I recently had the opportunity to meet with a senior pastor and his leadership team.  They wanted to learn more about the enterprise ministry software I had designed. 

During our meeting, I stressed that I believed any healthy church would value three basic ministry functions:

• Evangelism
• Discipleship
• Ministry Team Mobilization

During the course of our discussions, the senior pastor made a very firm statement that is reflective of many (but thankfully not all) modernist ministries…he said:

“We don’t care about discipleship…people already know more than they practice”

I believe the devaluation of discipleship by the North American “modernist” church can be traced to two church culture errors:

1. Discipleship is often inappropriately understood as “instructing the mind” with knowledge
2. The modernist Seeker Service drains all resources away from true discipleship

True Discipleship:

The western church culture has been seriously influenced by Greek philosophy…so much in fact, that often the contemporary church no longer understands what the Biblical authors meant by their use of specific terms.  “Disciple” is one of those concepts lost among many modernist churches, yet it is being re-discovered by healthy postmodern ministries. 

The modernist church tends to equate the word “disciple” with the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge”.  This perspective toward discipleship was also reflected by my undergraduate school, Calvin College.  Back in the 1980’s, I was taught that humanity did not consist of a tri-part existence of body, mind and spirit.  Rather, my professors stressed a bi-part existence where mind equated to spirit…so they believed that to “feed the mind was to feed the spirit”.

If discipleship was nothing more than “feeding the mind”, then I would have to agree that most Christians are educated well beyond their level of obedience.  But this is not the rabbinic understanding of “Discipleship”.  The rabbinic and Biblical understanding of discipleship is that the student becomes like the teacher, not merely in knowledge, but in action…in lifestyle…in spirit.  If our teacher is Jesus, then we should rightly desire to be like Him…not simply “know about” Him.

The emerging generations, who have unfettered access to information, more and more are realizing that knowledge does not make a person truly spiritual…there is something more important…it is the character of the person, molded through a true and dynamic relationship with God.  It is not knowledge “about” God that many young adults seek, but rather to truly know God…to experience God in all fullness and power within this world, and through that relational knowledge, to be transformed by God more and more into His image. 

The passion to “know” God, to “experience” God, and to be “transformed” into His image extends far beyond the modernist practice of discipleship.  So is it any wonder that the Echo-boomer rarely shows up for a modernist Bible study or Sunday school class?  The Modernist teaches about God, about doctrine, about life and living, and about church history and modern institutional structures (i.e., Our History, Our Values, Our Mission, etc.).  In the presence of such spiritual distractions, the emergent Church cries out…”God where are you?  How can I really relate to you?” 

The Modernist Seeker Service Drains Away Discipleship Resources:

If you had met me ten years ago, I would have been a strong proponent of the Willow Creek and Saddleback ministry models.  And I still admit that these models have strong appeal at building crowds…but the breakdown for me has been the inability of such models to consistently nurture biblical discipleship.  Virtually all the church’s human, financial and time resources are poured into creating an “event-experience”…but this experience often has little to do with helping people to relate to God and be transformed into His image.  The experience usually talks vaguely “about” God, “about” life, and “about” our need for God.  But the emergent generations already know that they need God…the #1 search category on the internet is “Spirituality and Religion”.  What they hunger for…what I hunger for…is to find true Christian leaders who will stop the spiritual performance and become authentic spiritual disciple-makers.

The Modernist church may take issue with my assertions…and many do…they believe that discipleship occurs within small groups.  But let’s be honest, while some small groups can be highly effective, most small group leaders have never themselves received Biblical discipleship from their church leadership.  If this is true, then how can we expect our ill-equipped small group leaders to be the Rabbi to their Disciples?  Most small groups degenerate into relational cliques.  While I highly value relationships, and believe ministry happens best in the context of authentic relationships, the relationship between Rabbi and Disciple is not the experience found in most small groups.

It Takes A Paradigm Shift:

There’s an old saying: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got”.  It is interesting to me that the Great Commission directs us to “Make Disciples”…not “make converts”.  Conversion, without transformation, is a spiritual void…misrepresenting the Christ-life as empty and powerless. 

The paradigm-shift that is needed today is a move away from talking “about” God, to helping people experience the reality of God…the reality of God in the moment.  Let’s take an analogy from every day life to clarify what I mean.  Consider for the moment that I wanted to introduce you to my brother at a social gathering.  I share with you his name, and facts about him.  I even share with you the kind of lifestyle he prefers to live.  Do you really know my brother?  Of course not!  To know my brother you need to hang with him, spend time with him, and relate to him.  Now, if you really want to get to know my brother, then you have a choice to make: Will you begin relating to him right then-and-there…in the moment?  Or will you wait to connect again at some point in the future?  I hope the analogy drives the point home.  People today want to meet with God, not merely His representatives in this world, and they want to meet with Him in the moment, to relate with Him, to experience Him and to be transformed by Him.

In some postmodern ministry circles there has been a move back to the use of icons and candles.  Ministry leaders are in error if they perceive these practices as merely staging…the latest gimmick.  While I am not pro or against the use of icons and candles within a service, I believe the heart of the matter regarding their use is the desire to re-capture a sense of the sacred and divine.  If our pastor’s and worship leaders would make their top service priority the goal of enabling people to relationally meet with God in the moment, sacrificing all performance and event-mentality for the higher value of authentic disciple-making, then I believe we all would experience an Acts 2 empowerment of Christ’s Church in our present culture…the real flame of the Holy Spirit, not just an MPEG1 version on the video screen or a waxy substitute.