(bright music) - So in the missionary task of church planting, we begin with engaging the city with the gospel, and then we make disciples of those new converts. And new Christians, like all Christians, they need to be trained, they need to be taught, they need discipleship, they need help in how to follow Jesus. So Keith, as you think about church planting and the missionary task, what are some of the essential practices, habits, or disciplines that a planter should really consider about teaching people on how to be with Jesus and follow Jesus?
- Yeah, what I love about this is that when I talk to planters, oftentimes there's all these systems to be able to help their church to grow, but sometimes there's something lacking on actually how to make a disciple. How do we get people to be able to follow Jesus? And I think a part of that is just helping us orient.
That word disciple has all this, like, religious meaning, but when we actually ask, what does it mean to be an apprentice of Jesus? Like, sometimes it's helpful to be able to understand we're just trying to get people to look like Jesus. And so when we think about that, sometimes it helps us understand what are the building blocks to make that happen.
And there's four things I think that we see, and we don't get a lot of Jesus curriculum, but we do see the process, and the context, and the idea of, what does it mean to be with Jesus? That word with is so key, because what we see him do is, I think, four things. One is we see Jesus modeling and debriefing to his disciples.
We see him living his life out. And I think as we think about what does it mean to build a disciple, to make a disciple, there has to be a sense where they're watching someone do it ahead of them. And so that process is really clear; Jesus does that.
Another thing that Jesus does is he teaches them to pray, right? He teaches them, "Hey, this is how you're with the Father. This is what it looks like for you to be integrated into a life that is deep, that is abiding.
" We see that really captured in what Jesus does. We see him sending them out on mission. This is one of those surprising things.
Oftentimes we think about holding them close and not sending them out, but Jesus seems to do the opposite. He goes and says, "Hey, live on mission, and as you're living on mission, what happens is the exposure of what you need to do to actually be with me becomes evident to you. " And you begin to understand, "Hey, here's where I lack, this is what is needed for me to be able to understand this deeply.
" And then he clarifies what it means to think and act like someone who's in the kingdom of God. And so he's always processing through, "Here's how you see the world. " And those things are really key for us because I think that as we're thinking about what does it mean to make disciples, the essential practices, I think, look like what Jesus did, and helping them to say there's gotta be someone to follow, there has to be someone showing them how to pray, how to live on mission, and really how to understand how to think, how to understand the Bible, how to get into that, and those are normal things for us, but it is all around what Jesus did in terms of his process and not just the curriculum.
- That's good because we need that holistic framework. Sometimes I think we can jump into either, "Alright, here, do these disciplines right away," all that, but it's good to also step back and say, "Yes, Bible reading, huge, yes, prayer, but also let's step back and look at the whole thing that you're gonna be doing as a disciple maker. " So as you think about kind of this holistic framework, some of the disciplines, what are some of the things that a planter, as the church is growing.
. . 'cause, you know, it starts with a core team, church planting team, new converts, and then you're teaching them, "Hey, let's do this.
" It's probably gonna be more one-to-one. But as you've got more leaders, and as things are growing, what are some of the environments or a framework that a planter could utilize as the church grows to make disciples, to train new converts, and to help other Christians grow up into maturity? What are some things that you've seen?
- Yeah, I think the key is helping us to understand it is not just a vehicle. And you're not just proclaiming a message; you're actually creating a framework. And Seth Godin has a story that he tells about a moment when he was trying to build out a trivia game for this software called "Prodigy".
And he starts off with a team, they write a thousand questions, and of those thousand questions, they have a 97% accuracy rate, which actually means that there's 30 wrong questions. And so they double down and they say, "Okay, we need to pay more attention, we need to be more careful about this. " So they keep going, and they get it down to 15 wrong questions, but he says, "Even one wrong question really ruins the game.
" And so he says, "You have to think differently. " And so if you think about what it means to be careless, the opposite of that might be to be careful. But one of the things he says is, careful sometimes just means paying attention, and we can put more effort into it, but he says there's actually a better word.
It's the word intentional, to create these processes. So he ends up creating two teams, one team that writes the question, and the other team has to go through and look at this. And if they find a wrong answer, they get $20.
And so he changed the whole framework of how the team worked together in order to create this kind of sense of accuracy to make it actually work. And I think oftentimes when we think about church planting, and specifically in disciple making, we have to think, how do we actually have a pathway to make a disciple? Not just how do we have vehicles, small groups, discipleship groups, stuff like that.
But actually, how do we think about this? And one of the most helpful things for us has been a little TED Talk called "How to Make Toast". And it's really simple because it just is someone saying, "How do you make toast?
