TRELLIS AND THE VINE Chapter 12. Making a start

TRELLIS AND THE VINE    Chapter 12. Making a start

We began, some time ago it now seems, with a vine, a trellis, and the

Great Commission. And we made a promise at the start that we would offer no new special technique, no magic bullet, and no guaranteed path to ministry success and stardom.

We did this because Christian ministry is really not very complicated. It is simply the making and nurturing of genuine followers of the Lord Jesus

Christ through prayerful, Spirit-backed proclamation of the word of God. It's disciple-making.

This is not hard to understand, nor even hard to do—unless, of course, you happen to be a sinful person living in a sinful world. The deceptively simple task of disciple-making is made demanding, frustrating and difficult in our world, not because it is so hard to grasp but because it is so hard to persevere in.

This is why we are such suckers for the latest ministry expert, who has always grown a church of at least 5000 from scratch, and who has a guaranteed method for growing your church to be like his. Every five or ten years, a new wave comes through. It might be the seeker-service model, or the purpose-driven model, or the missional-cultural-engagement model, or whatever the next thing will be. All of these methodologies have good things going for them, but all of them are equally beside the point—because our goal is not to grow churches, but to make disciples.

Let's tie together our thoughts with the following propositions.

 

1. Our goal is to make disciples

The aim of Christian ministry is not to build attendance on Sunday, bolster the membership roll, get more people into small groups, or expand the budget (as important and valuable as all of these things are!). The fundamental goal is to make disciples who make other disciples, to the glory of God. We want to see people converted from being dead in their transgressions to being alive in Christ; and, once converted, to be followed up and established as mature disciples of Jesus; and, as they become established, to be trained in knowledge, godliness and skills so that they will in turn make disciples of others.

This is the Great Commission—the making of disciples. The touchstone of a thriving church is that it is making genuine disciple-making disciples of Jesus Christ.

 

2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward

Churches inevitably drift towards institutionalism and secularization. The focus shifts from the vine to the trellis—from seeing people grow as disciples to organizing and maintaining activities and programs. As pastors, we come to think only in structural and corporate terms. We fret about getting people into groups, increasing numbers at various programs, putting on events for people to come to, and so on. We stop thinking and praying about people and where each one is up to in gospel growth, and focus instead on driving a range of group activities—attendance at which (we assume) will equal growth in discipleship.

But going to groups and activities doesn't generate growth in discipleship, any more than going to hear the Sermon on the Mount made you a disciple of Jesus. Many of those who hung around with Jesus, and followed him at different times, were not genuine disciples. The crowds flocked to him for many reasons, but they just as quickly flocked away again.

 

3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful teaching

The word 'disciple' means, above all else, 'learner' or 'pupil'. And this is how we become disciples and grow as disciples: by hearing and learning the word of Christ, the gospel, and having its truth applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The essence of 'vine work' is the prayerful, Spirit-backed speaking of the message of the Bible by one person to another (or to more than one). Various structures, activities, events and programs can provide a context in which this prayerful speaking can take place, but without the speaking it is all trellis and no vine.

 

4. The goal of all ministry—not just one-to-one work—is to nurture disciples

There is no one pure context or structure for discipling. In some places, the 'discipling movement' has hijacked the language of disciple-making to imply that only one-to-one mentoring constitutes true disciple-making, and that church meetings, small groups and other corporate gatherings do not. The goal of all Christian ministry, in all its forms, is disciple-making. The sermon on Sunday should aim to make disciples, as should the small group that meets on Tuesday night, the men's breakfast that happens once a month, and the informal gathering of Christian friends that happens on Saturday afternoons.

The pendulum seems to swing in these matters. As we write this, in most of the churches we know and visit, the problem is that there is not nearly enough one-to-one personal work happening. Structured activities and group events have taken over, and those on the pastoral team spend their time organizing and managing rather than chasing and discipling and training people. They themselves spend very little time working with and training individuals, and those individuals in turn spend very little time meeting with and training other individuals. The focus has shifted away from individuals and their growth as disciples, to activities and events and growth in numbers.

