Disciples Making Disciples

(This is taken from a sermon Colin Marshall, co-author of The Trellis and the Vine, gave at Foothill Bible Church on October 13, 2010.)

What’s next for our church?
So what’s next?  I think that’s what some of you are asking.  What’s next?  You are a godly congregation sitting under the word of God.  You come from a wonderful tradition and heritage of Bible churches. You love God, you love each other.  You are wondering what’s next in a really good way. You’ve had a five year plan and you’ve been able to see God achieve a lot of things that you prayed for and worked towards, so what’s next?  What do we do?
What I want to say upfront is there is no silver bullet, there is no magic program.  One of the reasons I love coming and spending a few days with churches is I don’t have a program, I don’t want to tell you what we’ve been doing in Sydney and Australia. I can raise ideas for you, but there’s no point just trying to translate something that we’re doing from our kind of churches to what you’re doing here. We don’t have a program to give you, which is actually very quite liberating to go back, to keep going back to the Bible, to keep going back to the gospel, keep going back to the Word of God and working it out from there. That’s what I love doing.
In order to answer “what’s next for our churches?”, we have to ask (this is a very exciting question, but a daunting question in some ways), what is God doing in Southern California and the world?

What is God doing?
Growing the gospel
Colossians 1:5-6 “…the gospel which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth.”
The gospel is news, it is an announcement of what God has done, it is not primarily an announcement about you and what He’s done for you, but what God has done.  So what God is doing in the world is growing the gospel.  He has been doing that now for 2000 years through people like you.  And this word is going around the world and Southern California making disciples and building Christ’s church.  It’s a very powerful word.  When Christ sent out his disciples with the gospel, it was a very powerful command when you look at what’s happened over the last 2000 years in the life of the church.
The gospel is the news of truth and grace.  The Lord Jesus is the only way to the Father.  It is the one truth.  The Father sent the Lord Jesus, put Him on the cross and the execution all taking the initiative for you.  There’s no program, there’s no syllabus, curriculum, new thing.  It’s just the old thing of the gospel and God bearing fruit.  We’ve got to start there, there’s nothing special, this is the old news, nothing new I bring you, only the gospel.

Growing the Vine
The vine is doing very well back home which inspired me to use this metaphor in The Trellis and the Vine.  So gospel ministry is growing the vine (people).  We need supporting structures and organization (trellis) to make that happen.  Some organizing has to happen no matter how simple the ministry is.  But many churches around the world have lost the vine.  They just have the trellis.  I have six trellises at home in my garden and only three of them have vines to my embarrassment, and I’ve got to try and grow some vines on the other trellises.  Some churches look like my three vineless trellises.
Sometimes, though, the trellis can take over.  You just have this minimal vine work, gospel preaching and Bible reading happening, but lots of activities, and programs, and churches to get people on board.  The vine starts fading away, but the buildings are here, and the programs are there, and the website is there and it looks like everything is happening but just gradually the vine is withering on the trellis.

What’s next for our churches? The trellis answer
The trellis answer is property, programs, polity, and professionals.  If you think that structures and organization are going to grow the vine, these are things you are going to focus on.
Property – Property is both a blessing and a curse.  The danger is it will shape our priorities.  Ministry will become counting the numbers who come to things.  How can we fill it?  How can we use everything and not have it underutilized?   We run more and more programs and events to get people in and the worst possible case is that we’ll start getting more and more events that have no Bible in them just because we’ll get more people that way.  We’ll provide more programs, more activities, more sports, more events, and more concerts.  The danger is you think success is filling all your buildings.  That’s not success.  Success is growing the vine and then God calling people through the preaching of the gospel.
It also is a curse in the sense that ministry only happens on campus. Ministry must happen in homes, neighborhoods, one to one at coffee shops, in your work place, and not just at the church campus.
Programs – Do you make yourselves so busy with programs that you, together and as individuals, can’t really focus on people the way you want to? There can be so many events on so many things and some overlap of programs.  It’s worth thinking about how to rationalize all of that and just to have the minimum number of programs and events to actually help you connect with people.  So thinking about programs is a trellis answer rather than a vine answer.
Polity – By polity I mean focusing on getting the right people in charge.  This is the idea that the elders and pastors are responsible for the growth of all the work. Now I want to challenge those of you who are elders and leaders to give the freedom to try new things.  Don’t just keep arguing for the status quo. Don’t get preoccupied with your position and your authority.  You are liberators rather than authoritarians.  Liberate people to preach the gospel.  Train them and equip them and send them out.  It’s going to be messy and chaotic.  It won’t be neat.  So the elders have to be not holding on to the tradition of men but to the tradition of the gospel.  We must train and release people.
Professionals – This is the view that we outsource everything.  We get the professional in to do everything.  We think of church like that and it’s a consumer kind of view of church.  That is a trellis answer as to what is next.  We get the paid pastors and ordained ministers and pastoral staff and a few others and they do everything.  That’s not church life.  We are a family in this together.

