Tag Archives: Love

Unity and Making Disciples 3

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I just got off the phone with a missionary to remote China.  The struggle for the missionaries has not been the language, the food, or the culture; but rather the relational tension between the missionaries on their team.  They feel a loss of creditability in sharing the gospel because of their inability to get along with one another.  Jesus words, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” taunt them.  One wonders why unity even among committed believers is difficult.

The community of believers in which a disciple finds himself is by design.  In his sovereignty, the Holy Spirit knows with whom each disciple needs to interrelate.  As Inagrace Tieterich correctly states:  “The role of the Holy Spirit is to form loving community: to create a people for God’s name, who bear God’s likeness in their character, as that is seen in their behavior” [1]. This community designed by the Holy Spirit will not only expose each person for who he is, but it will also give each individual the opportunity to learn how to lovingly relate to other believers in order that their relationship with one another can be a witness of the gospel to the world.  My friend Bill Greene says that he knows where the Lord is at work in his life based on who the Lord places into his immediate world for him to love; those from whom he cannot escape.

Robert Bellah sees living in community as an essential component for our own growth and for the benefit of others.  He writes:  “We find ourselves not independently of other people and institutions but through them.  We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own.  We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love, and learning.  All of our activity goes on in relationships, groups associations, and communities ordered by institutional structures and interpreted by cultural patterns of meaning” [2]. It was no accident that Jesus made disciples in a group.

A couple closing thoughts:

  1. Conflict in a community of believers is not a disruption to the purpose of God but rather they are an opportunity to teach your disciples how to love each other, how to build unity and therefore expanding the kingdom of God.
  2. Your disciple’s interaction with the others in a community will help you know your disciple.  It is more difficult to get to know a person apart from community.
  3. Each individual, no matter how difficult, is an essential element in the Spirit’s building unity in the group.  (Be careful not to think, “This could be a good community if only Jessica were not on the team.” In reality, Jessica may be the key to building the unity on the team that the Lord intends.)

[1] Inagrace T. Tieterich, Missional Community, Cultivating Communities of the Holy Spirit, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North American (Grand Rapids:  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 148.

[2] Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1983), p. 84.

Unity and Making Disciples 2

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The best defense against hypocrisy is to make disciples in a small community, as Jesus demonstrated. How your disciples relate to one another in a group is an indicator of how each relates to God as an individual. The reason I disciple in community is because the only real way to know a person is based on how he interacts with others. A person can say that they love God with all their heart and that they worship him with a total abandon, but if he does not relate well with others, he is a liar (1 John 4:20).

The test to see if a person is a child of God and if he knows God is that he lovingly relates with others. “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). My relationship with God cannot be separated from my relationship with people; it is a direct indicator of my relationship with God.

Disciple making is not just an equipping course on how to do ministry, at its core disciple making is learning how to relate lovingly with God and with others. For this reason conflict and disunity among a group of disciples should not be looked upon despairingly by the discipler; but rather it is an opportunity to instruct his disciples on how to love one another.

(This is also why the family is an optimal place to make disciples. Within the home the parents have the opportunity to observe how their children relate with one another and then are able to teach the children how to love one another from a young age.)

Here’s what I do:

  1. I talk privately with each disciple about their relationship with each member of our group. We then discuss how he can affectively love each individual of the group. (We have found “The Five Love Languages” has been helpful in teaching our disciples on how to love one another.)
  2. I make sure that the group members spend one-on-one time with one another.
  3. Generally, when there is a conflict I do not address the entire group, but rather only those individuals involved.

Unity and Making Disciples 1

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It was C. Norman Kraus who said, “The life of the church is its witness. The witness of the church is its life. The question of authentic witness is the question of authentic community” [1]. Our unity and love for one another as followers of Jesus is a proof to the world that the heavenly Father sent Jesus to earth. Jesus prayed for his future disciples that “they would be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me” (John 17:23). Our unity is a proclamation of the gospel.

