Walking with the Disciple Maker

[This is Chapter 14 of Disciple Maker: Fulfill Your Destiny in the Disciple-Making Movement Launched by Jesus Christ, by Phil Bickel (© 2020). Free download of 58-page ebook at Faith Trekker Store.]

Chapter Summaries

1. In the classroom of daily life, Jesus models for us how to walk with God.
2. Although we are misfits, He promises He will teach us to fish for people.
3. As the Bhojpuri of India and others used His methods, millions became disciples.
4. Discovery Bible Study succeeds when groups honor Jesus as their leader.
5. Know-nothings meet God when they accept His Word as their sole authority.
6. As they learn His-story from Creation to Christ, they see their place in it.
7. The DBS format trains disciples to trust God’s Word, share it, and live it out.
8. DBS groups multiply when seekers are taught to facilitate their own new group.
9. DBS grows disciples who believe, serve, witness, and mature in Christ. 
10. DBS prepares us for spiritual warfare and faithful outreach amid persecution.
11. DBS equips us to disciple our own children so they know God personally.
12. As the Disciple Maker keeps guiding us to persons of peace, He creates a DMM.
13. Starting small, our local churches can set a course toward disciple making.

Will I Sign on the Dotted Line?

The question now facing us is this: Will I enroll in Rabbi Jesus University, in order to walk beside Jesus the Disciple Maker?  

I choose to learn from Christ how to make disciples by employing DBS-DMM.  Why?  Since 1970, I have aspired to make evangelism the primary focus of my life and career.  Over the years God blessed me with colleagues and friends who share the passion that the Apostle Paul expressed in Acts 20: 24: “I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me — the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”  Fifty years later, I thank my Savior God for a career filled with opportunities to plant new churches, to encourage and train believers for compassionate outreach beyond their comfort zones, to work with missionaries in many lands, and to touch people I have never met through my writings.  Even so, some sobering questions remain.  I’ll state them as a prayer: 

Lord, Jesus, in the churches and ministries where I have served how many Christians matured into disciples who make disciples?  In the Book of Acts, Your Church multiplied phenomenally.  Yet in my lifetime, how much progress have we, Your Church, made toward completing the Great Commission?  Both our traditional methods and our modern innovations yield a small harvest compared to the multitudes that still need saving.  Did Your first disciples know something that we do not?

Do these questions sound familiar?  Do you ask them?  They resemble the consternation of missionary David Watson after his Bhojpuri church planters were martyred, and he realized that the Church’s current methods are insufficient to bring in the great harvest our Savior God desires.  Then in the Scriptures the Lord revealed His disciple-making methods to David.  When I review the strengths of Discovery Bible Study, I am convinced that none of my favorite evangelism and discipleship methods have as much potential to generate a Disciple Making Movement.  These are the reasons why I am signing on the dotted line to walk with Jesus the Disciple Maker.  

How about you?  If you are still hesitant, let’s compare disciple making to three strategy games played on a standard checkerboard.  I ask the indulgence of board game experts who know these games are far more complicated and have more variations than my simplified descriptions will indicate.

Now let’s compare checkers to telling people about Jesus Christ.  If someone rarely plays checkers, that is of no consequence, but it matters immensely if a Christian rarely witnesses.  To learn checkers is not complicated.  To memorize basic Bible verses and learn how to explain them doesn’t require excessive gray matter.  To actually speak up when an opportunity arrives may seem hard to do, but when we trust the Holy Spirit, we learn that He is orchestrating our conversations, which motivates us to hone our evangelism skills.  Although we have different levels of ability, we are all as capable of playing the game of witnessing as we are of playing checkers.

The complexity of pieces, movements, and more rules, may overwhelm novices who conclude, “I’ll never figure this game out.”  Too bad, because chess is the preferred strategic board game of many bumbling amateurs and of the Grand Masters, whose matches are legendary.

Like chess players, some lay people and church workers learn higher levels of evangelism complexity.  These experts implement discipleship strategies, so that newcomers to the faith may not fall away, but grow and mature.  Some of the “grand masters” favor using tried and true methods from the past, in order to make churches more faithful and fruitful.  Other “grand masters” prefer new strategies to make churches more missional and fruitful.  

How about you?  Do you play evangelism and discipling at the complexity level of checkers or of chess?  How satisfied are you with your methods and results?

When initially learning a game, we are puzzled and dread being humiliated.  With experience, our bewilderment gives way to confidence.  The same is true with evangelism and disciple making.  As our skills increase we grow comfortable with our methods and confident  that we know what we’re doing.  However, because being in control feels far nicer than our former cluelessness, we may not even be aware when we cross the line into self-reliant pride.  The problem with pride is that we can’t detect our own.

Counter-Intuitive Crisis

Then along comes Jesus the Disciple Maker, throwing a wrench into all our fine-functioning church machinery with His humbling and counter-intuitive methods: 

1. Pray to the Lord of the Harvest — because He is in control.  
2. Search for a worthy person of peace — because the Holy Spirit is already turning them away from their dead-end beliefs to the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  
3. Train the person of peace to facilitate the group, so that they listen to God’s Word (not our words) — because only by holding to Christ’s teachings will they really be His disciples (not ours), know the truth, and be set free. (John 8:31f). 
4. Allow Discovery groups to be know-nothings who explore God’s teachings — because this is how Jesus taught His disciples.
5. Let them grow in humble obedience to God’s Word — because obeying all that Rabbi Jesus commands is the very essence of being His disciples.  (Matt. 28:19)
6. When outsiders shows interest, help them form their own groups — because they are not our disciples (answerable to us), but Christ’s disciples.  (Acts 9:1)
7. Involve them right away in witnessing and service (rather than our slow-growth agendas) — because it will prepare them to withstand persecution.  (Acts 14:22)
8. Train children in this way too — because they also are disciples.  (Acts 21:3-6)
9. Disciple making can become the main thing in churches — because it is!
10. Trust the Holy Spirit to work through all these efforts — because only God (not we) can ignite and fan the spread of a Disciple-Making Movement.

