Transforming Church

Don’t be confused; there are many disciples who are members, but there are also a great many members who are not likely to become disciples. As long as they believe they can stay connected to Jesus by simply “sharing of themselves,” which is what membership encourages, they will never experience the discipleship that comes with giving their whole being to Jesus.

Many members will be content to live out their lives occasionally-or-often volunteering to assist in ministry programs. If, on the other hand, the church is blessed with new and made-over Christians in their midst who have given their life to Christ, the church is then responsible to help them learn to crawl as disciples, then to walk, and even to run. We are not talking about spiritual knowledge but spiritual growth.

The first order here is to help these new disciples, whether they’ve previously been part of the church or not, to discern vision for their new calling consciousness. The key here is helping them discover what specific gift(s) they have received from the Holy Spirit, gifts that are identified biblically as spiritual gifts, and second, how to channel their discovered passion. If no one assists with this it is likely to end in confusion, frustration and even discouragement.

We are seeing today more and more confusion on the best ways to approach this. The methods of conducting gift inventories are all pretty much good, some better, but even some of the best are really designed more to help members discover themselves as a volunteer. Good inventories for volunteers can be found at Group, Injoy, even the ELCA website. It is confusing, though, when these identify themselves as spiritual gift inventories. They do identify many of the spiritual gifts, not usually all of them, but they also add talents and abilities to help members identify themselves as volunteers.

Inventories are necessary to help disciples discover their calling. Christ chose it for them; it is not theirs to pick. Christ calls each of us to one or more ministries that are part of his mission, all in the context of the twenty biblically identified spiritual gifts. The only decision for the disciple is what they are going to do with the calling they’ve been given.

These are not volunteer opportunities which people choose based on their desire and talents and abilities. This does not in any way say that there can never be “new” spiritual gifts identified, but the inventory needed by disciples for assessment will not include talents or abilities. Those play a different role in the disciple’s life. Compromised inventories, and there are many that attempt to measure other than spiritual gifts at the same time, will always give skewed results.

Purely spiritual gift inventories are fewer, but they are out there. Based on our own personal experience we have in the past recommended a couple of those as reliable. Be sure, however, to check any inventory against the twenty gifts identified in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, and do not leave any of those twenty out of the inventory. They weren’t identified by church leaders; they were identified by the Holy Spirit for what Christ needs.

The second order for the church to grow these new and made-over Christian disciples is to provide climates or environments in which they can tap into and experience Christ first hand. These settings should cover all of the seven faith practices: to pray, study (Bible), worship, witness, encourage, serve and give.

If the settings provided by the church deal only with learning “about” those practices and do not become the conduit each is intended to experience Christ first-hand, those settings are less than what is needed. In a glimpse they need to be all about:
• praying (conversing) with God, not trying to find the best style/posture to tell him what he should do
• studying Christ as the Living Word, not just learning explanations of things about God two millennium ago
• worshipping with God, not premised on being either entertaining or offered to a distant God
• witnessing to Christ and his relationship, not providing a good philosophical, humanitarian example that is more focused on how we live
• encouraging others in their disciple relationship with Christ, not trying to teach or guide them to be “good” Christians
• serving in ways that Christ lives through the disciple, and where the disciple sees him in others, even through the meanest of tasks, not as having volunteered to do tasks at/for the church and elsewhere
• giving from self as motivated by one’s relationship with Christ, not by what is needed to reach goals or satisfy programs/budgets/etc

The third order needs significant preparation ahead of time. (cf. related articles) It is to provide ministry through teams, not by committee. Committees work within permitted parameters to manage programs that have been called or labeled ministry. The ministry, however, is the front line work of disciples, who have been called and gifted to do it. What members volunteer to do is fulfill perennial tasks and responsibilities that maintain minimum standards and/or manage or keep things on their determined task/track. Members vote, manage and volunteer. Called, gifted disciples both shape and do the ministry.

The priority need for teams is to effectively channel disciple passion where there has been mutual or shared calling. When teams are allowed to effectively operate in an environment of trust and permission, they positively enable, move and fulfill ministry without losing 80% of the resources along the way through meetings, lack of orientation and burnout. With the single focus of teams negating any necessity for either agendas or titled leaders, on the congregation’s landscape they can be seen all the time coming into being, fulfilling their objective and purpose, and then going out of existence.

Without this complete environment, however, disciples who in the first two orders have learned to crawl and walk will never learn how to run. This is the race of which Paul spoke, not one that merely focuses on volunteer opportunities all the way through retirement.

Related Articles:
"Don't Be a Member of the Church; be a disciple of Jesus Christ"
"Building Discipleship Communities: Where do we start?"
"Getting Going as a Congregation on a Discipleship Lifestyle"
"Membership Messed Us Up"
"Moments of Authentic Discipleship"