, adding plumbing, wiring, appliances, furniture, whatever. It's your homework assignment :-)

The main thing is that you grasp and understand the principles, values and practices we've outlined in this chapter. This is critical whether you're a pastor, a leader, or simply someone who wants to help fulfill the Great Commission. Because as we'll see next, the time is short.   

---> Go to chapter 7