Making Disciples over building Churches
“In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next it moved to Europe where it became a culture, and, finally, it moved to America where it became an enterprise.
Rev. Richard C. Halverson, 1916-1995, Chaplain of the U.S. Senate
Jesus never said build Him church. He said “I will build My church.” What He did say for us to do was to “make disciples.” But along the way in church history, we’ve begun to turn the church into an enterprise, a nicely oiled machine that does the same things: build a building, have people come to that building, make people sit in pews/chairs, sing some songs, listen to a sermon and then go home. I believe this was exactly what Jesus didn’t die for.
We’ve so deviated from original Christianity and the majority of the Christians today equate church and Christianity to a “church building that we go to on Sundays,” and this is extremely unfortunate and terrifying. It’s terrifying because at the end of our lives, when we thought we were doing all the right things, we ended up never being obedient to God concerning the Great Commision - to make disciples. It wasn’t called the Great Building project, but the Great Commission. It wasn’t about increasing church membership, but about making disciples.
Even observing Jesus’ example, he had all authority and power to raise up a mega church, but instead he devoted the entirety of his ministry to making disciples reproducing Himself. This is not to say that mega churches are bad. What I am saying is that we need to dismantle our understanding what Christianity was about. It was about making disciples, not just pew sitters who just come to be entertained at church and never lift a finger to be obedient to the Great Commission. The demise of the American church or church in general has been the fact that we have created church members, not followers of Jesus.
A litmus test to see if your members are disciples is to see if they themselves are being obedient to the Great Commission. If they are living no different from the world, something has to change.
A. W. Tozer said, “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”
The early church was not a perfect church, but they were fearless. Is fearlessness in living out the gospel a marker of your church? If our churches are not flowing in the Holy Spirit, and Christ is not having an expression through your church, we might have relegated our church down to human/centered programs that entertains men, and not Holy Spirit driven programs that exalts Christ.
If you build a church, you might get disciples, but if you make disciples, you will build the church.
When we do it God’s way, we get divine results. When we do it our way, we get human traditions.
If Jesus focused on twelve people, should follow in His footsteps. Of course His influence was not limited to the twelve and has impacted billions of lives, we cannot begin our pursuits with finding a building to fill it, but making disciples. If the building comes as a result of disciples being made, we’ve done what God has commanded us to do. If we neglect making disciples to be obedient to Christ’s commands, we are simply producing church goers filled with disobedience deceived to think that they’re saved. If there is not fruit of repentance and obedience, it’s disobedience. In the Hebrew mindset love and obedience are inseparable. The first generation of Israelites did not make it into the promised land because of disobedience. May our disciples never fall prey to the devil to deceive them out of their destiny.
It’s not so much about maintaining and growing the size of our “church,” but as we are growing ourselves following Christ, we are making other disciples who will also follow Christ. In the original translation of the great commision, it reads, “as you go, make disciples.” We should constantly be making disciples, not just to entertain converts. God doesn’t want just converts who prayed a prayer at one time, but disciples. He doesn’t want civilians who don’t look any different from the world, but soldiers. He would rather have a hundred soldiers than. 100,000 spectators. God is calling you to leave the sidelines and move to the frontlines.
When we think about John the Baptist, he is closer to the kind of pastor God wanted than a traditional pastor we see today. He was the prototypical Christian leader in my opinion.
He made disciples, but he was clear on his mandate: to decrease and let Jesus increase. He didn’t care if he was able to maintain and grow his membership or not. He was constantly pointing to the Messiah. When his two disciples left him for Jesus, He blessed them and he continued on his mission to lead people to the Christ.
We need to get to get the first button right or else everything will be out of wack. If we set out to build a building first before having the desire to make Jesus famous and make disciples, we will endanger ourselves of being disobedient to the call and waste our time on earth as a result. We might we even shipwreck our faith, because we’ve allowed for worldly greed to creep into our souls.
There has been a mass exodus of people leaving the churches because we’ve lost our authenticity and power. But when there’s a genuine pursuit for God, Numbers will be added to the church daily like the book of Acts.