theCrossroads, UPC

(Excerpts taken from - Gleason, Stan O.. Follow to Lead: The Journey of a Disciple Maker - Word Aflame Press. Kindle Edition.)

MAKING DISCIPLES VS. SOUL WINNING

When church leaders speak about soulwinning, 90% of the congregation checks out for one of four reasons:
they don’t do it
they don’t relate to it
it doesn’t fit their personality or gifting, or
they believe that only a few highly gifted people are called by God to do it.

Too many soulwinning presentations attempt to goad good people into doing something beyond their perceived gifting or skill set. This is unfortunate because the problem is not with the congregation, but rather, with the limited paradigm of reaching the world that has been presented.

Every local congregation has a culture, whether it is intended or not. The culture of the local church is largely inspired by the vision, preaching, teaching, communicating (verbal and nonverbal), and attitude of the pastor.

We cannot change the church from behind the pulpit. The only way we can change the culture of the church is to model the practice we want to see reproduced in the members of the congregation. As pastor, I must come out of my office, step out from behind the pulpit, and come down from the platform to interact with people up close. This was Jesus’ method of creating a disciple-making culture. He didn’t just preach to the masses, but He intentionally spent time with people, one-on-one, making disciples who then turned around and made more disciples.

There are basically two ways to motivate and inspire the people we lead to reach the people around them: program-based evangelism or Bible-based disciple making.

Unfortunately, many have a sense that once we introduce sinners to the new-birth message and they are born again, then our work is done. However, the truth is that the heavy lifting of disciple making begins after the new birth. Salvation is not a diploma but a birth certificate.

If soulwinning is like a microwave, then disciple making is like a Crock-Pot. This is why Jesus told us to go make disciples. Think about it: After you “win” then what? When you win it’s over, but when you make disciples the process is ongoing.

Evangelism is not what the early church did. Evangelism is one of the fivefold ministries. (See Ephesians 4: 11.) God-called evangelists have the passion and ability to quickly and consistently bring sinners to a decision to follow Jesus Christ and lead them into the obedience of His gospel. They have the God-given gifting to do this from behind a pulpit or one-on-one.

We should take note, however, that evangelism or evangelize is never used in the Scriptures and that the word evangelist is used only three times. Jesus did not say, “Go evangelize the world.” I agree that soulwinning certainly has something to do with the Great Commission as we have defined it, but the hard truth is that this is not what Jesus told us to do.

The good news is that making disciples is the correct biblical language that describes the method Christ directed us to use to reach the world, one at a time, from the spiritual cradle to the grave (or rapture). It has often been said that we don’t go to church two or three times per week, but we are the church everywhere we go. By the same token, evangelism is something that we may do on Saturday visitation, street service, block parties, or other such endeavors, but disciple makers is what we are, everywhere we go, 24/ 7.

The term soulwinning is somewhat problematic for a few reasons: (1) it is not what Jesus told us to do, (2) it is not New Testament language, (3) very few within local congregations relate to it, (4) it is not usually associated with making disciples, (5) it is often presented and received with a high dose of guilt-motivation, (6) it is not how we live our daily lives, (7) it is usually presented within a program or an unnatural institutionalized context. Making disciples is not just about what happens after a sinner is saved, but it accurately describes the journey from the first contact with an undiscipled person to the last step in Heaven with Christ and the church. Jesus did not compartmentalize new birth and spiritual maturity. He placed it all under one grand vision of making disciples.

We are faithful to church, pay our tithes, sing in the choir, and maybe even go out of our way occasionally to shake the guests’ hands in our local church, but we forget their names before church is over, much less have a plan to be intentional and make a disciple out of them. Jesus didn’t tell us to procure a building and hang a sign out front that says, “Y’all come.” I don’t think we can say we have fulfilled the Great Commission by simply having visitors show up. We have an obligation after they leave to follow up and make disciples.

The difference between a stork and a penguin, = the difference between evangelizing people and discipling people. Hans Christian Andersen wrote a fanciful tale about storks bringing newborn babies to their awaiting families. It is believed that the myth of the stork delivering babies was invented by adults who didn’t want to explain to their children where babies come from.

Unfortunately, some local congregations have adopted the mythology of the stork as their concept of discipleship: the stork picks up the baby in a huge diaper, flies that baby to the right address, rings the doorbell with its beak, and then flies away. Too many congregations have no plan to make disciples, assuming that when people get saved, God flips the autopilot switch inside of them and they become saints all by themselves.

We need to be less like storks and more like penguins when it comes to developing spiritual maturity in new believers. Emperor penguins breed during the cold Antarctic winter and lay their eggs in May. After the female lays her egg she passes it off to the male. He keeps the egg warm by tucking it under a pouch of skin just under his belly and above his feet. He balances the egg there for sixty-four days during which time the female travels to the ocean to hunt.

The male huddles with other males in the colony while they help to keep each other warm. They fast the entire time and incubate their eggs faithfully until the return of their female counterparts. The females return around the time that the egg hatches with a belly full of food to feed their young. They take over caring for their hatchlings, regurgitating the food they caught while the males travel to the ocean for their first meal in more than one hundred days. For the next fifty days, the parents continually switch back and forth; one hunts while the other stays to feed the chick.

When the chick is about two months old it starts spending more time away from its parents, though it still depends on them for food. The parents leave them in a group of chicks called a crèche that is supervised by other penguins in the colony. They can now go hunting together, but this hunt is not as time consuming because the warm spring weather brings the shoreline closer to the colony’s nesting site. When the parents return to the colony, they reunite with their chick to feed them.


