• Seeing the need
  
• Connecting with people
  
• Sharing the gospel

4. Training disciples

We talk about discipleship like it’s equivalent to sainthood. Maybe Mother Teresa was a true disciple, the rest of us just should feel failures.

Discipleship has become another abstract concept rather than a reality. Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples. Then he told them how go about it. “Teach them to obey everything I have commanded.”

That’s how you train disciples. You teach them to obey Jesus, one step at a time. That’s something you can measure.

How do you teach obedience? One story, one passage, at a time.

Read a story from the gospels and ask these questions:

• What does the story teach about God?
• What does it teach us about ourselves?
• Is there a command we should obey, or an example we should follow?
• How we going to obey what we’ve learned today?
• How did you go obeying the lesson from last time? [First question you ask when you meet next time.]

Don’t just teach, teach them to obey. Along the way you might learn to obey too!

Keep score: how many people do you have in a face to face Discovery Bible Studies learn to follow Jesus one story, one passage, at a time?

How many of the groups are run, not by you, but by someone you’ve trained?

How quickly do you teach new disciples to make disciples of the people in their relational world?

Can you measure that? Yes you can. Measurement number one—how long is it going to take you before you start your first Discovery Bible Study? You don’t have to start with believers. Why not start discipling someone who doesn’t know Jesus yet?

Next we’ll look at gathering communities.

UPDATE: For more on Discovery Bible Studies as an evangelistic and discipleship method . . .

What should we be keeping track of if we want to see a church planting movement?

Here’s the list so far:

• Seeing the need
• Connecting with people

Next . . .

3. Sharing the gospel

Acts is the story of the Risen Lord pursuing his mission through his people. It is the story of the progress of the dynamic Word of God as it spreads, grows and multiplies. Wherever the Word goes, new disciples are made and new communities are formed.

So, here’s something to track.

• Through your ministry how many people will hear the gospel—today, this week, this month, this year?
• How many people know how to share their story, and share Jesus’ story—clearly and simply.
• When someone comes to faith, how long before you’ve trained to share their story and share Jesus’ story with their friends and family?

Before you make excuses about “mere words,” read Luke and Acts and ask, What did Jesus do? What did Jesus train his disciples to do? What did the Risen Lord continue to do through his people empowered by the Holy Spirit?

It’s not about us. It’s about Jesus. People need to hear the gospel.

Want to learn more?

Next we’ll talk about training disciples.

We’ve already looked at tracking how well we’re seeing the need. Here’s the full list.

1. Seeing the need
2. Connecting with people
3. Sharing the gospel
4. Training disciples
5. Gathering communities
6. Multiplying workers

2. Connecting with people.

I have picture in my mind of Jesus waking up one in strange town, stepping outside the door and wondering to himself, “Who has the Father prepared for me to meet today?”

The gospels are full of stories about the people Jesus met. Most of them he’d never met before. The rich, the poor, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rogues and righteous.

He was always on the move, meeting new people.

Wherever he goes, he’s looking for faith. He’s looking for the people God has prepared. In Luke 10 he calls them “people of peace.” They welcome the messenger and the message, and they become the bridge for the gospel to spread into their whole community—the woman at the well, Zacchaeus, the demoniac. The taught his disciples to do the same.

Back to tracking the right things.

Open you calendar and take a look at your last month. How much time did you spend connecting with people? Did you connect broadly, like Jesus did, looking for reponsive people?

How do find a responsive person? You ask questions and listen. Share your story, share Jesus’ story. Invite people to take a next step.

Jesus got to spiritual matters quickly with most people.

So. .

• How broadly have you been connecting?
• As you connect, how have you been looking for responsive people?
• How quickly are you moving from connecting with individuals to connecting with their relational community?

Jesus made missional real. He made it about people. He spent time with people, looking for persons of peace who became bridges tot heir community.

This week, take a chance. Expect God to show up.

What to learn more? Listen to podcasts on Jeff Sundell.

Next time we’ll talk about sharing the gospel.

I’m not the measuring sort of guy, but I know it’s important to track the right things.

From a church planting movements (CPM) perspective there are six essentials we must track. Seeing the need is the first.

1. Seeing the need

Jesus saw the need. He saw that people were lost, like sheep without a shepherd. He saw the 200,000 people who lived in Galilee. He saw every town and village in Galilee—all 175 of them—and he visited each one.

He trained his disciples to see the need in Israel and then to see the need to disciple the nations.

When Peter and the early disciples were stuck only on reaching Jews, Jesus intervened and to shake them up and show them the need of the Gentiles (Acts 10).

