Task force aims to create ‘discipleship culture’
ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP) — LifeWay Christian Resources’ and the North American Mission Board’s recently-appointed task force on disciple-making met Monday, Oct. 17 at NAMB’s building in Alpharetta, Ga. The group of 11 Southern Baptist pastors gathered to discuss their task of communicating that “any church of any background can be disciple-making,” according to chairman Robby Gallaty, pastor of Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn.
Gallaty began the meeting by asking what the “win” for the discipleship task force would be. Members unanimously agreed that success would be helping churches create a process to celebrate making disciples.
“We, as pastors, are seeing the lostness all around North America,” Gallaty said. “It’s all over social media. There appears to be a very shallow concept of Christianity, and it’s sad to think about. But in order to understand how to disciple, we’ve got to understand the culture we’re discipling.”
The goal of the meeting was to find ways to help churches move closer to discipleship by creating a philosophy, mindset and change of culture. While task force members are not creating a curriculum, they are looking for ways to spark a disciple-making movement throughout the Southern Baptist Convention.
One priority the pastors discussed was the need for a holistic view of discipleship.
“We must understand that discipleship impacts all of life from our homes to our professions,” said Eric Geiger, pastor of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tenn., and vice president of resources at LifeWay. “It’s not only what we do at church.”
In addition to Gallaty and Geiger, task force members include Adam Dooley, Sunnyvale Baptist Church, Sunnyvale, Texas; Johnny Hunt, First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga.; Paul Jimenez, Taylors First Baptist Church, Taylors, S.C.; Mark Marshall, The Glade Church, Mt. Juliet, Tenn.; Kevin Smith, Highview Baptist Church, Louisville, Ky.; and Pavel Urruchi, Erlanger Baptist Church, Erlanger, Ky.
The group agreed that helping churches with poor discipleship processes, or churches with none taking place at all, is a key to positive change. One of the ways the task force discussed accomplishing this is by homing in on language to use while helping churches understand the disciple-making journey and encouraging churches to be intentional in fostering discipleship.
“Discipleship is the effort to push back lostness, push back against the trends in a holistic way,” Gallaty said. “It’s the solution for everything we’re talking about in the world today.”
Geiger noted there is an “important need for churches to understand that pastors are not the only disciple-makers.”
“All of God’s people are called to make disciples,” he said.
Task force members left the meeting with individual assignments on how to engage all Southern Baptist churches in their fundamental reason for existence — to make disciples.
NAMB president Kevin Ezell said the task force will present a report at the 2017 Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix.
I am grateful for your work. This is a needed emphasis in our evangelism. In your resource tab the links to Lifeway resources are not linked to specific items. It is confusing. I look forward to the development of this initiative and this website.
There’s some risk in writing what I’m about to write. I’m encouraged that the convention recognizes the need for discipleship; however, I’m discouraged at what I have read in this article. It concerns me that a “win,” according to the Task Force, would be, “…helping churches create a process to celebrate making disciples.” If we don’t know how to make disciples in our churches (and I’m fairly confident we don’t (see Barna’s “The State of Discipleship” report, 2015)), what good does it do to create a process to celebrate making disciples?
The article above further communicates that, “The goal of the meeting was to find ways to help churches move closer to discipleship by creating a philosophy, mindset and change of culture. While task force members are not creating a curriculum, they are looking for ways to spark a disciple-making movement throughout the Southern Baptist Convention.” Moving closer to a philosophy a mindset or a change of culture may sound good but it is a man-way of doing business. Jesus did it the WAY He wants us to do it–make disciples the way He made disciples. Don’t talk about how useful it is. Don’t talk about “sparking a movement” when you don’t currently do what it takes to make disciples. Make them!
I know the article is 2 years old but I’ve heard the report given by the Task Force and I’ve seen very recent articles by senior NAMB leadership about discipleship which do nothing to assure me that we’re on a good path toward understanding HOW to make disciples or toward actually doing effective disciple-making in SBC churches.
I desire deeply that God’s church (SBC churches and beyond) be healthy and fruitful. I must also acknowledge that my own walk and talk contribute and have contributed positively and negatively to the health and fruitfulness of churches of which I’ve been a part. What I have done poorly in my past, I own. It is my fault but has been forgiven by God. What I may have done well I owe to God’s long, patient and intentional work in my life through my parents, through men and women in the churches I’ve been in and through others outside of them, through His word and by His Spirit.
I’ve been a member of 15 SBC churches from Florida to California in the last 40 years of my adult life. I’ve not been exposed to serious, effective disciple-making processes and relationships in any of them. I don’t mean by this that everything that has been done in those churches is totally ineffective and useless. What I am saying is that I’ve not seen effective disciple-making processes (really, people who understand all of what to teach and how to teach it in order to produce a disciple who can spiritually reproduce himself/herself AND who do it) in any of the churches I’ve been in.
Some 25 years ago, I became acquainted with The Navigators, an organization which has disciple-making as its primary ministry focus. I was personally discipled by a man who lived 125 miles from me. We met weekly for a year and less frequently as I matured. I began to reach out to people around me, sharing the gospel with the lost and discipling believers who were interested in learning how to grow to maturity. Ten years ago, I came on staff with The Navigators and I now work in the collegiate arm of their broader work.
There are Navigator staff and Navigator-trained laymen in many SBC churches. There will be a diversity of abilities, skills and maturity among these people. Not all of them will be equally useful in providing help to churches who want to begin to disciple well but many of them who could help have been marginalized and are probably laying low IN church while laboring OUTSIDE of church. The reasons they’ve been marginalized are many but MUCH could be accomplished for the kingdom if we’d co-labor. Instead of trying to re-invent what is already well understood in The Navigators, perhaps SBC leadership could reach out for help, at least to the successful practitioners within their congregations and perhaps even at the convention leadership level to The Navigator organization leadership. The Navigators have an arm of their overall work called Navigator Church Ministries
https://www.navigators.org/ministry/churches/
that comes alongside churches to help them learn how to become effective in disciple-making.
God is using men and women in The Navigators to win people to Christ and to help believers become mature in Christ and to, thus, become reproducing laborers in the kingdom of God. I’ve talked with many of my Navigator brothers and sisters who are in churches across America. I don’t speak for them or for The Navigators as a whole but many of us are heavy-hearted at the sterility of the churches we are in and we are desperate to see them become healthy. Many would love to help. My interest and the interest of many of my Nav brothers and sisters is not to bring Nav lingo or an organization-centric approach to the local church bodies in which we are members. We want, instead, to help our brothers and sisters know God and become mature, “…to the measure of the stature that belongs to the fulness of Christ.” Will you let us help?
Long time supporter, and thought I’d drop a comment.
Your organization’s wordpress site is very sleek – hope you
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if I steal it? :P)
I just launched my small businesses site –also
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Keep up the good work– and hope you all take care of
yourself during the coronavirus scare!
~Justin
Many thanks, this site is very useful.
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