What we have been given by God is something unique, blessed, our lives, are blessing for other people’s lives, etc. So how can we be responsible for with that kind of stewardship? Certainly we do not want to ruin or weaken what we have been given. But all the more, we want to strengthen and expanding them. In many ways also we are responsible to pass along or hand off what we were given to others.
When we are looking at somebody that we are ministering currently, what we envisioning? Are we thinking whether he/she will get to have the same experience I’ve had, an experience full of dynamic movement, where the gospel is shared, lives are changed, people making impact, and the fellowship is warm, etc, etc? Or will he get to grow up in a lame, institutional group that can’t even capture his loyalty? Myself, I want my disciple to see with his own eyes, feel with his own skin, and hear with his own ear, what I have been experiencing, that is God’s mighty power at work through His body.
We argued last year that a paradigm that is based on personal ministry is not only a more biblical approach, but also more logical for ICF compared to program based paradigm, in supporting ICF as a movement. We discussed that ICF that has a personal ministry paradigm, at its heart is:
ICF is viewed as a group of empowered individuals and their personal ministry to other people. ICF that adopts this paradigm will mostly pursue its dream, vision, and ambitions through its people. Where success is therefore measured through the quality of its people and the emphasis of the group lies in the development and empowerment of its people. This paradigm seeks to win people through personal witness, developing people through personal ministry and more interested in outward focus strategies. In perspective, therefore, the focus of the organization is to strengthen, equip, and assist people in their ministry.
In personal-based ministry, the main focus is on the personalized development strategy of younger believer (instead of through programs), which will create the fellowship to become much more organic.
Ministry, therefore, is considered as a commitment to help people to get to know Christ or to grow from the toward maturity instead of “leading a department”.
We discussed that there are 4 major areas in personal ministry; evangelism, follow-up, discipleship, and leadership. Eventually these four areas will support themselves. The most crucial component and probably the most difficult as well the most time consuming is discipleship. What is then discipleship?
Biblical discipleship is a role involving facilitating others’ growth through sharing knowledge and experience, and living as models by both ministering in a general way in the fellowship, and by holding specific meetings for study, coaching, counseling, and prayer, all in the context of a close personal relationship.
Personal ministry paradigm hinges on strong discipleship and the general outlook of discipleship that we described last year is as the following:
[Discipleship is] when the new person becomes serious about his/her growth and wants to become a committed worker for God. In some ICFs, this process usually happens in a small group bible study. This is where the majority of the work of personal ministry is being done while it can easily be the longest, time consuming, costly, heart-breaking, tearful, but extremely rewarding work. People who are willing to be discipled usually have shown serious efforts to start a personal ministry of their own, although it mostly still consist of evangelism and follow up. During this process, the discipler and the disciple will commit to meet regularly in order to help the disciple be more effective in his/her personal ministry.
In this paper, I will argue that discipleship is a main key component to the success of our ministry in our fellowships. Later, this paper will highlight the importance of doing discipleship correctly.
Robert E. Coleman, Master Plan of Evangelism
It all started by Jesus calling a few men to follow Him. This revealed immediately the direction His evangelistic strategy would take. His concern was not with programs to reach the multitudes, but with men the multitudes would follow.
Jesus devoted most of His remaining life on earth to these few disciples. He literally stakes His whole ministry upon them.
This is a very distinct feature that we see in Jesus’ ministry and also in Paul’s. They prepare their disciples to continue their ministry. As Coleman mentioned, it was not through programs and mass-multitudes, but it was through a few men. We rarely see this model in current fellowship model or church model. When people need a successor, they will usually get a “seminary educated” people to be installed. Or in ICF, leaders usually scramble last minute to find and quickly train their successor or create a “regeneration program” to quickly get the person up to speed about some basic ICF leadership stuff.
Yet, strangely enough, it is scarcely comprehended in practice today. Most of the evangelistic efforts of the church begin with the multitudes… The result is our spectacular emphasis upon numbers… with little or no genuine concern manifested toward the establishment of these souls in the love and power of God, let alone the preservation and continuation of the work.
Nowadays, preparing someone for ministry mean sending them to a class or classes, or telling them to read some books or maybe with no preparation at all and hoping at all cost that they will “learn by doing”.
