Category Archive for 'disciple'

God’s calling to the church Part 4

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The fourth calling for the church is to make disciples. I discuss this thoroughly in Organic Disciplemaking

Jesus called the church to go and make disciples of all the peoples. Mt. 28. A disciple is a student. Ancient rabbis spent years with their disciples, teaching their way of life, their understanding of scripture, and how to teach it to others. Like Jesus, they often lived with their disciples for extended periods. The process of discipleship was a complete shaping of a new rabbi—a passing on of everything the rabbi had; his character, his knowledge, his values, and his wisdom. Ancient Jewish discipleship was an educational process, but it contained much more than our modern concept of education. Rabbis transmitted biblical knowledge, but the close association in daily life also transmitted elements not found in books. The rabbi sought to transmit his outlook, wisdom, and character. This was personalized education where two men formed a close, trusting relationship. Within that relationship, the rabbi could sense inner spiritual needs in his disciple and minister to those. The idea was to produce a certain kind of person. The intensive personal attention in this style of training dictated that a rabbi focus on only a few disciples at a time.

Jesus apparently took this model and used it fully, even expanding on the norm. He lived and traveled with the twelve, and seems to have focused even more on the top three: James, John, and Peter. Although some New Testament authors refer to all Christians as disciples (in the sense that they are all followers of Christ), the majority use refers to those who were trainees of a specific teacher.

The same seems to be true of Paul (the only apostle for whom we have extensive biographical information). Right from the beginning, Paul worked at discipleship. After his three-year stay in Damascus, he had to escape by being lowered from the city walls. According to Acts 9:25 it was “his disciples” who lowered him in a basket.

Later, Paul lived and traveled with numerous young men and at least one married couple, teaching them his extraordinary body of knowledge, both in the Old Testament scriptures (where he was an expert) but also from the amazing revelations he had been given by God. They also got the chance to see Paul at work in the field, and no-doubt participated with him in actual ministry situations. This kind of field training could develop skills and understanding in a way no classroom could. Paul was in a position to see with his own eyes how younger workers ministered. That would lead to the best kind of coaching and feedback.

More than 30 men and women are mentioned by name as fellow-workers with Paul. It seems likely that many of these were discipled by Paul, and there may have been others not mentioned. In a ministry spanning roughly 30 years, Paul could easily have raised up 30 or more disciples.

In one famous passage, Paul instructs his favorite disciple, Timothy, to carry on the work of discipleship:

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Tim. 2:2)

We can see Paul was concerned with duplicating disciples down through 4 generations: 1) himself 2) Timothy 3) “reliable men” and 4) “others.” From this single verse, we see clearly that Paul used personal discipleship as a conscious strategy for developing leadership in the early church. He also urged women to disciple other women (Tit. 2:3), a practice unknown in Judaism.

In the New Testament church, where there were no seminaries or graduate schools of theology, the church’s leadership was apparently all raised up by a process of personal discipleship. In the absence of any mention of other means for raising up leadership, we can only suppose that such discipleship was likely not just the main means, but the only means used. Apparently not only leaders, but most Christians were discipled at some level in the early church. Paul says, “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.” (Col. 1:28).

Filed under: disciple, early church, leadership training by Dennis McCallum
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The Power of Multiplication

Here are some thoughts from Organic Disciplemaking on multiplication growth as opposed to linear growth in the church.

Multiplication Growth

The period from the death of Christ until the end of the first century was the most fruitful in the history of the church. During these few decades, Christianity spread clear across the Roman Empire and even penetrated deeper into Africa, the Parthian Empire, and India. The best estimates put the number of Christians at the end of the first century at around 1 million.1 That’s an increase of 2000 times the number of Christians before Pentecost (perhaps 500). And all of this growth was facilitated by the process of discipleship. Without mass media, without advertising, without church buildings, and without seminaries, the primitive church expanded at a rate never equaled in the nineteen centuries since.

Both Christian and secular observers recognize the New Testament church as a perfect example of a church planting movement. In this type of movement, local house churches each strive to replicate themselves by planting additional churches. The result can be exponential growth.

To understand the power of exponential growth, consider the following scenario: Nobody would feel bad about a church that could win fifty thousand people in two years. In fact, we know of no church that has done so well. And if they won an additional fifty thousand each two years thereafter, such a church could win 1.5 million people during a sixty-year period. Remarkable indeed! This would truly be a super church.