 

5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker

Jesus gave his disciples a vision for worldwide disciple-making. No corner of creation is off limits, and no disciple is exempt from the work. We naturally shrink from the radical nature of this challenge. It replaces our comfortable, cosy vision of the 'nice Christian life' with a call for all Christians to devote their lives to making disciples of Jesus.

'Disciple-making' is a really useful word to summarize this radical call, because it encompasses both reaching out to non-Christians and encouraging fellow Christians to grow like Christ. As Matthew 28 says, to "make disciples" is to baptize people into Christ, teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. Disciple-making, then, refers to a massive range of relationships and conversations and activities—everything from preaching a sermon to teaching a Sunday school class; from chatting over the proverbial back fence with a non-Christian neighbour to writing an encouraging note to a Christian friend; from inviting a family member to hear the gospel at a church event to meeting one to one to study the Bible with a fellow Christian; from reading the Bible to your children to making a Christian comment over morning tea at the office.

 

6. Disciple-makers need to be trained and equipped in conviction, character and competence

If this disciple-making vision is correct, then an integral part of making disciples is teaching and training every disciple to make other disciples. This training is not simply the imparting of certain skills or techniques. It involves nurturing and teaching people in their understanding and knowledge (their convictions), in their godliness and way of life (their character), and in their abilities and practical experience of ministering to others (their competence).

This sort of training is more like parenthood than the classroom. It's relational and personal, and involves modelling and imitation. For most congregations and ministries, thinking about training in this way will require a number of significant 'mind-shifts' about ministry—from running programs and events to focusing on and training people; from using people to growing people; from maintaining structures to training new disciple-makers.

 

7. There is only one class of disciples, regardless of different roles or responsibilities

All Christians should be disciple-makers, and should seek to 'grow the vine' whenever and however we can. However, among the variety of gifts and roles that different Christians have in this task, some are given particular responsibility as pastors, overseers and elders to teach, to warn, to rebuke, and to encourage. These are the foremen and organizers of Christ's disciplemaking vision, the guardians and mobilizers, the teachers and role models.

Pastors, elders and other leaders provide the conditions under which the rest of the congregation can get on with vine work—with prayerfully speaking God's truth to others.

At a profound level, all pastors and elders are just players on the team.

They do not have a different essence or status, or a fundamentally different task—as if they are the players, and the rest of the congregation are spectators or support crew. A pastor or elder is one of the vine-workers who has been given a particular responsibility to care for the people and to equip the people to be disciple-makers.

 

8. The Great Commission, and its disciple-making imperative, needs to drive fresh thinking about our Sunday meetings and the place of training in congregational life

What stands in the way of Christ's disciple-making vision in Christian congregations? In most cases, it's not a lack of people to train, or non- Christians to reach out to, but stifling patterns and traditions of church life.

These obstacles may be denominational and long-standing; or they may be the result of jumping on board the latest church-growth bandwagon. They may be in the mind of the pastor, or the minds of the people, or—most likely—both.

If the goal of all our ministry is disciple-making, then many churches (and their pastors) will need to do some re-thinking about what they are seeking to achieve in their regular Sunday gatherings, and how that relates to other ministry activities during the rest of the week. This may mean starting new things, but very often it will mean closing down structures or programs that no longer effectively serve the goal of disciple-making. It may mean clearing out some of the regular activities and events so that congregation members actually have time to do some disciple-making—to meet with non-Christian friends, to get together one to one with newcomers at church, and so on. It may mean a revolution in the way the church staff see their ministry—not as service-providers, or managers, but as trainers.

 

9. Training almost always starts small and grows by multiplying workers

The temptation with training is always to start a new program—to run a multitude of training courses, and whack as many members of the congregation through them as possible. We bring our structural, event-based, managerial mindset to the task of training, and try to work out how to do it in bulk and efficiently. But you can't really train people this way any more than you can parent this way. Training is personal and relational, and it takes time.

