Missional Discipleship Cannot Be Microwaved

Discipleship is at the heart of the missional movement or at least it should be.  Jesus provoked followers to become gardeners that would till-and-toil for the flourishing of his in-breaking Kingdom.  Jesus was a rabbi.  Like other rabbis before him, he invited others to journey along side him. The rabbinic teaching style did not primarily consist of attending lectures, reading texts or going through a preset study.  The primary learning approach was through Midrash which was a way of processing with story, conversation, questions and reflection.  Today we are challenged with excavating an apprentice-heart in Jesus-followers for the sake of God's mission in the world.  But I wonder if we have time and patience for Midrash anymore?

Microwave Discipleship

In many ways in the evangelical imagination, discipleship has become so intertwined with our consumerist tendencies that we are blind to how fused they've become.  Discipleship, beginning with the twelve and moving into the early church, did not have embedded expectations of programs for felt needs, affinity groups and fill-in the blank accessibility.  It's become so innate that discipleship be quarantined to one night a week or to a 12 week notebook or to a one-year intensive.  Certainly, the previous options present people with potentially the right information in an arranged environment.  People may even have an ah-ha moment in settings like these.  But I believe this modus-operandi of practicing discipleship over the last 50 years has created some unintended consequences. You cannot microwave disciples. With these programs, participants often receive high emotional return on completion but dare I say without the invasive, conflict-exposing, vocation and life-integrated, initiative-required, vulnerability-based, relationship-saturated, locally-rooted qualities.  I‘m convinced there is a bit of smoke-and-mirrors when it comes to what discipleship tracks actually foster in us.  I understand the demand for organized ways to funnel people through essentials in an efficient fashion.  But when we establish that discipleship is a “system" we short circuit the impulse of the Holy Spirit found in the stew of community.  If you apply discipleship in-a-can you will get processed results. Discipleship needs to be purposely fastened to the rootedness of oikos, integrated into our rhythms of life.  For as much as it challenges our patience and need-for-speed, we should never detach from a communal orientation in order to fast track discipleship.

Cross-Pollinational Discipleship

We need to develop a community that begins to disciple itself.  I know that sounds impossible or idealistic. But our vision should stimulate discipleship becoming “cross-pollinational”-- circular and reciprocal. Yes spiritual leadership is required to model, direct and stir-up this ethos (more on this at the bottom).  Still we should be compelled to kindle a culture that disciples "one another" outside of formal, organized programs. Resist the factory mode of building Jesus-followers.  The “producers” in us might struggle with this.  We often want to guardrail and quantify how people are developed.  We are afraid of people telling each other “bad stuff.”  Honestly, this is happening anyways in the most highly organized environments.  Learn to push discipleship subterranean and make it less-and-less dependent on spiritual gurus and experts.   Develop people to practice mutuality and initiative with each other to intentionally “work out their salvation” (Phil 2;12).  High control works against viral disciple-making.   I promise you this is not a buy-off-the-shelf approach that becomes a simple “plug-in” for your church.  Take the long view of recalibrating over a steady period of time. 

 

Mutual Diagnostics

This is a communal diagnostic instrument we use to help empower priesthood.  This tool below is a guide for those currently tethered to a community who are working a habit of Midrash into their active life.  This tool can be used one-on-one or in a triad to "spur one another on to love and good actions" (Hebrew 10:24)  Each domain has questions to mutually ask each other.  I personally don’t bulldoze through all the domains in one sitting.  Mutually and incrementally we converse our way to a better future.

Identity - "What is God's spirit doing in me?"

Community - "What is God's spirit doing around me?"

Renewal - "What is God's spirit doing through me?"

Becoming -  "What step do I need to take?"
 

A Diagnostic Tool for Discipleship
(click to increase size)

Book Review: Creating A Missional Culture by JR Woodward

As a missional practioner, I am always looking for resources that come from others who have been digging deep in the garden of Missional Communities. Lately as I’ve traveled around a bit, I’ve bumped into a lot of “missional talk”; it can become a bit tiring. However, connecting with JR and his book “Creating A Missional Culture” I find missionality saturated in persevering practice. Walking through the book over the last month I’ve felt like I’ve had a conversation with someone who has taken difficult risks to pioneer for the sake of God's in-breaking Kingdom.