Personal discipleship is the bedrock that God intended to leave in the body of Christ. This is where people are training within a context of relationship to grow into a full stature of Christ, to be able to minister to others with sound foundations and able to carry the ministry.
George Barna, “Growing True Disciples”
Only half of the believers we interviewed felt that discipleship is one of the two or three highest ministry priorities of their church
Relatively small numbers of born again adults said that their church gives them the specific paths to follow to foster such growth. Slightly less than half said their church had identified any spiritual goals, standards or expectations for the congregation during the past year.
For many people, the goals and expectations related to exhortations at the end of sermons to go forth and live in accordance with the points in the sermon. There was no personalization or other, more detailed guidance provided in many churches.
Only one out of every five believers stated that the church has some means of facilitating an evaluation of the spiritual maturity or commitment to maturity of congregants.
A majority (55%) of the adults who indicated their interest in hearing advice on how to improve their spiritual life also said that if the church matched them with a spiritual mentor or coach, they would be more likely to pursue the changes suggested to them.
Barna’s finding is quite interesting in a way that it shows that it is usually not that people are unwilling to be discipled but the body of Christ simply does not place a high importance of value on it. I do believe that it is likely that ICF has a similar situation that people are willing, but ICF has not put a high importance of discipleship. A classical ICF model suggests this (program based), there a willing person is just being put into classroom and from program to other program with the hope if the person participate in enough programs, he or she will grow into maturity.
A majority of those who say they are involved in some type of discipleship activity, for instance, contend that because they are involved in a small group, they are on track. But our research shows that most small groups do well with fellowship, but falter when it comes to facilitating transformation. Even the teaching delivered in most small groups has little enduring influence in the lives of group participants.
Small group is usually not suitable to facilitate transformation. Often the materials are shallow, or sometimes it is too crowded where it is difficult to get down and personal, share true struggles, truth, and being vulnerable. In ICF environment, usually Small Group is just about discussion about the materials themselves with no further interaction before, after, or outside the regular meeting time. In some cases, small group eventually become a comfort zone for people, where they are rarely challenged to step beyond the boundary of their ability, get equipped, and start ministering.
Although there is openness to the use of spiritual coaching, relatively few people are currently engaged in a mentoring relationship, and our interviews with churches indicate that few churches are intentionally raising up mentors and strategically matching them with congregants.
Most believers who say that they want to have a deep commitment to the Christian faith, but are not involved in any intentional effort to grow spiritually.
The one out of five believers who are actively engaged in some type of personal spiritual development activity besides attending church services…include the following:
- two out of three (68%) are involved in a small group or cell group designed to facilitate spiritual growth;
- one out of four (24%) participate in a Sunday school class that motivates them to grow;
- one out of every seven(15%) is being spiritually mentored by someone;
- one out of every nine (11%) attends a special class for the purpose of becoming more spiritually mature.
One out of seven out of five, which means 1 out of 35! So, according to Barna, if your ICF is considered a typical evangelical fellowship and you have 35 people in your ICF, only 1 (ONE) is or will be discipled. That is pathetic.
The point is that discipleship is always being preached, but in reality it is not practiced. So why do we think that our approach in the modern world is so much better than the early church? Aren’t they the one who experienced explosive growth and intense dynamic?
Hindrance to Discipling Ministry
So, if discipleship is so productive, why are so few Christian workers actually involved in a discipling ministry? Sometimes organization and structure can become a hindrance to discipling ministry, but the main hindrances are usually in our personal lives.
- Hobbyism & Entertainmentism. Our culture pushes an idea of “thou shall be entertained at all time” and more often than not we are succumbing to it, and worse, we become addicts. Often they come in the expense of other responsibilities, ability to carry on relationships, ability to concentrate, but yet it is culturally not only acceptable, but approved. Some of us really need to look deep into this idea, because there is no discipleship that is not time intensive. This is an issue of excess versus moderation, not good versus bad. But we have to learn to detach ourselves from all these constant pressure of entertainment and hobbies to the point we stop feeding off excitement from those.