When the world sees our unity, it resonates with their innermost being because man was created not to live a detached existence, but rather to belong. Our unity may even make the world uncomfortable as it exposes their disconnection with others and with God.

Unity is at the heart of making disciples because it is rooted in the nature of God. Jesus came to earth to introduce the kingdom of God through demonstrating the unity he had with his own father. He said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?” (John 14:9-10). But he also worked for nearly three years to cultivate unity among his followers knowing that their relationships with one another would be a picture of the gospel to the world. He confronted anything that could cause disunity (e.g., arguing among themselves who was the greatest, Mark 9:33-34) and encouraged anything that would build unity. (“Love one another as I have loved you.” John 13:34-35)

Kevin (not his real name) was an atheist who had become friends with our group of disciples. Kevin later became a follower of Jesus and told us that the group’s love for each other was something that he had longed for his whole life. He had never had a place to belong. This love caused Kevin to re-investigate the very claims of Christianity that he had been earlier refuting.

Some closing thoughts:

  1. Be intentional in building unity among your disciples. Talk to your disciples about unity. I have worked on 4 church staffs and 2 para-church organizations and do not recall ever having a deliberate plan to cultivate unity among the believers.
  2. Believers love for one another and unity as disciples may be one of the best ways to reach atheists.
  3. Making disciples should be done in a community (as Jesus demonstrated both with the twelve disciples and the other disciples in his home town of Capernaum.) It is in the interpersonal relationships among the group that love is learned and demonstrated.

[1] C. Norman Kraus, The Authentic Witness: Credibility and Authority (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 156.

Fear and Making Disciples 2

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My fear obstructs the making of disciples. A discipler is to love his disciples, but if I am insecure it is difficult to love others. I have experienced the pain of rejection which has caused me to become fearful and leery of relationships, I even fear those who love me the most. The voices of insecurity and shame boom in my head something like this:

  • “I can’t even get my own act together, how can I help someone else?”
  • “I have disqualified myself from ministry.”
  • “If this person finds out what I am really like, they will not want to continue in this friendship.”
  • “I can’t afford to go through another relational disappointment, so I had better play it safe right now.”
  • “Why would they want to spend time with me?”

Christianity has tried to accommodate this fear by creating ministry systems and programs which require a minimal amount of relational investment. The problem with these approaches is that the kingdom of God was founded upon and still advances on sacrificial love. There is no place for fear in my life, because fear disrupts my relationship with others so that I can no longer love.

The obvious question is, “how do I remove fear from my heart?” First, I need to understand that wrong thinking is the cause of my fear. My view of God and my perception of how he views me are incorrect which has resulted in me having a fearful outlook on life.

So then, the antidote for my fear is a right understanding about the Lord’s love for me. Jesus takes the initiative to love me first, which in turn removes the fear from my heart, (because love drives out fear, 1 John 4:18) so that now I am able to love others as Jesus has demonstrated through his own death on the cross.

Fear and Making Disciples 1

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The fears that your disciple is being forced to face is an indicator of where the Lord is at work in his life. One cannot follow Jesus and fear. Jesus confronted the fear in the hearts of his own men by leading them directly into their fears. One day a lake storm came up while he was asleep in the boat; he was frantically awakened by his disciples who were afraid for their lives. He was amazed at their lack of faith, for all fear is the consequence of a void of faith (Matthew 8:24). Even today, as a man seeks to follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit will lead him into his deepest fears in order for him to face and root out those fears.

When your disciple faces his fear it can have an adverse affect on his attitude and behavior. People respond to fear differently, some lash out (possibly at you!), some withdraw, and others self-medicate. During these times of fear it is not only an opportunity for you to teach your disciple the power and love of God, it is also an important time for you to affirm your own love for him.

