Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Feb/92

Contributor - Jonathan Manlove

Title - Converts or Disciples?

Topic - Spiritual Discipline

There had been a great deal of excitement among family and friends five years ago when Charlie (assumed name) surrendered his life to Christ. Charlie had not been what most people would call a 'bad' person, but he tended to live a rather aimless, superficial, and often undisciplined lifestyle. And so, when he accepted Christ, those who knew him best couldn't believe how much he'd changed. It wasn't so much a change in behaviour that was noticeable - though his behaviour did change some. Instead, the quality about Charlie that caught people's attention was that he was no longer an aimless, purposeless kind of guy. Instead, he was now a man who was excited and challenged with the call of Jesus Christ to discipleship.

Now, five years later, Charlie still calls himself a Christian. Charlie has also made some progress over the years in adopting the lifestyle of the average churchgoer. But in his moments of greatest honesty, even he will admit that somewhere over the years he has lost his spark. The radical call ,to discipleship that first attracted Charlie to Christ, and the sense of purpose and direction that was so noticeable to his family and friends has all but disappeared. When asked what has happened he only shrugs his shoulders and says, "I don't know".

In my five short years of being a pastor I have seen enough 'Charlies' and those with similar testimonies to become very concerned about the great dearth of Christian Discipleship taking place in our churches. For some reason, we seem to be better at making converts than making disciples.

One of the greatest attractions of the Christian gospel is that the Holy Spirit of God transforms lives out of aimlessness and self-centeredness and directs new creatures in Christ down the purposeful and exciting pathway of discipleship. Jesus calls us out of the marketplace where we have been standing around doing nothing, into His vineyard where there is important work to be accomplished (Matthew 20). How is it then that so many of us, in the years following conversion, end up back in the marketplace living aimless, undisciplined lives, instead of staying in the vineyard where Christ can teach us to be effective and disciplined vineyard workers?

My gradual conclusion these past few years is that one of the greatest reasons we are not seeing our converts grow into disciples is that we are not teaching and equipping the church in the great spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith. For after all, a disciple can well be defined as a "disciplined learner". Consequently, a few years ago in our congregation, we began to make an attempt to weave spiritual disciplines into the fabric of our congregational life.

It would be fairly easy in an article such as this to leave the reader with the impression that if you were to meet me, or were to visit our fellowship, you would find a highly disciplined pastor leading a remarkable group of disciples.

Let me make clear from the start that equipping a congregation to be spiritually disciplined is a long process, and we are very much at the beginning of that process. But every person, and every congregation has to start somewhere, and here are some of the things we have done to get started.

Priority #1 - Modelling

First, let me say a few words about leadership. It should go without saying, but here goes! The single most important thing that a group of leaders can do who want to see their congregation grow in spiritual disciplines is to model a disciplined life. The effectiveness of every strategy that will be mentioned will be magnified many times over if people in the congregation can see the evidence of spiritual discipline in their pastors, elders, and deacons. Whether in the areas of inward disciplines, such as meditation, prayer, fasting, or study, or in the outward disciplines such as simplicity, solitude, submission, or service, the congregation will learn the most by watching the lives of leaders, even as Jesus' disciples learned by being with Him and watching His life.

Notice my emphasis on a plurality of leaders, as opposed to a single leader. I have found this to be an important emphasis for several reasons. One reason is that no one leader is likely to excel in all of the disciplines, and so it would be impossible to model all the disciplines without plural leadership. A second reason is that the pastor, who is often looked to for the greatest leadership in a church, may be the least effective in being a model of spiritual disciplines. The reason for this is simple. No matter how much we may theologize to the contrary, the average Christian will be unmoved by the modelling of his or her pastor. This is because deep down inside most Christians see pastors as being in a unique category of people who have to do these things because it is their job, rather than seeing discipline as normative for the Christian life. Consequently, the modelling of other leaders will have much more impact on a congregation. Therefore, you can see that a good strategy for a pastor is to be encouraging spiritual disciplines among consistory members. A simple structure would be to acquire a set of Richard Foster's classic, The Celebration of Discipline, and to focus on a chapter a month for your devotional times in consistory meetings.

Priority #2 - Inward Disciplines

The inward disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study, are the hardest to measure in a congregation. Yet these disciplines are the foundation upon which the outer disciplines and corporate disciplines rest. Therefore, we have sought to not only model, teach, and preach on these disciplines, but to go a step further. A simple structure we used in our fellowship to encourage the inward disciplines is to include them in our yearly congregational goals. Each year we set goals as a congregation in a number of areas. The past two years we have included areas of inward spiritual discipline. For instance, the last two years we set the goal that each person in our fellowship spend at least ten minutes per day in Bible reading and prayer. Now, some peop le might consider that goal to be too low, and perhaps for your congregation it is. However, considering the fact that the national average for pastors is somewhere between ten and twenty minutes per day, I would encourage you to start with a fairly modest goal. And before raising that goal, it is important that this goal, along with all other goals, be evaluated each year. One Sunday per year our congregation spends some time evaluating last year's goals. To enable this process we use a congregational survey. To measure the otherwise unmeasurable goal of inward spiritual disciplines, I simply include the question, "On a scale of one to ten, how well have you done this year in our congregational goal of spending ten minutes in Bible reading and prayer each day." People will generally be honest in their responses if they don't have to sign the survey.

