Disciple Making Interviews with Pastors

(For this I interviewed 2 Pastors, one with lots of experience, one who was new in the ministry, a small group leader, as well as discussed the topic with my 7 roommates who are all involved in ministry in different facets and in different fellowships.)

There were a couple of things that I learned from the People that I interviewed for this assignment that were really interesting things for me. The first one is that when I asked “What is the process for Disciple making?” Like we have been finding out in this class everyone has a very different view on how to disciple and a different process by which we make disciples. One of the pastors had a very set up perspective on how to develop disciples, while another pastor who was new in the ministry I interviewed was very relationship based when it came to how to develop disciples. The one thing that came out of all the pastor’s and small group leaders no matter how much experience they had that I interviewed was that they all based their methods for developing disciples no matter how structured or non structured their approaches were they all based on the importance of relationship. They talked a lot about the importance of relationships in a lot of different areas. For one the relationship is what keeps that person in your life, and keeps you connected to them. Through this relationship in the process of making them a disciple you can learn their strengths and weaknesses, and any potential faults and danger areas to work on them with. Then the relationship is also the way that you are able to pour into them. The whole idea of making someone a disciple is to essential mold them into being like someone else, and so having a relationship with them is the easiest way to be in their lives and make that connecting with them. Without a relationship with them how are you going to be close enough in their lives in order to pour into them and teach them about life? The other interesting thing was the amount of people that each pastor recommended trying to disciple. One of them had the perspective that you personally shouldn’t be trying to disciple more that three people at a time, while another pastor suggested no more than ten or so in more of a small group setting.

One of the other things that I found interesting comes from my second question. I asked the pastors, “what are some of the biggest challenges that you face when you go about making disciples?” All the pastors said that some of their biggest issues that they faced all came from people being willing to go through the process or being willing to change as needed. So often you have people who wish to be part of a discipleship program or who want to be made into a disciple, but when it comes down to it they don’t want to put in the work that it takes. One pastor commented that being made into being like Jesus isn’t easy, so it is huge to be willing to go through that process, and it isn’t easy. So that was probably the biggest problem that any of them run into, being able to keep someone all the way through the process.

How can they measure their effectiveness? Effectiveness to them was not measured in are the people that they discipled leading million person conferences, but rather, are the people that they are discipling walking one step closer to Christ then they were when the whole process started? Are they different and are they more like Christ. It is interesting to me that all of these pastors had different styles of how to get to this point, but the idea was the same. They know that in discipling people their goal is not to make them 100 percent different people, but to bring them at least one step closer to God and being like Jesus. If they do that then they feel like they have won and have been effective.

People as I am learning all have different ways to disciple, but when it comes down to it, as long as the people under them are learning to be like Jesus then it is effective and worth while. Whether they are going through a structured program, or a simple relationship based group, as long as they are getting to the same place then these pastor’s would all call it a win.

Even the People that I talked to briefly about this, but didn't do a formal interview with emphasized that point too. The idea is to lead people to Jesus, and however that is being done will ultimately determine who is being discipled. People are all different in their approaches, and as long as Jesus is the end point then the structure ultimately doesn't matter.

Andy Stanley

I liked what he said in this section of the talk, where he focused on the three different steps to making vision stick. He talked about casting it, celebrating it, and living it. He then went into explaining what each one of these things was and how they played crucial roles in making vision stick. He had a lot of good things to say about casting the vision, and celebrating it, but what stuck with me most was what he said about living it.

So often we are asking people to do something in our vision that doesn’t excite us, it isn’t something that we would want to do ourselves. I think the biggest thing that we can do to get people to go with our vision is making it real in our lives. If they can see that it is something that we have as part of our lives and something that we are putting into effect in our own personal walks then they will be more likely to get on board with it. We can’t ask them to be part of a vision that we ourselves are not willing to be a part of. So until we can live our vision it won’t stick with other people.

Stephen Defrain and Don heller

One of the things that Stephen said that really hit with me was he talked about that so often the problem with the church is that we go into the community, and we expect people to help us out. We go out to stores and ask for donations, and we go to places and ask them to give us things to help us out, but is that what the church was really called to do, is that what we are supposed to do. I am not saying that every church is leaching from the community, but some of the churches out there are always take, take, take, and they never give.

We shouldn’t be the kind of church that is trying to cut corners, or who is trying to get out the cheap way. Now that doesn’t mean that we should be loose with our money and that we shouldn’t be responsible with what we have, but we shouldn’t hoard it, we need to be using it to bless each other. We need to be the church that is not trying to do things and take advantage of people in order to get the most out of what we can by walking on the community around us. That is not showing the light of Christ. We need to be trying to bless the community. They already have a bad taste of church in their mouths and it is our job to change that, but we need to be showing the light all the time, not just when they are on our turf.

Jess Bousa

There were a lot of different things that interested me about Jess Bousa. It was interesting to me that at such a young age he has written a book on discipleship, and because I have not read the book I can not comment on it or its content, but I just wonder what experiences or influences he is pulling on to understand such a deep topic. He made a lot of Good points, but like I said I wonder if his lack of experience has affected his attempts at all, or if he has found any hindrances in publishing his book or writing it because of his earliness in ministry.

There was one thing that he said which really caught me though. He said essentially the simpler something is the easier it is to replicate it. In other words it could be said that just because something is needed or a good idea doesn’t mean that we need to complicate it. We need to make something that is easy to replicate, and so if we want to disciple people and get them to that point of being a holistic Christian we need to make sure that they are capable of doing all of this, but in order to do that we need to make sure that we aren’t complicating it past their abilities.

Christ wasn’t complicated when it came to his teachings he wasn’t complicated in how he discipled. Christ poured his life into twelve others, and that is what we need to make sure that we are doing.