- Tyranny of the urgent – prioritization. We often let less important thing take up more of our time. From Covey’s diagram (the 4 quadrants of urgent and important), we should ask ourselves about how much time do we spend in the things that are important but not urgent, such as discipleship. The “good” is always the enemy of the “best”. We can spend a lot of times doing good things in ministry, the things that are urgent, and never get around to do the non-urgent but important ministry, like discipleship. Then there are those other 2 quadrants, which often filled with hobbies and entertainments (not urgent not important) and other non important matters.
- Insistence on quick and easy results. Our culture suggests that we are all entitled with quick and easy result of everything, from cooking, relationships, internet, and including spiritual growth. The acceleration of expectation and idolatry of technology often becomes a measuring gauge for the speed of doing things, including discipleship. But you can bank on this that it will never happen. Working with screwed up people like ourselves for years, there are mixed up and failures, two steps forward, one step backward, certainly an indication that discipleship is not hard, it is impossible. It is possible by God’s grace and power, but certainly not easy and quick.
- Preference for high-recognition ministry. This is certainly one of the ways that can become a distraction for us. Otherwise Jesus needs not to tell the parable of taking a lower seat in Luke. People naturally lust for recognition and praise. We lust and will gravitate toward ministries that we can do and get people to praise us. It is not that public or high-recognition ministry is always wrong, but the point is that discipleship is not this way. By God’s grace, He often uses discipleship as a means to humble us. In discipleship, almost if not all is done behind the scene, when no one is looking. We ought to exercise caution when we are entrusted with high-recognition ministry to not setting aside discipleship.
- Derailed by our spiritual gifts. By definition, spiritual gifts give us the ability for that ministry, so that ministry becomes easier (not easy, but easier) for us to do than a lot of other ministry. But it is also because of that the area of our gifting is easier for us to do that it may entice us to operate almost entirely in the area of our gifting. Then eventually to neglect those crucial areas of ministry that is not easy and then to rationalize neglecting those areas.
- Perfectionism. Sometimes we just will not do something or will not stick with something without the assurance of success in doing it, or until finding such a gifted person and charismatic that we are bound to succeed. There is a lot rationalization in doing this, such as “I want to pursue excellence”, “I don’t want to dishonor God with my failure”, “I am just not good at this”, which basically a law based perspective on ministry that is basing our identity, flesh, and self-worth on how well we do in our ministry. In many ways this is just a tactic to preserve my ego in the flesh and unwilling to be seen as failing. Unless we are willing to fail or have the freedom to fail in grace, we will dare not to embark in the discipling ministry, since it is loaded with possibilities of uncertainties, errors, and failures.
The list above certainly is not an exhaustive list, but I think it highlights some common problems in ICF. God, on the other hand, feels like He is powerful enough to overcome those challenges and still moving forward with discipleship. The question then becomes,
Are you willing to cooperate with Him in these areas and move forward with Him in discipleship?
Biblical Discipleship
So what does the bible says about this? Let’s take a look at Ephesians 4.
11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,
12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service (ministry), to the building up of the body of Christ;
It is pretty clear in the bible that the higher leadership’s role in the body of Christ is to equip the body so they can do the work of the ministry. A lot of times, this is the opposite of how we see most churches or fellowships are. Mostly leaders are the one who do the entire or most ministry work, meanwhile the rest of the body are just watching and observing.
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
“Unity of the faith” and “knowledge of the Son of God” are two key ingredients in becoming a spiritually mature person. They are to be developed in a deep way instead of just superficially.
Col. 1:28 And we proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man complete in Christ.
Gal. 4:19 My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you
This is Christ’s goal for us. It speaks deeply into the heart of reality of lives of Christian believers. If we want to do this the godly way, we have to accept that we need to get deep and get in there with people so they can be mature. That is the burden that has been laid on all of us to participate in this process of helping each other into maturity.
14 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming
We have to be deep enough in the Word to be stable and not easily wavered. It is hard to get deep into the Word with just attending weekly fellowship meeting or going to church. For most of us, maybe we think personal daily devotion will do it. But discipleship facilitates this much better, where we help each other out in studying the Word, getting deep and practical and sharpen our skill of bible study with one another and in turn, passing the “knowledge of the Son of God” to each other.
15 but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ,
“Speaking the truth in love” captures about what happen in personal discipleship. In discipleship we just don’t tell people about what to do or not to do and giving orders, but we have to take time to build relationship, real personal relationship.
