A fundamental concept Truth is always intended to produce beauty. In both the Old and New Testaments, God’s strategy for his people has been to make them his beautiful bride. His purpose is to bring men and women together in a matrix of relationships in which he incarnates his very nature. As we cooperate effectively with this gifted, transforming community, we become effective members of the second incarnation, making visible the glory of the invisible God in the same way Jesus Christ did. Ezekiel 16 is a remarkable portrait of God’s effort to make Israel beautiful. She is described as a newborn infant cast out on a rubbish heap, squirming in her blood, moments away from death itself. But God rescues this infant and pours out his nourishing care upon her. Under his protection she matures to the time for love. A romance blossoms: He takes her as his bride and lavishes his riches upon her. His fervent love has transformed her into a beautiful queen known throughout the world—completing the incredible advancement from rubbish heap to royalty. But then she is ruined—because she forgot that her beauty was God’s splendor placed upon her.
I did considerable research for writing my first book on the concept of beauty, but not until I studied Ezekiel 16 did I determine what I believe is beauty’s true definition. It is simple: Beauty is the possession and the expression of the nature of God. Anything truly beautiful somehow possesses and expresses some facet of God’s nature. In the New Testament the pattern is the same. Jesus Christ loves his bride, the church, so he can remove her every spot and wrinkle and blemish to make her beautiful. She then becomes his way of displaying himself to the world. Her beauty is not like a mannequin in a bridal shop. Her beauty is not static, but dynamic. The beauty of this bride is people in relationship—how they relate to each other in love. The church in Ephesus, commended by Paul for its love—is taken to the woodshed in the book of Revelation because that love was lost. Even though the Ephesian church was theologically sound, our Lord threatened to remove his glory from them because they had lost their beauty. Is Christ confined? The first step in understanding how to turn a frog into a prince or a princess is to define a prince or a princess.
What kind of disciple do we want to deploy into the world? Obviously our prince or princess should have the fruit of the Spirit—the marks of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the evidence of the indwelling character of God, who wants to make himself visible and use his people to reach the lost. Picture now a growing Christian in your church who is indwelt by Jesus Christ himself. Does Christ working in the life of this individual have an opportunity to mix it up with the sinners of this world? Or is his heart broken week after week because he is confined and can never get out where the real people are, to love them and communicate with them and care for them? The qualities in the life of a person indwelt by Jesus Christ are not to be kept in a trophy case. They are qualities the world needs desperately to see if we’re to be effective in evangelism and discipleship. Yet the average Christian has no non-Christian friends after he has known the Lord for two years.
Because of this we engage in all kinds of contrived evangelism programs. For some, it’s evangelistic mugging missions on Tuesday nights. After coming out of their spiritual phone booth with a big S on their chest, they charge into a neighborhood—never their own—to “win” it for Christ. But this is not the central New Testament pattern for evangelism. Evangelism is a way of living beautifully and allowing this beauty to be seen and felt.
The ultimate apologetic for Christianity is Christians existing together in loving relationships, and opening up these family webs of relationships to the non-Christian so he can hear the music of the gospel before we share the words with him.
At best, only five percent of a congregation will become involved in an evangelism program with a cold-turkey approach. But the entire congregation can get involved in loving people, if that is important to them and if they receive help in how to do it.
The dirty word ‘success’
An important passage that helps us describe our prince or princess is 1 Corinthians 9, which I believe is probably the greatest description of a proficient discipler in the New Testament. From this passage it is obvious Paul intended to succeed. Yet I’m afraid success is something of a dirty word for many of us, a word we’re uncomfortable with. Paul wrote in verse 24, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” In the next verse he makes it clear we’re competing and should undergo training. He concludes, “Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” I hope your desire is to succeed. Successful people are those who discover how things work and then get on the good side of how things work. Being raised on a farm, I remember that one of the exciting things in spring was to watch new calves come running out of the barn for the first time, glorying in the sunshine and the wide open space. But there were boundaries to this new world, boundaries marked by a single-strand electric fence. The calves knew nothing about electric fences. Inevitably some would charge into the wire, then jerk away looking quite startled. Some didn’t learn too quickly. Out went their wet little tongue to lick the wire—zapped again! A few tested the fence a third or fourth time, but finally most of them figured out how it worked and then got on the good side of it. Successful people are also those who develop a habit of doing the things unsuccessful people won’t do. You may say you don’t like the sound of that, since it speaks of doing and God is more interested in our being. But you can’t be without doing.
