Why the missional movement will fail | Part 2

My last post, “Why the Missional Movement will fail” caused quite a stir in the past week and the overwhelming response seemed to require a followup post. So consider this PART TWO.

There were a few questions that emerged in online conversation because of this article:

1. How am I defining disciple/discipleship?
2. Am I separating mission from discipleship? Aren’t they part and parcel the same thing?
3. Why am I making this complicated? Can’t we just do what Jesus says and stop talking about this stuff?
4. What should we do about it?

WE’VE MOVED THE GOAL POSTS
Defining a disciple is fairly easy, in my view. The greek word mathetes is the word that scripture uses for “disciple” and it means learner. In other words, disciples are people who LEARN to be like Jesus and learn to do what Jesus could do. One great writer on discipleship put it this way: Discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.

A disciple is someone who, with increased intentionality and passing time, has a life and ministry that looks more and more like the life and ministry of Jesus. They increasingly have his heart and character and are able to do the types of things we see Jesus doing. We don’t have to look far in the New Testament to see this happening. Just look at the life of the disciples/ apostles and the communities they led…over time, they looked more and more like Jesus!

How did the church go from 120 people in an upper room to more than 50% of the Roman Empire in about 250 years? Simple. They had a way of reproducing the life of Jesus in disciples (in real, flesh-and-blood people) who were able to do the things we read Jesus doing in the Gospels.

Is that still the way we see Christians or have we moved the goal post? I have to wonder if we’ve changed our criteria to match the kind of fruit our communities are now producing. Many are now fine with Christians who show up to our churches, are generally nice people, do some quiet times, tithe and volunteer. Maybe they even have a little missional bent to them. These are all good things, but I don’t think this is the kind of “fruit” Jesus was referring to when he talked about fruitfulness in John 15. Would those kinds of people change the world like the early church did?

Probably not.

In truth, I think we are pretty bad at making disciples in the Western church. Why? Because I look at the life of Jesus, the life of the disciples, the life of the early church and what they were able to produce with their fruit…and then I look at ours. When we read scripture and the texture of their lives and ministry, do we think that ours holds up to it? Even if we have a growing church, do the lives of the people we lead look like the lives of people we see in scripture? That’s the goal post we should be going after.

I’ve heard Dallas Willard say that every church should be able to answer two questions: First, what is our plan for making disciples? Second, does our plan work? I believe most communities have a plan for discipleship. I’m not convinced many plans are working the way Jesus is hoping they will — and that’s why we’re in trouble.

I think the fruit of our lives will reveal the root of our lives. So if we are creating disciples who are far from the people we see in scripture as the rule and not the exception, we must ask ourselves why this is the case and how we can change that reality.

“I’LL HAVE A CHEESBURGER WITH NO CHEESE, PLEASE”
Undoubtedly, one of the key components to being a disciple is to care deeply about mission. In Christendom, it seemed that people thought of discipleship as only an “inner” reality that sought the transformation of the individual and mission was left on the sideline. As we have come to re-embrace the mission Dei — the reality that the God of mission sent his Son as the great rescuer and we are to imitate him — I wonder if some within the “missional movement” are far more concerned with being missionaries/reformers than also seeking the transformation and wholeness that Christ is offering them personally.

What concerns me is that we have gone ditch to ditch. The reality is that both things are at work in being a disciple. The reality of living more fully in the Kingdom of God is that we are being back put together through God’s grace, conforming more to the image of Jesus, having his heart and mind, and the overflow leads to Kingdom activity. That is why Jesus says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” Apart from the active work of Jesus in our life we cannot produce Kingdom fruit. To engage in Kingdom mission without being equally attentive to our own personal transformation (through relationship with the King) is like asking for a cheeseburger with no cheese. It stops being the very thing we’re asking for! By the same token, to be a “disciple” while not actively engaging in mission as a way of life is asking for a cheeseburger with no burger. Both are necessary. To be a disciple is to be a missionary.

If we look at it objectively, we see churches with discipling cultures (that focus mainly on the transformation of individual self) and churches with missional cultures (which focus on the transformation of the world/people around us) and we often see tensions between these two camps.