The Power of Culture 
My favorite section of the book is on the power of culture. JR is a diagnostician when engaging with the nature of how cultures form and form us. JR helps us see what we have potentially become too accustomed to. He helps us have eyes to see when he says “The dominant culture seeks to squeeze the church into its mold of market-style exchanges, manufacture desire, self sufficiency and addiction.”  I many ways the Evangelical church has built and planted churches leveraging these drives and cultural standards. JR is diagnosing the culture and like an archaeologist begins to uncover how the “host culture” has shaped and socialized us. The glaring narrative of our host culture is fierce individualism. This ethic has seeped into the church and woven its way into our very fabric. JR exposes that this reality has seriously weakened our ability to be an “alternative way of living and of being a human community”.

Re-imagining Leadership 
The feistiest section of the book is when JR transitions to re-imagining leadership that is not individualistic but instead orients around a shared approach to discipleship and culture creating. Honestly this type of leadership makes many of us nervous. There is an illusion of security with a strong hierarchy style, one guy at the top branded leadership. JR is speaking truth when he says that a "Kingdom-formed church must swim upstream when it comes to how we practice leadership." In the chapter “Hearing the Story” he makes an effective attempt at giving us a new lens to read the scriptures when it comes to the narrative of leadership. Within the church we have heroic ideals of sole leaders who rescue the day and lead God’s people into the sunset.  But JR challenges that reading and walks us gradually through leadership in the book of Revelation, in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the Gospels and in Acts and the Epistles. This part of the book is straight up bible survey that lands with saying “the church in Jerusalem was led by a plurality of leaders, James, Peter and John being amongst others…sitting in the round, encircling the table, recognizing God at the center and mutually submitting to each other.” 

The Polycentric Model 
Part three of the book lays out a thorough schematic of what a shared leadership paradigm looks like for the Missional Church. JR calls this a “polycentric leadership model.” He paces us methodically through what he calls the “five culture creators”: apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. He gives us a good picture of each of the culture creators working together and how each of them is earthed out.  For a couple years now personally, I’ve mulled over and researched whether these five gifts are prescriptive or descriptive. I’m not fully convinced either way yet but JR makes the best case I've read so far for how to interpret Ephesians 4:11-16.  He is gracious and hospitable with his hermeneutic and this drew me in to investigate. Honestly it was this section of the book that stirred me up and challenged me the most and that’s how I like my books to hit me.

For certain, I’m convinced JR Woodward is surgically accurate when he says “structures are not neutral, they are theological statements”.  His passionate case for correcting our over-institutionalized leadership is necessary to free the Missional Church to authentically be on mission and contextual in the west. If we desire to be a church that is a sign of God’s coming kingdom we will “seek to reflect his triune and communal nature in all we do”.  This emphasis on community is more than a fad or just an issue of belonging for JR, it is the plumb-line through the Scriptures. Get this book if you're in the trenches, it's an accessible text book on the missional frontier that is written with urgency, soaked in genuine experience.

Click for my further thoughts on "Mutual Missional Leadership" 

Mutual Missional Leadership (5 Principles)

My story is that before being part of a team that planted a church in the city, I had been blessed to be a pastor for over a decade working in fairly organized churches. In the last few years I’ve had to go through a serious overhaul in my apprehension of ministry leadership. I am now  part of a “Leading Community” that is forging a network of missional-communities in a very Post-Christian city.    

The Anabaptist Influence 

Over the last decade I devoured every book and conference I could touch that taught me how to be a better personal leader. But somewhere in that leadership hunt I stumbled upon an odd little book called “Body Politics” by John Howard Yoder. I first thought it was about American politics but discovered this short-but-sweet book was on Anabaptist ecclesiology. It’s contents lodged in my mind and spun an inner conversation. I started to read both Anabaptist works and the New Testament narrative, alongside my 21st century leadership library. A growing conflict and discontent was brewing in my leadership framework.

