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Disciplemaking in a Healthy Church
Final
Discipleship Ministries (Liberty University)
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LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Disciple Making in a Healthy Church
Submitted to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
DSMN 500 – B03
Discipleship Ministries
by
xxxxxxxxxx
Contents
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Introduction....................................................................................................................................1
A Healthy Church and the Making of Disciples.........................................................................2
The Body of Christ and Church Model.......................................................................................4
Health Assessment of My Former Church..................................................................................5
Roles of the Church and Disciple Making...................................................................................6
Conclusion......................................................................................................................................7
Bibliography...................................................................................................................................8
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Introduction
As disciples of the Lord, we are commanded to go forth and make new disciples. This is
one of the most important things that we are to do. To do this, a healthy church is needed as
they provide the spiritual love to its congregation and provide everyone with a tight knit
community of people who are working towards the same goal.
It is possible to check the pulse of a church by its discipleship and how it acts towards
the outside community. As the church is representative of the body of Christ, a body that is not
healthy and ill, will have failing parts and this leads to the body not performing in an optimal
manner. Every Christian has at least one gift that they are given by the Spirit. The gifts given by
God are so varied, the church benefits from this mixture or combination of them. Some gifts
may not readily visible to those who are around, but they are still doing the work of the Lord.
Just because it is not visible, does not mean they are not working.
For the church to be healthy and make full use of its gifts, everyone within the church
has a role to play. These roles start at the top, from the lead pastor and then all the way down
from the worship teams and even those who serve on the parking teams. Through researching the
different types of spiritual gifts and models of churches, we will be able to give an overview of
the body of Christ as it relates to the church, and provide an assessment of church health as it
relates to making disciples.
A Healthy Church and the Making of Disciples
The health of a church can be thought of in a living and biological sense. The church is
made up of different parts, which make up the “body” of the church. Before getting to the body
of the church and its health, we need to define what a healthy church is and how it is with
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discipleship. Acts 2:42-47 incorporates the community found in a church and its health when it
states, “And they devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching and the fowwloship to the breakin
of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were
being done throught the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in
common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds
to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their
homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor
with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being
saved.”1 The actions of the church community, as they came together and shared their
commanalities in fellowship, displayed their outward love for those around them. In order to do
this, the church had to be healthy and harmonious, with all parts working to together to function.
If a church is not healthy, it will not function but it will have “dysfunction.”
How are disciples made within a healthy church? One of the first things that will be
needed in order to make disciple is to gauge the health of the church itself. It is said that the
“reality for congregations both large and small is that the fundamental issue is health, not
growth.”2 The focus should be on health, then deal with the discipleship because “Only after
dealing with the systemic issues related to health should the pastor/leader of the congregation
make growth a goal for the congregation.”3 This may seem simple but in a biological sense and
referring to children or healing, without good health a child cannot grow or wounds may not
heal.
1 Unless otherwise noted, all biblical passages referenced are in the English Standard Version
(Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016).
2 Rodney Mills, “Healthy Churches Grow,” Journal of Applied Christian Leadership 10, no. 2 (2016): 69.
3
Ibid.
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Describing the church as the body of Christ, is an easy way for us to understand how all
of the parts interact with one another and puts it in a physical sense that we can grasp. It is
written 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the
members of the body, through many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were
all baptized into one body-Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and all were to drink of one Spirit.”
Even Ephesians 4:16 states, “from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every
joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so
that it builds itself up with love.” Paul points out that the body is to built up and made strong
while if the body part are not working as they should, then the body is not healthy.4
A healthy church is described in a multitude of different ways. Several of these healthy
traits are apart of discipleship. The health and discipleship of a church combine as “new
believers are intentionally and individually nurtured and developed” and “where relational
groups are intentionally developed andmembers are growing in their love for one another.”5
Also, a healthy church makes disciples where the “groups are lovingly sharing their lives with
unbelievers” and “where the poor and ‘least of these’ is intentionally being ministered to.”6
Once the church is made healthy, then discipleship can work efficiently and effectively.
When healthy, “discipling is what we do any way as we live life and while we learn how to live
4 Dave Earley and Rod Dempsey, Disciple Making Is…How to Live the Great Commission with Passion
and Confidence (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2013), 188.
5 Ibid, 212.
6 Ibid, 212-213.
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life to its fullest.”7 The benefit of disciplemaking in a healthy church is not only an increase in
the spiritual growth of its disciples, but also an increase in the growth of the disciplers.8
The Body of Christ and Church Model
The body of Christ, as mentioned in the previous section, is the sum of the different parts
of a church as they represent the different parts of God and His mission. These different parts are
comprised of the internal functions of a church and must be harmonious and healthy for the body
to properly function. The body of Christ is also Paul’s way of “expressing the unity that
Christians enjoy with their Lord and Head, Christ” and this unity “has both vertical and
horizontal dimensions between members.”9
When using the Traditional, Attractional, Organic, and Hybrid (TAOH) model to discern
what model my “former” church falls under, the evidence points towards the “hybrid” model.
There is a senior pastor who is surrounded by his professional staff. It is focused on discipleship
and accomplishes this through a variety of activities or small groups. The list of staff members is
extensive and ever-changing. The locations are spread out over several satellite locations while
the hub of the locations is the main campus but also houses the church’s administrative offices.
They also have a large focus on missions, with many occurring locally and several being
international missions.
Health Assessment of My Former Church
7 Malan Nel and W.J. Schoeman, “Rediscovering ‘Disciplemaking’ and the Role of Faith-Sharing,”
HTS Teologiese Studies (February 2019): 3.