One has a clue, but no cause. The other has a cause, but no clue. High mission/low discipleship church cultures have issues with Biblical literacy, theological reflection and deficiencies in character and Creed that, in the end, sabotage the very mission they’re about. Critics are rightly concerned that these kinds of churches are a hair’s breath away from heresy, with people largely not experiencing the depth and transformation of heart and mind Jesus invites us into. High discipleship/low mission church cultures have strength in the previous issues, but lack the adventurous spirit/ heart of compassion and Kingdom compulsion that so stirred the Father into action that he sent his only Son to a world he so loved. Their transformation isn’t leading to the place God is taking them. Critics are rightly concerned that these kinds of churches will turn into Christian ghettos, creating people who lob “truth bombs” over their high, secure walls, creating an “us vs. them” mentality. In both, something is disastrously off.

As humans, we are creatures of overreaction, choosing polarities rather than living in tension. The truth is, a TRUE discipling culture (as Jesus envisioned it) must have both. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and. We mustn’t choose between depth and breadth, but embrace the tension of having and shaping both in our communities.

CHARACTER AND COMPETENCY
At the end of the day, we can probably boil being a disciple down to two things: Character and Competency. We want the character that Jesus has and we want to be able to do the things that Jesus could do (competency). Discipleship is learning, over the course of our lives, to become people who have both. 

So how we are forming/discipling the people in our communities? This is only helpful if we’re truly honest.

• Character: Are their lives characterized by grace? Peace? Love? Transformation? Patience? Humility? A deep relationship with the Father? A love of the scriptures? Can they submit?  Do they see the world through the eyes of the Kingdom and not the prevailing culture? (Obviously there’s a lot more, but you get the idea.)
• Competency: Can they disciple people well who can then disciple others? Can they do mission well? Can they hear the voice of their Father and respond with action, with His authority and power? When they pray, do things happen as they did for Jesus? Can they read and teach scripture well? (Again, Jesus was able to do many things, this is but a short summary.)

These are Kingdom questions. These are Discipleship questions. Which is why I go back to the point that if you make disciples, you will always get the church, but if you make the church, you won’t always get disciples. If the people in your community are discipling people who can answer “yes” to those questions, you’re doing what Jesus asked you to do. You’ve sought first the Kingdom and the rest will be added. Look at it through this matrix:

Finally, discipleship is about faithfulness and reflection. We need to be faithful and obedient to the things Jesus has asked of us (when it comes to character and competency) and let him control outcomes. At the same time, we need to be reflective about whether we’re good at the things Jesus could do. Jesus is calling us to be faithful, but he’s also asking us to get better, in “his strength which so powerfully works through us,” at the Kingdom things he could do. If we’re not good at something, let’s just not say, “It’s OK, I’m faithful.” I’d argue that faithfulness also requires us being honest and reflective about whether we’re good at the things Jesus could do, seeking to become better. Faithfulness and reflection. It requires us living in tension. He wants both, and if we embrace both, we take the posture of a learner.

So what do you think? Am I way off? Am I missing something? Is this a fair assessment?

If you’re interested in how we’ve made these kinds of disciples, you can check out the book we released on the subject here.

DISCIPLESHIP + MISSION WORKSHOP: Lastly, because of the outpouring of response for this particular blog series, we’ve decided to put together a time when people who are interested in further discussion, who are interested in seeing how mission and discipleship play off of each other in a practical way, can come together. It’s nothing terribly official or slick, it’s cheap and it’s going to be a 2.5 day workshop on discipleship and mission, diving into the practical outcomes of this discussion for church communities. We are capping it at 200 people and it’s December 13-15 of this year. You can click here to register.

Why the missional movement will fail

It’s time we start being brutally honest about the missional movement that has emerged in the last 10-15 years: Chances are better than not it’s going to fail.

That may seem cynical, but I’m being realistic. There is a reason so many movements in the Western church have failed in the past century: They are a car without an engine. A missional church or a missional community or a missional small group is the new car that everyone is talking about right now, but no matter how beautiful or shiny the vehicle, without an engine, it won’t go anywhere.

