{"id":1222,"date":"2019-09-05T17:30:56","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T23:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2019-09-04T10:43:46","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T16:43:46","slug":"members-or-disciples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=1222","title":{"rendered":"Members or Disciples?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[To follow The Ewellogy<\/em><\/strong>, please click on Leave a Comment<\/em><\/strong> above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email<\/em><\/strong>. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve connected with a young pastor in Cameroon via LinkedIn. I don’t know much about him yet except he actually wants to make disciples! He wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am about to start a discipleship ministry “back to the word of God ministry” only to equipped Christians but specially leaders. Please I want to see how we can work together for the glory of God. <\/em>The church don’t<\/em><\/strong> [sic] want to transform members to disciples.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>[emphasis mine, actual words are his in the best English that he, as a native French speaker, can muster]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Churches don\u2019t want to transform members into disciples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a chilling observation. Why does he see things this way? Here\u2019s one possibility: churches spend most of their time and energy on one tool: the Sunday morning service. And they measure effectiveness by how many come. I read a report recently where a pastor in India is quoted as saying, \u201cWe\u2019re running 2,000 right now, and I think we can be to 3,000 by the end of the year!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know if those are the words the Indian pastor used or that\u2019s how the American telling the story heard it. Either way, someone appears to be interested only in how many come. This is unfortunate. As one wise pastor told me years ago, \u201cWe\u2019re good at measuring how many come<\/em>. I wish we could count how many go<\/em>!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we can\u2019t…or don\u2019t count how many go, and it appears, as the young pastor from Cameroon concluded, \u201cChurches don\u2019t want to transform members into disciples.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think he\u2019s wrong. Churches really want to make disciples…they just don\u2019t know how. More on that tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go and make disciples of all nations. (Matthew 28.19)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere,… \u00a0(1 Thessalonians 1.7, 8, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve connected with a young pastor in Cameroon via LinkedIn. I don’t know much about him yet except he actually wants to make disciples! He wrote: I am about to start a discipleship ministry “back to the word of God ministry” only to equipped Christians but specially leaders. Please I want to see how we … Continue reading Members or Disciples?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-jI","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1224,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions\/1224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}