Making Disciples

But Jesus says this…

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

“I’ve won, I want you to join in the victory by making disciples, baptizing them and teaching them all you’ve learned from me. Oh, and I’m going to come along with you!”

An old method: Making Disciples

Jesus doesn’t commission his followers and us to be God salesmen, to sell Jesus, he commissions us to make disciples of Jesus.

Today I want to talk about how making disciples is a much healthier, much more sustainable method of evangelism than trying close the deal with everyone we meet.

In he book Dog Training, Fly Fishing & Sharing Christ, Ted Haggard is encouraging us to become diciplers. Often we think that discipleship begins after someone accepts Christ – you become a Christian and then you are discipled in the faith. Ted presents the idea that we start discipling people no matter where they are in their faith journey.

In 1975 James Engel published a scale that describes the faith journey, and the various states that people pass through on their way to God. It has been used by missions educators ever since and has become known as the Engel Scale:

DISCIPLING AT EVERY STAGE: THE ENGLE SCALE

-8 Awareness of a Supreme Being, but no effective knowledge of the gospel

-7 Initial awareness of the gospel

-6 Awareness of the fundamentals of the gospel

-5 Grasp of the implications of the gospel

-4 positive attitude toward the gospel

-3 Personal problem recognition

-2 Decision to act

-1 Repentance and faith in Christ

0 The person is born again, and becomes a new creation in Christ

+1 Post decision evaluation

+2 Incorporation into a local body of Christ

+3 A lifetime of conceptual and behavioral growth in Christ

- very cerebral scale – we want people to experience God

- very individualistic – body life only happens after conversion

Ted’s Definition of discipleship is taking people one step on the Engel scale

If they are believe in a God, but don’t get grace, we help them become aware of grace…

This has caused a shift in the idea of ministry or evangelism – Ted Haggards’ model of small groups & intentional discipleship

Fly fishing small group – covert discipleship

Yes responses to God

I think that we have another not so helpful method of evangelism – the hit and run method.

We’ve gotten to know someone and befriended them, and think it would be great if they would come to Jesus. We have all these mixed up feelings – guilt for not telling them about Jesus, desire to do the right thing, hope for their soul, fear of rejection and losing a friend… So one day we get our courage up and come loaded for bear, blurt out everything we know about God, call for a response, and wait for the rejection to come. Unless it really is the Spirit’s timing and our friend was just waiting for an opportunity to give their life to Jesus, they wonder who you are and what you’ve done with their friend. Often times the friendship is hurt by our evangelistic outburst and walls are built rather than knocked down.