I’ve been reading a book called “Building a Discipling Culture” by Mike Breen, so most of this post can be attributed to his ideas being processed in my head. The statement he makes in the first chapter that caught my attention and got me going on this is:

“If you make disciples, you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples.”

It seems simple but it’s incredibly profound. I’ve been involved in church ministry for over 25 years. I’ve seen attempted church plants fail more often than they succeed, and I think I finally understand why… …it is because we have gone into them with the goal of  “building a church” instead of “just making disciples”.

This begs the question then of “what does it mean to “make disciples”? what does that look like? Or better yet what SHOULD that look like? When I have asked that question in most of the churches I have been involved with, the answer I typically here is “we have a program for making disciples” followed by a description of some kind of class, or program that involves mostly teaching scripture (which is good) and perhaps some short term mission project (which is great). And it ultimately boils down to a bunch of hoops we try to get new believers to jump through, after which we label them “discipled”.

Compare that with what Jesus did with the 12 that followed him. He did some teaching, (check √) He sent them on short term mission trips, (check √) so what else did he do that we are missing? In my experience, and what Mike Breen seems to be getting at in his book, is that what we are most often missing is the “doing life together” part that Jesus did. It has similarities to how a healthy family operates. Investing time with each other in ways that allow one and all to see not only our successes but also our failures as leaders, as we learn how to navigate the ever changing culture together. It involves an uncomfortable level of transparency and accountability, and perhaps hardest of all humility. Perhaps what it comes down to in the final analysis is that there is absolutely no room for pride of any kind in healthy, effective leadership. And ultimately…healthy, effective leadership is essential to effective discipleship.