Bobby Jamieson challenges us to think again about how we do discipleship and evangelism
It seems that more and more churches are ceasing to rely on programmes to accomplish the work of ministry.
In the main, I think this is a happy development.
Eric Hoffer, the American moral and social philosopher, is frequently misquoted as saying, ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.’ Apocryphal though the quote may be, it illustrates a common pattern, a pattern we often see with church programmes. It goes something like this.
Life cycle of a programme
Let’s say a certain programme is begun as a clearly focussed means to an end, usually Evangelism evangelism or discipleship: Explosion, Alpha; Saturday morning men’s breakfast; Sunday school; youth group, etc.
The programme seems to bear good fruit. People are coming. People are enjoying it. People seem to be spiritually engaged.
But eventually, the programme begins to take on a life of its own. Once you have it, you have to keep it going. After all, what does it say about your church if the evangelism programme folds? Programmes seem to speak univocally about the health and success of your church. If they’re running and full, then your church is doing great. But if they’re leaking people and losing momentum, then something must be wrong.
So you have to keep feeding the programme to keep it happy. Maybe you spruce it up with a new name, new look, new plan. Maybe you hire more staff to run it. Maybe these measures succeed, maybe they don’t. But either way, some doubt about the programme begins to creep in.
You begin to notice that your church has an increasing number of programme partisans. Some seem to be more loyal to their group than they are to the church. The programme has become a sacred cow – maybe even a golden calf. But when programmes become ends in themselves, they’re actually counterproductive to real ministry. They have the appearance of ministry, but lack its power. They look impressive, but they’re not helping non-Christians come to know Christ or Christians come to know him and obey him better.
What’s the alternative?
What’s the alternative to programmes? What does it mean to be a post-programme church? Should churches get rid of all their programmes? My short answer to that last question is a definite no. I don’t think a post-programme church should be an anti-programme church, or a 100% de-programmed church. For now I’ll simply make one vision-level suggestion: instead of running programmes, cultivate a culture. Specifically, nurture a culture of evangelism and discipleship.
Culture is to humans what water is to a fish. We hardly notice it because it’s all around us. In this way, culture defines what’s normal. And my point here is simply that pastors should preach and teach and lead in such a way that evangelism and discipleship become normal parts of every single church member’s life. That’s the goal to aim at, anyway.
The plumb line
The New Testament teaches that the church grows as every single member contributes to the body’s development.
Although it doesn’t have to be this way, one of the dangers of programmes is that they can make it seem like evangelism or dis-cipleship only occurs within the programme. But evangelism and discipleship are things that, in one way or another, all of us should be doing on a regular basis. So make that your plumb line for evaluating pro-grammes—and everything else in the corporate life of your church.
Here’s Ephesians 4.11-16: So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
The goal of Christ giving gifts to his church is the whole church’s growth to maturity in Christ. How does that happen? Pastors equip the members for works of service. What do those works include? Building up the body of Christ. Pastors equip members so that members build up the body. Toward what end? Unity in the faith. Maturity in the fullness of Christ. Steadfast stability in sound doctrine. The ability to discern and reject false teaching.
It isn’t just the teaching ministry of pastors that contributes to this end, but the teaching ministry of every single member speaking the truth in love. Paul pounds this point in verses 15 and 16.
What Paul portrays here is a culture of dis-cipleship. Every member is growing and helping others to grow. The whole body builds up the whole body. Every joint. Each member.
Paul gets a lot of mileage out of treating the church as an organism. In a living body, every part contributes something to the whole. You can’t reduce the life of a body to set of scripts or processes or procedures. There’s a living, energetic link between the parts of the body. That should be what the life of our churches is like. So we as pastors should constantly strive to nurture, to cultivate, to strengthen such a culture in our churches.
The pastor’s mistake
I think often when pastors want to foster some goal in the church we think in terms of programmes. Trying to spark disciple-ship? Great, let’s run a class every Tuesday night. Trying to ramp up our church’s evangelism? Great, let’s host an outreach event once a quarter.
Now these kinds of programmes can be helpful and useful. But I want to point out several potential pitfalls of any programme for discipleship or evangelism.
1. They tend to be driven by paid staff, and heavy on staff time and staff leadership. Running programmes may not always be the best use of a pastor’s time (as I’m sure many of you pastors can testify), or the best use of another paid ministry worker’s time. And, because programmes can tend to be staff driven...
2. Programmes can perpetuate the mind-set in the congregation that ministry is done by paid professionals, not all members.
3. Sometimes programmes can undermine a culture of evangelism or discipleship. If you as a church member think of your small group as your context for fellowship and service, it can easily become a box you tick. And once you tick it, you’re done. A small group can, perversely, shrink someone’s sphere of service and fellowship in the church rather than enlarge it.
4. Programmes can suck up too much of members’ time that would be better spent discipling their families and fellow church members and mixing with and evangelising their neighbours. You don’t want members spending all their time ‘at church’.
5. Programmes can become ends in themselves, as we have seen, rather than means to the ends of discipleship and evangelism. And when they do, they are in danger of becoming idols rather than tools.
6. Programmes often separate members along natural divisions rather than fostering fellowship in Christ across those divisions. People naturally stick to those who are most like them. We in church don’t need to help them do that; they do it anyway. So if lots of programmes break down along the lines of ‘youth group’, ‘20s and 30s’, ‘young marrieds’, ‘parents of young children’, ‘over 65s’ and so on, we can unwittingly weaken the body by keeping it demographically segregated.
The best of programmes are ones that equip members to do their own discipleship and evangelism; programmes that give members tools and strategies for doing their own work of ministry; programmes that enrich a culture of discipleship and evangelism rather than draining it.