If you want to be like Christ you have to get into the Bible, and that’s doing. You have to be faithful in your prayer life, and that’s doing. The successful person is progressively becoming the person God designed him to become, and progressively doing what God designed him to do. He develops the habits which the unsuccessful person won’t, not because he likes to do them, but because he has surrendered himself to a purpose that demands that he do them. Your purpose in life determines everything. If your purpose is noble, you’ll become noble as you accomplish it. If your purpose is honest you’ll become honest as you accomplish it. If your purpose is cheap you’ll become cheap as you accomplish it. I believe that a successful person—a winner, a prince or princess—is someone who feels the gold medal around his neck before he begins the race. If you believe you can’t win—or if you believe you can—you’re right. What you see in your life is what you’ll get. And what you see is directly related to your faith.
Faith is simply adding God to the equation of your life—looking into the future and expecting God to work supernaturally through you. If you believe this will happen, it will—because God wants it to happen. Faith is simply taking the truths of his Scripture out of mothballs and putting them to work in the particular ministry in which you find yourself. It is believing God wants to use you in building redemptive relationships.
Let’s look at more marks of a winner in 1 Corinthians 9. Here we see Paul expressing an all-consuming purpose, as in verse 22: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.” And in verse 19: “Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.” It’s easy to see he was committed to marking lives for Christ.
Carlyle wrote, “The minds of men are not inflamed by small ideas.”
If you want to be effective in discipleship, you need afire in the boiler. You must have an all-consuming purpose that becomes contagious.
Another quality found in 1 Corinthians 9 is that of a sacrificial, giving spirit. Paul listed the rights he gave up: to food and drink, to a wife, to financial support. Instead of using these rights, he said, “We put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ” (9:12). “I have not used any of these rights,” he stressed again in verse 15. Rather, “I make myself a slave to everyone” (19). The ability to become One more quality taught in this passage is probably the watershed in effective discipleship, and I believe it is the most critical issue the church must face today to become effective in winning men and women to Christ. It is the quality of cultural sensitivity and flexibility.
The greatest barriers to effective discipleship and evangelism are not theological—they are cultural. We do not know how to bridge back effectively to the non-Christian culture. Notice how frequently the word became appears in verses 20-22: To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law—To those not having the law I became like one not having the law.—To the weak I became weak—I have become all things to all men. The issue in evangelism is not what information I need to process, but what identity I need to assume. Someone who is effective in evangelism and discipleship always possesses the ability to become. He can become a naturalized citizen of another person’s world, walking in that person’s shoes, seeing life from his or her perspective. This is important because people do things for their reasons, not mine.
In a management training program I attended, a speaker pointed his finger at us and said, “People do not buy your product because they understand the product. They buy your product because they believe you understand them.” And I thought, When are we as Christians ever going to learn that truth? The effective communicator in evangelism and discipleship is a person who cares. People don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. When love is felt, the message is heard. People need to see and feel truth before we tell them about it. That’s what the New Testament tells us: “Always be prepared to give an account to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). This passage presupposes enough contact so that others have time to observe our hope.
There is no impact without contact. The word love has an interesting bedfellow throughout Scripture: the word neighbor, which comes from Latin and Greek roots meaning “to draw near.” Many of us are near to our neighbors geographically, but few are near to our neighbors spiritually. As I reflected on my educational experience, it came as something of a shock to realize I wasn’t aware of a single professor of mine in either Bible college or seminary who was effectively winning his neighbors to Jesus Christ. And I know few pastors who are doing it either. To be a neighbor is to be drawing near. That’s what Paul spoke of: “I have become all things to all men.” He developed the ability to draw near to any people. With the Jews he functioned and thought as a Jew and reasoned with them from the Jewish Scriptures. With the Gentiles he entered the mind-set of a Gentile, and didn’t argue from Scriptures they didn’t know.