So what is the engine of the church? Discipleship. I’ve said it many times: If you make disciples, you will always get the church. But if you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples.

If you’re good at making disciples, you’ll get more leaders than you’ll know what to do with. If you make disciples like Jesus made them, you’ll see people come to faith who didn’t know Him. If you disciple people well, you will always get the missional thing. Always.

We took 30 days and examined the Twitter conversations happening. We discovered there are between 100-150 times as many people talking about mission as there are discipleship (to be clear, that’s a 100:1). We are a group of people addicted to and obsessed with the work of the Kingdom, with little to no idea how to be with the King. As Skye Jethani wrote in his Out of Ur post a little while back “Has Mission become an Idol?”:

Many church leaders unknowingly replace the transcendent vitality of a life with God for the ego satisfaction they derive from a life for God.

Look, I’m not criticizing the people who are passionate about mission…I am one of those people. I was one of the people pioneering Missional Communities in the 1980’s and have been doing it ever since. This is my camp, my tribe, my people. But it has to be said: God did not design us to do Kingdom mission outside of the scope of intentional, biblical discipleship and if we don’t see that, we’re fooling ourselves. Mission is under the umbrella of discipleship as it is one of the many things that Jesus taught his disciples to do well. But it wasn’t done in a vacuum outside of knowing God and being shaped by that relationship, where a constant refinement of their character was happening alongside of their continued skill development (which included mission).

The truth about discipleship is that it’s never hip and it’s never in style…it’s the call to come and die; a “long obedience in the same direction.” While the “missional” conversation is imbued with the energy and vitality that comes with kingdom work, it seems to be missing some of the hallmark reality that those of us who have lived it over time have come to expect: Mission is messy. It’s humbling. There’s often no glory in it. It’s for the long haul. And it’s completely unsustainable without discipleship.

This is the crux of it: The reason the missional movement may fail is because most people/communities in the Western church are pretty bad at making disciples. Without a plan for making disciples (and a plan that works), any missional thing you launch will be completely unsustainable. Think about it this way: Sending people out to do mission is to send them out to a war zone. Discipleship is not only the boot camp to train them for the front lines, but the hospital when they get wounded and the off-duty time they need to rest and recuperate. When we don’t disciple people the way Jesus and the New Testament talked about, we are sending them out without armor, weapons or training. This is mass carnage waiting to happen. How can we be surprised that people burn out, quit and never want to return to the missional life (or the church)? How can we not expect people will feel used and abused?

There’s a story from World War II where The Red (Russian) Army sent wave after wave of untrained, practically weaponless soldiers into the thick of the German front. They were slaughtered in droves. Why did they do this? Because they knew that eventually the German soldiers would run out of ammunition, creating an opportunity for the Red Army to send in their best soldiers to finish them off. The first wave of untrained soldiers were the best way of exhausting ammunition, leaving their enemy vulnerable. While this isn’t a perfect analogy, I sense this is a bit like the missional movement right now. We are sending bright-eyed civilians into the battle where the fighting is fiercest without the equipping they need, not just to survive, but to fight well and advance the Kingdom of their dad, the King.

The missional movement will fail because, by-and-large, we are having a discussion about mission devoid of discipleship. Unless we start having more discussion about discipleship and how we make missionaries out of disciples, this movement will stall and fade. Any discussion about mission must begin with discipleship. If your church community is not yet competent at making disciples who can make disciples, please don’t send your members out on mission until you have a growing sense of confidence in your ability to train, equip and disciple them.

Here are some questions I have leaders I’m working with ask regularly:

• Am I a disciple?
• Do I know how to disciple people who can then disciple people who then disciple people, etc? (i.e. does my discipleship plan work?)
•  Does our discipleship plan naturally lead all disciples to become missionaries? (not just the elite, Delta-seal missional ninjas)

This blog post is part of a 6 week series related to the release of my new, re-written edition of Building a Discipling Culture: How to release a missional movement by discipling people like Jesus did, which shows how we made disciples in a truly post-Christian context. If you’re interested in picking it up, click here.