It involves sharing not just skills, but also knowledge and character. It involves imitation and modelling. Training courses and other resources are very useful tools to help us with this task. They can save enormous amounts of time (in not having to devise and refine training content ourselves), and can provide excellent frameworks within which the personal, relational work of training can take place. But it must start with people, and focus on people —not programs.

In other words, if we want to start training disciples to be disciplemakers, we need to build a network of personal ministry in which people train people. And this can only begin if we choose a bunch of likely candidates and begin to train them as co-workers. This group will work alongside you, and in time will themselves become trainers of other coworkers.

Some of your co-workers will fulfil their potential and become fruitful fellow labourers and disciple-makers. Others will not. But there is no avoiding this. Building a ministry based on people rather than programs is inevitably time-consuming and messy.

 

10. We need to challenge and recruit the next generation of pastors, teachers and evangelists

When the training engine begins to gather steam, and people within your congregation are being mobilized into ministering to others, some 'people worth watching' (PWWs) will float to the surface—people strong in conviction, character and competence. These PWWs are the potential 'recognized gospel workers' of the next generation. And if you are a pastor or elder, it is one of your God-given responsibilities to recognize, nurture, train and entrust the gospel to these "faithful men who will be able to teach others" (2 Tim 2:2).

Many churches have found a ministry apprenticeship program to be an extremely effective way of advancing this process (such as the one developed and supported by the Ministry Training Strategy).

 

Making a start

We hope that reading this book has set your mind racing with ideas and challenges for the ministry you are engaged in. However, it is often difficult to translate a racing mind into a set of concrete goals or action steps.

To help your thinking and planning, here is just one suggested plan for starting to reshape your ministry around people and training, rather than around programs and events.

 

Step 1: Set the agenda on Sundays

If you want to change the culture of your congregation in the direction of disciple-making and training, then this new direction needs to shape your regular Sunday gatherings. You could, for example, preach a sermon series on 'What is gospel growth?', or on 'Disciples and disciple-making'. You could set out the biblical vision of the Great Commission, and how it leads to disciples who make other disciples.

But more than that, in your regular exposition of the Scriptures:

• show how the gospel of grace shapes a life of praise and sacrifice for

Christ

• enthuse the congregation with the grand eternal purposes of God to make disciples and build a fellowship of disciples under Christ's lordship

• call the congregation to radical discipleship

• communicate the expectation that what is being taught from the pulpit is what also should be passed on to others (you might provide summaries or discussion questions for use in personal ministry)

• preach in a way that helps the congregation learn to read and speak about the Bible themselves; show how you arrived at your conclusions from the text

• tackle apologetic and pastoral issues that will be useful not only to those present, but also to others via the personal ministry of those present.

It's not only the sermon that sets the agenda and starts to change congregational culture. In your church meetings, get members up the front to share about ministries they are involved in. Don't just get the superstars or the success stories; provide examples for the congregation of people who are stepping out of their comfort zones and trying something new.

This also flows into what we pray for in our gatherings. Make the various personal ministries of congregation members a regular subject for corporate prayer.

We can also build a culture of training into the way people contribute to the gathering. Provide training and feedback for those who are participating

—in music, Bible reading, praying, sharing a testimony, welcoming newcomers, and so on.

 

Step 2: Work closely with your elders or parish council

In building a disciple-making and training emphasis in your congregation, it's obviously vital that the existing elders and leaders of the congregation are fully included in the thinking, planning and decision-making. Here's an example of how one pastor went about it:

When introducing the Ministry Training Strategy into the Christian Reformed Churches of Australia (CRCA), we had to bear in mind that these churches are governed by a system of elders in each congregation.

All decisions about the life and direction of the church are made by the elders that form the church council.

So when Colin Marshall invited me to join his Art of Ministry Training course [a forerunner of this book], I knew that I had to get my eldership team on board as well. I asked Colin for permission to photocopy the reading assignments for my elders. It became required reading before each church council meeting, and then we discussed the readings for the first half-hour. I did this throughout that year, so that by the time I finished the course, the elders had also done the readings.

