Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

discipleship

How I Make Disciples: Character & Competency

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Dallas Willard has famously said that, since making disciples is the main task of the church, every church ought to be able to answer two questions:

  1. What is our plan for making disciples of Jesus?
  2. Is our plan working?

I have a new huddle starting this week, and at our first gathering I will walk people through the big picture of how I have come to think about and practice making disciples and training leaders. In conjunction with this, I’ll be posting a six-part series that outlines my philosophy and practice of discipleship; my personal answer to Willard’s first question.

It’s not that I have it all figured out, of course, and I am basically just doing things I’ve learned from Dallas Willard, Mike Breen, and countless others. I know I still have an immense amount to learn, but in the past few years several things have settled into place for me, and it seemed like a good idea to distill and condense many of the various pieces into a coherent “manifesto” on discipleship, if you will. So, without further ado, here’s my plan for making disciples of Jesus.

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Why It’s Hard to Invest in Exponential Growth

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You’ve probably heard most of the illustrations about the power of exponential growth vs. linear growth. For example, if you were able to keep folding a piece of paper in half indefinitely (essentially doubling its height every fold), it would only take you 42 folds to reach the moon. Or, if you started with one dollar and doubled your money every day, by the end of the first week you’d have $64. But by the end of the first month you’d have $268,435,456!

When you think about it, making disciples of Jesus could be like this. If I make, say, 8 disciples, and they all make 6 disciples each, and all of those people make 4 disciples each, you end up with 248 disciples of Jesus by the third generation. The exponential equation only gets more incredible after that. And all I have to do in the first generation is make 8 disciples. So why do we find it hard to invest our energy in making disciples who can make disciples? I can think of a couple reasons.

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Ecclesia National Gathering Discipleship Workshop

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Today I’m heading out to Washington D.C. for this year’s Ecclesia Network National Gathering. The theme this year is Spiritual Formation in Missional Congregations, we’ll be joined by Dr. Todd Hunter, Dr. Marykate Morse, Corey Widmer and Don Coleman, and others from within the network who will be running some of the focused sessions. There is a liveblog feed, which you might enjoy following.

In addition to the blessing of simply attending and re-connecting with friends in the network, this year I’ll be partnering with my friend Doug Paul to lead a focused session on Huddles, a vehicle for discipleship and leadership development we’ve both found to be tremendously transformational for our communities.

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Do We Actually Trust the Holy Spirit?

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From my previous post (reflections on the triumphal entry):

Even among his disciples, though, there was an incredibly high level of misunderstanding about what kind of king he was, and what was going to happen in Jerusalem. In this aspect, Jesus displayed a tremendous trust in the Holy Spirit to bring his disciples into “all truth” after his resurrection and ascension.

If I were Jesus, I think I’d be a bit worried. His disciples, who have been with him the whole time, learning about the kingdom of God, still don’t get it. They have been personally mentored by the Son of God for three years, and on the eve of his crucifixion, they’re still arguing about who will be Secretary of State when Jesus kicks out the Romans and restores the glory-days of Israel. He’s entrusting his movement to these people?

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Liking Jesus For All the Wrong Reasons

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This morning’s daily readings included Mark’s telling of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and it got me thinking again about how those same crowds who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem as the long-awaited king so quickly turned against him and called for his crucifixion only a few days later.

There is a deep irony in the story, because the people were rightly proclaiming Jesus to be the long-awaited king were also wrongly harboring hopes that he would be a king to their liking, a king who would behave in the ways they expected him to behave, who exercised his power in ways that suited their own aspirations and goals. They interpreted the message of the kingdom as a ticket to getting what they wanted, as a new power available to them for attaining the desires of the flesh.

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