What’s next for our churches?  How do we grow the vine? The Vine Answer
The vine answer is proclaiming the gospel.  The ministry of the vine is to present to each other the Word of God in all its fullness.
Proclaiming the Gospel
Colossians 1:23 –“if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved from the hope of the gospel that you have heard.”  The answer is always gospel growth.
So what we do in growing the vine is proclaiming this gospel just like the first apostles, like Paul.  And we are…
Presenting everyone perfect (complete) in Christ
“We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.” (Col. 1:28)
This is the goal of Christian ministry, whether you’re doing it one to one, small groups, college group, whatever you’re doing, the aim is presenting everyone perfect.  This means perfect in the sense of fully accepted by God, not perfect in terms of no sin anymore, but complete, and full, not needing religion, not needing to save our souls.
Moving people to the right (from the dominion of darkness to the Kingdom of the Son)
Many are in the dominion of darkness.  Some are very far away and alienated and angry with God.  If you think about it, you know 100 people you see regularly who are not Christians: hairdressers, dentists, the doctor, insurance, accountant, work colleagues, neighbors, and homeschoolers.  You know a lot of people.  Together as a fellowship you know hundreds or thousands of people, and you see them every week and you talk to them.  Talk to them about the gospel!
And under God some are converted, they become Christians, and they become reconciled to God and they are no longer enemies.  Marvelous moment.  And if you’re all following up people like that there are hundreds of people being followed up with the gospel all at once.  It’s a great vision, isn’t it?
After they become Christians, we help people through the struggles and as they struggle we are training them to be Christians, but we are also training them to share the gospel with others and to share their lives with others.  We are training each other in the gospel and to be vinegrowers through the struggles of life.
Disciples Making Disciples
To whom is the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 addressed?  “It’s only the missionaries.”  It’s been taken like that far too much.  “Or maybe the full time pastor, or maybe the elders.”  No, Jesus is addressing them as disciples.  You have the same relationship to Jesus as the apostle Paul and Peter and John and our Pastors.  We all have the same relationship to Jesus as disciple and master.  There’s no clericalism here.  There’s no clergy-laity kind of distinction here. Got the idea?  It’s to all of us.  And one of the ways you see that is because one of the commands that we are to teach everybody else is to make disciples.  So it’s sort of a circular thing.  If you’re going to teach new disciples to obey all the commands of Jesus, one of those commands is to make disciples. So you can’t actually get out of it.  What I’m pushing on you is everyone being involved in discipleship in your church life.  The comforting thing is that He is with us all the days, to the end of the age.  And we need to know that.  It’s His power. He will strengthen us through the struggles, to be making disciples even through the doubts.
The role of the pastor
Your pastors then are your trainers.  They’re not just the ones who do it all, they’re the ones who help you do it.  And when they’re preaching on Sunday or leading the classes in the adult Sunday schools and so on, they’re training you not just to know Christ and the Scriptures, but to pass it on to others.  That’s the vision of disciple making.
Disciple making is a Bible reading movement. 
We are creating as many opportunities as possible in the big gatherings, in church, in the small groups, in the one-to-one, to read the Bible to each other.  Your equipment is the Word of God.
Do a deep work in the lives of a few and let God multiply the work
Train all of your leaders well.  Don’t have small groups, women’s groups, men’s groups, and house bible studies if you’re not going to train the leaders in conviction, character, and competence.  Deepen conviction, deepen godly character, and to be really good at the skills of teaching (competence).
Don’t adopt this kind of thinking if you’re not willing to go deep with your leaders.  Those of you who are leading groups, or in the future will lead groups, my personal view is your pastor should be inviting you to some kind of leadership training.  And you need to agree to that.  And be willing not to lead unless you can give the time to proper training, whatever form that takes.
This is not the only way to do it, but the way Jacquie and I did it was to give some initial training to a home group leader, sometimes for a few months, sometimes for a whole year, then when they’re leading a group, we would meet with all the leaders monthly.  And so, at least ten times a year, we would get together with groups of leaders in our home finding out how they’re going, keep on teaching them, help them with pastoral problems in their groups.  Otherwise the small group ministry would all kind of fritter away out there and no one knew what was happening, and the leaders got lost and groups would go on for thirty years and be unwilling to invite anybody in, and they really became sub-Christian kind of groups.  This happens if you don’t have initial training and then on-going coaching and fellowship of the leaders.  So do a deep work in the lives of a few and let God multiply the work, and what that does is the growing of the vine.

What is a church going to look like full of vine growers?

1. The gospel is front and center – matter of life and death.
2. The call to discipleship is clear – am I willing to live and die for Jesus and the gospel?
3. Prayer increases as our weakness in ministry is keenly experienced.
4. The mission of church becomes clearer – to preach the gospel and make disciples.
5. A new level of partnership is forged between the minister and the congregation.
6. Conflict over non-essentials is reduced (color of the carpets, etc).

Copyright Vinegrowers 2010