“Feeding the wolves,” Bob Osburn, Mission Frontiers. He writes passionately:
The problem? Decisions are taking precedence over discipleship. In the process, there is an increasing gap between the numbers who are deciding for Christ and the numbers who are being trained as disciples. The wolves are eating the difference. Is it time to slow the pace of evangelism and to increase the pace of training and discipleship?
The statistics would seem to be on Osburn’s side. Each year, some 45 million children are born into Christian households and grow up to become Christians. At the same time, each year 15 million non-Christians convert to Christianity. At the same time, each year some 12 million Christians defect or leave the faith. (Some of these are Christian children who grow up and abandon the faith of their parents; others are backsliding converts.)
Closing this back door obviously is to be a matter of significant importance. However, I don’t think the question is an either/or challenge. We don’t need to slacken our evangelism in order to increase our discipleship. The trick is to combine the two in a way that scales.
This is in part what church planting movements are about. They typically feature home groups in which new converts are immediately discipled, and as part of that discipleship learn to share their faith with others. People are evangelized through discipleship: the two are not separated.
Discipleship that evangelizes is in effect what Jesus did. He declared the Good News, he taught the crowds, he taught his disciples, he healed the sick (side note: what kind of economic and societal boost did Jesus bring about by healing so many people?), etc. All of this needs to be integrated. Trouble arises when we separate and segment the church’s efforts and declare some greater than others.
So: should we slow the pace of evangelism to increase the pace of training and discipleship? My thought: No! But, possibly, change how evangelism is done in certain instances. Disciple believers and send them out to disciple other believers, and so spread the Kingdom in a sustainable and multiplying way.
See Also
“A discipleship revolution: The key to discipling all peoples,” Mission Frontiers, January-February 2011. In which Mission Frontiers itself focuses on the idea of multiplying discipleship. Especially look at articles like “Training for Trainers Process” (Steve Smith) and “A passionate call for maturity that reproduces” (Dawson Trotman).
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