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Writting assignment 4 Discipleship and a Health
Church
Discipleship Ministries (Liberty University)
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LIBERTY UNIVERSITY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Discipleship and a Healthy Church
Submitted to Dr. Rick Garner
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
DSMN 500-B12
Discipleship Ministries
by
Kenneth Bass
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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
The Goal of Discipleship.................................................................................................................4
Personal Examination of My Church..............................................................................................5
Steps Needed for Improved Spiritual Health...................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
There is a saying, there is no I in Team. So often when watching a sports team play a
game, it can seem like nothing is going right and then there are times when everything seems to
be going right. The times when things seem to be going bad, there are indicators which explain
why things are going bad. But, most of the time, they cannot be seen from the from the team’s
perspective, there needs to be someone from outside of the team who can take an unbiased look
at the team. They usually can see those indicators which show why the team is doing badly.
Most of the time the outsider’s perspective is they are playing bad because they are not playing
as a team, they are playing as individuals. But, when things are going well for the team, it seems
everyone can recognize that they are playing as a team, not just as individuals. When playing as
a team there is greater rewards than winning one game. One of those rewards is the team is
growing. This happens when the stronger players are helping the weaker player play better,
which not only allows the team to win at that moment, but ensure wins down the road.
The Church can be viewed as a team. The church is made up of different players, coaches
and an attitude of winning, which is winning people to Christ and watching them mature in their
new faith. This kind of winning can be defined as growth. The church is just like a sports team
when it comes to playing as a team or playing as individuals. When the church has a lot of
individual players off doing their own thing, there does not seem to be a lot of growth. When the
church is playing as a team, there is continuity throughout producing a common vision and
direction for the whole church causing growth. As Earley stated, “a healthy church looks like
and acts like a healthy body.”1 Throughout this paper it will look at the goals of a healthy goal
and
1 Dave Earley and Rod Dempsey, Disciple Making Is …: How to Live the Great Commission with
Passion and Confidence, 211.
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what areas the author’s church needs to take a look at to see if it is playing as a team or
not, indicating if it is a health church or not.
The Goal of Discipleship
A healthy church is a church that is growing. A church which is not growing can be
classified as an unhealthy church. The term growth is used here to determine if a church is
healthy or not, but the term growth needs to be defined. Growth of a church is often thought of as
the number of people attending has increased. This is one form of growth but there are other
forms within the church. There is growth in the area of finances, the amount of people serving
using their spiritual gifts, the amount of people involved in a bible study group, and the amount
of people investing in other people to make sure they are growing spiritually.
A healthy church is one that understands their vision and is planning to ensure every
person who attends has an opportunity to grow in their walk with the Lord. Unfortunately, the
church has become ineffective in fulfilling its mission because it has lost a sense of its own
identity as community.2 To regain this identity it needs to get back to the process defined as
discipleship. To be a disciple it is indicating a person is studying, learning and living out all they
are learning from their teacher. In the case of the people attending church, their teacher is Jesus
Christ.
When it comes to discipleship the end goal is to develop a person into one who
loves Jesus and is fully devoted to all He commands them to do. The end goal of
discipleship is to produce a person into a reproducible person. A reproducible person is one
who does not just worship on Sundays but every day of the week. One who reads God’s
word daily and
understands how to put into personal application. They are in submission to the Holy Spirit’s
2 Gilbert G. Bilezikian, Community 101: Reclaiming the Church as Community of Oneness (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Pub. House, 1997), 48.
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direction and are sensitive to sin. They are joyfully sharing their resources and are in deep
community with other believers challenging one another to grow. They live differently and
are naturally sharing their faith. They are continually linked to God through prayer and
meditation and are using their gifts, skills and training for the benefit of their church.3 When
this is happening within the people of a local church, it is indicators of a healthy church,
which is the end goal of discipleship.
Personal Examination of My Church
Just as a sports team on occasions needs someone from the outside to come in and make
an unbiased examination, so does the church. As I am not unbiased, I have tried to look at my
church and take an assessment of the spiritual health and notice the top three areas it needs to
focus on to become healthier. Those areas are the nurturing and development of new believers,
prayer for the lost and for laborers and finally where relational groups are multiplying new
leaders and new groups.4
When people accept Christ into their lives, they are new believers or could be called
Spiritual Infants or Spiritual Babies. Hebrews 5:12-14 addresses this important issue, “Although
by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles of
God’s revelation again. You need milk, not solid food. Now everyone who lives on milk is
inexperienced with the message about righteousness, because he is an infant. But solid food is
for the mature-for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil.”
For my church to be a healthier church it needs to focus more on teaching the Spiritual Infants
the Word of God and how to personally apply it to their lives.
3 George Barna, Growing True Disciples: New Strategies for Producing Genuine Followers of
Christ, Barna Reports for Highly Effective Churches (Colorado Springs, Colo.: WaterBrook Press, 2001), 4-6.
4 Earley and Dempsey, Disciple Making is, 214-216.
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For there to be New Believers in the church it starts with a passionate prayer for the lost
and laborers. With so many people in the world who have not accepted Christ, the task to reach
them can seem overwhelming. It seems overwhelming because there are so few laborers, but
Jesus addresses this problem in Luke 10:2, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.
Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers in to His harvest.” “The vital
link between the masses who need to hear the gospel and the workers who are sent out to
preach the gospel is the whole company of disciples praying for the work of the gospel.”5 To
become a healthier church more focus on praying for the lost and workers to reach them needs
to happen within my church.