Christians have developed four basic responses to the secular culture around them, and your effectiveness in discipleship is directly related to which response you choose. The first response is rejection. The Christian says, “I don’t want to have anything to do with secular culture.” We see this particularly in the monastic movements which sought withdrawal from the world. Those who respond this way are committed to maintaining a radical Christian difference, and rightly so. But because they have no radical identification with the lost, they cultivate no redemptive relationships. The immersionists, on the other hand, identify extensively with the lost. But they lose their saltiness and sell themselves short. The third and most common approach to culture is split adaptation. On Sunday these people are into the Christian culture, maintaining the radical difference. But not on Monday. They say, “Well, you know, if you’re going to make it out there you’ve got to play their game. You’ve got to cut corners like everybody else. I don’t like to be out there doing it, but that’s the way the system works.” Good seed scattered Finally we have the correct approach to culture: critical participation. If we are to be effectively involved in marking men and women for Jesus Christ we will always struggle with the tension between being a citizen of heaven and living in this world. For God has not called us out of culture; rather, we are to live within the culture in which he has placed us.
We are to be spiritually distinct, but not socially segregated. In Matthew 13 are two parables about sowing seed. In the first parable the seed represents a verbal message—the proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom. In the second parable the seed is no longer a verbal message, but represents people: “the sons of the kingdom” (Matthew 13:38). It is as if those who become Christians by responding to the preached message in the first parable then become the message themselves. God walks the earth with his great seed bag, casting them out all around the world. The seed in the second parable is called “good seed,” and the word good here in Greek could be translated “beautiful.” God’s strategy is to scatter his people in the midst of culture so they can be centers of beauty through which his nature can become visible. Once a church is established, the strategy shifts from proclamation to presence. The world can then hear the music of the gospel, and become predisposed to hearing the words. The disciples we deploy into the world should be given permission and encouragement to mix it up with the non-Christian community. These men and women should be urged to go out and be involved at the front lines. But false ideas about separation often prevent them from doing so.
Separation does not mean isolation. We are to be separated from sin and separated unto God. Yet we are not to separate ourselves from the sinners of this world. Another quality that belongs to those who would be effective in evangelism and discipleship is the ability to handle criticism. Isn’t it tragic that we’re the only army that shoots our own wounded soldiers? The few who actually go out where the non-Christians are and get wounded in the process have to wear the Ephesians 6 armor for protection from the barbs of other Christians. If you seriously undertake the task of going into battle, you’ll be criticized for it. But the church needs men and women who are willing to stand alone and to reach out and touch unbelievers regardless of the criticism from within the body.
The effective discipler cannot avoid every appearance of evil. It is impossible. If you sit on the fence and remain neutral spiritually you won’t have any problem. But if you truly care for and love and get involved with people who hurt, you will come under the criticism of some within the body of Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ in no way avoided every appearance of evil. The religious community was after him regularly to launder his lifestyle because they couldn’t handle the fact that he was mixing it up with sinners. They accused him of being a glutton, a drunkard, and a friend of sinners. Similar voices hinder God’s work today. Christians and Coke When I visited Switzerland I discovered that some Swiss Christians were upset because American Christians drank Coke. We can use this as an illustration to help us understand the various responses Christians have to exercising freedom in “doubtful” areas. One response is that of the professional weaker brother. He usually has been a Christian for years. He is not in danger of stumbling. His spiritual identity—his place in the spiritual pecking order—is centered around the kinds of things he doesn’t do, and he is proud he doesn’t do them. The professional weaker brother says, “Coke is out for me. I’m proud of the fact I don’t drink Coke.” He also says, “Coke is out for everybody else. And I am a self-appointed inspector.” I believe people like this have crippled the evangelistic enterprise of the church. They need to be confronted in love and challenged with the wrong they are doing. They have assumed that only one lifestyle should exist in the body of Christ, and they demand that the church polarize around this carefully prescribed lifestyle rather than recognize what the Bible teaches. Paul said in Romans 14 that both those who cannot eat meat offered to idols and those who have freedom before the Lord to do so are authentic members of Christ’s body. Paul does not reject either of them, but instead gives guidelines for their mutual acceptance.
