Steve Cordle’s Blog

There is a lot of talk about discipleship in the American church today, and I believe it will heat to a boil within a few years.

Over the last few decades we have learned how to grow big churches — we have more mega-churches than ever in history. (The list of the 100 largest churches start at 8,000 attendance today, up from 4,000 in 2000.) But in the process we have discovered that it does not mean we have more disciples. The purpose of the Church Growth Movement (starting with Donald McGavran’s writing in the late 1960′s) was “to make make more and better disciples”. We figured out quantity, but not quality. As a result, we have many huge churches, but our society is not deeply impacted, and research shows attendees do not live much differently than unbelievers.

So, where to turn? The answer is probably not to launch a “church shrinkage movement”. Small churches are not better at making disciples, either. I am not bashing mega-churches; I think they have been a very positive development for the Kingdom.

The point is to focus on what makes disciples. The truth is, we have not built our churches, large or small, on a disciple-making foundation. The problem is our assumptions and starting points in our churches. We assumed that if we could get a lot of people in a room who sing and hear truth, then the kingdom would come. That didn’t happen.

Someone said “Start with disciples and you will always get the church. Start with the church, and you will rarely get disciples.” Wow, that’s a radical statement, and if true, it explains a lot.

We used to say that church planting was the most effective means of disciple-making. That may not be true any more.

Brian Hook,  the church planting pastor at Northwood Church in Texas (where I will be for training again next month) said “…in the years ahead we will be talking disciple rather than church planting.”

Do we love or hate religion? Listening to the voices in our culture, the answer seems to be, “both”.  But if you think that believers love religion and unbelievers hate it, you might be surprised to find the reverse is often true.

I recently heard a talk by atheist and philosopher Alain de Botton on what he calls “Atheism 2.0″. He says many atheists secretly like many parts of religion (like Christmas carols or cathedrals) but they miss out on them because they don’t believe in  God. To fill their void, he advocates stealing important aspects of religion while leaving the beliefs behind.

For example, he believes atheists should:

- Get Organized; poets and philosophers working alone on noble ideas get isolated and depressed, so they should band together and thus gain some power,  just like churches do.

- Organize Time: religions develop calendars in order to remind people of essential truths on a regular basis (think Easter about the resurrection, and Christmas about the Incarnation).  So he states that atheists should develop similar traditions to draw people’s attention to truths.

- Repetition: Religions develop daily routines (like prayer) which reconnect people to their beliefs. Atheists, he says, should not expect people to remember important ideas, they should repeat them.

- Offer “Sermons”;  de Botton says atheists pin their hopes for humanity on education, which too often lacks transforming power because it simply gives facts. He says they should be more like religious teachers who ask listeners for life change.

Now, de Botton does not suggest who should determine the essential ideas or establish these structures and traditions. But at the end of the talk he received a wildly enthusiastic applause from the appreciative audience.

It is ironic that some atheists are looking longingly at religion at the same time that many Christians are running hard from religion.

Jefferson Bethke created an internet video phenomenon with his Youtube video, “Why I hate religion but love Jesus”.  This spoken word piece, which expresses revulsion at religion, has been viewed over 19 million times. Not only does Jefferson hate religion, is convinced Jesus hates religion, too. Some of the same things the atheist longs for, the believer runs from.

Could it be that some atheists long for aspects of religion because they believe they will help fill the void in their hearts, while believers understand from personal experience that it won’t? It is not religion, but rather God himself, who will fill that emptiness.

We don’t need to hate religion, at its best it is a vehicle which helps us connect with God (Jesus was an observant Jew, after all). But if we don’t look beyond it, we will be bitterly disappointed.

de Botton declares he can be “spiritual” without any belief in a “spirit”.  Not without doing great violence to the meaning of the word or the reality to which it points, I’d say.

We don’t need to hate or love religion, we just need to know Jesus.

The BBC reports that on January 1 the government of China cut the amount of entertainment shows on Chinese TV from 126 down to just 38. The government said there was excessive amount of entertainment on TV and that they were guarding the nation against too much Western cultural influence.

Now, I think it is dangerous for governments to legislate how much entertainment its citizens can watch on TV, and I am proud to be an American. But this report did get me to thinking about TV and its effect on our spiritual lives.

Would my life be richer or poorer if I watched less TV in 2012?

The average American watches 4 hours of TV per day – or 28 hours per week. The impact of this goes beyond the fact that when we are watching TV we don’t have time to do things like play with our kids, read a book, pursue a hobby, serve another person or disciple someone else.

We also need to remember that when we are watching TV we are being instructed by the culture. We are absorbing a value system of what is right and wrong, what is normal, what is desirable. We are learning the music, topics of discussion for the day, and more. We are being discipled by the culture.

Wit that in mind, how might you use 28 extra hours per week? How might God use those hours in your life?

What does it mean to follow Jesus? How would you describe a disciple? (Since we are called to be, and to make, disciples, it’s a good thing to know!)

One of the simplest definitions of a disciple is one who hears Jesus and does what he says. That gives us a hint of how to grow in our relationship with Christ.

Floyd McClung shares this:

“Just do the next thing you’re reasonably certain Jesus wants you to do.”

If you feel spiritually flat or lukewarm, this simple process cuts through the lethargy.

What will that mean for you?

The Occupy Wall Street protests have made popular the phrase “the 1%”, referring to the richest 1% of the U.S. population. Who are they? Households with an annual income of $345,000 or more.

Ask the question globally; who are the richest 1%  of the world’s population? Answer: Those with a household annual income of about $50,000 per year or more. (If you want to find out exactly where you rank globally, insert your income into the tool at www.globalrichlist.com)

If you are not in the 1%, you are probably in the top 5-10%. That means we are rich compared to the 7 billion people on the planet, 80% of whom live on less than $10 per day. (And not because the essentials cost less.)

In light of this, it is worth asking the question: what is God saying to me about how He wants me to celebrate Christmas this year?