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).

Fear and the Wise Servant

Matthew 24:45-51

“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

The difference between the two types of slaves—the one who kept watch and did what he should, and the one who forgot what he was about and did the opposite—isn’t just the difference between good and bad, between obedience and disobedience. It’s the difference between wisdom and folly. . . . If the living God might knock at the door at any time, wisdom means being ready at any time. . . . Wisdom consists not least, now, in realizing that the world has turned a corner with the coming of Jesus and that we must always be ready to give an account of ourselves.

Of course these warnings are held within the larger picture of the gospel, in which Jesus embodies the love of God which goes out freely to all and sundry. Of course we shall fail. Of course there will be times when we shall go to sleep on the job. Part of being a follower of Jesus is not that we always get everything right, but that, like Peter among others, we quickly discover where we are going wrong, and take steps to put it right (130-1).

Aaron Orendorff

Fear is without a doubt one of the most powerful motivational forces in our lives. In a hundred different ways, fear drives us, directs us, prompts us, compels us. Our problem with fear, however, isn’t fear itself; it’s what we fear.

Jesus’ point here is simple: what (or perhaps better, who) we should fear is God. It’s no accident, as Wright points out, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Pro. 9:10). Wisdom consists in taking a right view of the world, of seeing things as they really are (not as they appear nor, as is often the case, the way they feel). Faithfulness to the work at hand and wisdom to see things aright go hand in hand. It’s only as we reverently cultivate a genuine “fear of the Lord” that we are made fit for the kingdom work that the Master of the house has prepared for us.

This Is Impossible

Matthew 19:23-26 (cf. 23-30)

And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

Some have suggested that the saying about the camel going through the eye of a needle is actually a reference to a gate in Jerusalem that was called “the needle’s eyes.” A camel would need to unload all it was carrying on its back to get through it. Other people have pointed out that a word very similar to “camel” meant a sort of rope; maybe that he was talking of threading a sailor’s rope through a seamstress’s needle. But both of these suggestions miss the point. . . . [T]he point is precisely that it’s unthinkable. That’s the moment when all human calculations and possibilities stop, and God’s new possibilities start. What is impossible in human terms, Jesus’ followers are to discover to their amazement, is possible to God (verse 26).

Jesus is then offering a vision of God’s whole new world in which everything will be upside down and inside out (53).

A. Orendorff

The disciples’ astonishment (or perhaps better, their dumbfoundedness) at Jesus’ interaction with the rich young ruler is not relieved but rather intensified by his interpretive explanation. As Wright points out, Jesus’ illustration about a camel going through the eye of needle is meant to vividly portray the stark impossibility of a “rich person”—those “on top” in other words—every entering the kingdom of God. The disciples’ response is completely appropriate: “Who then can be saved?” If the powerful can’t get in, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I imagine Jesus turning to his disciples with a soft but knowing smile and telling them, “Exactly. From a human perspective, it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.”

In many ways, this is the hallmark—the central, operative truth—of all gospel-ministry: “With people, it’s impossible. But not with God.” Jesus is forcing not only his disciples but us as readers to deal with the uncomfortable and humbling reality that none of us can get ourselves into the kingdom. How much more impossible, then, would it be for us to get others into the kingdom or, even more ridiculous, to go about building the kingdom ourselves?

The point is we can’t. We can’t. Jesus wants to drive us away from ourselves, away from the way we think the world operates—with the rich on top and the poor struggling underneath—and to turn us, with all the subtlety of a hammer to the head, to himself. You can’t, he says, but God can.

Carrying the Sheep Back

Luke 15:5

And when he [the shepherd] has found it [the lost sheep], he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.

Kenneth E. Bailey, The Cross & the Prodigal

After finding the lost sheep the shepherd’s hardest job was still before him because he had yet to carry the heavy beast back to the flock. . . . The shepherd takes his heavy burden “rejoicing” and accepts this backbreaking task happily. . . . When the lost is found, the task of restoration has barely begun. . . . [This] is a crucial theme within which lies the cross (31-2; emphasis original).

Prayer is Answering Speech

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles

We want life on our conditions, not on God’s conditions. Praying puts us at risk of getting involved in God’s conditions. Be slow to pray. Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests. And when we realize what is going on, it is often too late to go back. Be slow to pray (44).

. . . prayer is never the first word; it is always the second word. God has the primary word. Prayer is answering speech; it is not primarily “address” but “response.” . . . Prayer is answering speech. The first word is God’s word. Prayer is a human word and is never the first word, never the primary word, never the initiating and shaping word simply because we are never first, never primary (45-47).

Pastoral Pelagianism

Andrew Purves, Reconstructing Pastoral Theology

Apart from union with Christ, ministry is cast back upon us to achieve. This is a recipe for failure, for we all fall short of the glory of God. The understanding and practice of pastoral work in this case is a burden too heavy to bear and follows a path that denies the gospel. We do not heal the sick, comfort the bereaved, accompany the lonely, forgive sins, raise up hope of eternal life, or bring people to God on the strength of our piety and pastoral skill. To think that these tasks are ours to perform is not only hubris, but also a recipe for exhaustion and depression in ministry (45).

The effect [of developing “an imitative rather than a participatory approach to ministry”] is to cast the pastor back upon his or her own resources – thus it can be defined as pastoral Pelagianism, a ministry by works rather than a ministry through grace (xxx).

The professional pressures on ministers today are immense. At the level of practical theological argument, the case can be made that to understand the burnout rate among ministers and the lack of vocational fulfillment that many experience we must also recognize the decision we may have made to turn away from this theological and practical foundation for ministry in general, and preaching in particular. [That foundation being, as Barth wrote, that the sum and substance of all pastoral work is the declaration of Him who proclaims Himself.] We must consider this turn because it signifies…the introduction of a countergospel basis for ministry and means here that preaching becomes something we do, something that we must make effective. Preaching becomes the minster’s burden, a new law, the consequence of which is a kind of ministerial Pelagianism in which there is now a strictly human, albeit religious or churchly, criterion of success. Bluntly put: this turn means that it is up to the preacher to make preaching effective (158-60).

The Gospel & Pastoral Ministry

Romans 6:17

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were entrusted…

Andrew Purves, Reconstructing Pastoral Theology (pg. xvi)

Paul does not have it backward. One might think that doctrines are to be entrusted to believers, but believers are entrusted to doctrines, meaning by this the reality of God in Christ for us. It is the gospel that possesses ministry, not ministry that possesses the gospel. ...[T]he actuality of the gospel is the basis for the possibility of our ministry. It is not Jesus Christ who needs pastoral work, it is pastoral work that needs Jesus Christ. Just as faith lives not by human effort, but solely by the grace of God in, through, and as Jesus Christ, and through our incorporation into his life, so also ministry must be understood to be built not upon human striving for growth, well-being, and health but upon the grace of God which is understood now as a participation in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, on earth, in heaven, and as the one who will come again. The focus of pastoral theology, then, is on God’s extrinsic grace in Jesus Christ, on the gospel that is verbum alienum, a Word from beyond us, and to which gracious Word and to that Word alone pastoral theology and pastoral practice must submit in order to be faithful to the gospel.