Saturday links

• Church Planter as Mythic Hero: 5 reasons not to go this route (Dave Fitch)
• The 6 Things that Divide Christians (Brett McCracken)…not terribly deep and misses some big things, but still mildly interesting
• 30 Ways to be missional in the workplace (Josh Reeves)
• Children in your Missional Community (Jo Saxton)
• 10 Bizarre Rules people used to accept as “good” running tips
• A new book on Paul coming out you won’t want to miss (Kenneth Bailey)
• Jesus in the Qur’an (fascinating project my good friend Buddy is working)
• Creative ways to pray with your feet (J.R. Briggs)

Building a Discipling Culture

Today we released ebooks for the three books that have become part of the core content of 3DM. But perhaps the thing we are most excited about is the re-written and newly released 2nd edition of Building a Discipling Culture via ebooks. One of the things we found when we released the first edition of this book is that people were absolutely enamored by the discipling language and proces we discuss in the book and this discipling vehicle we call Huddle. However, we didn’t have a lot of practical information for HOW to use the vehicle of Huddle to disciple people and what a discipling leader must specifically do to build a discipling culture. This released 2nd edition answers those questions in a very practical and helpful way.

60% of the content is new and we’ve written it so a lay leader in any church setting would be able to use it and understand it. We’ve started to get reviews on the book (check out Amazon.com for a few) and we’ve been really pleased with the feedback.

So, ladies and gentlemen, we hope you enjoy it! Pick up your electronic copy today for your ipad, kindle or nook (the hard copy edition of this book should be available in mid-October). Click here to download the ebook today. Here is the text from the back cover of the book which gives an excellent description about what the book is about:

+++++++++++++++

Much ink and many pages have been devoted to all of the missional issues facing the Western church today. As our culture becomes more post-Christian with each passing day, we are all realizing that what has worked in the past is no longer working, that we are far less effective for the Kingdom than we were even 10 years ago. But we would suggest it isn’t because we don’t know what the Great Commission states, or that the imperatives of the Gospel or our church services just aren’t getting it done. It’s because we are in the midst of a discipleship crisis in the Western church. The people sitting in our pews are rarely becoming like the people we read about in Scripture. They may come to a worship service, join a small group or even tithe, but their lives just don’t seem to be look like Jesus’ life.

The truth of the matter is that we don’t have a missional problem or leadership problem in the Western church. We have a discipleship problem. If we make disciples like Jesus made them, we’ll never have a problem finding leaders or seeing new people coming to faith.

The central issue is that we have no idea how to make disciples who can do the things that Jesus did for the reasons Jesus did them. Building a Discipling Culture is the product of more than 25 years of hands-on discipleship practice in a post-Christian context that has turned into a worldwide discipling movement, dealing specifically with how to make the types of missional disciples Jesus spoke of. We all want to make disciples. Most of us are unsure how to do it.

Dallas Willard put it this way: “Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. One, do we have a plan for making disciples? Two, does our plan work?”

For most of our church communities, we have a plan, but the plan isn’t working. If you find yourself in this situation, this book is for you.

ebooks are officially here!

My friends, ebooks of our core content are finally here! You can download all three books at Amazon (Kindle or ipad), ibooks (ipad) or Barnes and Noble (nook). It’s a big day, no?!

Building a Discipling Culture:
How to launch a missional movement
by discipling people like Jesus did
There is a discipleship crisis in the Western church. Many Christians may come to a worship service, join a small group or even tithe, but few have the kind of transformed lives we read about in Scripture. If we made disciples like Jesus made them, we wouldn’t have a problem finding leaders or seeing new people come to faith. Building a Discipling Culture is the product of 25+ years of hands-on discipleship practice — developed in a post-Christian context, tackling how to make the types of missional disciples Jesus spoke of.

 

 
Launching Missional Communities: A Field Guide (award winner)
Among church practitioners, “Missional Communities” have become one of
the most discussed tools of the past 20 years. This is a book about where they came from, how they developed and how your community can begin launching and multiplying them to see those who don’t know Jesus begin the journey of discipleship. It is a practical, insider’s look, giving you the tools to make MCs come alive in your church.