When Jesus confronted Saul on the Damascus road, he showed him that both Jews and Gentiles were blind and living in darkness, they needed to be rescued from the power of Satan so they could receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 26:18).

Eventually Paul saw the need of who regions of the Roman Empire. He saw the millions of people who lived between Jerusalem all the way to Rome and beyond. He knew what he job was. He must plant reproducing churches in the major cities from Jerusalem to Illycum (Rom 15:19) before moving to Spain and the western half of the Empire.

When Paul was based in Ephesus he saw the whole city of 200,000 people and the whole region of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and he multiplied workers like Epaphras who reached the cities of Colosse, Laodicea and Hierapolis (Acts 19:10; Col 4:12).

How do we keep track “seeing the need”?

Simple.

Movement leaders don’t ask, “What can I do?” they ask, “What needs to be done?” They don’t see just congregations, They see unreached neighbourhoods, cities, regions and nations. . They ask, “What does look like when the job is done?” CPM practitioners call that the “endvision.”

If you don’t see the need, don’t despair. You are in good company—the twelve Apostles, the early church, and Saul who became Paul—none of them saw the need because of a book they read or a brainstorming session or their natural creative genius.

Seeing the need is something you go to God for. You aren’t smart enough, or compassionate enough, prayerful enough, or bold enough. You see the need by grace not works.

Next we’ll look at: Connecting with people.

Here’s a story from the draft to my next book. I’m looking forward to catching up with Nathan and Lipok in India next week.

It’s early Sunday morning. Lipok and Nathan are traveling down the mighty Brahmaputra River to visit the believers among the Mising people of Assam, a state in northeastern India. They travel by ferry and then on the dirt roads of an island that is home to 300,000 people.

The Mising people live along the fertile riverbeds of the Brahmaputra, which they regard as holy.

They live in thatched houses raised on stilts that provide protection from floodwaters during the rainy season and from wild animals during the dry season. When the floodwaters rise, the Mising pack up their few possessions and move across the river or downstream where stilts have already been erected.

The Mising deal with annual floods, malaria and water-borne diseases. yet they continue to live along the banks and tributaries of their beloved Brahmaputra River.
Lipok and Nathan have been working with the Missing people for three years; they teach them to follow Jesus and make disciples up and down the river system that is their world. One local worker has started three hundred churches in his “stream.” He can go where Western personnel and funding can never reach.

When the Mising church gathers there is no printed order of service and no powerpoint presentations. No one receives a salary, and they don’t need a church budget. A permanent building would be useless along the flood prone Brahmaputra River. The Mising believers’ guide for church is Acts 2:38—47.

They begin a meeting by confessing their sins and repenting. They baptize new believers outside in the river. They teach the word of God, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and pray for the sick. They share their needs with each other and, if possible those needs are dealt with immediately through a gift or offer of help. Worship flows out of a response to God’s word. They finish by reminding one another of the gospel and by committing to go out and share before the sun sets that day.

A story like that of the Mising believers reminds us that our experience of church shaped by the world we live in. It also helps us think about what essentials all followers of Jesus share across time and different cultures.

Here’s a great parable for the decline of Western civilisation.

It all comes down the marshmallow test.

Looks like I’m in trouble.

more. . .

Population decline is the elephant in the world’s living room. As a matter of arithmetic, we know that the social life of most developed countries will break down within two generations. Two out of three Italians and three of four Japanese will be elderly dependents by 2050. If present fertility rates hold, the number of Germans will fall by 98 percent over the next two centuries. No pension and health care system can support such an inverted population pyramid. Nor is the problem limited to the industrial nations. Fertility is falling at even faster rates—indeed, at rates never before registered anywhere—in the Muslim world. The world’s population will fall by as much as a fifth between the middle and the end of the twenty-first century, by far the worst decline in human history.

The surprise is not the declining birthrate in the West—the US is an exception—but that it is matched by the decline in Islamic societies from Morocco to Iran.

“How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)” (David Goldman)

I took this on Gillard’s Beach, Mimosa Rocks National Park, a short stroll from our campsite.

Headed inland and home via the Snowy Mountains.

It’s summer in Australia. Michelle and I will hitch up the camper-trailer, and leave tonight for a beach somewhere on the south coast of New South Wales.

Perhaps we’ll find a spot at Bournda National Park.

I expect to be back, blogging around January 20.

Have a great summer break if you live in the southern hemisphere. Suffer in silence if you’re a northerner.