One of our best small group leaders, a lawyer by profession, approached me after a Sunday service. He said, “Do you have any curriculum suggestions on the topic of racism for a small group study this next semester?”
Our nation had just gone through a wave of civil unrest in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. The 44-year-old black man had been murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. The whole country was feeling the racial tension, so I understood where my leader’s interest was coming from.
But our staff team had just decided on a church-wide, integrated series for the fall on the topic of discipleship. The timing was awkward because we had not yet communicated this to our group leaders. The design of an integrated series is to integrate the Sunday service teaching with the small group study interaction during the week. I knew it would disappoint my friend, but I asked him if he could put the burning race issue on hold for a while so his group could participate in the integrated series.
As I walked away from the encounter I felt badly because I knew I’d dampened his enthusiasm, and I also felt my answer was kind of lame. “We want you to put the hot topic issue of our time on hold because we/I’m really excited about discipleship.” That was a bad leadership moment if ever there was one!
Then, I remembered something I’d heard at a leadership conference from Juliet Fundt (daughter of Alan Fundt of Candid Camera fame). She said leaders often miss the mark with their people because they focus exclusively on the what and how but often neglect the why! Simon Sinek has popularized the idea with a TED Talk, titled Start with Why, which has had over 63 million hits.1
Juliet went on to teach us a technique she uses in her consulting business with executives called “laddering up”. You keep laddering up by asking why we are doing this and you don’t stop until you get to the top why answer.2
I took out a pad and began to write:
Why are we doing an integrated series on discipleship?
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Because we want to drill down on the topic and understand it better.
Why do we want to understand discipleship better?
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Because we want to make more and better disciples.
Why do we want to make more and better disciples?
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Because discipleship was Jesus’ great and final commission!
Why was it Jesus’ great and final commission?
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Because he wanted to use the church as his hands and feet to restore the world to its original intention.
Why did he want to restore the world to its original intention?
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Because he wanted to tear down the barriers that divide us (i.e., racism) and bring peace on earth and human flourishing!
Did you feel a growing sense of excitement, energy, and motivation as we “laddered up” to the big why?
Our church culture has so individualized the gospel (i.e., me being forgiven and me going to heaven) that we’ve lost sight of the big picture that Jesus’ salvation includes the healing of the entire planet, including issues like racism, human trafficking, and corruption in government.
Dallas Willard makes this same point when he writes:
“Widespread transformation of character through wise discipleship to Christ can transform our world. It can transform the structural evils (i.e., racism, human trafficking, etc.) that have always dominated humankind and now threaten to destroy the world.”3
Note two things: (1) The immediate threat—“structural evils…that threaten to destroy the world” and (2) The solution—“widespread transformation of character through wise discipleship to Christ.”
So, what’s the problem? In a nutshell, we’re not producing the right kind of disciples. We’re suffering from what has been called “the discipleship dilemma.” Disciples, by definition, are followers of Christ, not just converts (i.e., decisions). They are not just nominal (in name only) professors of the Christian faith but people who are being transformed into Christ-likeness.
Why aren’t there more Christ-like people in our world? Because the church has failed (and I include myself in that sweeping indictment). It’s not because of a lack of professing Christians in our country (200+ million according to a 2019 Pew Research Poll)4, it’s the lack of mature practicing Christians!
If the church were producing Christ-like disciples, the American landscape would be populated by men and women with the moral courage to oppose the evils of our day. There would be self-giving, sacrificial, others-centered people meeting the practical needs of the least and the last in our society. There would be a formidable block of our citizenry that would be color-blind, respectful, wise, winsome, honest in our political discourse, and persuasive change agents in the public square. We would be the “salt and light” of society that Jesus envisioned in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:13-15).
But that is hardly the case. One Barna survey found that less than 1% of Senior Pastors felt we were doing “a good job of making disciples of new and young believers.”5 Consider the disconnect between what Jesus said was the primary mission of the church and how the church is actually performing.
