Church Planting or Jesus Planting or both or neither?

A good question came through on Twitter that I thought would be worth noodling on: "How do we inspire, encourage, get traction on a 1-on-1 discipleship movement inside the "organization" of the local church?" (Thanks Brett Crimmel)

That's a really good question. You see when we start a church we are thinking about the usual church things that we're accustomed to:

worship--check
small groups--check
missions--check
children's ministry--check
youth ministry--check
greeters--check
community building--check
outreach--check
other stuff--check

And so we do that and we work it and we are praying and hoping for the best and then we evaluate and we look around and we see what we've accomplished and some of it is AWESOME! Some of it we can really be proud of. The crowd may be really, really good! But when we ask about transformation, the results aren't always what we were hoping for.

It seems like the things of church don't make for radical transformation.

But what about the things of Jesus?

1 guy (Jesus) took on 12 guys (knucklehead disciples) and said, "follow me." And then he did life with them...investing his whole life in them.

Now our capacity may not be 12 people, but how about 1? That wouldn't be so hard, would it? What if we took on 1 person for 1 year and taught them everything we know about following Jesus (that is IF you're actually following Jesus--because if you're NOT then this is NOT going to work--you may teach them a lot of information, but if you're not living it, it will not translate into transformation.)

So...back to the question...HOW do we do that?
1. Look around your church and see who is actually following Jesus. The number might be small but don't worry...just get started with what you've got.

2. (If you are a pastor) Take those people on for 1 year (I use the 1 year time frame loosely--could be more, could be less, could be way more)

3. Ask them to take on 1 person for 1 year.

4. Be prepared for it to go slow.

5. Within that year, the other person must be investing in 1 person for 1 year.

6. Let the reproduction take its course and and then momentum won't be an issue.

We are just embarking on this journey and it's tough to do.
--People don't have the margin and will have to make adjustments.
--We may have to release people from 'church work' to give them the freedom to invest in another person.
--People aren't rested enough to give back to people. Sabbath is a lost discipline.
--People don't like being challenged (Confession: I don't like it either)
--And I'm sure we could come up with other barriers
But I'm confident that the results will be worth it.

So we can keep rockin' with all our church stuff, but if real discipleship and transformation is what we're after, then we might want to check out the Jesus model.

Want to read even more about this from a guy that's way further down the road than us on this? Check out Aaron Snow's blog HERE.


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