On the other hand, a single house church of thirty people, where the average member did nothing but win and disciple one other person during a two-year period would seem rather unremarkable. They would have a mere sixty people after two years, and would become two home churches. But if the original group and the new group both did the same thing during the following two years, and this process continued for the next sixty years, the result would be far more remarkable than that of the super church. In fact the duplicating group would have won 16 million people! They would, in fact have out-performed the super church by more than ten times! Not only that, but within another twenty-five years, this duplicating group would have won every person on earth.

We are not suggesting these numbers are realistic, but they do illustrate the power of exponential growth. However, notice two important points about these calculations:

1. To achieve true multiplication growth, the duplication of individuals and churches must go forward without degradation. If the quality of disciples or churches declines at all with each duplication event, the whole process breaks down very quickly. Quality is one key to ongoing duplication. Historians have noted that church planting movements tend to fizzle out after a number of years. Why? Probably some movements compromise on quality for the sake of quantity. Others may grow so concerned about quality that they cease duplicating and become saddled with too many rules and restrictions.

2. In the duplication model, results are very small during the early years, compared with the super church. By year 10, for example, the duplicating group would have only 480 members in sixteen house churches, while the super church would already have a quarter million members. Can you imagine these two groups looking over at each other? How inferior the duplicating group would feel with less than five hundred members to show for ten years hard work, seeing a super church nearby that had reached a quarter million people during the same period! At this stage the super church would be more than five hundred times larger than the duplicating group. Surely, it would seem, God’s blessing rests on the super church, and not on the duplicating church. (Although we know the duplicating church is actually doing ten times better than the super church, though it doesn’t show yet). It would take a powerful act of faith to continue using the duplication approach. Anyone impatient for quick results will abandon duplication.

Organic growth is biblical and powerful.


[i] For instance, the World Christian Encyclopedia, estimates that by A.D. 100 there were 1 million Christians in the Roman Empire out of a population of 181 million. David B. Barrett, ed., World Christian Encyclopedia. A Comparative Study of Churches and Religions in the Modern World A.D. 1900-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 3. Recently, Rodney Stark has written a book offering an entirely implausible estimate of only 8000 Christians by the end of the first century. We would join most historians in rejecting this estimate. In the first place, we can account for 8000 Christians within the first few chapters of Acts, unless these narratives are completely discounted. Secondly, his estimate is based on a straight mathematical formula assuming 40% growth per decade for 300 years, ending in six million Christians by the time of Constantine. But this is not how Christianity grew. The growth was far better during the early years and slowed thereafter. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, (Princeton: The Princeton University Press, 1996). For a more responsible account see Latourette: “Our records, unsatisfactory though they are, suffice to show that by A.D. 180 Christians were in all the provinces of the Empire and in Mesopotamia.” Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, Vol. 1, (Grand Rapids, MI. Zondervan Publishing House, 1970) 85. He also observes, “Never in the history of the race has this record ever quite been equaled. Never in so short a time has any other religious faith, or, for that matter, any other set of ideas, religious political, or economic, without the aid of physical force or of social or cultural prestige, achieved so commanding a position in such an important culture.” 112. Of course Islam and Communism spread fast, but both used military force. Notice that Tacitus refers to the “huge multitude” of Christians captured during Nero’s persecution Tacitus, Anal. XV. 44. Shortly after the first century, anti-Christian governor Pliny says that in his province Christians were so numerous that temples were empty, and they couldn’t sell sacrificial animals or fodder. (Pliny, 10.96.1-2)

[ii] If the same rate of growth had continued, everyone on earth would have been a Christian before the end of the second century. Only in our own day to we see a comparable level of growth in some parts of the world, unfortunately not including Europe or the U.S. See Martin Robinson and Dwight Smith, Invading Secular Space: Strategies for Tomorrow’s Church, (Grand Rapids, MI: Monarch Books, 2003) Chapter 1. Also see David Garrison, Church Planting Movements, (Midlothian, VA: WIGTake Resources, 2004).

Filed under: church growth, church planting, disciple, discipleship, early church, organic church by Dennis McCallum
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