We invest and pout our lives into another person until we care deeply enough, know the person deeply enough and that framework of relationship is the context in which we can bring the truth. The truth has great power when you know it is being spoken by somebody you know who loves you.
That is really where it’s at when we are talking about discipling one another, that we practice self-giving love with another person and this is something that we may build into over a period of months, or maybe years. Then, in that context, bringing the truth, instructions, encouragements, admonition, exhortation, rebuke, discipline, etc.
We are also to grow up in “all aspects into Him”, not just particularly selected areas. Most often that not, the failure to develop in one or two areas will nullify everything.
What we find is that in a community where discipleship is taken seriously, is that people get into each others lives and you cannot just fake it over several years of close relating. Often people resist discipleship for this reason, they refuse deep accountability with each other.
16 from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
This is stressing that the work of ministry is the work of each individual part. It is not the leadership that has the responsibility to do all this, but they equip us and it is up to us to take a hand and to work together which “causes the growth of the body for building up of itself in love”. The biblical picture is not a matter of attending some weekly meeting or service. It goes a lot deeper that that if we want to follow what the NT teaches.
Doing Discipleship Correctly
In this LM, it is filled with workshops and not that many sessions. The goal of our LM this year is to equip you with discipleship framework and skills to be brought back into your own ICF and implement them. As we have mentioned above, discipleship in personal ministry can easily become the most difficult but highly crucial aspect. It is important to be able to do discipleship correctly, since this personal ministry paradigm depends on excellent discipleship.
Let me reiterate again about what are the things involved in discipleship:
- Discipleship begins with an informed and voluntary decision to follow Christ
- Biblical discipleship is a role involving facilitating others’ growth through sharing knowledge and experience, and living as models
- A discipler is one who helps people by both ministering in a general way in the fellowship, and by holding specific meetings for study, coaching, counseling, and prayer, all in the context of a close personal relationship.
What is the ultimate danger if we do not do discipleship correctly? The ultimate danger is “pseudo-discipleship”, which is something that looks like discipleship, but does not achieve the same goal and target as real discipleship. Pseudo-discipleship can really pose a latent danger to the whole ethos of the fellowship, especially in personal ministry.
So let’s see some of their differences in the table below:
| Real-Discipleship | Pseudo-Discipleship |
| Involves a friendship | Involves a friendship |
| Includes pastoral help | Focuses on pastoral help |
| Focuses on equipping | Includes some equipping |
| Instructs people in God’s Word | Weak impartation of the Word |
| Builds a thorough Christian worldview | Settles for general knowledge of basic doctrine |
| Imparts the ability to teach the Word to others | Settles for a devotional knowledge |
| Builds ability to resist falsehood | Vulnerable to false teaching |
| Insist on real comprehensive character change | Settles for superficial character change |
| Includes inner walk with God | May settle for outward compliance |
| Able to teach and model real love, including self-sacrifice | Love relationship present, but may be self-serving |
| Able to turn people into servant ministers | Disciples only minister conveniently |
| Agonizes with disciple over lack of ministry | Excuses disciples’ lack of ministry |
| Cultivates a life-long love of ministry | Fails to raise tension in the relationship over lack of ministry |
| Foster independence and on-going motivation | Relationship may be as much for the discipler as for the disciple |
| Is able and willing to release disciples | Fails at release time |
| Continues to coach as needed | Out of sight, out of mind |
So what is the risk of pseudo-discipleship?
- In some ways it can be worse than no discipleship at all. If someone who is not being discipled, we would know right away and get someone to cover that person. But with pseudo-discipleship, we assume that people are covered and we don’t consciously look out for them, but in reality they are not covered. Typically also we only have 1 shot at discipling the person so it is crucial if we do it right the first and most likely the only time. So we do not want to see people investing several years over somebody and at the end knowing that they have not really been discipled. It would be a catastrophe for that person and also for the whole fellowship. In a sense we blew our stewardship from God.
- The bad disciples now have learned that the definition of discipleship is pseudo-discipleship. They now almost certainly continue to replicate that for the rest of their lives. The impact will propagate and rot the ethos of the fellowship. Eventually personal ministry will crumble when more and more people brought under pseudo-discipleship. Again, our ministry paradigm depends on REAL discipleship.