8 Bambang Budijanto, “The Correlation Between Church Growth and Discipleship: Evdience
from Indonesia,” Evangelical Review of Theology 44, vol. 3 (2020): 240.
9 Andrew Meszaros, “The Body of Christ the Teacher: The Church’s Prophetic Office,” Angelicum
96 (February 2019): 208..
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This health assessment of my former church revealed a few cracks. The assessment
resulted in a total score of 58 out of 100. The lowest scores were in the areas of the proper usage
of spiritual gifts and teaching the “whole counsel of God” with a view towards application. The
highest scores occurred when referring to missions and worship. The rest of the categories fell
into the mid-ranges. As I became an “insider” at my former church (I used to facilitate (teach) at
their college), I began to see many issues that did not align with what makes a healthy church.
The church had its congregation participate in the usual “testing” to discern what one’s spiritual
gifts are. Even though a person may have gifts in one area, the campus pastor or their staff
would usually direct the person to areas that did not nurture their gifts. Assignments were
usually based off of staffing numbers but the person was frequently told to not not worry about
their gifts and to follow the needs of the church. This works at times, as certain serving sections
would need help, but to totally neglect what a person had as a gift does not promote a healthy
church. The church also lacked the teaching of the Bible. As mega-churches often do to appeal
to the masses, the sermons were geared towards their version of Christian living while “backing
it up” with one or two lines of scripture.
Outside of the two lowest scoring items, the church could improve in several ways. The
church was hyperfocused on statistics. This is understandable to a degree as statistics are
necessary to show growth and where new campuses are needed but when numbers become the
main focus, and not the people that are there, this can create serious problems. There were
numerous times when I would see campus pastors “fudge” the numbers to show an increase in
attention. This was done to not cause problems with senior staff as some campuses or pastors
may be labeled as underperformers. Some of the pastors participated in a podcast where they
stated they did not care about numbers at all, but knowing the behind the scenes action, I knew
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this to be a lie. As they church expanded to other states and even internationally, the individual
person was lost and became a number. This could be fixed by not focusing on such outward
growth and at such a fast pace. I know this growth is all by design but a return to the focus on
one’s spiritual growth and not expansion would fix a majority of the church’s issues.
Roles of the Church and Disciple Making
The various roles within a church play a huge role in the nurturing of spiritual gifts and
making disciples in accordance with God’s plan. The church must be in the middle of God’s
plan to make disciples.10 The word “church” is mentioned eight-two times in the New Testament
and Jesus mentions the concept several times, beginning in Matthew 16:18 by stating, “And I
tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it.” The church is the force that will keep hell where it belongs and will smash it
at every turn.
A pastor’s role can be seen as being “a preacher, counselor, administrator, PR guru,
fund-raiser and hand-holder…he may have to be an expert on youth,... something of an
accountant. Janitor, evangelist, small groups expert, and excellent chair of committees, a
team player and a transparent leader.”11 Their role is also to train the “saints.” The pastor is
there to feed the flock and to facilitate spiritual growth as they develop their spiritual gifts
and the “saints” are to “do the work of ministry” as found in Ephesians 4:11-16.12
Without these parts working together, the body of Christ will not function properly and
disciples will not be made. The spiritual gifts are important as they are the skills that each
“saint”
10 Earley and Dempsey, 39.
11Matthew Barrett, “The Duty of a Pastor: John Owen on Feeding the Flock by Diligent Preaching of
the Word,” Themelios 40, vol. 3 (2015): 460.
12 Earley and Dempsey, 41.
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brings to the table. When the church is healthy, the pastor leads in a biblical fashion, and the
saints are brought up to utilize their gifts to the best of their ability, then disciple making occurs.
Conclusion
The church can be looked at as being a part of God’s program for discipleship. A healthy
church is the training ground for disciples, who will go out and make more disciples. Proper
engagement between the members of a church and those wanting to be discipled, promotes
health. A healthy church must all parts working in unison and in proper order for the church to
carry out its mission. As the church is described as being the body of Christ, the church requires
upkeep and spiritual maintenance so it can continue to grow and thrive.
Each part of the church plays a specific role. The pastors lead and help develop the
spiritual gifts within the congregation and the “saints” do the work of the ministry. Without a
deep and instrospective look into the health of the church, the pastors may find it hard to get their
church back on track and performing as it should to make new disciple. Once they assess their
needs and address them, then the disciple making will run smoothly.
Bibliography
Barrett, Matthew. “The Duty of a Pastor: John Owen on Feeding the Flock by Diligent
Preaching of the Word.” Themelios 40, vol. 3 (2015): 459-472.
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Budijanto, Bambang. “The Correlation Between Church Growth and Discipleship: Evidence
from Indonesia.” Evangelical Review of Theology 44, vol. 3 (2020): 234-241.
Earley, Dave and Rod Dempsey. Disciple Making Is…How to Live the Great Commission with
Passion and Confidence. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2013.
Meszaros, Andrew. “The Body of Christ the Teacher: The Church’s Prophetic Office.”
Angelicum 96 (February 2019): 203–236.
Mills, Rodney. “Healthy Churches Grow.” Journal of Applied Christian Leadership 10, no. 2
(2016): 68-76.
Nel, Malan and W.J. Schoeman. “Rediscovering ‘Disciplemaking’ and the Role of Faith-
Sharing.” HTS Teologiese Studies (February 2019): 1-8.
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