The Role of Friendships in Making Disciples #1

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Lewie Clark

Friendships are a mirror of who a person is. If you want to understand your disciple, get to know his friends. Your disciple has chosen his friends and his friends have chosen him.

Parents, you should not be nearly as concerned about friends being a bad influence on your child as who your son or daughter chooses as a friend because the choice of friends is a reliable indicator of the inner man of your child. Another window into your child’s heart is who chooses your son or daughter as a friend, because like attracts like. Children know how to deceive their parents, teachers, coaches, youth pastors, and disciplers but friendships expose a person for who he really is.

Often when I point out this friendship mirror principle to my disciples it makes them uncomfortable. One guy recently said to me, “But I don’t want to become like my friends!” even though he was already exactly like his friends. It is comfortable to live in denial believing that I am in a better condition than my friends, when in reality friendships are an accurate diagnostic tool for my heart condition.

Love Limits

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Lewie Clark

Love limits. When a man says “I do” to his wife, he says “I don’t” to all other women and when a couple decides to have children they choose a lifestyle that is limiting in comparison to their childless friends. Recently I attended my nephew’s wedding. Both sets of his grandparents are still living whose combined years of marriage is 114. I was moved at the sight of a room full of their direct descendants who all love and enjoy one another. We willingly set margins around our family so that love will multiply to future generations. To neglect a marriage leads to divorce and to neglect a child results in a wounded person, which both break the love continuum.

Christianity accepts the setting of boundaries to effectively love our families but for some reason we do not apply that same principle to our ministries. I can only love a limited number of people, so to choose a disciple making approach to ministry (which in a word is love) means to limit the number of people to whom I can minister. To not limit the number of people in my ministry is to actually hinder the gospel multiplication process, but if I can remain disciplined and love my few disciples well, in the long run there will be a continual multiplication of love for generations to come.

Disciple Making and Children #2

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Lewie Clark

Recently I was with a Jewish couple that had converted from Judaism to Christianity. One difficulty in the transition was the home life. Judaism had provided for them a template for a Jewish home (e.g., keeping the Sabbath, Passover, and feasts, etc.), whereas Christianity gave them little help on what a Christian home should look like. (Other than they were told to be sure and get their children into Sunday school and youth group.) As Voddie Baucham points out, Christianity’s approach to ministry communicates to parents: “leave the spiritual training of your children to the professions.” [1]

God gave the Israelite parent the responsibility for the spiritual training of their child. To be an Israelite meant to train children for a lifetime-not only were they expected to teach their own children but also their grandchildren. “…teach them to your children and to their children after them.” (Deuteronomy 4:9-10)

Since God is familial (Father-Son-Holy Spirit) the best environment for a child to learn and experience the nature of God is in a family. Are there benefits for a child in attending Sunday school, children’s ministry, vacation bible school, and youth group? Sure. But the best context for him to experience sacrificial love, belonging, grace, and a servant’s heart is in a home. Here, day after day, year after year, a child learns what it means to belong in a family just as the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are in perfect union.

[1] Voddie Baucham http://media.sermonindex.net/15/SID15607.mp3

Disciple Making and Children #1

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Lewie Clark

Around 80% of the children who are raised in an evangelical church will leave Christianity at college [1]. If the number were 50% we should be concerned, but at 80% alarmed. Yet churches seem to be more concern about their numerical growth than they do about losing their own kids. Churches spend thousands of dollars on church growth conferences, consultants, and materials searching for the key to their expansion, while spending comparatively few resources to help parents with their marriages or on how to disciple their children.

In many cases if a married couple volunteers for ministry in their church, they will be required to have some type of training and be under the apprenticeship of an experienced leader for a period of time. But when a couple announces to that same church that they are expecting their first child they will given little or no training on how to raise that child.

There is something inconsistent about strategizing on how to reach our community and the world when we are unable to reach our own children.

[1] Glen Schultz, Kingdom Education; 2002 Southern Baptist Council on the Family.

