FAQs of Disciple-Making

Note from the editor: Share your experiences and questions related to disciple-making in the comments portion below or on Facebook. We’ll share your stories here with others, and address your most common questions.

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Ray L. asks: “What’s the best way to present the gospel without being too forceful or raw while at the same time not sugar coating anything?”

This is a common, yet good question among many believers today. The question is good because it brings together two very necessary realities when it comes to sharing the gospel: love for God and love for neighbor (Matt. 22:37-39). Love for God in that we should eagerly desire not to “sugar coat” the gospel, but proclaim it because of the glorious God at the center of it. The question communicates love for neighbor through the desire to share the gospel in a way that is sensitive to those around us (which shows concern for them), rather than dismissive of those with whom we share (which shows concern for ourselves).

I’d like to offer four key biblical truths to help us think through this important question. Certainly more could be added, but these should serve as a good starting point:

Foundations
Foundational Truth 1: The gospel is not popular. “…but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles…”(1 Cor. 1:23). We need to recover a Christian world-view that understands that, in some way, the gospel will be rejected as offensive, foolish, or both to everyone who has either not been born again by the Spirit of God, or who does not have the Spirit already beginning the miracle of the new birth within them. We shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that we could share this good news in the most perfect way possible and still be rejected apart from the Spirit’s work in our sharing and in their hearts.

Foundational Truth 2: We must be dependent through prayer. “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people…This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:1-4). Pray. This is the next logical step that flows from the last truth. We are dependent upon our Father to change the hearts of those around us, through the work of his Spirit, from hearts that see the gospel as foolish and offensive to hearts that see the gospel as wise and precious. What might happen if we joined the Father in what he is already doing by being a people desperate in prayer everyday for those around us who desperately need Jesus?

Foundational Truth 3: We must be walking in love. “...walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us…” (Eph. 5:2). We must love the people we are engaging. This may seem obvious, but loving sacrificially is essential. If the person in front of you doesn’t feel like you care enough for them to sacrifice time, money, pride, etc., then how do you expect them to believe that Jesus cared enough to have sacrificed his own life so they could live? We are the living witnesses to the life of Christ. We model the suffering servant who sacrificially loved us, by sacrificially loving others so that our lives would affirm our mouths in sharing the gospel. Otherwise, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:1-2, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” Without love for the person in front of you, your words are about as good a noisy gong that no one wants to listen to.

Foundational Truth 4: We must be listening. “…be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger…” (Jas. 1:19). Because the gospel is rejected as either foolish or offensive, we sometimes get into situations where we become frustrated, which can then lead to an argument. James offers this needed admonition in our day. Listen! Listen! Listen! Did you hear that? If not, then listen some more! Speaking is obviously an essential part of sharing the gospel, but before we speak, let us first humbly listen. Ask questions that will allow the other person to do most of the talking. Being genuinely interested in someone else’s life not only shows them that you love and care for them, but it also maps out where all of the land mines are in the field of their life so that you can navigate around them to get to their heavily guarded heart with the good news. We don’t want any unnecessary casualties on the battlefield of evangelism. Remember that the gospel of Jesus is always relevant, but never relative. Knowing your audience enables you to see how the unchanging truth of the gospel is relevant to them personally.

Again, this list is not exhaustive when it comes to sharing the gospel. No one formula is going to fit every person in every situation, but these foundational truths should inform any approach to discipleship as we seek to be both loving and faithful as we share the message of the gospel.

Blessing or Burden?

“Go, make disciple of all nations…”

Anyone who has even limited familiarity with Multiply knows that this is at the core of it all.  The Great Commission – Jesus blessing His followers to go and lead others to follow Him as well (Matt 28:18-20).

Does this command feel like a blessing or a burden to you?

Here’s some encouragement for those of us who sometimes feel burdened by what we perceive to be the impossible task of walking the tightrope of obedience without falling into the sea of legalism below. “The gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life” (Matt 7:13-14).  This is true.  But tip-toeing down a wobbly tightrope that is thinner than your foot may not be the best analogy for obeying God. The reason that the “way is hard” is not because we must earn something from God by obeying Him, but because following Jesus brings opposition from the world.

Of course, just because our obedience doesn’t save us doesn’t mean it’s not important. After all, it was Jesus who said, “every healthy tree bears good fruit” (Matt 7:17).

So where is the connection?  How do you trust in Christ and follow Him well (which involves action, to be sure) without feeling legalistically burdened by the weight of His commands?

Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.  (Ps 1:1-2)

Did you catch that?  We are blessed by God in obedience as we delight in His law.  This is because when His law is our delight, obeying it is not weighty legalism, but joyous love.  And the only way we can delight in God’s law is through God-given faith in His Son, Jesus – the fulfillment of the law and Word made flesh (Matt 5:17, Jn 1:14). So trust in Him, not yourself, and then freely love Him well by obeying Him.  How gracious of Him to bless us with commands through which we can properly love Him!  This is delight in the law of the Lord.

In other words, while legalism binds us to achieve righteousness on our own via the law, God gives grace so that we can delight in the law from our heart, and this frees us to obey Him because we want to, not because we have to.  This is evidence of saving grace, and this is what the Lord desires of us – an earnest longing to obey, even if our attempts are imperfect, because we love God and delight in His commands.

In that line of thinking, 1 John describes delighting in God’s law like this:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?  (1 Jn 5:1-5, emphasis added)

So before you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and force yourself to do some stuff that you don’t really want to do deep down inside (which, by the way, is a pretty decent description for legalism), examine your heart.  Why are you doing what you’re doing?  Why are you making disciples?  Is it because you love God?  The answer to that last question ought to be a resounding and delighted “Yes!” for all who are following Christ.

Trust Christ for your salvation, and then love God by obeying His commands with a heart that is overflowing with thankfulness and joy.  God’s commands are a blessing, not a burden, but only when we delight in them.  If you don’t find yourself delighting in God’s commands, ask Him for that delight.  Over and over, more and more, with persevering trust in Christ.  Only through Him will the burden of God’s commands ever be alleviated.

Other helpful and relevant passages include:  Psalm 119, Jeremiah 31:31-34, Ezekiel 36:24-29, Matthew 11:28-30, Ephesians 2:8-10, and Hebrews 12:1-2

Jesus Makes Disciples, Not You

Okay, you do make disciples, but no disciple of Christ is ever made apart from the Spirit of Christ.

This is what we’d like to encourage you with now… this is your official check-up. We’ve heard many amazing stories of God’s work through many of you as you have sought to be obedient to the Great Commission. At the same time though, we know that some of you are struggling right now. You might be having a difficult time finding someone around you who doesn’t know Christ, you may be finding it difficult to feel a burden for the lost, or you may be giving a discipleship relationship everything you have, following every step you know, but with no apparent spiritual fruit.

We’re here to tell you that what you are trying to do is virtually impossible. In fact, you cannot do it… on your own. Realize that as you look through the book of Acts, the main disciple-maker is a guy that you rarely ever see there in person. He is present in every chapter, every conversation, and every conversion. When you look in Acts and see different individuals and crowds being converted, you almost always see something to the effect of, “And the Lord added to their number…”. Jesus was at the center of the mission in the book of Acts, and lest we forget, Jesus is at the center of the mission in each one of our lives today!

So as you continue in the race set before you, be encouraged that God has promised to bless this mission through inadequate people like us (1 Cor. 1:26-31).

Earlier last month, we asked you to share your stories with us. Today, we do the same. Why? In our next post, we’ll be highlighting some of your stories and offer suggestions for problems you’re running into. The ultimate goal is that we will be able to encourage one another in the Lord from your experiences. So we want to give you one more chance to ask a question or share a story. Send us both successes and failures. What have you tried? What has been helpful? What funny or awkward situations have you encountered, and how have they turned out? How has God amazed you in the midst of it all? Do you have a specific doubt or question? While we want the triumphs, we also want to trials. Let us know how it’s going. We may use your story to help others in the future.  Comment below or post it on the Multiply Facebook page.

Personal Disciple-Making Plan

In today’s busy world, making disciples can fall by the wayside as things of far less importance are elevated to priority status.  It takes hard work, sacrifice, and intentionality to obey the Great Commission.  We wan to point you toward a great tool that will help you rightly orient your life to make this possible.

Pastor David Platt recently encouraged members of his church to create a “personal disciple-making plan.”  Click HERE to watch to full sermon.  If creating such a plan sounds like a good idea to you but also sounds a bit ambitious and overwhelming, Pastor David has helped by posing six questions for us to consider.  Answering these six questions will lay out a plan to help you make disciples better this year.  According to Brook Hills, “This plan uses six straightforward questions laid out in the PDF available for download below to help you flesh out what it means to follow Jesus. These questions are not exhaustive, but they are essential. Our hope and prayer is that they will serve us as we consider what it means to be disciples of Jesus and make disciples of Jesus.”

We want you to consider the same thing.  How will you follow Jesus better and bring others to do the same?  This doesn’t just happen, so one way or another, you’ll need to plan.  And if you don’t know where to start… well here’s a great place.