Many in our churches, however, have come to the false conclusion that the lifestyle of those who don’t eat meat is the spiritual lifestyle. But that is not what the passage teaches. It is not either-or, but both-and. Both these kinds of people need to be affirmed within the church. Neither is to judge the other. You’ll discover that the meat eater is always more effective in evangelism and discipleship. He has a greater ability to draw near. I’m speaking, of course, about exercising freedom in spiritually neutral areas. The Lord was a friend of sinners, but he did not sin in the process. Another response to these issues is that of genuine weaker brothers who could actually stumble. If they don’t have freedom before the Lord to drink Coke but are persuaded (against their conscience) to drink one, they sin. I believe we cripple ourselves by trying too hard to protect this weaker brother rather than educating him. Without proper teaching this brother moves easily into the camp of the professional weaker brother. So we have weaker brothers, both professional and genuine, who because of weakness or immaturity do not participate in certain practices. A third response is that of the mature nonparticipating brother. He does have freedom before the Lord to drink Coke but chooses to limit his liberty, something I hope we’re all mature enough to do when it’s necessary. But there is also a mature participating brother. He has no problem with drinking Coke. And though he drinks Coke, he is mature first of all in that he is not a champion of his liberty, which would be an error. Second, he is sensitive to the weaker brother. Generally, this brother has the greatest potential for evangelism because he has a broader base for effective contact and cultivation. Evangelism and discipleship are risky.
Emerson said he once heard the counsel, “Always do what you’re afraid to do,” and I think there is some truth to that. We should not limit God’s penetration into his world, but instead allow his Spirit to blow into the sails of our lives and drive us into unchartered waters—and not disappoint God by taking down those sails. Another mark of our prince or princess is freedom from legalism.
We are legalists by nature, and it is much easier to live legalistically than to enjoy the risk of the freedom Christ calls us into. Legalism is a spiritual lobotomy that leaves people alive but not living. Our churches are full of it. These are the qualities our prince or princess should have: an all-consuming purpose, a sacrificial spirit, cultural sensitivity, the ability to handle criticism, and freedom from legalism. This is the kind of disciple we want to deploy into the world. We can now consider another critical question. One-on-one dangers What process makes possible this kind of disciple? How does God change and mold an individual’s behavior? I want to mention first some facts that may raise questions in your mind.
Of the 270 occurrences of disciple in the Gospels and in Acts, the word is never used to set apart more devout believers from the run-of-the-mill believers—a common way we use it today. Furthermore, occurrence of the word stops abruptly at the end of Acts. The last New Testament use of disciple is Acts 21:16. A new vocabulary greets us in the language of the epistles. God’s people are called believers, suggesting their relationship individually to Jesus Christ as Savior.
God’s children are also called brothers, indicating the equality and the fraternal relationships that exist among them. They are called saints, pointing to their separation from the world and their commitment to Christ as Lord. Partly because of what it has come to mean in our Christian culture, I sometimes cringe inside when I hear the word discipleship. It is as though discipleship were something we did to someone as if that person were our own project. I don’t see this as a prominent pattern in the New Testament. I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I have met personally with scores of people on an individual basis and continue to do so. I believe God does call us to minister to others one-on-one. But I believe this should be done with great caution. Paul never referred to anyone as his disciple. Only Christ, because of the true process of discipleship, is worthy of having disciples. A disciple, as our Lord said, becomes like his teacher (Luke 6:40). Not only will he pick up his teacher’s strengths, but he will also learn his weaknesses.
So I believe it can be dangerous to focus on building into the life of a single individual in isolation. Each of us views reality through at least one of four temperaments, and we interpret Scripture through our own set of eyes. There is no such thing as theological objectivity. All theology is filtered through our humanity. So in the discipleship process what we share from the Scriptures may have a measure of distortion to it. Therefore we should not limit new believers to one man’s private interpretation of what Scripture says. We can get him in the starting blocks and get him going, but we also need to say, “Listen, you need exposure to a broader giftedness of the body than just myself.” One of the discoveries I’ve had with people at a younger level of maturity is that in a one-on-one ministry, often neither person is real. The discipler somehow believes he has graduated into spiritual maturity, and it would be difficult for him to acknowledge that he still has struggles. The person being discipled feels like some spiritual midget just getting started, so he doesn’t dare share his true thoughts and feelings.
Perhaps the right approach is more an attitude than anything else. Remember as you minister to younger believers that often the greatest gift you can share with them is the gift of your need, not the gift of your strength. In this way you affirm them and accelerate their growth. In 1 Corinthians 12 we learn that the body of Christ is full of many diverse parts, all having different gifts from God, and all the parts are interdependent. This means we should be exposed to all the parts. From Ephesians 4:16 we see that the purpose of Christ’s body is to be God’s divine agent for change. The body is his discipling vehicle as it “grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” As a general principle, discipleship takes place within the matrix of this full body, though stimulating growth in certain periods in a person’s life can come through one-on-one ministry. The beauty that comes from experiencing God’s love through exposure to the body of Christ is much like the quality of becoming “Real” in the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit, a story of stuffed animals in a nursery: “What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day.—”Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.— “It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to those who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit (Avon Books, 1975). That is what’s involved in the process of loving people through ugliness to beauty—which is what discipleship is all about. The age of the ox So how do we kiss frogs? A critical principle is this: Change takes place as we become full participants in the giftedness of Christ’s beauty parlor, the local church. But just being members of a local body of believers does not mean automatically that we are drawing effectively on its resources.