Bill Hull, Co-Founder of The Bonhoeffer Project, calls it a “failure of product.”6 If a Ford plant came out with a quarterly report saying, “Absenteeism is low, morale is high—we had a wonderful company picnic, but we did not produce any cars this quarter.”, we would call that a failure of product. In other words, you can do any number of things, and excel in many good activities, but if you fail in your primary mission for existence you have failed!
That’s why TBP exists—to help the church rediscover biblical disciple making and to restore it as the core mission of the church. To turn leaders into disciple makers.
Could the church and a renewal of biblical discipleship really be the answer to the social ills that currently engulf us? Do we really believe, as Dallas Willard argues, that “widespread transformation of character through wise discipleship to Christ can transform the world?”
Again, Dallas Willard suggests, that discipleship was precisely Jesus’ strategy to rescue the world.
“If you read the Great Commission, you may not realize that it was about world revolution. If you think it is about planting churches, as important as that is, if you think it is about evangelization, as that is often understood – no, no, it is about a world revolution promised through Abraham, come to life in Jesus and living on in his people up to today. That is what our hearts hunger for even when we don’t know how to approach it or how to go about it.”6
Here’s a simple four-step strategy, outlined by Bill Hull, of what that revolution might look like.7
STEP 1: THE CHURCH EXISTS TO MAKE DISCIPLES.
Disciple making is not a program of the church it’s the purpose for which the church exists. C.S. Lewis put it this way.
“The church exists for nothing else but to draw men to Christ, to make them little Christs. If they’re not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose.”8
The church needs to recapture disciple making as its core mission.
STEP 2: DISCIPLES ARE GOD’S DELIVERY SYSTEM TO BLESS THE WORLD!
As Archbishop William Temple put it:
“The church is the only organization in the world that exists for its non-members.”
Why? Because its founder and teacher was, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “a man for others.” That means his followers will also be others-centered.
STEP 3: HIS PLAN WAS TO RELEASE CHRIST-LIKE MEN AND WOMEN INTO EVERY VOCATIONAL DOMAIN OF SOCIETY.
It’s a brilliant 5th column strategy to create a resistance force embedded behind enemy lines, to overthrow the dominant power (i.e., Satan). Imagine mature, Christ-like men and women, infiltrating the world of government, media, education, business, health care, science and technology, the trades, arts, and entertainment as salt and light transforming our culture!
As E.M. Bounds famously said, “God is not looking for better methods but for better men and women.”
STEP 4: TRUE DISCIPLESHIP WILL CHANGE THE WORLD.
Indeed it already has. Take just one example—John Wesley (1703-1791) living in 18th century England was one of the most effective disciple makers in church history. He organized his followers into transformative small groups, with high levels of truth, transparency, commitment, and accountability. His followers became known as Methodists because they followed the “methods” of Scripture! One author titled his biography, England—Before and After Wesley, so great was his impact on England.
This plan has been dubbed, “The Divine Conspiracy.”9 So simple, yet, so masterful, radical, and profound only God could have designed it. Most amazing of all – he invites you and me to be part of it!
My failure to address the why question in my conversation with the small group leader in his question about race, is symptomatic of our larger failure as a church. We’ve failed to connect the dots and show how our inability to make disciples is at the root of many of our societal problems.
May God help us to capture the why behind the gospel. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16 KJV).
FOOTNOTES
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Sinek, Simon. 2010. “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” YouTube Video. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4. (See also: Sinek, Simon, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (London: Portfolio/Penguin, 2009).
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Juliet Fund, Laddering Up Your Leadership. Presented at The Global Leadership Summit, August 14, 2020.
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Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 1988).
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Measuring Religion in Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, Pew Research Center, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/01/14/measuring-religion-in-pew-research-centers-american-trends-panel.
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New Research on the State of Discipleship, Barna Group, December 1, 2015, https://www.barna.com/research/new-research-on-the-state-of-discipleship.
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Bill Hull, Conversion and Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), p. 19.
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Bill Hull, Four Step Strategy to Revolution.
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C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, NY: Macmillan), 1952, p. 30.
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Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins), 1998.
This post originally appeared at: Start with Why — The Bonhoeffer Project