Generational Love

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Lewie Clark

Lois Synder died this year, she was 96. Mrs. Synder taught my 2^nd grade Sunday school class and directed our Christmas pageant each year at the Christian Fellowship Church. I attended her memorial service with my mom and dad in the same auditorium where in 1952 Lois had decided to follow Jesus. When the Synder family walked into the service that afternoon I was moved. Before us stood 3 generations who follow Jesus nearly 60 years after Lois’ conversion.

In the service family and friends shared their memories of Lois. It was in these stories that we discovered the reason why her family still follows Jesus today: Lois loved well. She so loved her children and grandchildren in their formative years that this love overflowed to her great grandchildren. Not only did Lois love her family, but each week she would load her car with teaching materials and go share the gospel with children living in the inner-city.

Lois’ seemingly endless ability to love others flowed from her understanding of God’s love for her grounded in the cross of Jesus. God’s love for me will not be found in my circumstances, my heritage, my abilities, or my position, rather it is anchored in the truth that Jesus died for me. “. . . God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

God shows me how to love others in Jesus’ death for me. John writes: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 1 John 3:16-17” Once I begin to grasp the depth of God’s love for me, I am then able to love others in sacrificing my life for them. It will cost me to love my mate, my children, my friends, and my disciples.

How silly a question it would seem if we could ask Lois today, “Was it worth it?” I can only imagine the joy in her heart in seeing 3 generations loving God and loving one another.

Measuring Results by Generations

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Lewie Clark

“Begin with the end in mind”[1], so says Stephen Covey. The end objective determines not only how I do something but also how long I will do it. To make a disciple of Jesus requires a loving relationship over an extended period of time. Disciple making thinks in terms of the impact that my life will have on the generations to come rather than just on immediate results.

A generational perspective comes from God. He instructed the Israelites to not only train their own children but also their grandchildren (Deuteronomy 4:9). In other words, an Israelite was expected to train children throughout his entire life. The Lord also warns the Israelites that their sin would cast a long family shadow darkening generations to come. Their behavior today would affect their children, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren, and even their great great grandchildren (Exodus 34:7).

In contrast, much of Christianity today values rapid multiplication and instantaneous movements. We view a rapid growing church as being blest by God. The faster the growth, the larger the numbers, the more blest by God, or so the reasoning goes. The 3000 converts after Peter’s message in Acts chapter 2 is a favorite proof text. This is why most church staff positions focus on the worship service as they seek to replicate a Pentecost type movement through what has been called “high impact services”. I visited a church this week that had four staff members whose jobs revolved around the Sunday morning service and yet their small group coordinator was a part-time volunteer. We revere the pastor or evangelist who is able to produce a Pentecost type stirring, notwithstanding the fact that not even Paul achieved comparable results.

Though spectacular, movements can lack the depth of relationship and character necessary to be sustained from one generation to the next. Generational sustainability necessitates a deep love and a sacrificial longevity that a rapid multiplication does not require. Only a sacrificial love is strong enough to bridge the generations.

[1] Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), p. 97.

Sin and Your Disciple

Posted on May 13, 2010 by Lewie Clark

Sin is the principal issue in your disciple’s life. Man was designed to love and to be loved, sin prevents both. It has estranged him from God and alienated him from others. It has opened his life to the dark force of shame; a shame that prevents him from drawing near to God and prohibits him from building authentic relationships. When man lives a detached existence his behavior becomes unstable, erratic, and often self-destructive as he explores ways to attach to others and to belong.

As a discipler, one of your first concerns should be to gain an understanding of your disciple’s perspective of his sin, the cross of Jesus, and his relationship to it. There are even those who grew up in Christian homes and gospel centered churches that have not been able to apply the gospel to their lives. Pride and disbelief will cause your disciple to make himself the exception to the rule by believing that he has sinned beyond the patience of God. He must humble himself and acknowledge that he can do nothing to pay for his sin. His forgiveness is a gift from God because of his mercy and love.

The truth of the good news of Jesus is best learned and experienced in the context of a loving relationship with a parent or a discipler. The parent/discipler provides an environment of love and forgiveness which illustrates the gospel for the disciple as he explores the gospel and applies its truth to his sin.