There are a number of potential barriers. Some of us may not trust our brothers and sisters. Others may be allowing sin’s influence to continue in their lives, making them virtual fugitives from God, from themselves, and from other people. They will not want to return to reality. But maturity means always returning reality about yourself. The mature person always wants to know who he or she is. Therefore, if the body of believers is to work as a redemptive community, each person must be open to criticism. We all have faults that we may be unaware of but which are often obvious to others around us. The maturing person wants to know about these, believing that Scripture is true: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17); “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6). There is a direct correlation between maturity and openness to criticism. Another necessary ingredient in the beauty process is each person’s openness to self-disclosure. We all have dreams, fears, apprehensions, and struggles. How can we grow if we don’t share these with someone else?
Malcolm Boyd is right when he says, “The masks are on parade tonight, hiding status anxieties and bleeding ulcers.” Our churches are full of people like this. The Scriptures give us other strong clues about the way God intends to nudge people toward beauty. Jonathan Edwards said that the ultimate good is to treat something according to its true worth. That’s what mankind failed to do, as Paul wrote in Romans 1. They tried to change the truth about God rather than live in the light of it. We nudge people toward beauty—realizing that Satan has gone around the world changing all the price tags, and that he’s selling rat poison disguised as bread—when we help them assign proper value to that which is worthy of value. Mankind knew God, according to Romans 1:19-21. They clearly understood the invisible qualities of his eternal power and divine nature. But they did not glorify him as God. They did not respond to him according to his true worth. They chose the only other option, which was to devalue God.
Paul goes on in this chapter to show the danger of devaluation, as men made their own objects of worship. Psalm 106:19-20 portrays how Israel made a similar shift in values: At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal. They exchanged their Glory for an image of a bull, which eats grass. These people attributed value and worth not to the glory of God, but to a grass-eating ox. We too live in the age of the ox, and the moment we begin seeing ourselves as oxen eating grass, we start living that way. Psalm 135:16-17 describes the idols of the pagans: They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear, nor is there breath in their mouths. Then comes this censure of the idol-makers: Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them. What we value is what we become.
This is an important clue as to how God makes princes and princesses. Harmonicas and friends I mentioned earlier the truth of Luke 6:40—”A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” Discipleship involves likeness education. The job is not merely filling minds with facts. We become like the people we associate with, which means our personality is a product of relationships.
When I was in junior high school a boy from Japan came into our class as a new student. He was extremely shy. He carried in his shirt pocket something wrapped in a linen handkerchief, and one day I saw him in a corner unwrapping it. It was a harmonica. Since I used to play around with one too, we struck up a friendship centered around that harmonica. Soon he was ushered into the web of my relationships and got to know my friends. His personality began to blossom—because personality is a product of relationships. You’ve probably known a bubbly, gorgeous bride full of life and love on her wedding day, but bitter and withdrawn after five years of an unhappy marriage relationship. She is literally a different person, because personality is a product of relationships. That’s why discipleship does not take place in a vacuum, but in the matrix of relationships within the local church.
In 1 Thessalonians 1, Paul reminded the church at Thessalonica of his ministry to them. He did not say, “Remember what we taught you,” but, “You know how we lived among you for your sake” (1 Thessalonians 1:5). He is talking about intentional living. Then he wrote, “You became imitators of us.” They learned to live the same way as Paul. They began to think the same way and to value the same things, so that Paul could then say, “You became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia” (1 Thessalonians 1:7).
There’s the discipleship pattern: living intentionally, and exposing yourself to the lives of other believers within the body of Christ who then also learn to live intentionally. In the next chapter Paul says, “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). That’s why the gospel took hold in Thessalonica, and men and women fell in love with the Savior and became models to all the churches in Macedonia and Achaia. Paul was on duty for them as a total person. We become imitators of what we value, and we value the people whom we’ve gotten the chance to truly know.
