First Things First - Disciple-Making Disciples

Aaron Orendorff

With the launch of re:Generātion quickly approaching—February 28th is just 47 days away—and with the launch team ready to begin training and preparation, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what’s often called “first things.” Why are we launching a new young-adults ministry? There’s probably a hundred different ways to put it, but every answer worth anything has to boil down to one thing: the glory of God in the lordship of Christ by the power of the Spirit. My greatest hope for re:Generātion is that God would use us to make disciple-making disciples. Everything else—attendance, websites, Life Groups, music, and even in one sense the teaching itself—are worthless if they do not fuel and directly contribute to this one, consuming end.

The great joy of making discipleship the central aim of re:Generātion is that it means doing ministry after the pattern of Christ and in the presence of Christ. The first—imitation—is utterly impossible and existentially crushing without the second—indwelling.

In the spirit of keeping first things first, I’ve pulled out a number of excerpts on the topic of authentic gospel-ministry from a recent book by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne entitled The Trellis and the Vine.

Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine

The basic work of any Christian ministry is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of God’s Spirit, and to see people converted, changed and grow to maturity in that gospel (8).

The [Great C]ommisison is not fundamentally about mission out there somewhere else in another country. It’s a commission that makes disciple-making the normal agenda and priority of every church and every Christian disciple. . . . [W]e must . . . see disciple-making as our central task in our homes and neighborhoods and churches (13).

To be a disciple is to be called to make new disciples. . . . Thus the goal of Christian ministry is quite simple, and in a sense measureable: are we making and nurturing genuine disciples of Christ? . . . The mandate of disciple-making provides the touchstone for whether our church is engaging in Christ’s mission. Are we making genuine disciples of Jesus Christ? Our goal is not to make church members or members of our institution, but genuine disciples of Jesus (14).

[S]tructures don’t grow ministry any more than trellises [lattices] grow vines, and . . . most churches need to make a conscious shift—away from erecting and maintain structures, and towards growing people who are disciple-making disciples of Christ (17).

[T]he real work of God is people work—the prayful speaking of his word by one person to another (27).

[I]t’s interesting how little the New Testament talks about church growth, and how often it talks about “gospel growth” or the increase of the “word.” The focus is on the progress of the Spirit-backed word of God as it makes its way in the world, according to God’s plan. . . . [T]he emphasis is not on the growth of the congregation as a structure—in numbers, finances and success—but on the growth of the gospel, as it is spoken and re-spoken under the power of the Spirit (37).

[I]f this is really what God is doing in our world then it is time to say goodbye to our small and self-oriented ambitions, and to abandon ourselves to the cause of Christ as his gospel. . . . [Gospel growth happens as] a Christian brings a truth form God’s word to someone else, praying that God would make that word bear fruit through the inward working of his Spirit (38-39).

[T]his means that the two fundamental activities of Christian ministry are proclaiming (speaking the word) and praying (calling upon God to pour out his Spirit to make the word effective in people’s hearts) (41).

To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker. The radicalism of this demand often feels a world away from the ordinariness of our normal Christian habits and customs (43).