Are you church-making or disciple-making?

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Nowhere in scripture did Jesus command His followers to go make the church. In fact, we tend to gloss over the fact that Jesus said He would build His church:

“Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it,” Matthew 16:18.

So what, then, is the role of the disciple of Jesus (including “church leaders”) if it isn’t to “make the church”?

It’s to go make disciples:

“Jesus came and told his disciples, ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” Matthew 28:18-20.

So here’s a simple but blunt truth:

If your church isn’t making disciples, you cannot honestly state your church is a disciple-making church.

Instead, your church is more likely a church-making church, which is radically different from being a disciple-making church. Mike Breen wrote about this in his book, “Building a Discipleship Culture”:

    Here’s the thing that can be difficult to wrap our minds around: If you make disciples, you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples.

    Many of us serve in or lead churches where we have hundreds or even thousands of people showing up on Sunday. But we have to honestly answer this question: do their lives look like the lives of the people we see in Scripture? If you set out to build the church, there is no guarantee you will make disciples. It is far more likely that you will create consumers who depend on the spiritual services that religious professionals provide.

Church leaders and Christians have been stumbling over this issue for decades. So, let’s consider the steps involved for “making a disciple”:

1. You must present the Gospel to non-Christians so that they may believe it and be reconciled to God. And specifically doing that work is the special kingdom vocation God has appointed every Christian to:

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God!'” 2 Corinthians 5:17-20.

2. You baptize new converts and then begin a “discipling” process of teaching them everything Jesus commanded, and you continue this work of discipleship from the initial stage of new convert all the way to spiritual maturity:

“Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you,” Matthew 28:19-20.

“So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect [mature] in their relationship to Christ,” Colossians 1:28.

“Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ,” Ephesians 4:11-13.

To accomplish this responsibility of making disciples, so that as Christians we may be disciple-makers, and as local churches we may be disciple-making churches, what must we do and/or have in place in the church?

1. Church leaders have a responsibility to equip the saints for ministry, foremost of which is their personal “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18); so leaders need to equip every disciple with the knowledge and skills to be able to effectively present the Gospel to non-Christians.

We read previously that this equipping is a specific responsibility of church leaders (Eph. 4:11-12); it would also follow that each Christian needs to see to it that they get equipped!

If you don’t have a congregation in which many of your members are well-equipped in sharing the Gospel, and those members are actually active ambassadors who are making new disciples, then you’re not a disciple-making church, you’re likely a church-making church.

2. Have, and fully execute, an effective plan for teaching new believers so that their spiritual formation sees them grow from new converts to spiritually mature disciples. If you don’t have this in place in your church, you’re not a disciple-making church, which means you’re more likely a church-making church.

3. An important element of the spiritual formation in the lives of new converts who come into your local church through your disciple-making activity of your members being Christ’s ambassadors is to make sure you equip new believers to serve as ambassadors for Christ who also become disciple-makers.

4. Fellowship — a bond of love for one another — is important to nurture in your local church so that all members, as a family of God, can encourage and support one another not only through life generally, but also through our service as ambassadors so that we may be faithful to God and fruitful ambassadors for Christ.

So, is your church a disciple-making church or a church-making church?

A final note to both individual Christians and church leaders: 1) To help you have a greater understanding of your role in God’s great mission, check out my book “The Great Appointment,” which you can find here. This book is a helpful resource for Christians individually, as well as an effective resource for equipping your local church. 2) To help you become equipped in how to effective share the Good News of Jesus Christ with non-Christians, check out this FREE, online, on-demand training offered by YouShare at https://www.yousharejesus.org. I’ve personally used for decades the evangelism tool and methodology taught by YouShare and have found it to be the most effective means of evangelism I’ve seen.

If Scott Free Clinic can be of service to you in regard to any of this, please contact me at dr.scott@ScottFreeClinic.org.

Scotty