What explosive growth every local church would experience if every believer made one disciple per year. But there is something even more dynamic than that. What if every disciple maker stayed with that disciple until each one in turn began to make a disciple? The endgame of being a Christian in the first century was more than just to bring others to faith in Christ. Their pattern took discipling one step further by modeling Christlike practice alongside disciples until they themselves began to make disciples.

Reproducing ourselves in others is undoubtedly the ultimate goal and demonstration of full maturity in Christ. We see the model of spiritual reproduction unfold in the Book of Acts and throughout the epistles. Paul said, “Imitate me just as I also imitate Christ” (I Corinthians 11: 1). John wrote, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth” (III John 4).

Peter wrote that Christ left a model so that you should follow His steps (I Peter 2: 21). In Acts 8:4 the believers went everywhere preaching the Word and were accused by their detractors as these that have turned the world upside down. Ananias and Barnabas teamed up to make a disciple out of Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9–13). Aquila and Priscilla took Apollos aside and explained the way of God more accurately (Acts 18:26).

New believers or underdeveloped Christians were nurtured by leaders and mature believers in hopes of developing their maturity in Christ. The evidence of true discipleship or maturity in Christ is fruitfulness. When Jesus talked to the disciples about being fruitful in John 15 He said that He was the vine and they were the branches. He let them know that without Him they could do nothing and that their connectedness to the vine was the prerequisite to becoming fruitful. There are many ways that mature believers can become fruitful.

The most obvious fruit we can bear is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5: 22– 23). We can also bear the fruit of the gifts of the Spirit (I Corinthians 12: 7– 10). As we mature in Christ we will become faithful to God’s house; schedule daily prayer and time in the Word; begin to demonstrate the character, nature, and attitude of Christ; begin to return our tithe to the Lord and give offerings; and get involved in local church ministries. There is not a pastor in the world who would not love to have a congregation of believers manifesting the fruit that has just been described. I would suggest, however, there is more fruit to bear.

Every fruit reproduces another perfect specimen exactly like itself. I think it should be obvious to us that our fruitfulness is not what we do at church or a godly character trait or spiritual gift, but our fruitfulness is to reproduce after our kind, to make another one just like us. Whether or not you agree with this interpretation of fruitfulness, it remains that at least some aspect of Jesus placing a demand of fruitfulness and reproduction on us has something to do with making disciples.

Making disciples should be as natural as a grape reproducing grapes or a husband and wife reproducing children. Disciples are being made every day all over this world, but for other purposes: drug dealers are making disciples, pornographers are making disciples, rock stars are making disciples, extreme Islamists are making disciples, and even marketers in corporate America are making disciples. Making disciples seems to be a natural by-product of all these aberrant and heretical groups, so why shouldn’t disciple making be as natural for us as going to church, reading the Word, and lifting our hands and worshiping our great God? The church must rise up and counter all the anti-God and anti-biblical disciple making by reproducing biblical values, principles, and practices in our disciples.

Exponential growth of the early church was made possible because born-again believers were aggressively engaged in the daily process of making disciples.

Jesus was not only saying that they would see greater things than these, but He began to say, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father” (John 14: 12). Jesus began to steadily ramp up His expectations of His disciples. He not only told them they would eventually be doing what He was doing, but He sent them out to do it.

Luke 10 is probably the moment that it hit them they were in training to do the things Jesus had been doing alone up to this point. This was the game changer for the disciples. They realized that they were not following just to follow, but Jesus’ plan for them was to follow for now, but eventually lead. Follow to lead: This simple concept is the reason for the dramatic growth in the first-century church.

Paul told his disciple Timothy when he wrote, “And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (II Timothy 2: 2).

When we as pastors fail to preach commitment, we are doing Christ, the mission, ourselves, and our audience a disservice. Without asking for a commitment from the multitude we will never build a congregation.

One reason an Apostolic church does not grow as fast as some other churches could be because we preach and expect commitment. This is not an excuse for lack of growth, but it is our reality. It costs something to be a part of a church that teaches the full gospel of repentance and baptism of water and Spirit. That alone is enough to turn off people who believe they are saved by repeating the sinner’s prayer.

It costs something to be part of a congregation that teaches and models a separated lifestyle from the world. Separation from the world is a clear and timeless scriptural doctrine, but it is not “culturally correct” today. Apostolic churches have a spirit of holiness about them that carries a spirit of conviction.

People who don’t want to change their lifestyles and carnal ways turn back at the moment of conviction, and like those in John 6, walk with Him no more. Apostolic churches expect their members to plan their calendars around the house of God and be there and participate when ministry is going on. They expect their members to dedicate time, talent, and treasure to the mission of Christ. But there is one thing we yet lack: it is time to cast the vision, equip every member of our congregation, and place an expectation on them to go make disciples.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

1. What are some differences between soulwinning and disciple making?

2. Do you think there are differences between how the first-century church lived their personal lives and how we live ours regarding reaching lost people?

3. What are some things that you can do to incorporate the idea of being more like a penguin than a stork as a disciple maker?

4. Who do you know that you would describe as being effective in reproducing themselves in others?

5. What challenges does Western culture present in establishing a disciple-making culture in a local church?

6. Where has the church generally fallen short with the development of new believers?

7. How would you rate your fruitfulness?

8. What would be your definition of a disciple in the first century and how would that compare to being a disciple today?

8. Why do you think Jesus spoke differently to uncommitted people than He did to His disciples?

9. How does the picture of carrying a cross speak to the commitment of making a disciple?