That’s why we will never make disciples with video cassettes. We can impart valuable information that way, but not a way of living. Paul commanded Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:14, “Continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of.” This is certainly one of the stepping stones to greatness—continuing in what we have learned. But notice that Paul gave Timothy two reasons for doing this. The first: “You know those from whom you learned it.” The second: “You have known the holy Scriptures.” What did Timothy know about Paul? Look at verses ten and eleven of this chapter, then ask yourself how many people know these same things about you: You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—the persecutions I endured. When as young Christians we are exposed to someone like this who is suffering in the forefront of the battle, and we see him holding up under the pressure, then we know God indeed is able to strengthen and keep us. The Holy Spirit turns these suffering experiences into a prism through which the glory of God can shine, so that we become powerful as men and women involved in discipleship. You’re probably at your discipleship peak when you’re suffering the most. One of the keys to marking men and women for Jesus Christ is understanding that we have the greatest potential when we are under the greatest pressure. A discipler is someone who continues in the purposes of God no matter how hot the heat. We don’t sit and soak in tubs of despair, biting our spiritual fingernails and wondering what in the world God is doing. Instead we affirm God’s presence in the midst of our suffering, and respond with praise, thanksgiving, and obedience. That’s the stuff men and women want to follow. Value vacuum cleaners
We must remember in this that although what we believe and what we value should be the same, often they’re not. Our value systems and our belief systems are not always identical. Most Christian high school kids would readily admit cheating is wrong. But if I asked a group of them, “How many of you cheat?” and could get them to respond honestly, probably half or more would say they do. Their value system usually overrides their belief system. They value passing the course. They value peer approval and parental approval. Our value systems are socially anchored. We become like the people we associate with. We are value vacuum cleaners, and the implications of this are profound. The body of Christ must be seen essentially as a culture, and discipleship must be seen as a process of socialization into this Christian culture. How does a Japanese become Japanese? Does he go to a class or listen to sermons on how to become Japanese? No, the process of socialization takes place, and in the community of other Japanese he becomes Japanese. That’s how you and I become Christlike—by being part of his redeemed community. We become mature in the same way a Japanese becomes Japanese. This change has to do with the total person, and not just the intellect. We need help coming to us emotionally, physically, and spiritually. A verse which probably did more to change my Ministry than any other is a rather mundane one: Paul Wrote, “God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus” (2 Corinthians 7:6). I was impressed that God actually mediated his comfort through a person.
I wondered if God does this all the time, and became aware that yes, this is what God does. The people of the body with their gifts are like God’s divine tool chest full of different kinds of tools. When he sees a problem he wants to solve in one of us, most of the time he works through another member of his body, picking out the tool he shaped for that particular purpose and putting it to use. We are discipled into the life of faith in the same way anyone is discipled into his culture, so discipleship takes place when we experience redemptive relationships within Christ’s body. There will be times when we need the sharpening of one-on-one, but we must broaden our concept of discipleship beyond that. The full body of Christ will continue moving us toward beauty, reflecting the glory of God. If personality is a product of relationships, what kind of church makes this process possible? In Acts 2:42-47 we see that the Holy Spirit builds strong bodies four ways. God wants the church to learn, to share, to worship, and to serve. A cause-and-effect relationship exists between these. If effective learning is taking place in the church, it provides a context for effective sharing in which the implications of what is taught can be talked about. We’re not to come together like marbles that ricochet around a room, but rather like grapes pressed by the Spirit of God until brokenness allows an intermingling of the new wine of the Spirit. As we grow through what God is doing in our individual lives, we turn together to the Father, the source of it all, and worship as a responding family. And in truly worshiping God we are motivated by love and appreciation for him to go out and serve.
Loving strangers It is the church’s leadership team that determines the lifestyle of the church. If the leadership team is divided and quarreling, the body will not be beautiful. It will not be a candidate for God’s blessing. As a result, the church will be deploying sick people into the world. The Achilles heel of the local church is its leadership team. What does the right leadership team look like? We can compile a list of characteristics from such passages as 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Certainly these leaders must be Bible-taught—individuals who have developed the ability to use Scripture to solve personal problems, both their own and other people’s. They also need to be self-controlled, knowing how to keep their strongest desires and feelings within scriptural limits. There’s no room for someone with a short fuse or a critical spirit. That would be pouring poison into the life of the body. They must also be people-oriented, relating to others in a gentle, nonthreatening way. And since the body is a family, they should provide models in their own households of how to live together as a family. Life’s most crucial curriculum is taught at home. The home is the White Sands proving ground for leadership. Another important quality is hospitality. The word hospitality means being a lover of strangers. Why is this important?
