8. Building a Discipling Culture

My thoughts:

• I LOVE and probably refer back to this more than any other book: Breen's concept of the three main ways people learn: Information, Imitation, and Immersion. We learn best in the dynamic interplay of these three ways of learning. And the most effective disciple-making churches must create opportunities for people to learn to follow Jesus through all three of these ways of learning. Citing Breen's example: We wouldn't want to have a heart surgeon who had only learned in a classroom, but had never gone through a residency to receive apprenticeship and immersive learning, as well.

• Our approaches to discipleship within churches are usually almost completely information-driven. We create passive learning environments in classroom or lecture hall-type rooms where we disseminate information to people, and often try to motivate them with impassioned pleas and musical underscores. But there's almost no apprenticeship happening in churches. We don't have time or systems for that type of learning relationship. And as Breen says, we don't really do much in terms of immersion, either, because immersing immature believers among other immature believers can't produce maturity.

• One of my favorite quotes from the list below, and one that I think we could spend hours processing is, "Most of us have been trained and educated for a world that no longer exists." I don't think I can overstate how rampant this is, in our churches. We are still running plays, systems, evangelism tracts, programs, etc. that were created for a world that no longer exists. We are not good at keeping our systems and resources updated and effective at equipping our people to make disciples and reach the unchurched for TODAY and for the future. Many of our resources and programs were developed between 1980 and 2019. Many of our formats were created centuries or millennia ago. The massive training infrastructure of seminaries, denominations, Christian resource developers, etc. are aimed at a world that no longer exists. They are slow and costly to change, and they are full of people who are often wired or incentivized to resist change, rather than embracing it.

• Many of our programs are built on the assembly line, mass production value system. That we create a set program and then run thousands or millions of people through the program, and that's how we mass produce disciples. But that is not how Jesus made disciples. And that is not a value system that connects with our current and future culture. We MUST dig in on this idea if we want to create a more faithful and fruitful future Church. The way of the future (as Jesus' way) is through not only information download, but through access to apprenticeship and immersion with more mature disciple makers.

• Again, I don't have space to include every mic drop from Mike Breen in short quotes. There are so many great insights on the state of the Church and the limitations of our approaches to discipleship.

Favorite Quotes:

• It was the question that no one was asking. Or had the courage to ask out loud. It is the question that no one wants to admit not having the answer to.  Yet it is the answer that everything else hinges on. It is the future of the Church Either we haven't realized we need to be asking it yet, or we can't seem to push ourselves to ask. It's as if it's embarrassing to even ask. Isn't this something we should have figured  out by now? ... This is the question: How do we make disciples.

• The problem is that most of us have been educated and trained to build, serve, and lead the organization of the church. Most of us have actually never been trained to make disciples. Seminary degrees, church classes, and training seminars teach us to grow our volunteer base, form system and organizational structures, or preach sermons on Sundays mornings and assimilate new comers from the Sunday service. As we look around as Christendom is crumbling and the landscape of the church is forever changed, a stark revelation emerges. Most of us have been trained and educated for a world that no longer exists. However the call to make disciples remains.

• If you make disciples, you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples. Most of us have been quite good at the church thing. And yet disciples are the only thing that Jesus cares about. It's the only number that Jesus is counting. Not our attendance or budget or buildings. He wants to know if we're making disciples. Many of us serve in churches where we have hundreds or thousands showing up on Sundays. But we have to honestly answer the question: Do their lives look like the lives of the people we see in scripture? Are we just good at getting people together once a week, and maybe into a small group? Or are we actually good at producing the types of people we read about in the New Testament? Have we shifted our criteria for a good disciple as someone who shows up at our stuff, gives money, and occasionally feeds poor people?

• Effective discipleship builds the church, not the other way around. We need to understand the church as the EFFECT of discipleship. Not the cause. If you set out to build the church, there is no guarantee that you will make disciples. It is far more likely that we will create consumers who depend of the religious services that professionals provide.

• If we have churches with warm, cozy, comfortable, inviting environments, someone is paying the price to make sure that happens. That means for all the invitation that's offered to a large portion of the people in the church, there is another group that is shouldering all of the expectations and challenge of producing that kind of atmosphere. Church leaders, pastors, staff, elders, deacons, board members, volunteers. Whatever your church has, usually 15-20% of the people are doing almost all of the work. Because of that,  their experience is extremely high on the challenge side of things, but very low on  invitation. What space is there for these people to receive encouragement, rest, down time, and investment? Every week has to be bigger and better than the last. So these people are constantly discouraged, frustrated, and stressed. Burnout is normal. There is a  high degree of turnover.

• No one creates a discipling culture modeled on the life and ministry of Jesus by accident. No one accidentally created disciples. Discipleship is an intentional pursuit... If you want to free people from the captivity of the client-provider relationship we have seen emerge in the Church, and create an empowered discipling culture, it must be seen as a must-win battle.

• We should expect and appropriately and plan for some degree of failure, aimed for low control, high accountability. And invest all we have in creating empowered leaders who can function as producers, rather than consumers. As GK Chesterton once said, "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." No one was born great at discipling people. It takes time and practice.

• We've seen cloning happen, within the Church. Certain churches are particularly famous. And suddenly everyone is copying what they do. Producing less effective clone versions of the same church... What inevitably happens...  eventually it stops working. But because they lack the foundational information for forming the original practices, the [clone] churches are unable to successfully innovate what they're doing.

Pushback:

• I think Mike Breen was ahead of his time with so many of these insights, and he's speaking so relevantly to the culture we experience in American Churches today. The start of the book has some brilliant insights, and then Breen turns more practical in sharing more of the how-to of how they have done discipleship. I don't disagree with the shapes or the "discipling language" that they use. But that's not necessarily why I've included the book as a resource. I think Mike Breen's analysis of church in the opening chapters puts great words to the experiences many of us have had in American churches when it comes to discipleship, small groups, and the call to make disciples.

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