- Eventually, pseudo-discipleship will not result in multiplication. Quality of discipleship will continue to degrade and sooner or later the ministry will grind to a halt.
Rich Reward in Discipleship
The truth is that discipleship is extremely rewarding. It is hard work, painful, a self-giving way of life, confusing, overwhelming, but there are wonderful rewards in the lifestyle of discipleship that will out-weight the cost.
- Regular spiritual nutrition. At the very least, getting together regularly with another person who wants to grow and be used by God, opening the Word together, learning together, talking to God, and sharing the life of Christ with each other is extremely nourishing. 1 Timothy 4:6 “In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith” There were numerous times in my experience where I got together with my guy feeling lazy, down, dragging myself, but coming out lifted up and zealous, for no other reason because we got into God together.
- Sweet camaraderie. There is always camaraderie among soldiers of Christ. There is something about being a fellow soldier, about hanging around people who like you, are involved in a “war”. There is a kind of real enjoyment and closeness that just cannot be matched any where else. 2 Timothy 1:4 “I thank God … as I constantly remember you in my prayers night and day, longing to see you, even as I recall your tears, so that I may be filled with joy.”
- Deliverance from the “mother bird” syndrome. Discipleship will deliver us from the discouraging and demoralizing sense that we are just continuing to feed baby bird that will never grow up and no one else will do it but us. This is very dysfunctional and is not God’s will and way. That is why in discipleship ministry, God calls us to productive work, work that will multiply the kingdom of God and will multiply workers that will work alongside of us so that we become worn out. This is not saying that we won’t become tired or discipleship will eventually become easier and less work. But it will become a “good and satisfied sense of tired” instead of a “losing kind of tired”.
- A cushion during other ministry difficulties & setbacks. You cannot be in ministry without viciously attacked by Satan, there no way getting around that, we are going to get wounded and torn up, seeing failures, etc. But, when we are involved in discipleship, we can bear a lot in ministries, when we can look over to our disciples and say that we are making progress with these guys.
- Unsurpassed joy in this life. 3 John 1:4 “I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth.” John is referring to results of discipleship. We have to take John up by faith here that in this life, the greatest joy in the service of God is to be able to look and see the people that I put my life into are walking in truth.
- Eternal reward. Have you ever noticed on how Jesus is telling us to store up treasure in heaven? How about Paul telling us to do the same? Or how about Paul is looking forward for the day when he will get those rewards? There will be a judgment and there will be things gone in fire, but there also will be services that God evaluates and God will say “Good and faithful servant” and God is going to open our eyes and show us the true full extent and significance of everything we do in service to Him (which will be mind-boggling to us) and He will assign us a role in His eternal kingdom. To Paul, that becomes a driving motivation. We probably cannot run a long run in our ministry to God without a deep conviction about this issue. 1 Thessalonians 2:19 “For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?” Christ will reward us for all the service we have done in His name, but for sure Christ will reward us for discipling. If discipling others is the most important thing we can do to advance the kingdom of Christ and we get rewarded for advancing the kingdom of Christ, then the reward for discipling others will be very rich indeed. We need to have a healthy dose of desire in this eternal reward area.
Concluding Thoughts
Let me ask you the same question I asked in the beginning;
When we are looking at somebody that we are ministering currently, what we envisioning? Are we thinking whether he/she will get to have the same experience I’ve had, an experience full of dynamic movement, where the gospel is shared, lives are changed, people making impact, and the fellowship is warm, etc, etc?
If we are striving for a dynamic ICF movement, personal ministry paradigm is a biblical model that will capture that. In order to have a successful personal ministry, we must, again I repeat, MUST excel in real personal discipleship. That is the burden that has been laid on all of us to participate in this process of helping each other into maturity.
Failure in discipleship will result in eventual failure in our fellowship and certainly it is not the risk that I am willing to take. How about you?
Resources & Further Readings
- McCallum, Dennis, “Organic Disciplemaking”
- Coleman, Robert, “Master Plan of Evangelism”
- Barna, George, “Growing True Disciples”
- Garrison, David, “Church Planting Movement”
- Setiabudi, Johannes, “ICF as a Movement” – LM 2005 paper
- Kuswanti, Meiliana & Anggraini, Melissa, “Discipleship” – LM 2005 paper