" And this is one of those things where you think, "Oh, of course I know how to make toast," but then how do I explain it to someone? How do I say, "You start here and then do this thing and do this thing"? And if you can begin to explain how to make toast, it helps you to be able to linearly understand, how do I get to an end point?
When you do that, you can replicate that. And so it's not just an intuitive experience, but it's a thought-through, intentional experience. - That's good.
So let's go to the "How do you make toast? " and just pull back the curtain a little bit for a church planter on, okay, so how do I make a disciple? How do I make toast?
What would be some of the quick overview outline things that you would think of, "Let's have this included"? Just think about these things. - Yeah, it really is just as simple as to be able to say, "Where's my starting point and where's my ending point?
" And so how am I going to engage people? Where do I want to engage people? How do they start the process?
Where do I want to find them? And then be able to say intentionally, "What would be that next step? What would be that next step?
What would be that next step? " And how is it that they would end up into the kind of person that I would say, "This is a disciple in our context in our church"? And the great thing is there's a thousand ways to get there.
So I don't wanna be prescriptive in this, but just to be able to say, "Have you thought about this? Have you thought about what it looks like to get from point A to point B? " And to ultimately get to that place where you're saying, "I know how to get to those destinations.
" - Yeah, it's good. It's helpful. There's so many things that for planters, I mean, there are a thousand ways, a million ways to go about it.
But I think a planter should think about their context, think about their people, think about their leaders and go, "Are we gonna do an 'Alpha' course? Are we gonna do a new believer's class? Is it gonna be more one-on-one?
Are we gonna teach them, 'This is what God's word is. This is what sexuality is. This is, you know, biblical faithfulness in the city,' or whatever it may be?
" to outline those things. And then we're gonna teach people how to pray. So I just encourage you guys, think about those each step things that you wanna have for people.
- And ask, why are we doing this? How is this getting to some sort of destination? Not just because we've done it before.
What's a men's group? What's a women's group? What are they supposed to get people towards?
And why would we be doing that? And to be honest, there's so many things that we could be doing, but when we sharpen that funnel, that pipeline, that process, that pathway down, we begin to say, "We have to do this, not this. We have to lean out this so that we can get people to the place where God wants them to be in terms of disciple making.
" - And that really, I think, frames up the final question really well, is what are some of the pitfalls or kind of cautions you would give a planter as they think about their framework, as they think about, "This is kind of the process we wanna work, this is how we wanna make toast, this is how I wanna make a disciple"? What are some things they need to be careful that they don't just copy and paste? Or what are some of the dangers that you see?
- Absolutely. So let's say you've built out a disciple making pathway, you have intentionality; you're not just careful, you're intentional towards this. So what are the things that might be these tensions?
One is the tension between specificity and flexibility. So you can say, "This is exactly how you do it, and it has to happen like this. " And we're all different.
We're all unique. There's all different ways by which we get to that. And so you have to hold that in tension.
On the other side, you can have the pitfall of being able to say, "Do whatever you want. We hope you get there. " And that's too flexible, I think.
And so you have to balance between helping people to have a pathway, but not necessarily have a script to be able to say, "You have to do it that way. " So that's one of the tensions you have to balance. Another thing is that the pathway is not a magic wand.
It's really just as good as the people who are operating that make it to be so. So you have to still have a lot of human interaction around that. Just because you have this thing on a piece of paper doesn't actually mean that you're making disciples.
So you have to go back through and say, "How are people utilizing this? " And so one of the pitfalls is being able to say, "We have something on paper, but it didn't actually get translated into the lives of people. " And then the last thing is really the idea of we have a pathway, and that can unintentionally become this place where we're asking them to have a place of achievement.
"So you've gone through the pathway, therefore you are an apprentice of Jesus. " And to be able to say, this is something that you may be in a certain part of this pathway for years as you're developed in the image of Christ, right? As you are in a place where you're becoming an apprentice.
And that's okay. And everybody has a place where they're at in that. And so one of the things that is detrimental sometimes is showing someone a pathway, because then it makes them all of a sudden feel like, "Hey, if I'm not here, then I might feel shameful.
" So it's kind of a background operating system. And it's one of those things that to be able to take and put that into a place where it's still humanizing and not shame-inducing is really key to get people to the place that they need to be as a follower of Christ without them feeling like they're just some sort of cog in a machine. - Yes, we make disciples, but they're not made in factories.
- That's right. - Yeah. Our discipleship pathways, I mean, you just think about Christ, how we opened till we started talking about Jesus; I mean, three years with these disciples, and he wasn't done with them.
He was still ministering to them, still leading. I mean, he's still working on us and still helping us. - Right, absolutely.
- So, man, what a privilege to join Christ in his mission of making disciples. - Amazing.
