The Power of the Pastors

We are reading the Disciple-Making Church (Bill Hull, ISBN 0800756274) together with our leadership team (deacons and trustees). Hull has a great passion for disciple-making, for helping others grow and succeed. Thus he wrote a book with the expressed intention to "provide a scriptural apologetic for a full-bodied discipling model" (p.12). To seek to deliver people from bondage to sin, develop them into fully functioning disciples of Christ and to deploy them into the whitened harvest fields is discipleship in a nutshell.

When Christ walked the earth, he was a one-stop discipler. Twelve men followed him closely and came away having been discipled. Hull suggests that these twelve, however, could not do it alone. They needed twos and threes and twelves to accomplish the same effect. We need the body of Christ to be engaged in discipling, not just the pastors or leaders. This may have even been the issue in Corinth as disciples began to hold their key discipler up as a model for others -- the ultimate discipler. Yet Paul's begging message is for reconnection of the body with all of its pieces. Each person must be discipling his neighbor and involved in the call to obedience and holding each other accountable.

Hull also says that

...pastoral care plays a vital role in drawing people to the church and supporting them in Christ. Unless a loving, caring community exists to help new-born babes and heal the wounded, people won't come to Him or stick around long enough to be trained. Love within the community of Christ is the most powerful of all the church's evangelistic tools. pp.31-32

If Hull is right, then the old Baptist adage, "every member is a minister" is true in a church that understands its evangelistic and disciple-making mandate. If the nurturing to disciple factoid is added to the no solo, lone ranger disciplers factoid, then the result is a strong Biblical belief in multiplicity of pastors (even if you don't believe in ordaining every person to the position/office).

Discussion Q's:

1. Whose responsibility is disciple-making?
2. If people are getting saved (responding to the gospel personally) and not growing or becoming functional members of the church, what is missing?
3. How many people does it take to grow a fully functioning mature disciple of Christ? Is it higher or lower than the number of Baptists it takes to change a light bulb?

Passionate about disciplemaking (relationship combined with instruction),

Mike