PERSONAL DISCIPLE-MAKING PLAN

Strangers Next Door

We periodically try to highlight additional resources, other than what you might find here at Multiply, that will be helpful in making disciples. This week we wanted to direct you toward a little book by J.D. Payne called Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration, and Mission.

Up until recently, J.D. was the Associate Professor of Church Planting and Evangelism  at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. For the last several months, however, he has been serving at The Church at Brook Hills as the Pastor of Church Multiplication. If you would like an overview of Strangers Next Door, it was recently reviewed by Mark Morris for the Gospel Coalition, and there he gives a very helpful, but brief, assessment of the book.

Suffice to say, though, if you are someone who wants to have world impact through disciple-making, and be a part of literally making disciples of all nations, then this book is for you. Strangers Next Door outlines how the nations are literally coming to our doorsteps through immigration, and how these people are a part of vast social networks through which the gospel can travel into some of the most dangerous and unreached areas in the world. We would highly recommend picking up a copy today, for the impact it may have tomorrow!

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Before moving to Birmingham, J.D. served for ten years with the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. While at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, he directed the Center for North American Missions and Church Planting.

Check out J.D.’s blog, Missiologically Thinking

Leading By Listening

Each lesson in the Multiply material is accompanied by a leader’s video.  In these videos, Francis Chan and David Platt discuss things that might be helpful for you to remember as you lead someone through the lesson.  Leader videos can be found at multiplymovement.com/#material, embedded beside each of the corresponding lessons.  These are great tools to help you in your preparation to disciple someone.

Above is a 60-second excerpt from the leader’s video for the very first lesson, “Living as a Disciple Maker.”  In this short clip, they encourage leaders to listen well.  They explain that we’ll never know how to rightly apply the truth of God’s Word in someone’s life if we don’t know where they are coming from.

Conquering Evangelism

“Conquering evangelism” is not something most of us would feel comfortable saying for numerous theological and practical reasons. Practically speaking, if trusting God, and being fervent in prayer for the salvation of non-believers is difficult for the average Christian, evangelism seems impossible! That is why so many Christians have turned over the responsibility of evangelism solely to their local church. Now, it is not a bad thing for the local church to be engaged in evangelism in different ways. In fact, it is quite necessary. But when the local church becomes our excuse to disengage the countless people that God has placed us in personal relationships with, who do not know Jesus and will not come to a local church, then we have a problem.

Yes it feels easier to just bring our non-believing co-workers, friends, and family to a church service, expose them to great music, and a good speaker, and then hope for the best. But I wonder if that is really the most full picture of biblical evangelism and discipleship? When we look primarily to church services, programs, and pastors to do our evangelism we have to ask ourselves the question of why?

As we do things like this, we should be asking the heart penetrating questions of what aspect of the gospel are we failing to believe when we shrink back in the fear of personal evangelism? Because ultimately, a lack of belief comes out in a lack of obedience. Just follow the trail of bread crumbs of partial or complete disobedience, and you will find your way back to the house of partial or complete unbelief.

Thankfully for us, evangelism does indeed begin with God, and prayer. It begins with God’s sovereignty and us praying like the father of the boy with the unclean spirit, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Then we remind ourselves that Jesus is the founder and perfecter of faith (Heb. 12:2), that the Son of Man seeks and saves the lost (Lk. 19:10), and that no matter when, where, who, or how, only the Lord opens hearts for salvation (Acts 16:14-15)! These are truths about conversion that are bound up with the heart of the gospel and its benefits. If you remove truths like these, then you undercut your confidence in the success of the Great Commission, but because Jesus has all authority (Matt. 28:18-20), you can have rock solid confidence every time you share the gospel!

Thabiti Anyabwile, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Grand Cayman Islands, wrote in his book What is a Healthy Church Member?, “The encouraging news is that when we have a good grasp of conversion, we realize that evangelism does not depend on eloquence, using the correct mood lighting, emotionally sappy stories and songs, or high-pressure sales pitches” (58). He goes on to say that, “biblical evangelism requires of us one thing primarily: that we be faithful to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the people God places in contact with us” (59).

So as we seek to be faithful witnesses, and faithful disciple-makers, then lets strive to believe the truths of what the gospel is, and what it secures. Namely that God not only made the way of salvation through Jesus Christ, but he himself distributes the gift of salvation through our God-reliant proclamation! And in the process of evangelism and disciple-making, he sanctifies us in our struggles with our unbelief, and saves the lost in their unbelief. As David Platt often says, “It’s like he’s got this whole thing rigged!”