New Believers need places to grow in their new faith. A great place for this to happen in
my church is in Life Groups. Life Groups are a place where believers and non believers can
come together to do life with one another. During their time they fellowship with one another,
study the Word of God, minister to one another, and reach out to those who have not accepted
Christ. These groups need to stay around eight to twelve people to be effective. As the church
gets healthier, more people will start to attend church and they will need a Life Group to get
plug into. Teaching the Life Group Leaders the importance of training up new leaders and
birthing new group is another way that will allow there to be room for my church to become
healthier.
Steps Needed for Improved Spiritual Health
When a person goes to the doctor for health reason, the doctor does an evaluation of their
patient to determine where the unhealthy problem is coming from and gives a solution to cure the
problem. Within the church for it to become healthier it too needs to do an evaluation of its
health. That is the first step that needs to happen to help my church become healthier;
5 John Dickson, The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2010),
65.
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understanding what condition it is in. Once this has been done getting the Senior Pastor to
understand his personal and professional life affects the health of the church. Both of these are
integral in the overall task of running a church, because a senior pastor sets the tone for what
spiritual maturity looks like in a congregation. The pastor is the DNA of the church.6 Getting my
senior pastor to understand the current health of our church is important for any improvements.
When the Pastor has laid out a clear vision to the church and how important it is to have a
plan in place to train all new believers, there will be signs of a healthier church. The plan will
involve the new believer having the chance to spend time with a person one on one for ten weeks
of bible study. During this time they will cover topics such as assurance of their salvation, the
freedom they have in their salvation, setting their priorities in order, how to study the bible, pray
and why they need to fellowship and be evangelist.7 As the two meet together weekly they will
be building a relationship which will be encouraged to continue after the first ten weeks. They
will meet weekly for accountability and progress insuring the new believer is still practicing the
things they learned in the training. They will meet for a total of a year to help this young believer
be able to survive on their own in the world. During these meeting the new believer will be
encouraged to start attending a life group. In this group they will be able to go deeper in their
study of the Bible and have fellowship with other believers.
For there to be new believers coming into the church, the church body needs to be
praying for the lost world around them and for the workers that need to go out and share with
them. This will be done from the senior pastor leading the way from the pulpit. He will be
responsible to weekly remind people about the harvest fields of lost people outside the church
and that we need workers to go out and share with them. There will be special called prayer
6 Jim Putman and Bobby Harrington, Discipleshift: Five Steps That Help Your Church to Make
Disciples Who Make Disciples, Exponential Series (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 98.
7 Grant Edwards, Swimming + Lessons: How to Keep New Christians Afloat in a Sinking World
(USA: Specificity Publications, 2010), 94-127.
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meetings which are dedicated to praying for the lost. Life Group leaders will attend training that
will teach them how important it is to have their group pray for the lost. One way this can be
done is by teaching an open chair method. By putting an empty chair in their group will remind
them to pray for the person who needs to be sitting in it. They can pray for the person who needs
to go out and share with that person. All of these events from the pulpit to the life groups will
need to be coordinated to be most effective.
Life groups are a major part of the growth of a new believer, having room for people to
be able to attend is important. To insure there are enough life groups within my church, setting
up high expectations is important. All of our life group leaders will attend a monthly training
session that will teach the importance of birthing new leaders and groups. When this has been
taught, having the leader sign a commitment that they will pray and ask the Lord to give them an
apprentice leader and birth their group within two years is important. The apprentice leader will
attend the monthly meetings as well. They too will have to sign the commitment that when they
become a leader, they will be expected to one day birth a group from their own. This will ensure
there will always be enough groups to offer the new believers a place to spiritually grow.
Conclusion
One the hardest things for a church to do, is to stop and take a look at who they are and
how are they doing. Just like with a sports team, having someone come from the outside to give
an unbiased look at the health of the team does not hurt the team it only helps them. But so often
this does not happen until the team is in a losing streak. When it comes to the health of the
church, it cannot wait until it is in a losing streak, because people’s eternity is on the line.
Stopping and taking a good look at the health of the church should be done at the minimum once
a year. This can be done by taking a look at the church’s discipleship plan that is in place. A
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discipleship plan will allow the stronger believers tools to help the weaker believers grow in their
faith which will allow the church to become healthier. When this is happening, it is ensuring
future victories for the church, which is people having a chance to accept Jesus as their Lord and
a place to grow in their new faith.
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Bibliography
Barna, George. Growing True Disciples: New Strategies for Producing Genuine Followers of
Christ. Barna Reports for Highly Effective Churches. Colorado Springs, Colo.:
WaterBrook Press, 2001.
Bilezikian, Gilbert G. Community 101: Reclaiming the Church as Community of Oneness. Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Pub. House, 1997.
Dickson, John. The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan,
2010.
Earley, Dave, and Rod Dempsey. Disciple Making Is--: How to Live the Great Commission with
Passion and Confidence. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Avademic, 2013.
Edwards, Grant. Swimming + Lessons: How to Keep New Christians Afloat in a Sinking
World.
USA: Specificity Publications, 2010.
Putman, Jim, and Bobby Harrington. Discipleshift: Five Steps That Help Your Church to Make
Disciples Who Make Disciples. Exponential Series. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013.
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