Having completed the course, and being very keen to get into it, I asked the elders what they thought. They agreed it would be part of what we do as a church. What was important about how we processed it was that they were on the journey with me. They had time to assimilate all the new ideas. They had time to reflect and make it their own, so that when I asked them at the end of that year, "Shall we do it?", they were ready to go.

It is so important to give your leaders the time to process stuff and come to terms with it and own it. I say this because my colleagues did not take the steps I took, and when they put it to their local church councils many found resistance to these 'new ideas'. Several colleagues asked me to address their elders and I spent an evening in those churches workshopping the main concepts of ministry training. It was delightful to see the 'light go on' for some of the senior elders, who went on to encourage their minister to set up training in their church.

In the CRCA this processing by the elders needs to be an ongoing thing, as our elders each serve for a term of three years. I train all my new elders for six months. This training process, and the four workshops we run on what MTS is and how it works, has them keen about the training mindset by the time they are inducted as leaders of the church. Seeing young men coached in preaching, Bible study leaders trained, and an apprentice learning the skills of ministry has given the elders the sense that we are a training church; it is part of our DNA now. It's all about developing a mindset: 'this is how we do church'.

It's being faithful to 'making disciples' and 'equipping the saints for ministry'. It's what we need to do if we want pastors, evangelists and church leaders now and for the future.

Building some form of regular training and 'ministry talk' into the agenda of church council meetings is very useful. Over time, it cements the eldership team together as co-workers in the gospel, rather than as a council of regulators and accountants. Decisions are made through the prism of gospel growth.

Over time, we can also create the expectation that being an elder or parish councillor also means being engaged in some personal ministry of the word—visiting newcomers, or meeting one to one with others, or mentoring people with potential to be leaders in the future. The overall goal is to increase unity around the common task of gospel work.

 

Step 3: Start building a new team of co- workers

The principle is: do a deep work in the lives of a few.

This is your band of brothers and sisters who would die together for the sake of the gospel; those with whom you will share your life and ministry in the expectation that they will learn to evangelize, teach and train others.

Notice that it is a new team. Don't just think about those who are already serving in ministries or on committees. Choose a mixture of current and future leaders that you would like to build the ministry around for the next five years.

Remember: you are not grooming people to fill gaps in your church program, but training co-workers around whom you will build ministry according to their particular gifts and opportunities. Some of these people will start new ventures in outreach or Christian growth—things you or they haven't yet imagined or thought possible.

Training this team of co-workers can be done through one-to-one meetings, group meetings, or more often a mixture of both, and includes our now familiar mix of the three C's (conviction, character and competence).

See chapter 9 for more ideas about how to train a team of co-workers.

 

Step 4: Work out with your co-workers how disciple-making is going to grow in your context

So you are training a team of co-workers—but how is disciple-making going to grow from this base? How does it multiply? There is of course no single correct answer, because it depends so much on the gifts and circumstances of your co-workers, and the church or ministry context in which you're working. Here is just one idea to get your juices flowing. Your congregation may already have an existing Bible study group network that is functioning reasonably well, but the real challenge you have is in helping new people (whether Christian or non-Christian) to find their way into the congregational life and be discipled. So you work with your coworkers on a visiting and follow-up ministry aimed especially at newcomers. The aim is that every newcomer or visitor to the church is personally visited in their homes, and then followed up over the next several months, until such time as they are safely and happily involved in a small group (where the group leader takes responsibility for discipling them). Your co-workers are the front-line in getting this integration process happening.

You take them with you to visit newcomers, and train them in how to assess where someone is up to in 'gospel growth'. Each co-worker might personally take on two or three newcomers over a three-month period: to meet with each one several times, to evangelize them if they are not Christian, to read the Bible and pray with them, to explain the church's vision and how to become involved, to have them for lunch and introduce them to other congregation members, to call them when they don't come to church to see how they're going, and to see them join a small group.

