I had a conversation with a friend the other day about what it’s like to do church planting. He asked me two questions. The first one was, “What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned church planting?”
What a great question. I didn’t even have to hesitate to answer. The biggest thing I’ve learned church planting is that church programs may be the biggest problem we face in the American church.
I know you’re thinking, “Woah, woah, woah…lots of people trust Christ because of church programs! Those are good!”
I hear you, I’m not intentionally bad mouthing the all pervasive church program. But, what I’ve come to realize is that programming has replaced discipleship which means it has short circuited the maturity process of Jesus followers. We equate maturity with attendance at our programs. If a kid comes faithfully every week to youth group then they are growing. If an adult shows up every week to the Sunday School class they are Elder material.
What I am finding out is that real growth takes place in the gaps. People need time to work out their “salvation with fear and trembling.” We need to replace the programs with discipleship. Jesus followers need to be pressed into growing in the character and competency of Jesus. Programs allow us to go through the motions, fully engaged discipleship keeps us from falling into that trap.
We must do whatever we can do to make sure that the growth process is not short circuited. We must not equate attendance with maturity, but seek out real growth as a sign of spiritual maturity taking place.
So, are all church programs inherently bad? NO! Local congregations should be organizing kingdom efforts as Christ’s ambassadors. The issue that we must wrestle is what are these programs for? What is their purpose? How do they fit into our responsibility as representatives of the King? As we create forms and structures within congregations we need to ask about how they fit into the bigger picture of the discipleship process. We need to work through the timetable for how long they last, there needs to be a planned obsolescence for all programming. This keeps us from allowing a program to become equated to maturity.
At the end of the day, it comes down purpose. We must choose to be purposeful in our actions to build mature believers. We must place discipleship as the fundamental priority and then allow that to drive the creation of programming.
The post On Discipleship appeared first on The Journal by Daniel M. Rose. It was written by Daniel M. Rose.
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