A couple of closing thoughts:

Most people (including believers) will never have anyone talk with them about their sin and the application of the gospel to their lives. If you do not discuss it with your child or disciple probably no one will.
Just because someone has “made a profession of faith” at some point in his life does not mean he believes he is forgiven by God today.
Your disciple’s behavior, rather than his words, is an indicator of his understanding of the gospel. (Is your disciple comfortable with God? Does your disciple love others well? Does your disciple receive love well? Is his life style contradictory?)
Our God is love. Our message of the gospel is love. Our love for one another is an expression of the gospel. Love is a reliable test of a person’s understanding of the gospel.

Hospitality: A Starting Point For Making Disciples

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Lewie Clark

Hospitality is a good starting place for making disciples. It provides for you an opportunity to serve your disciple and to carve out a safe place for him to belong. Serving and making followers of Jesus are inseparable. Jesus told his disciples:

Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:43-45)

Hospitality not only allows your disciple to observe service to others, it also provides him an opportunity to become part of the serving process; whether it is cutting the bread, setting the table, or taking drink orders. Teaching your disciple hospitality is an important component for the spreading of the gospel through serving others.

Henri Nouwen writes:

How does healing take place? Many words, such as care and compassion, understanding and forgiveness, fellowship and community, have been used for the healing task of the Christian minister. I like to use the word hospitality, not only because it has such deep roots in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but also, and primarily, because it gives us more insight into the nature of response to the human condition of loneliness. Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler. Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights.

Why Hospitality?

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Lewie Clark

Making disciples of Jesus is best done in the context of your home, whether for your natural children or your spiritual children. Disciples are the children of God; therefore the home is an ideal environment for a disciple to experience, (1) the parental nature of God, (2) what it means to belong to a family, (3) how to love and serve others, and (4) how to attach to brothers and sisters. Children can witness what it means to follow Jesus by observing the daily lives of their parents in various circumstances.

In the West we tend to compartmentalize our lives, often separating our ministry from our home. Even when ministry is conducted in the home, it tends to be done as a “study” or “meeting” rather than being a family gathering. (In the many small group training conferences that I have attended, never did “family” or “a meal” enter the discussion. A house was only a convenient place to hold a meeting.)

Some Benefits of Hospitality:

Hospitality provides you an opportunity to serve your disciple. (Serving is another way to say “I love you”.)
Hospitality opens up your life to your disciple. (A person’s home tells a lot about a person. I have been in very few homes of pastors or church leaders.)
Hospitality provides your disciple an opportunity to observe how you relate to your wife and children.
Hospitality provides an opportunity for your children to serve others and to learn how to share.
Hospitality provides an opportunity for your children to love others and for others to love your children. (A hug from a 4 year old will melt any heart.)
Hospitality provides an opportunity for your children to observe how you minister and interact with others.
Hospitality provides a place for your disciple to belong.
Hospitality provides a place for your disciple to serve. (Help cook, help clean up, help with the children)
Hospitality provides you an opportunity for you to observe how your disciple relates to others.

How To View Your Disciple

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Lewie Clark

The lens through which I view others communicates louder than my words or actions. This is why the lens through which I view my disciple must be correct in order for him to experience the love that brings life change. As a wrong prescription for glasses effects how a patient sees everything, so a wrong or incomplete perspective effects how I view others. People can sense how another views them, so I must rigorously evaluate the lens through which I see each of my disciples. I can say the right words and do the right things, but if my lens is incorrect, my words and actions will ring hollow.

My lens must correspond with God’s view of my disciple, which is a perspective of family love. The heavenly Father has adopted my disciple into the family of God. He is now a son of God; she is a daughter of God. He is my brother; she is my sister. The Father has engrafted him into his family at great cost demonstrating his value to God.

Paul and John’s perspective of the brothers and sisters enthusiastically comes through their letters. Paul writes:

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his comparable great power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:18)

John writes:

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1)

The apostles’ perspective reminds the disciples of the great love, kindness and grace that the Father has given to them.

Imitating Jesus

The blog of a disciple maker

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