A wealth of resources are available to assist your co-workers in meeting with newcomers to minister to them one to one. There are Bible study tools for working through the gospel with someone, or for establishing someone in the basics of Christian faith and life, or for simply reading the Bible one to one with another person. There are also excellent resources for helping you to train co-workers in these ministry skills. (See appendix 2 for examples of these resources.)

Now, this idea will only work long term if the small groups are functioning well—and, in particular, if the group leaders have been trained to see themselves not merely as facilitators or organizers but also as front-line disciple-makers and 'mini-pastors' of the people in their group. Spending regular time with your group leaders to train them in this may be your next priority!

 

Step 5: Run some training programs

Although we have been emphasizing the need for training to be personal —as opposed to just running people through a three-week course—there are still lots of advantages in running structured or off-the-shelf training programs. They not only provide a level of formal structure that can improve the quality of the training, but they can also function as a first step in identifying people who are suitable for more responsibility and more intensive personal training.

For example, you could encourage all your small groups to do a training course on personal evangelism in their normal group time—such as Six Steps to Talking about Jesus or Two Ways to Live: Know and share the gospel.

This will give all the group members, no matter where they are up to or what their level of gift is, a basic degree of skill and confidence in being able to talk about their faith. This is something every disciple should have!

However, running a course like this will usually reveal people who are really good at evangelism, and who are ripe for further training and ministry in that area.

Again, see appendix 2 for a range of high-quality programs.

 

Step 6: Keep an eye out for 'people worth watching'

As the number of people in training and ministry grows, keep an eye out for those with real potential. Invite one or two of them into a two-year ministry apprenticeship. (See Passing the Baton for all the details on how to set up and run a ministry apprenticeship.)

The long-term goal might be to see these apprentices do some further formal training, and then return to the congregation to work alongside you, or plant a new congregation with your support. Ministry of the kind we are talking about always generates more ministry. As more and more people are trained as disciple-makers, more and more people are contacted, evangelized and/or followed up. The amount of people work gradually mushrooms. And the need for pastors, leaders, overseers and elders grows accordingly. The number of paid staff in your congregation will thus need to grow, simply to cope with the growing number of people to be led and pastored.

PLEASE REM EM BER: THIS IS just one set of ideas about how to make a start. Your ministry and context will generate its own variations and challenges. As you begin to introduce these concepts to your congregation, be careful to keep preaching the gospel of free forgiveness through Jesus, and the life of joyful obedience that flows from it. Keep holding high the death and resurrection of Christ, and keep praying for your people. The motivation to serve and to be trained will come from the gospel and from a deep work of the Spirit in people's hearts. It won't come from you going on and on about training, and harassing people until they finally sign up! It's grace, not guilt.

Don't make 'training' the new test of true discipleship.

However, the possibilities for training and growth in most congregations are endless, and endlessly exciting. And you will need to think through for yourself the possibly radical changes that need to happen. To help you do so, and as a useful way to conclude, let's try a little mental experiment.

 

Imagine this…

As we write, the first worrying signs of a covid pandemic are making headlines around the world. Imagine that the pandemic swept through your part of the world, and that all public assemblies of more than three people were banned by the government for reasons of public health and safety. And let's say that due to some catastrophic combination of local circumstances, this ban had to remain in place for 18 months.

How would your congregation of 120 members continue to function— with no regular church gatherings of any kind, and no home groups (except for groups of three)?

If you were the pastor, what would you do?

I guess you could send regular letters and emails to your people. You could make phone calls, and maybe even do a podcast. But how would the regular work of teaching and preaching and pastoring take place? How would the congregation be encouraged to persevere in love and good deeds, especially in such trying circumstances? And what about evangelism? How would new people be reached, contacted and followed up? There could be no men's breakfasts, no coffee mornings, no evangelistic courses or outreach meetings. Nothing.

