Disciple Making Principle #1 – The Core Mission

Dear Discipleship-first Friends,

Can we talk to you about making disciple-making the core focus? We’ll need to start the conversation here… making disciple-making the core mission of the church. Let’s be clear, we’re not saying disciple-making is the only thing the church does. I have friends who will talk about how God wants us to worship, so glorifying God has got to be the thing. Or other people might say it’s fellowship or social justice. All of these things are important, but they come out of a focus on Jesus and what it means to be a disciple and make disciples. The bottom line is… disciple-making is the core mission of the local church, and we will not be effective in disciple-making in our church unless we realize it is the core mission.

Yeah, I think so many times, (Bobby Harrington, I know you and I have seen this over and over again), as we’ve been working with different churches across the country or across the world—but disciple-making ends up being a supplement or it gets very little actual time and energy.

We had a team of ours recently who did a study with a lot of pastors and leaders and churches. They basically asked them some hard questions and said, “Hey, how many hours a week are you or your staff intentionally, relationally discipling people?” And for many of them, it was zero to five hours a week that was actually spent on real disciple-making, which is super sad—I mean, Jesus literally said, “I want you to go make disciples.” That’s the core calling and the core mission that Jesus gave us.

So, it must become the main thing that we’re focused on. I have a dear friend, Jason Ishmael, and he says this a lot, “I just want to hijack every ministry in my church and leverage it for the sake of disciple-making.” And that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about. We’re really talking about making sure that the main thing is the main thing, and Jesus has given us the main call and focus of really going out and making disciples.

One of the ways that I find very helpful to think about this is I take a couple of passages– one would be Matthew 28:18-20, where Jesus said to his disciples before he was to ascend back to heaven, “Therefore go and make disciples.” The Greek text emphasizes making disciples—so how do you do that? The passage goes on to say… “baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and then teaching them to obey everything I’ve commanded you, and I’m with you until the end of the age.” These are Jesus’ last words, and it really helps us to see that there’s two ends to it. There’s the front end, which is often called evangelism—evangelism is really just discipling people who don’t know Jesus as Savior, King, and Lord. And then there’s maturity, which is learning to obey all of His commands.

When people ask me, “What is the core mission of the church?”—there are several passages I like to look at, but I really like Colossians 1:28-29. Let me read them with you, because the Apostle Paul is describing his ministry to the Colossian church. Notice what he says: “He [talking about Jesus] is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom”—catch this—”so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.” Amen. “To this end” [maturity in Christ, being more like Jesus] “to this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” So, when we think of those two things—one is reaching lost people, often described as evangelism, and second, helping those who know Christ to become more and more like Christ—both of those are caught up in this mission of being disciples and making disciples. And that would be the core mission of the local church.

I absolutely love this, because the truth is, friends, I think it’s so easy with all the stuff we do in the Christian world and all the busyness of life and the Sunday morning services and all our programs, sometimes we lose sight of the core thing that Jesus has given us. And it is really time for us to come back to that first-century blueprint. Many people are talking about the new wave of disciple-making across the world and disciple-making movements. But this isn’t a new thing—I mean, it’s a 2000-year-old thing that really is just refocusing once again on the things that Jesus has called us into.

And so honestly, as you are reading this, it’s really important for you to think about two things. I think number one, as a church: Has your church lost focus of the core mission, or are you really focused on the things that Jesus has called you to? And then I also think we need to look at that personally and we’ve got to look in the mirror and ask, “Okay, is this my core mission as well?”

Because Jesus has not only called us programmatically (I can’t even say that word—there we go, that’s a hard word to say—programmatically, see, I can’t even say it again), but it’s not just about the programs, it’s not just about Sunday morning, it’s not just about all the things that we’re doing corporately, but it’s also the mission that He’s given us individually in order to live for Him and to be on mission with him. At the risk of sounding redundant, we’ve got to look at it organizationally, as well as personally and make sure that the main thing is really the main thing.

One of the ways I like to describe it, and I think this is important, is that I want to be a genuine disciple. Jesus rescued me, and my goal is to honor Him. I want to be like Him. We use this definition… a disciple is somebody who’s following Jesus, being changed by Jesus, and joining the mission of Jesus. And I want to be a disciple. And when I really am like Jesus, I’m going to do what Jesus did, and that is to make disciples. So be encouraged to make this a focus in your ministry in your local church.

CLICK HERE to watch the Principle #1 video now