J R Woodward in his book, Creating a Missional Culture, quotes Neal Cole:
Ultimately, each church will be evaluated by only one thing — its disciples. Your church is only as good as her disciples. It does not matter how good your praise, preaching, programs or property are; if your disciples are passive, needy, consumeristic, and not (moving in the direction of radical obedience), your church is not good.
Something to ponder.
Ok. I’ll bite.
To be honest, when I first saw this blog I thought, I don’t. lol
Maybe it’s just me but after several years I’ve stopped caring about success. I looked in the Bible and couldn’t find any commandments about it, not even in Leviticus.
Plus I read this random quote by Mother Theresa that went something like this…God hasn’t called us to be successful, He’s called us to be faithful.
My biggest issue is that sometimes we pick a spiritual topic (i.e. discipleship) and we decide this is the test of success. But how do we know if our discipleship process is working? It seems somewhat ambiguous. What does “successful” discipleship look like?
Oh yea, the person we are discipling doesn’t smoke, swear or swig anymore. I forgot.
When I was in bible school we took a “discipleship” class. The homework involved a literal checklist where we marked out how much time we had read the bible, prayed and witnessed. There was even a weekly quiz for Scripture memorization. I think we had to track how often we gave in an offering as well. I never felt…er…closer to Jesus.
Some of the people we’re trying to help aren’t doing what we thought they would. I thought they would start dressing better when they came to church but instead they are inviting some of their other friends to church with them. Some of them aren’t even Republicans yet – but they let people crash at their house for undetermined lengths of time. I even heard about one family who decided to skip Christmas presents for their family and instead spend on their money on a single dad with two kids whose aren’t even Christians. Egads.
Oh well, I guess I got more to learn…
Not sure how that last example isn’t an example of discipleship…
I use “success” in quotes for a reason. I’m tired of the measurements. But what does matter in ministry is following Christ and pointing the way. We can’t make people follow. We CAN show the way.
That, I have no doubt, you do.
This book seems to be a call back to finding out what is truly “following Christ.” And… how has the Church done this over the centuries. It looks to be a decent read.