You could, of course, revert to the ancient practice of visiting your congregation house-to-house, and door-knocking in the local area to contact new people. But how as a pastor could you possibly meet with and teach all 120 adults in your congregation, let alone their children? Let alone doorknock the suburb? Let alone follow up the contacts that you made? No, if it was to be done, you would need help. You would need to start with ten of your most mature Christian men, and meet intensively with them two at a time for the first two months (while keeping in touch with everyone else by phone and email). You would train these ten in how to read the Bible and pray with one or two other people, and with their children. Their job would then be twofold: to 'pastor' their wives and families through regular Bible reading and prayer; and to each meet with four other men to train and encourage them to do the same. Assuming that 80% of your congregation was married, then through these first ten men and those that they subsequently trained, most of the married adults would be involved in regular Bible-based encouragement.

While that was getting going (with you offering phone and email support along the way), you might choose another bunch to train personally—people who could meet with singles, or people who had potential in door-knocking and evangelism, or people who would be good at following up new contacts.

It would be a lot of personal contact, and a lot of one-to-one meetings to fit in. But remember, there would be no services to run, no committees, no parish council, no seminars, no home groups, no working bees—in fact, no group activities or events of any kind to organize, administer, drum up support for, or attend. Just personal teaching and discipling, and training your people in turn to be disciple-makers.

Here's the interesting question: after 18 months, when the ban was lifted and you were able to recommence Sunday gatherings and all the rest of the meetings and activities of church life, what would you do differently?

 

 

 

 

 

Making It Practical: Making a Start

1. Our goal is to make disciples.

"The fundamental goal is to make disciples who make other disciples, to the glory of God" (p.152). This must be the essential goal for all ministry activity.

How are we doing at it at Hope CCC?

What opportunities are before us?

2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.

"We stop thinking and praying about people... and focus instead on driving a range of group activities - attendance at which (we assume) will equal growth in discipleship" (p.152).

Are there things that hinder us from people-centred ministry at Hope CCC?

 

3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful teaching.

We become disciples and grow as disciples "by hearing and learning the word of Christ, the gospel, and having its truth applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit..."The essence of 'vine work' is the prayerful, Spirit-backed speaking of the message of the Bible by one person to another (or to more than one). Various structures, activities, events and programs can provide a context in which this prayerful speaking can take place, but without the speaking it is all trellis and no vine" (p.153).

What events nd programmes can become teaching and training opportunities at Hope?

4. The goal of all ministry - not just one-to-one work - is to nurture disciples.

"The goal of all Christian ministry, it all its forms, is disciple-making" (p.153).

5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker.

If you are a follower of Christ, all of life should be aimed at this target. And the range of possible relationships, conversations and activities is essentially infinite.

How cn we assist our people to see this at Hope?

6. Disciple-makers need to be trained and equipped in conviction, character and competence.

The right kind of training is critical to the Great Commission. "This training is not simply the imparting of certain skills or techniques... This sort of training is more like parenthood that the classroom. It's relational and personal, and involves modelling and imitation" (p.155).

How can we move from being program driven to people nurturing at Hope?

 

7. There is only one class of disciples, regardless of different roles or responsibilities.

8. The Great Commission, and it's disciple-making imperative, needs to drive fresh thinking about our Sunday meetings and the place of training in congregational life.

"What stands in the way?" We must always ask the question, Is it working?

What is working at Hope CCC?  Why is it working? What isn't working at Hope? Why?

 

9. Training almost always starts small and grows by multiplying workers.

The kind of training advocated in this book must begin small, personal and relational, and it will take time.

Where do we go next at Hope CCC?

 

10. We need to challenge and recruit the next generation of pastors, teachers and evangelists.

Current ministry leaders should be active and unashamed in recruiting the next generation of ministry leaders.

.

Making a start

• Step 1: Set the agenda on Sundays
• Step 2: Work closely with your elders of parish council
• Step 3: Start building a new team of co-workerses of a few."
• Step 4: Work out with your co-workers how disciple-making is going to grow in your context
• Step 5: Run some training programs
• Step 6: Keep an eye out for people worth watching