Discipling the Whole Person

by John Kimball, CCCC Director of Church Development

One of the problems with the modern American idea of “discipleship” is that the Church tends to rely on increasing one’s knowledge as the primary way to bring about growth in spirituality and character. The truth is that this approach is simply inadequate. None of us would teach our teenager how to drive by solely giving them a book about cars and expecting them to memorize it. They need hands-on training and real life experience to accompany that knowledge — and even then they need time to grow in both skill and confidence before we would turn them loose behind the wheel by themselves. Just like every other area of life, Christian discipleship requires knowledge, mentoring, accountability, experience and time to bear its fruit.

One component of discipleship that is often overlooked is accountability. People do not naturally desire accountability, because it requires change and an admission that we have yet to “arrive” in certain areas of life. I have found that, if someone disengages from discipleship, it is almost always due to resistance over accountability. Discipleship is not just about learning biblical facts — it’s about changing the way one lives. It’s about the language we use. It’s about the priorities we set and fulfill. It’s about the way we treat our spouses, our children and others. Ultimately, it’s about how much we grow to actually be like Jesus. In the end, this kind of growth cannot happen in a vacuum. It requires relationship and the loving, watchful eye of our Christian peers and mentors.

To disciple someone without addressing their “baggage” — be that pain from the past, bad behaviors in the present, or tainted desires for the future — is useless. It was Jesus who said, “Go and sin no more…” — demonstrating an expectation of substantive personal change. It is deception to think that church attendance, participation in a Bible study or even good works without a clear and loving accountability for life-change will bear kingdom fruit (and as always, by “kingdom” I am referring to the dominion of Jesus over us). It’s more difficult to hold someone accountable for a malevolent tongue, a self-centered lifestyle or a dysfunctional attitude. But that is precisely what discipleship requires if we want to produce the kind of growth Jesus expects.

The usual suspects can be found in every local church:

• The leader who hoards church funding in spite of clear and present ministry needs which lack resources.
• The mouthy member who commandeers church business meetings on a regular basis to promote a personal agenda.
• The self-aggrandizer that desperately needs to tell people how much they are doing for Jesus.
• The crisis-dweller whose life is forever in shambles, but who constantly rejects the very advice that will solve their problem(s).
• The angry person who refuses to forgive even the most elementary offenses (but is quick to advise others to follow Matthew 18 when they face an infraction).

And when someone like me visits the church and asks about these characters, too often the reply is, “Oh, they’ve always been that way…” — which is an admission that the church does not take accountability in discipleship seriously. Brand new believers will still display their sin and dysfunction to the world, but those who have had time to mature in the church’s life and ministry should exhibit the dominion of King Jesus over their lives. Every believer, including pastors and denominational guys like myself, must continuously show evidence that we are growing daily to be more and more like Jesus. If that’s not true, there is a problem with our discipleship.

I understand that there are some cases of mental illness — that there are medical reasons why some people cannot change — but all of these are the exception, not the rule. The truth is that we’ve grown accustomed to teaching people truth without expecting the accompanying behavioral changes. That’s not discipleship — and we should stop calling it such.

Now that I have sufficiently ruffled some feathers, would you like to know more? The CCCC Church Development Process has, at its core, this kind of transformational discipleship. You can call the Conference Office at (651) 739-1474 for more information. Let’s make this kind of discipleship the priority it has always supposed to have been.