To aid in the attaining of this goal, and to keep the discipline of being in the Word before our fellowship, we place a week's worth of suggested Scripture readings in our bulletin each Sunday. We use M'Cheyne's calendar of daily readings, which, if followed, will take a person through the entire New Testament and Psalms twice a year, and through the Old Testament once a year. We like reading guides because they are a systematic way of confronting our people with the whole counsel of God. I am often surprised how many Christians have never gotten beyond either their favourite book of the Bible, or beyond the flip and stab method of deciding what to read.

Another spiritual discipline that we have encouraged through goal setting is the disciplines of fasting and prayer. In 1991 we set a goal of having monthly days of prayer and fasting, which were to be followed by an evening of congregational prayer and worship. This goal not only pushed us to learn more about the little used spiritual discipline of fasting, but also encouraged an area of weakness in our fellowship - that is, congregational prayer. At the writing of this article we honestly don't know how many people in our congregation have participated in the fasting. The evaluation time in two weeks will tell the story. We do know that the evenings of worship and congregational prayer have been poorly attended. But whether many people respond to these challenges, or few, setting such goals communicate to Christians that these spiritual disciplines are a normative part of the life of discipleship.

Priority #3 - Outward Disciplines

An authentic disciple of Jesus Christ will not be limited to the practice of inward disciplines, and so we have also attempted to encourage outward disciplines such as simplicity, solitude, and service. Once again, we as a fellowship are only beginning, but here are some things we have learned so far.

Solitude: Frankly, we haven't gotten very far in our fellowship in encouraging the discipline of solitude. In a young congregation, where most of our children are under the age of eight, and where in many cases both spouses are working, it is a tremendous challenge. Someone has said that the most precious possession in the '90's will be time. If this is the case, how can we possibly equip our people in the discipline of solitude?

What I have become convinced of in the past two years is that our leadership team must work extremely liarcl to keep from over-programming our church. To this end, we have developed a profile of what we expect from the average member. Our members are expected to: 1) regularly attend corporate worship; 2) regular1y tithe; 3) be a part of a home fellowship group; and 4) be involved in at least one kind of ministry in line with their spiritual gifts.

I will say more about #4 in a moment, but let me mention an attitude toward our home fellowship groups that is helping us to remain simple and less programmed (thus encouraging solitude!). We are attempting to use these existing home groups when tasks need to be accomplished for the church, rather than create new, time-consuming structures. For instance, as a new church, we need a group n our church which will thoughtfully and prayerfully administer our missions budget. Instead of forming a new committee, we are asking one of our existing home groups to take on that role- Another home group is functioning as a task force on children's ministry. Using existing structures in these instances both prevents Christians from committing the sin of over-business (the opposite of solitude), and it provides our home groups with a healthy 'mission' component.

Service: As mentioned above, the discipline of service is woven into the fabric of our membership profile. By making this one of our qualifications for membership in the fellowship, we communicate that serving the church and the world through the use of our God-given gifts and talents is a normative part of the Christian discipleship.

Simplicity: There are many reasons why simplicity is a desperately needed spiritual discipline in our generation. Whether our burden is to "Live simply so that others might simply live", or whether our calling is to be a living prophetic word to the world that the philosophy of "He who has the most toys wins", is bankrupt, it is imperative that we equip our congregations in the discipline of simplicity.

Richard Foster, in his book Celebration of Discipline, suggests that one of the keys to simplicity is to break through our North American lust for ownership. We all love the convenience of ownership, but he suggests we need to get used to sharing, borrowing, and lending our resources. Is there any more natural place to practice this than in Christian community?

In our fellowship, we have published in the back of our friendship list (phone numbers, addresses, etc.) what we call our Common Goods List. Each person in our fellowship is asked to look around their homes, and list any items which they are willing to lend out to people in our church community. These items are listed alphabetically, with the name of the potential lender, to facilitate the sharing, lending and borrowing of our material resources. It is a simple structure, but one that has been instrumental in both building a sense of community in a city setting, and in encouraging our people to practice the discipline of simplicity.

Conclusion

It is probably true for most of us that when we read Paul's description of a spiritually disciplined person, we will feel terribly inadequate.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who completes in the games goes into strict training .. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly, I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave ... (I Cor.9:242 7a)

However, if we are going to move beyond the making of converts, to the making of disciples, we need to go beyond our feelings of inadequacy, and become serious about equipping the people of God in the great disciplines of the Christian faith. If we do so the 'Charlies' of our congregations will grow into disciplined, effective workers in God's vineyard. If we fail, 'Charlie' will simply head back to the marketplace and do nothing.

Please click the "Back" button of your browser to return to previous page.