[Church Growth through Discipleship]
We live in a world where the churches are either empty or in
a few cases full of fashionable Christians following a charismatic leader. In
these churches they are for ever learning but rarely effectively used. Their
worship is professional but often doctrinally wrong and they can’t even see the
error and if they can no-one takes any notice. If the praise is exciting and
‘cool’ that’s all that matters.
People sometimes travel long distances to attend a ‘good’
church where they are ‘fed’ but these same people usually have no impact in
their local community. I suggest that we have a fundamental misunderstanding
about what church is and that the current church model is part of the problem
in our society rather than part of the solution.
What are the problems in our society? Isolation,
powerlessness, boredom, unemployment, overwork, ignorance, exclusion, addiction.
I suggest that these same problems also affect the church and may in fact be
caused by the church in that over the centuries it has taught and discipled
wrong attitudes and beliefs into its members, which to some extent still
include the majority of the population evidenced by the demand for church
christenings, weddings, funerals and memorials.
Christians often see external attack from militant atheists
as the most serious threat it faces but I shall argue that the greatest danger
is in fact from within and that we are in that age of which Jesus said Luk
18:8 Yet when the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth? And He
spoke this parable to certain ones who trusted in themselves, that they were
righteous, and despised others:
I want to show that there is a parallel between what has and
is happening to our industries, villages and high streets and what has happened
to the church.
Closure is the key word; manufacturing closure, village shop,
school, bakery, butcher and post office closure; the same holds true in town
centres and there we can add to the list pubs and mutual building societies.
What is driving these changes? Money. Shoppers think that they can get a better
deal at the out of town supermarket. Certainly they can buy cheaper but do they
get the same quality and do they experience and add to their community? What
does Paul mean when he said in his letter to Timothy 1Ti 6:10 For the love of money is
a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have
wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
If we look at the context of that verse we can see that Paul
is arguing for an unselfish attitude to money; 1Ti 6:6 But godliness with
contentment is great gain and 1Ti 6:8 But if we have food and clothing,
with these we will be content. Also 1Ti 6:11 But as for you, O man of God, flee
these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness,
gentleness. Fight the good fight of the
faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which
you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
So what I am arguing is that just as people, Christians
included, have abandoned the local family businesses for the cheaper (better
supplied) supermarket so people have abandoned the local church for the big
church where they think that they will get a bigger, better deal. But just as
we buy watered meat and tasteless ‘perfect’ vegetables at the supermarket so we
often get a watered down gospel and ‘manufactured’ community at the megachurch.
James Ritz argues in his book ‘The Open Church’ that this process began around
1700 years ago when the church was taken over by pagans in the guise of the
‘converted’ emperor Constantine. The church changed overnight from being a persecuted,
grass-roots and organic community of outreaching believers into a fashionable,
socially prestigious club for the upwardly mobile. This new status meant that
its meeting places and mode of conduct had to reflect the status of its
‘leading’ members and they had to look no further than their pagan past,
temples, favourite gods, liturgy and priesthood. Within the next 100 years the
practice of Mary worship had begun (pagans of all types have female gods,
Diana, Venus, Astarte etc.). Praying to ‘saints’ (in place of polytheism) was a
controversy in the church as far back as 481 and as you are aware has been
firmly established for centuries. My purpose here is not to snipe at the
Catholic Church but to point out that the reformation did not finish its work;
it may have thrown out Mariolatry, praying to saints and buying salvation but
much of the pagan framework and attitudes remain intact and is destroying the
true expression of church that Jesus had in mind when he said John 13:35 “By this all people will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another." And Matt.
28:18 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore
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. And behold, I am with you
always, to the end of the age.”
Love and discipling; how did that work in the early church?
Act 2:42-47 And they devoted
themselves to the apostles'
teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many
wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had
all things in common. And they were
selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread
in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their
number day by day those who were being saved.
