LeakeSpeak

Every couple of weeks, a missionary friend named Rob comes and coaches our church planting team. He has provided a lot of great wisdom, insight, and ideas. Today, we were talking with him about how to effectively disciple a few new believers and pre-believers we’re working with. Here is what came out of that discussion:

Rob talked with us about what he calls the triangle of discipleship. This triangle involves three elements that need to be present in roughly equal proportions: a relationship between the discipler and the one being discipled, the Word of God, and a focus on task/obedience. These elements correspond with the three persons of the Trinity: relationship to the Father, the Word to the Son, and task/obedience to the Holy Spirit. Any time the balance between these three gets out of whack, discipleship suffers.

Our relationship with people we’re discipling needs to be cultivated somewhat independently of how things are going with the discipleship. In other words, we hang out with people because we value their friendship, not simply because we’re discipling them and things are going well. When discipling, we always have to be aware of how the relationship is doing. We have to continue to do things to build the friendship; we can’t just rest on the fact that the relationship has been good in the past.

When the relationship is strong, we can put a little more emphasis on the Word and obedience, without having to invest quite as much time in developing the friendship. We’re always keeping track of where the friendship stands, though.

Bringing the Word into discipleship can never be divorced from obedience. We must train our disciples to be doers of the Word, and not hearers only. Every time we study the Word with those we are discipling, we agree on what specific step(s) of obedience they will take in the coming week.

In the beginning, we should always assume we’re at fault if those we’re discipling aren’t following through with obedience. We may have asked them to do too much, or we may have suggested a step of obedience that doesn’t fit well in their culture. We have to figure out where people are with relationship to obeying Christ and suggest steps of obedience appropriate for them. Even if they are very baby steps in the beginning, that’s okay. Small obedience is something we can build on.

Rob challenged us with the idea that obedience happens best in community. If we can take some baby steps alongside our disciples, this can really help them. For example, if one of them wants to share their testimony with a friend, one of us could go along and gently encourage them.

After balancing the three elements of the triangle of discipleship and assuming we’re at fault and making changes if things aren’t progressing, we may still reach a point where the discipleship isn’t going anywhere. In that case, we would back the relationship off to a friendship. Friendships we have with people are always genuine; the amount of time we commit to different people is what varies. Rob suggested we limit the time invested in most friendships to one or two visits a week of 1-3 hours each. If we have a relationship with someone who is taking steps of obedience in response to the Word, we will invest more time in them.

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