This thought occurred to me yesterday as I was driving home from Atlanta. When Jesus began calling the first disciples into ministry, he used this phrase:
“Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!”
For whatever reason, I started thinking about what Jesus didn’t say to those first disciples.
He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will teach you spiritual insights!”
He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to worship together!”
He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will gather you together in a home group!”
He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to pray!”
He didn’t say: “Come, follow me, and I will make you members of the church!”
I think we can all agree that Jesus was a fairly insightful guy, so I think it’s interesting of all the things he could have said, he chose to put the focus on ministry to reach other people.
And, of course, that got me thinking about how we “disciple” people in the Church today. Rather than putting the focus on ministry to reach people, we prioritize different things. Not that the other things are wrong. I just wonder if there’s something significant about the initial vision that Jesus shared with these first disciples.
In other words, maybe discipleship is really more about helping people serve God by serving others. Maybe it’s more about disciples making disciples. Maybe what we really need to do is unlearn how we do discipleship in the church.
How would the Church look different if we approached the discipleship process on “fishing for people?”
Tony, great question. I agree that I think we have maybe made it a little to complex. We have to fish for men, which means go out of our comfort zone, go out of our way, go to the places where people are “swimming” and find them. Very compelling post.
Great post Tony.
Right on; too many of use have traded cleaning the aquarium or cleaning the fish for catchin the fish! The later us too messy for too many!
I think the question is, then: “How do we fish for people?”
Jesus never shared the Gospel without meeting a need first, but he also didn’t leave the disciples to figure it out all on their own, right? There’s a balance here, and I think a lot of churches are missing it.
Good stuff man…
Its funny how we preach that only God can really save someone and that the Holy Spirit is the one who saves.
Then someone gets saved and we think we are the ones to disciple them, not the Holy Spirit.
Hey Holy Spirit take a break, you have done good work but Ill will take it from here…
Francis Chan said it at West Coast Catalyst, “If people just read the Bible would they get the same conclusions we hold to now?”
Lets let the Holy Spirit do the work and we assit him, not the other way around!
Right on Tony. When I look around at Christians from new to old, I see the most mature in Christ are the one’s serving. They are also the one’s reaching the lost and reproducing leaders.
I think part of the problem is that we teach Jesus primarily through “truth” and not through “obedience”. I have nothing against truth but if we teach Jesus based around knowledge and are unchanged by that knowledge then we need to change the way we are teaching. I agree teaching through doing is the way that we moved our knowledge into practice where is soaks down into us and actually changes us.
Spot on, Tony. I think the shoulder-to-shoulder work of serving and the understanding of our faith that evangelism requires creates natural discipleship and disciples …
I think there is danger in drawing conclusions from what Jesus did not say. Jesus, as he often did, capitalized on the surroundings to make his teaching more effective. Jesus said what he said, not because he wanted to make a point by omitting certain things, but because those men were fishermen & were leaving that life for another.
Jesus was communicating effectively in the language of his audience.
Great post! I feel like if we approached discipleship this way, the world would be reached! I mean, the whole world. If we would focus more on reaching others, than just our own spiritual development, the Gospel would spread like wildfire!
ray, i agree with you. the reason why he used the “fishing” metaphor was because he was talking to fishermen. but that doesn’t change the original message. his original message was “follow me and i’ll show you how to reach other people.” generally speaking, we don’t do that in the church anymore.
tony
As in, taking our students from sitting in the church, being fed to taking them out of the church to feed & reach other people? It thins out the crowd, but you learn who the disciples are….
Excellent post Tony! The call to focus on being fishers of men and not just church members or students is a very good thing to remember. But following Colton and Chan’s advice to study the Scripture directly for answers and to evaluate posts, I did a study on “Follow Me” and come up with a different conclusion.
As tony commented, the metaphor was used in the one time he was talking to fishermen, but he said “Follow Me” over a dozen times. In looking for the common denominator in all these, it seemed to me to be calling us to lay aside our own agenda and give Him first place in our lives.
It’s not discipleship vs. evangelism, etc., but rather that proper discipleship includes evangelism, and ministry, and fellowship, and worship.
http://stepuptothecall.blogspot.com/2009/04/follow-me.html
This is the stuff fires are made of, the Holy Spirit kind. Simple is best. Jesus started with Come Follow Me and ended with GO!(from Barbarian Way) I’m with the Francis Chan reference also, we need to follow whats in scripture ONLY. We need to read God’s Word first, not to keep dissing the Church but if you haven’t read or are reading your Bible, your are lost and have no fire.
Great blog, Tony. Interesting that we have our class, programs and paths, yet all Christ asked of us was to love him and love others. I believe true discipleship happens when we do this. Our service, commitment, disciplines and callings come out of our love for him. His heart? The lost!
I’ve been on a mission to learn how to disciple people like Jesus did for a long time now and one thing I’ve learned is that discipleship does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. It has little value apart from context and that context must be a mission to make Jesus known to everyone.
Good article.
Jeff Anderson
I was at a mini-conference/conversation last week and one of the leaders said, “don’t ever be afraid to invite people to become like Jesus with you. Be bold with his vision.”
what would it do for the church if, everrytime someone joined, a member of the same gender spent some time with that person sharing with them how to test their own faith?? II cor 13:5. have we fallen shorr on making disciples?
Great post. Your right on target when you made the statment: “Maybe it’s more about disciples making disciples.”
I think that’s what is meant to be missional. Everything in the context of mission.
What I also find significant are the very last words Jesus spoke before He left this earth. Now, this was the last thing his disciples would hear him say and what I’m sure resonated in their hearts for the rest of their lives. Go make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey all that I have commanded. Couldn’t it be a both/and strategy rather than an either/or mindset?
Great post
clay, i think we agree. the focus should be on reaching others. disciples making disciples. that’s how jesus started his ministry, and that’s how he finished his ministry on earth.
btw… who was the “Great Commission” given to?
tony
Sounds like a great idea for a new book. Go for it…
This is great stuff!! Great dialogue on the comments too. Clay and Tony-I agree with both/and as well. There will always be some tension in fleshing out what it looks like.
Aside, Clay, I think the last words of Christ might have been the command to go and wait on the Holy Spirit before they did anything. I’ve been wrestling with that on my humble little blog. Waiting until we hear from Him.
uh….AMEN!
Great post Tony.
Much of our discipleship is focussed on assimilation rather than on liberation.
We’ve been using a programme called Freedom in Christ which focusses on liberation, and we’ve found that liberated people share the good news naturally.
I think you’re on to something. We have a leadership development environment called Xcellerate at our church (www.beachchurch.org) tht focuses on having spiritual conversations. The basis is Philemon 1:6 – “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.”
Sounds like he was saying we will learn more about Christ by sharing Him with others.
disciples making more disciples at whatever the cost
Good stuff!!
Thought provoking post!
I would think, though, that all the other things Jesus didn’t stay were bi-products of following Him. Maybe fundamentally He taught them how to fish for men, but in the process they learned to pray because He prayed, they learned to worship because He worshiped, and so forth.
I have heard it said that discipleship isn’t something that is really taught, so much as something learned by doing.
What are your thoughts on any of that?
To “follow me” in the context of a rabbi is evangelistic AND discipleship. Can’t see how both don’t apply. Again, look at Jesus & the NT as a whole: evangelism, discipleship, compassion. All integral. Peace.