Don’t forget that these were Jews who had not yet had Paul’s
revelation of the gospel. These apostles were not learned men but ordinary
workers and businessmen who had been discipled by Jesus for just 3 years. The
Jewish temple was destroyed in AD 70 and the first ‘christian’ building was
built in AD 323 under the direction of Constantine. Prior to this Christians
had met in private homes (one exception to this is stated in Acts 19:9 where
Paul ‘disputed daily in the school of one Tyrannus’) also no mention of
instrumental music in Christian practice is mentioned in the NT and yet both
buildings and instrumental music form two of the major concerns of the modern
church. Of course the other thing not mentioned in the New Testament from Acts
to Revelation is tithing.
So we see sent disciples (apostles) who had been discipled
for 3 years by Jesus going out into private homes and teaching small groups of
people to do what Jesus has taught them and by AD 300 about 1 in 10 people in
the Roman world called themselves Christian. India was reached in about 52 AD.
It is clear that the early church pattern of church life and outreach worked;
do we see it in operation today?
The nearest I have seen to their method of outreach and
discipling was in an organisation using multi-level marketing techniques. In
the mid 1980’s Catharine and I were for a couple of years members of an
organisation called Amway. This organisation used discipleship, books and
tapes, encouragement, cell structure, social gatherings, family involvement and
a constant emphasis on the positive, refusing to even mention ‘negative’
products! I remember thinking at the time ‘I wish church was like this!’ Let me
show you how it worked:
Imagine using Discipleship Evangelism in this pattern!
Disciple six couples over four months to DE Condensed Version level 1 backed up by selected Andrew Wommack books
and CD/DVDs. Encourage them to then begin their own DE groups whilst you find
six more and at the same time get your first six moving on to higher DE levels
or correspondence courses (some will go full-time at CBC). The whole condensed
DE process will take a year meeting once per week. Inside a year you could be
working with a network of over 1700 people! Imagine those kinds of numbers at
your quarterly regional rallies or Gospel Truth Seminars.
So what is the product? Eternal life, relationship with God,
SOZO, community….
How do we recruit? By demonstrating the product! Heal the
sick in your sphere of influence, tell them the Gospel, use and pray for local
businesses (tell them what you are doing). Invite them to discipleship meetings
and social events. Eat together a lot but invite ‘outsiders’ to your ‘love
feasts’. See local churches as a recruiting resource. Run this in parallel with
any local church links you may have. When they find out what you are doing they
will either chuck you out or adopt the method! Sell the dream to out-of-church
Christians, to those distressed, disgusted, disappointed and doubting. To those
held down by the system, the controlling pastor, the threats of
excommunication, in fact, as it says on the base of the Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming
shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me; I lift my lamp beside
the golden door!"
Or as Jesus said “go, make disciples”.
Since we are the Body of Christ we should grow like a
body.
Remember Jesus
taught that hanging on to personal relationship stunts growth:
Mar 10:29-30 Jesus said, "Truly, I say to
you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or
father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not
receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and
mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come
eternal life.
Cell Growth Over 2 Years
|
|||||||||||||||||||
q1
|
q2
|
q3
|
q4
|
q1
|
q2
|
q3
|
q4
|
||||||||||||
Multiplier
|
12
|
1
|
12
|
144
|
1,728
|
20,736
|
248,832
|
2,985,984
|
35,831,808
|
||||||||||
10
|
1
|
10
|
100
|
1,000
|
10,000
|
100,000
|
1,000,000
|
10,000,000
|
|||||||||||
8
|
1
|
8
|
64
|
512
|
4,096
|
32,768
|
262,144
|
2,097,152
|
|||||||||||
6
|
1
|
6
|
36
|
216
|
1,296
|
7,776
|
46,656
|
279,936
|
|||||||||||
4
|
1
|
4
|
16
|
64
|
256
|
1,024
|
4,096
|
16,384
|
|||||||||||
2
|
1
|
2
|
4
|
8
|
16
|
32
|
64
|
128
|
|||||||||||
1.5
|
1
|
2
|
2
|
3
|
5
|
8
|
11
|
17
|
|||||||||||
1.25
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
2
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
|||||||||||
Chris Jackson May
2012
