Keys to Success and Barriers to Growth (1 of 3)

In an earlier series we explored 5 values for a whole-life disciplemaking church. Now, based on our experience with the Imagine Pilot Project, I’d like to give space to exploring some of the keys to success and barriers to growth in becoming a whole-life community. We start by exploring the barriers.

From experience we know the sobering reality:

• In some places whole-life discipleship will flourish
• In many places it will not flourish as much as it could do

This is not easy work. Becoming a church that seeks to equip its members for the whole of life is a slow, long term process. Often it takes a long time of concerted effort to begin to see green shoots of change and churches encounter many challenges and distractions as they make the journey.

So, can we identify the barriers that get in the way?

From what we have observed through the pilot project, we think there are three areas of challenge:

1. Problems with Perspective
2. Problems with Participation
3. Problems with Process

Over the next three posts we will explore each of these areas in turn, but we begin by looking at problems with perspective. The challenges that arise in the way whole-life discipleship is understood.

Problems with Perspective:

1. Forgetting it is an urgent question
Whole-life discipleship can become something that is endlessly interesting for church leadership teams and groups to talk about. We can debate the ways in which we might equip people, reflect on the question of the characteristics of a whole-life disciple, and brainstorm creative approaches. However, churches need to be fundamentally convinced that the equipping of the people of God as disciples on the Frontline is urgent for the continuing mission and vitality of the church in the 21st Century. There is a serious issue in the life of the church today, the membership of churches is reducing, and people are struggling to present a coherent and credible witness amidst multiple overwhelmings. Therefore this is a question that needs to be addressed now rather than put off. And it needs to be addressed where you are and not just elsewhere.

Consequently, the equipping of the people of God is not, to quote Hendrik Kraemer in his Theology of the Laity, just an ‘interesting intermezzo in the Church’s realm of discourse.’ Rather, a church leadership team need to be gripped by this vision. As Bishop Graham Cray put it:

Churches have to recognise that the core of their calling is to be disciplemaking communities, whatever else they do.

Situations where whole-life discipleship remains an interesting rather than an urgent question are contexts where this call has failed to take root properly. To see this as an urgent question is not to say we need to go about it in a frantic manner without due consideration. We need to practice what Jim Kotter termed Urgent Patience – acting each day with a sense of purpose but with a realistic sense of time seeking to embed coherent changes in line with the new vision.

2. Forgetting it is a vision question
So what is this new vision? Well, whole-life discipleship is not about finding new ways of doing church better. It isn’t about discovering new, clever or creative ideas. Nor is it about helping tired, busy people discover new ways of living. (Although we hope it will embrace these aspects.)

Fundamentally, what we are talking about when we talk about whole-life discipleship is a new vision of the lordship of Christ manifest in all of life.

This vision underpins all we do. What we are trying to encourage churches to do is help their members discover what naming Jesus Christ as Lord of All practically means, so that ‘whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.’ (Colossians 3:17) It is a clear grasp of this vision that will fuel change that lasts. (For more on unpacking the question of Lordship, click here.)

3. Forgetting it is a mission question

Connected to the vision question, is the need to remember that whole-life discipleship is fundamentally a mission question. The central question we are constantly asking is, how can we accompany God in His mission to reach this nation?

This means churches need to be clear in focussing on this work as a mission question and not just a pastoral question. Our hope is to enable people to not only survive on their Frontlines but thrive, to make a difference. Consequently, we retain our pastoral concern, but do not seek to separate it from our missional concern. Indeed, this should enlarge our vision of pastoral care – it isn’t just about patching people up. Rather, the pastoral element of our work gains new dimensions as we encourage people to engage well in mission on the Frontline.

4. Forgetting the power of the default

Finally, churches struggle when they forget the power of the Sacred-Secular divide. The sacred-secular divide, that sees some things as really important to God and others as not, is alive and well in our churches, in church members and in us. We need to ‘keep the enemy in mind.’ Engaging in this work is not done in a neutral context. Rather as we seek to become a whole-life disciplemaking community we are actively fighting against a mindset that seeks to drastically limit the scope of people’s imagination and vision of how God might use them.