It includes:

• The theory and theology behind MCs
• The key, driving concepts we learned in the past 20 years
• A simple, flexible process for beginning MCs in your church
• An in-depth look at MC life (from teaching to teenagers and from children’s ministry to multiplication)
• Case studies on U.S. churches across denomination, size and context that have used MCs and the results of their efforts

 

 

Covenant and Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible
For many, Scripture falls into the same category as Shakespeare: valued and enjoyed, but seldom understood. Scripture is not, however, out of reach. The ability to identify the main themes of any passage is a skill you can learn, even as you seek to apply its truth to your own life. Covenant and Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible provides guidance for the path it will take to develop, to the fullest, your own individual relationship with God.

 

ebooks are almost here…

We are but days away from the launch of ebooks for Nook, Kindle and ipad of our three core books:

• Building a Discipling Culture
• Launching Missional Communities: A Field Guide
• Covenant and Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible

Put it on your calendar: Tuesday, September 7!

coming to Chicago!

I’m going to be in Chicago for a few days on October 27-29. If you’re in the Chicago-land area, I would LOVE to see you. We’re going to be at Northern Seminary out in Lombard near Wheaton. Here’s what the schedule of those few days is going to look like:

• Thursday | October 27: 7-9pm. We’ll be presenting a whitepaper and video on re-imagining theological education followed by an extended time of discussion and Q&A. Going to be making some pretty provocative statements and the discussion time should be stellar.
• Friday | October 28: 9am-5pm. 3DM in Chicago: A workshop on discipleship and mission. We’re going to spend the day exploring the link between discipleship and mission and how if we re-embrace the ancient calling of discipleship, we’ll get the whole “missional” thing. You can register for this event by clicking here.
• Friday & Saturday | October 28-29. Missional Learning Commons.I’ll be helping to facilitate this event with the Ecclesia Network and you can register for it by clicking here.  This year, the focus is on discipleship. Here are some of the questions that will be shaping our time together:
• What does discipleship actually look like in our lives?
• Does the gospel we preach naturally and organically lead people into discipleship, or does it feel like an extra-curricular activity?
• How should the call to make disciples shape and guide our church practices: what we do, and how we do it?
• What is the significance of discipleship as the core component of the formation of Christian leaders?

If you’re in Chicago, we’d love to see you there over those three days. It should be a great time together.

Steve Jobs and your church

Last week Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple and handed the reigns over to his former COO. That day, the stock dropped by 5%. The talk around the digital world is whether Apple can keep up their winning streak without their visionary leader manning the day-to-day world of the company. Here’s why I think they’ll not only weather the storm, but continue on:

Here are Apple’s core values:

• We believe that we’re on the face of the Earth to make great products.
• We believe in the simple, not the complex.
• We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make.
• We participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.
• We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.
• We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot.
• We don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we’re wrong and the courage to change.

What Apple has done is created a CULTURE of innovation, design and collaboration. There is no doubt that Jobs is a genius and is responsible for Apple’s meteoric rise. However, what he has done more than anything else (and probably won’t get credit for until now) is created a culture that can consistently produce products and services that have enchanted people the world over. It’s Jobs DNA, through and through, in the life of that culture.

It makes me wonder if we, we leaders in our church communities, are seeking to do the same kind of thing. Are we seeking to create a culture where everyone is a producer, where the culture of the community will far outlast us? Where the DNA of discipleship and mission has a kind of half-life that is born into the heart and soul of our people and our communities so that it takes on a life of its’ own.

Are we seeking to create that kind of culture?

Why I self-publish

We are less than two weeks away from the release of the re-written (and with 50% new content) second edition of Building a Discipling Culture: How to launch a missional movement by making disciples like Jesus did. The official release date is September 6.