What might cause us to be reluctant to adopt Jesus’ methods?  Well, God’s ways are not our ways. (Is. 55:8-10)  To follow His ways would mean submitting our long-held traditions to His superior wisdom.  We would have to lay at His feet all our cherished ecclesiastical traditions, evangelism strategies, and discipling programs, to be employed only when He indicates that they will fit into His plans.  

Our hesitancy may be fueled by something even more damaging than our reluctance to retool.  What is the opposite of faith?  Is it unbelief or doubt?  While these play a role, the actual opposite of faith is fear.  Every one of the ten points listed above requires us to give up control, and we fear not being in control.  Adopting DBS-DMM would mean letting go and letting Christ lead us.  We worry: God only knows what would happen if I sought to make disciples in a way similar to what Jesus did.  That’s right — only God knows!  

How do we overcome our fear?  Let’s consider a third board game.

Multi-Dimensional Chess

In the science-fiction television series Star Trek, Spock and Capt. Kirk would sometimes converse while engaged in a chess-like game with seven boards arranged at different levels.  (To see it click here.)  Although the game was merely a theatre prop, Trekkies and chess fans could not resist inventing rules to play what is now commonly called Star Trek Chess (The official name is Tri-Dimensional Chess).  The seven boards and levels add moves and strategies that range far beyond checkers and chess.

Probably 99.99% of us don’t have a clue how to play Star Trek Chess.  Just a glance at the seven-board layout makes us freak out, “It’s too complex!  I would never know how to win that game!”  That reaction sounds a lot like how Christians dread setting aside their tried and true evangelism methods and allowing the Disciple Maker to lead them. 

This shouldn’t surprise us.  When Jesus sent out the the 12, He said “Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts— no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff,…” (Matt. 10:9f).  The 72 received similar instructions to set aside every resource people usually depend on, thus placing their future and the results in the Disciple Maker’s hands.  Upon their return, they rejoiced in the successful outcome of Jesus’ counter-intuitive methods.  Jesus was just as happy as they were.

At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.  Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.  (Luke 10:21 emphasis added)

Jesus’ words reveal that evangelism and disciple making are far more complex than Star Trek Chess.  No matter how wise and learned we think we are, this game is played best by little children who lean not on their own understanding.  We are not scholars in Rabbi Jesus University, we are tots in Rabbi Jesus Kindergarten.

The most complex and longest-running strategy game is “Wanting All to Be Saved,” and God our Savior is the only Grand Master.  While at times He appears to be losing, the momentum shifted when He set His King on a little square called Bethlehem.  This King came to set pawns free.  Although the King was captured for a time in the checkmate of death, the Grand Master had a surprise move up His sleeve.  Before the Risen King left the board, He commissioned us to multiply His pawns until He returns.  However, we are more than pawns — we are God’s children!  

So, picture this. You are like a 5 year old sitting on God’s lap while He plays “Wanting All to Be Saved.”  The game is far more complex than Star Trek Chess — not just 7 boards, but 70 times 7!  However, God the Grand Master knows every detail about everyone you know, every influence on their lives, every thought in their minds, every lie they believe, every sin they’ve done, every evil done to them, every emotion, every agony, every ecstasy, every spiritual battle raging in the heavenly realms, and far more. 

As you nestle in God’s lap, you are clueless how to win the game.  But then the Lord says, “Child, please pick up that knight on Board 439 and set it here on Board 22.”  So you dutifully follow His instructions, and He applauds, “Well done, child!”  Move by move, He leads you to triumphs you could never achieve alone.  Such a game occurs in Acts 8:26-40, as the Holy Spirit guides Philip step by step to bring the Good News of Jesus to the Treasurer of Ethiopia, and through him to all his nation.  

When we play “Wanting All to Be Saved” at our limited skill level, the harvest is small.  Wherever Christ’s disciples surrender control and play at God’s skill level, the harvest is plentiful.  This does not mean the abilities we were born with and the skills we have learned through the years are useless; it means that Jesus our leader will show us when to use them and when to employ a novel approach.  

The Almighty God, the Grand Master of this game, says, “These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word” (Is. 66:2b).  We don’t see all the factors involved in the moves God shows us to make.  We are unaware of what will happen next.  And next.  And next.  But when we obey and do what He calls for, we are then in place for the next move.  Step by step, revelation by revelation, His strategy unfolds.  An earlier move which had seemed to be too risky — even a blunder — now provides a strategic advantage.  After experiencing this many times, we learn to obey His directions more consistently.

My friend, isn’t this is the best way to play the game of making disciples?  You don’t need to know everything.  You only need to walk in yoke with the Disciple Maker, seek your Father’s kingdom, and trust the Holy Spirit to lead you each step of the way.  

Playing this game with the Triune Grand Master is so fluid, complex, innovative, and thrilling, that every morning you will ask “May I play with You again, Abba?”  Smiling, He nods, sets you on His lap, and together you gaze out upon the fields that are ripe for harvest.

Chess: Image by Positive_Images from Pixabay