Re-imagining New Scaffolding

Since planting this awkward missional expression, I’ve had to re-imagine and reconstruct our leadership scaffolding. I had baptized my previous leadership commitments in isolated Bible verses and Christian lingo. In my evaluation, I began to see the overly-individualized and overly-professionalized nature of a large portion of leadership paradigms. I began to ask the question how does leadership function in a land where old maps no longer work? The challenge was to pare back my leadership zealousness in order to resurrect a Missional Leadership that is fluid, communal, sustainable and equipped for the collapse of the Christian Empire. Without being exhaustive in this post for a more Mutual Missional Leadership, what follows is the basic principles that we've employed in our Leading Community. Naturally when I speak of a more inclusive and participatory leadership, pragmatic types see chaos and anarchy. My experience has been the opposite. We intentionally cultivate the following scaffolding that steers us away from becoming personality, program or power driven. It is not romantic or without it’s struggles but it is a framework that pushes to the surface the priesthood.  

1. Communal before Clergy

The Scriptures contain: Apostles, Elders, Pastors, Evangelists, Prophets, Deacons, Teachers, Paul and his Coworkers, Barnabas, Peter, James, Timothy, Junia, Phoebe, Eudia, Lydia, Priscilla and Aquila.  We do not believe there is one prescribed form of church government, though we do see contextual organization. We are convinced that the early church was in process, attempting to figure things out as we are and we notice most of the NT letters where troubleshooting problems. From the New Testament we minimally observe mutuality, diversity and character. So we establish a "Leading Community" with a mosaic of voices even if it causes us to slow down our pace. The movement of the Kingdom was not intended to revolve around one gifted personality, propped up on a stage as a magnet communicator. We'd rather the messy work of "influence by mutuality" than "authority by hierarchy." Our pursuit of an emotionally healthy life together is our greatest leadership. We call people into our shared life; the cost of following Jesus and the work of building for the Kingdom on earth. 

2. Submissional before Sergeants

Together we have the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. There is no chain of command, no louder voice amongst our Leading Community. Sure, our personal passions and strengths lean towards emphasizing certain areas. But we practice equality and mutual submission in valuing each others opinions, experiences and perspectives. Just because someone does more of the teaching or someone communicates to the body more often does not mean they hold more authority. Authentic consensus is valued over compliance. The work of agreement is exhausting at times but it cultivates ownership. We champion each other to use our strengths to bless and nourish our larger community. But trust is imperative as we decentralize. When we hear curious information about someone else we defer to trust; choosing to treat them with honor and respect as we seek out a direct conversation for understanding.

  

3. Disciplers before Deciders

Our "Leading Community" are first disciplers because we are all called to apprentice others as we apprentice under Jesus. Our team cannot make good decisions unless we are in the sacred, complicated space of being entrenched relationally with others on the journey of discipleship. This means an active calendar of sitting still with people one-on-one to navigate inner-life, family, mission and community. Leadership is not primarily about making decisions. Our first responsibility is developing people, empowering their inherent priesthood and inviting them to submit all of life to King Jesus as we seek to do the same. Our ability to influence is built on continued, transparent, relational proximity instead of church structured programs with us at the helm.

  

4. Consultive before Concrete

Be available, accessible, in direct dialogue and breaking bread together. Spend unhurried time meeting with people, discussing the movements of our community before forming a concrete position on an issue. Hold forums, dinners, coffee-talks to receive consultation from our larger communities. Let feedback weigh heavily on the Leading Community. Learn to compromise based on good insight from the community we love. Believe that the Holy Spirit is in them just as much as it is in you. Don’t treat this like a hoop to jump through. Embrace this for what it is; listening to the voice of the Spirit through others.

5. Accountability before Autonomy

We covenant together towards a rhythm of life that orients around two arenas; missionality and community.  We welcome sustainable practices that draw us into greater hospitality, generosity and presence in our neighborhoods. We commit to orienting around community by working towards vulnerability, truth-speak, pointed encouragement and regularly shared meals. Skills do not qualify leaders character does. Leadership calls us collectively to model covenant and promise keeping. This accountability to the "way we are human" requires the constant self-evaluation among the leading core. Status can become the source of the lie that says "I don't need accountability because of who I am."