Here are a couple of suggestions as you walk your disciple through his fears:

  1. Pray for the faith of your disciple, that it will remain strong.
    • Luke 22:31-32 “Jesus said, ‘Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.'”
    • 1 Thess 3:10 “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.”
  2. Do not project you own fears on your disciple, nor minimize the object of their fear. We do not all fear the same things.
  3. Love and fear are incompatible. Clearly communicate both God’s love for your disciple, as well as your own.
    • 1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Love and Making Disciples

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Early in my life Ann Morrow Lindberg (Mrs. Charles Lindberg) gave words to my own discipleship experience.

“To be deeply in love is, of course, a great liberating force and the most common experience that frees…The sheer fact of finding myself loved was unbelievable and changed my world, my feelings about life and myself. I was given confidence, strength, and almost a new character. The man I was to marry believed in me and what I could do, and consequently I found I could do more than I realized.” [1]

Evangelicalism is obsessed with teaching techniques, programs, and curriculum in disciple making. We place our hope in some new program with a creative curriculum believing it will release a flood of disciple making. There is only one way and there will always only be one way to make disciples and that is to love.

Jesus sums up disciple making in a word – love. Jesus and his relationship with the twelve during their early years are recorded in the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke. John’s gospel spends little time on these years but devotes six chapters on Jesus’ last hours with his men. Judas the betrayer is out of the room. Jesus gathers the eleven together and says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13: 34). Later in the evening he adds: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. So remain in my love” (John 15:9). The Father loves Jesus, Jesus loves the disciples, and in the same form of love the disciples were to love fellow disciples.

All are created in the image of God. God is love. Jesus is God. To be a follower of Jesus is to love. Proverb 19:22 says “What a man desires is unfailing love.” To understand my behavior I recognize my need to be love and to love. A person is only spiritually complete when he receives loves and gives love. Discipleship at its core is demonstrating to another how to love and be loved.

[1] Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1929-1932”, (Wilmington: Mariner Books, 1993), Introduction.

A Servant’s Heart and Making Disciples 3

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How are disciples of Jesus made?

New disciples are birthed when I die to my life and place others ahead of myself by serving them. It is not the act of service itself that changes the disciple; rather it is the death to self occurring in the discipler that produces spiritual life in the disciple. Jesus gives us the key to kingdom multiplication in John 12 when he says to his disciples:

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” (John 12:23-26)

Paul viewed his ministry in this same way when he writes: “…so then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” (2 Corinthians 4:12). It is critical that a servant’s heart is cultivated in each disciple in order that the multiplication of the kingdom will continue. Most church growth strategies focus on expansion on a corporate or group level. Either churches begin other churches or a small group multiplies my growing numerically and then dividing. I believe that Jesus intended for kingdom expansion to be on the individual level; each disciple producing another disciple.

How long should I serve a disciple, especially when there does not seem to be any progress?

This life change and multiplication process in a disciple will take longer than you thought it would and requires the discipler to patient. The disciple is often unaware of the significance of being served by his discipler until later. Jesus served the twelve for three years and yet on the night before his crucifixion the disciples were still debating among themselves who was the greatest (Luke 22:24). Once again the Lord used this opportunity to instruct and demonstrate the kingdom value of a servant’s heart. To be a follower of Jesus is to be servant.

A Servant’s Heart and Making Disciples 2

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There is a story of Jesus and his disciples that makes me smile every time I read it. They were getting settled into the house after a road trip, and Jesus asked the disciples, “What were you guys arguing about back there on the road?” Busted! The disciples answered him with silence because he had caught them arguing about which one of them was the greatest. Here is the exact account:

“They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the road?’ But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.'” Mark 9:33-37

As followers of Jesus there is a particular “way” we are to relate to one another and live out our lives together (Luke actually calls Jesus’ new movement “The Way” in Acts). Jesus formed a group with the 12 disciples to have a relational laboratory in which to teach the values of the kingdom of God. The “way” kingdom disciples are to live is to consider others more important than themselves and to serve one another. Form any group, and there will eventually be conflict. Jesus was able to use each conflict that occurred among His disciples as a teaching point to expose the source of the conflict and also to provide them with the solution. The solution was found in the example of Jesus himself. He said to them, “…I am among you as one who serves,” (Luke 22:27) and “…just as I did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

A discipler’s instruction alone is not enough to form the kingdom values in the heart of his disciples and their community. It requires the discipler to demonstrate a servant’s heart by his actions and attitude.