As we’re moving towards that date, I thought it’d be fun to explain a few reasons why I self-publish. Publishing is a tricky thing these days, isn’t? With ereaders and the democratization of ideas via the internet, the publishing industry is left in quite the quandary and authors are in the middle of it. Now I’ve had a number of great experiences with Christian publishers and I really want to honor and be appreciative of what they do. In fact, for one of our next books, we are looking at working with a publisher and go for mass distribution as it will serve as an introductory book to much of what we do/think when it comes to discipleship.

But for today, I thought we could look at why we’ve chosen to self-publish. As with all things, there is nuance to decisions and there are drawbacks for any decision, but this is why we’ve gone with self-publishing:

1. I can say what I think needs to be said in the way I want to say it. Editing is a tricky thing. Up to a certain point, it’s extraordinarily helpful. But sometimes I wonder if we spend a bit too much time thinking about our “target audience” to the point that we change what we’re trying to communicate in an effort to connect with them. What I’ve enjoyed about self-publishing is I’m able to work with fantastic editors, but in the end, I get to make the call about the content I’m trying to develop and the style I want to fashion.
2. Texture is really important to me. We have three core content books that we’ve released. One is a standard paperback. But the other two I had a very specific vision for in how I wanted it to look and feel. For instance, I wanted our Launching Missional Communities: A Field Guide book to actually feel like a field guide. I wanted it to be big enough that two people could get around it at a coffee shop and go through, work with it, answer the questions we’ve provided, etc. In other words, the content and the layout weren’t done in a vacuum. Because of the financial straits many publishing companies find themselves in, I’m not sure this vision could have been realized apart from self-publishing.
3. Ebooks are the great democratizer. As soon as you take paper, oil, distribution and printing costs out, book publishing suddenly became a lot more accessible. There has never been a better opportunity for people who want to go the self-published route.
4. More profit = cheaper training. My guiding philosophy about books in the space of discipleship and mission I inhabit is that they are always meant to be supplementary. In other words, while resources like this are incredibly helpful, the best way to understand and learn to do discipleship mission is to go out and be trained in how to do it. For 3DM, that’s why Learning Communities are so essential. Making wider profit margins by self-publishing has allowed us to drive down the price of our communities by a staggering amount, making it far more accessible. With traditional publishers, we wouldn’t be able to see a profit margin that would allow us to do that.

So there you have it! Four quick reasons for why we self-publish. There are more, but those were the ones that popped into my head this morning. In the mean time, September 6 is right around the corner and ebooks are coming. 😉

What does your leadership pipeline produce?

Chances are, you are in a church that has a leadership pipeline. And by “pipeline”, all I am referring to is an intentional method to create and develop leaders. Now I’m not saying every pipeline works well, but most churches have something they are intentionally trying to do to create and develop leaders.

The question some of us on our team have been asking this week: What does your leadership pipeline produce?

Here’s what I mean: Most churches only really produce one or two different kinds of leaders (and by leaders, I’m specifically referring to the Ephesians 4 Five-fold ministry: Apostles, Teachers, Pastors, Evangelists and Prophets). In fact, I might be able to break it down into different streams.

• Baptist pipelines tend to produce pastors or teachers.
• Highly attractional, seeker-sensitive churches tend to produce evangelists (of a certain kind).
• Pentecostal/Charismatic churches tend to produce prophets.

You get the point.Now generally speaking, it’s not what “stream” you find yourself in that dictates what kinds of leaders you are producing but the LEADER of the church. If the leader is an evangelist, the pipeline will tend to produce evangelists. If you’re a teacher, your pipeline will tend to produce teachers. The maxim holds true, “We recreate who we are.”

The real issue here is that we need more than one or two of the five-fold ministries at work in our communities. We need ALL OF THEM. That will require a real intentionality in the way we intentionally form people and shape them in an organic leadership development process. Because what has probably happend is that we have people who are apostles that are being forced to function like teachers, or evangelists who are trying to be pastors, etc. Now there isn’t anything wrong with spending a season in a ministry that is not your own (at 3DM we call that a ‘phase’), but it’s not for forever. I worry that for many people that are in communities where they will be living in a place that isn’t their nature base for five-fold ministry.

How about you? What kind of leaders is your church producing? What’s working? What isn’t? Have you been in a place that was good at shaping and allow all 5?