It has been quite a few years now since I’ve pastored a church. During this time I’ve reflected a lot on what I did wrong and what I did right. I still have a lot of fond memories of the good things we, as a church, did in our city and even beyond our city. The road trips to do teaching workshops, exploring notions of justice in community, training up leaders who went out to serve in other congregations, and even the deep enduring friendships that we cultivated. These good things definitely have their counterpoints in the things I wish I had done differently. Some of these things we got right in the beginning, but somehow, they were overtaken or misaligned by the demands of pastoral ministry. As a result we’ve had to work through a few relationship stumbles from those days and there are still a few we have yet to work through, especially from the last couple of years of Freedom Vineyard. As these reflections percolate in my heart I thought it would be helpful to me, and possibly others, to reflect on them here. I want to reflect on the first idea, more ideas will come and more will come on each idea I am sure.
Mentoring/Discipleship
The idea of discipleship has been coming up a lot for me lately and I am sure it is God trying to get my attention. For me I understand discipling and mentoring along the same lines. You disciple by giving to others what has been life-giving to you so that they too can grow and mature and give what they learn and become away to others. I am convinced that this cycle of health is why Jesus made discipleship central to his mission for the Church.
My own basic foundation for discipleship actually comes from being part of a twelve-step programme when I was a troubled teen trying to bring back some order to my life. In that programme I learned the value of intentional mentoring and I was blessed many great mentors during the two years I was actively part of the programme. I also learned through the programme the value of walking with others who were actively working on their own personal and spiritual development. Health begets health. Discipleship is not a downward authoritarian structure, it is servant leadership and intentional life sharing.
In our early years as a congregation I spent a lot of my time deliberately mentoring/discipling people. In our community we intentionally modeled this by not doing things alone. So when people called the church looking for groceries, I would grab one of our people to come along with me. When someone asked for prayer, I would not go alone. When I was asked to run a workshop we’d fill a van and go. In the going we would spend the time talking about what we were going to do and what we hoped God would do. On the trips home we spend time talking about how God changed our own lives. Those are some of my fondest memories, and the times when we really saw people grow in their faith. Unfortunately, mentoring like this was also the first casualty of success.
As the church grew and I was looking after more groups (we had a connected house church model) it became easier to just do things myself which is never healthy for the church. I see a lot of pastors doing too much alone in churches today. As evangelicals we value entrepreneurship in our church planters. So our brave independent leaders go out and continue the cycle of clergy dependency that plagues our churches. It is an easy trap to fall into, especially when you get caught up in the lie that everything has to be done immediately (or even done at all). We were no exception, try as I might to stop our church from becoming the ‘Frank show’, there was a point when the ‘Frank show’ was what people really wanted. It was at this point that I believe discipleship had died in our community.
One of our stated goals as a community was to always be gathering in such a way that we were growing as people and as God followers. Our slogan was: Freedom Vineyard helping you become all you can be in Christ. This vision was great for orienting us and it is actually a big part of why we pulled the plug on the church when we did – we were no longer seeing people grow. However, my biggest regret is not facing this reality sooner. Not that I think I could have rescued the church, but it might have been a lot less painful for many of us if we had pulled the plug a few years earlier.
Discipleship had died because we had settled into a pattern of leader-follower/clergy-congregant. In fact people actually resisted changing this model once it had settled in. This pattern had become our new status quo and folks were comfortable with that. The moment I could no longer deny that this had happened was when I suggested some new ways to start reaching out to our neighbours and was vocally resisted by the group I was supposed to be leading. That meeting shook me deeply. We had gone from being a loving community that was growing deeply in our relationship with God and with reaching people no other church seemed interested in to being a church that wanted to just keep their tight knit community the same as always without too many things to disrupt our comfort. It is actually a bit more complicated than this sounds, but the net result was the same. Discipleship was no longer possible in such an environment. Much as we still love the people God gathered to us at Freedom, it was clear that our church needed to close.
If (and possibly when because there is a deep restlessness in me still) we are to pastor again I will do my best to do two things. First I will cultivate a community of mentoring and discipleship. In fact I think that needs to be part of how we relate to people even if those people never come to know Jesus. It is giving our best for others and hoping that they too will see the Jesus we have seen and be drawn to His faithful love. Jesus did this, the cross is a great risk, so is discipling and we cannot forget that one of His disciples turned out to be a traitor. So this is the first thing – I would make it all about discipling and disciple-making.
The second is that I would do my best not to go so fast that discipling becomes a casualty of success. If that means programmes never start, great. Programmes without discipling disciplers are not worth having. The thing is that we have a lot of churches with great programmes already, programmes are not what the Body of Christ is lacking. What we need are discipling communities who, like Jesus, walk among the rest of the people (especially the ones religious people do not want to touch) sharing our hopes, dreams, struggles, and our vision for the good life. We need mentors and disciplers.
Like I said at the beginning, these are ideas still percolating in me. I expect to share more ideas over time. Also I would love some interaction, especially for any of you starting out in church planting who want to learn from my mistakes.
The image is from me sharing about theological training with our regional leaders at our yearly retreat. I loved those gatherings and this year was the first time I wasn’t extended an invitation. The photo was taken by my good friend Andrew Jennings.
Let me know your thoughts...