In closing:

  1. It is in community that the discipler can both teach each disciple how to serve the others, and illustrate a servant’s heart by his own life.
  2. Conflict in your community is not a disruption, but rather an opportunity to move the community toward serving one another.
  3. Help each individual to identify opportunities to serve the other members in the group. (Do not assume that they are aware of opportunities to serve. Our eyes are tuned to see ways for people to serve us, rather than to see how we can serve others.)

A Servant’s Heart and Making Disciples 1

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Taylor Gardner is the man who discipled me. His life is an illustration of a servant’s heart. One evening I received news that my dad had been severely hurt in a motorcycle accident hundreds of miles away. Though late at night, Taylor drove across the city to be with me and to make sure I was alright. I will never forget that act of kindness as long as I live. Taylor went on to serve me by opening up for me ministry opportunities, even when he knew he could have done a better job on his own.

As a discipler, serving your disciple is a necessary element in the relationship in order to cultivate within him a heart to follow Jesus. Unlike the world, the discipler is to serve his disciples rather than being the one served, as exemplified by Jesus himself. He not only taught about a servant’s heart, he demonstrated servanthood by serving his disciples in daily living, such as preparing breakfast and washing their feet, and in the ultimate act of service in laying down his life for them.

Disciple making requires more than a weekly Bible study with a disciple at Starbucks; it is living life together. As a discipler I must be acquainted well enough with the life of my disciple in order to see the opportunities to serve him and his family. I must also have the time available to serve my disciple when the opportunity does arise. This is why a discipler can only disciple a limited number of people. What good is it that I am aware of a need of my disciple, but I am not able to meet that need because I am too busy?

Here are a couple of lessons I have learned along the way about serving:

  1. The opportunities to serve your disciple will come at inopportune times. It is the sacrifice you make to meet that need of your disciple that empowers the act of service with love.
  2. Look for ways to serve your disciple in simple ways (like a ride to the airport), as well as a major event (such as a move).
  3. It is the responsibility of the discipler to cultivate such a degree of comfort in the relationship that the disciple is able to share a need with the discipler.
  4. An act of service says, “I love you.”

Friendship and Making Disciples 4

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Restoration Through Discipling-Friendship

The kingdom of God is about relationships. Man was designed by God to be loved and to love. The sad news is that in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s relationships were shattered, both with God, and with one another. There were now barriers of shame, self-consciousness, and fear between individuals and between man and God.

The good news is that Jesus has reconciled man to God, so that he can once again have a loving relationship with God and with others. Jesus came to earth to demonstrate how men can lovingly relate to God and to one another, both through His sacrifice on the cross, and through the example of His 30 month relationship with His own disciples. The discipling relationship restores individuals to God’s design so that man can be in relationship with one another as the Lord intended.

Here is how a discipling-friendship works:

  • God loved me first.

    The reason I can love God and love others is because He first loved me. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). I am now able to love God and others out of the reservoir of infinite love poured into my life by God at the cross.Religion tries to manipulates men to love God, but the basis of the kingdom is that God loves us first and we are grateful responders to that love. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

  • Relational restoration takes place in the bond of a discipling-friendship.

    A discipling-friendship relationship is vital component in the kingdom because it is means by which men learn how to love and to be loved. Jesus has given us the example of how to love by the laying down of His life for us. In the same way I am to love others by laying down my life for them. It is in a discipling-friendship that I experience being loved and then also having the opportunity to love another.