Because the greatest context for evangelism and discipleship is a marriage and a home. There is no more powerful apologetic than a husband and wife who are living and growing together, and moving together toward maturity as they center their lives around Jesus Christ. In every neighborhood my wife and I have moved into, we have determined that our friends will come from our neighbors in the non-Christian community, and we’ve seen couple after couple come to the Lord. Recently we went to the beach with one neighbor family. While there, the husband said to me, “Joe, you know we’re really not very religious people.” This was the first time we had talked about “religion,” after being together on several occasions. I answered, “Hey, Jim, I can understand that. I’m not either. In fact, I’m not even interested in religion. One of the exciting things to me was discovering that Christianity isn’t a religion, but a relationship with Jesus Christ.” Most non-Christians have in their minds a variety of caricatures of Christianity.
Evangelism means eliminating these caricatures—not by a shotgun approach, but by low-pressure, long-range relationships. I was excited that day at the beach because I saw one of Jim’s caricatures go down like a target in a carnival booth. The moment he realized he could no longer reject Christianity because he thinks it’s a religion, he moved one step closer to Christ. All of us can have a significant mission in the church’s evangelistic enterprise by simply helping change people from a negative to a positive attitude toward the gospel. That’s part of the evangelism process. But many of those who really show hospitality, who understand those hurting non-Christians out there and take them seriously, would not be welcome in most of our churches. That is a tragedy. Isn’t it interesting that God chose to evangelize the city of Sychar with a five-times married woman who was living with a man she wasn’t married to? We can’t handle that, can we? And that’s one of the major reasons we’re not effective in evangelism today. The great evangelist C. T. Studd said, “Some people are content to remain within the shadow of the church; but as for me, give me a rescue station one yard from the gates of hell itself.”
Most of us don’t know what he’s talking about. Taking risks We must open up our relationships to non-Christians, and accept them as friends. They’re neat people. They are not the enemy—they’re victims of the enemy. Can you visualize the Spirit of God hovering over your neighborhood, wanting to lead you to those people who are ready to trust God? How do you find them? Social relationships are your divine locator. Most of the people who respond to you socially are the people who are ready, and that’s one of the most exciting facts in the world. You discover who they are as you extend social opportunities to them. Some won’t respond, but those who do, I have found in my own experience, are inevitably the people God has prepared. That takes the pressure off. You don’t have to slip tracts in their mailboxes. But you start building a reservoir of common shared experiences. Invite them over. But don’t expect regenerate behavior from unregenerate people. Just be their friends. And don’t make it a relationship with a hook. People don’t want to be your spiritual project. You must believe that even if they never trust the Lord, it’s worth building a relationship with them because they’re made in the image and likeness of God. If you have any other attitude toward them, you can’t hide it. Listen to them. Later you can come to the point where you can ask what I call a pilgrimage question. As the first real conversation about spiritual things, you can begin by asking where they are in their spiritual journey. Then let them talk. Afterward you can say, “Well, Bill, sometime when we have a chance I’d like to share with you some principles that may help bring into focus for you what it means to know Christ personally.” One couple visited our home probably thirty or forty times over a three-year period, but we couldn’t talk about spiritual things because they didn’t want to have anything to do with Christianity.
One day I saw my wife crying as the woman berated her unjustly on the telephone. I said, “Let’s forget the whole thing.” But my wife was wiser than I. She called the florist and had a beautiful bouquet sent over, with a card signed, “Love, Joe and Ruthe.” Soon afterward the wife trusted the Lord. Her husband, a man in his fifties, had mentioned he was a good tennis player thirty years ago. So I bought him the right equipment, took it by his house, and told him we had a tennis game scheduled for the next Saturday morning. I prayed all week for the Lord to help him play well. When Saturday came I could hardly believe how good he was for not having played for thirty years. That day he discovered you don’t have to have lace on your underwear to be a Christian. You can have a good time, and be a man, and be competitive. That was news to him. A short time later he committed his life to Christ. Every moment you spend with non-Christians as their friend you’ll be planting seeds. You will have to take risks, but I challenge you to take them. May God keep us from fleeing to the hedonism of safety, and may we be thankful that Jesus Christ risked everything for us.
Joe Aldrich