Sermons do a lot of things, but sermons don’t make
disciples.
Here’s the dilemma: the church’s mission is to “go and make
disciples” (Matthew 28:18-20). If sermons don’t make disciples, then how does
the church fulfill its mission? If sermons don’t directly fulfill the church’s
mission, then why is so much emphasis placed on the weekend worship service and
the sermon?
What Do Sermons Do?
I’m a preacher. I have nothing against preaching. I take
exception, however, in depending on preaching to accomplish what it cannot
accomplish.
Sermons serve to inspire, inform, and motivate. People can
come to Christ as a result of responding to a pastor proclaiming the Word of
Truth. Preachers are brokers in hope. They can help people reframe their lives
from a context of frustration and despair to embrace hope and God’s love.
Sermons anointed by the power of the Holy Spirit are dynamic things that can
make an impact. Yet, sermons don’t make disciples.
If discipleship was a uniform process or the mastery of a body of knowledge, then the information delivered in a sermon would certainly add to knowledge acquisition. But, that’s not what discipleship is. Disciples aren’t processed. They’re crafted.
How Do You Make Disciples?
Disciples make disciples. While much of Western Christianity
has depended on the definition of a disciple as a student, then placed the
student in a class and delivered thorough teaching, it has ended up with very
educated, yet disobedient students. Here’s the proof: what they know is not
adequately reflected in their attitudes and actions. I’m not building a case
for perfectionism. But, I am a believer in the principle that what people truly
believe is reflected in what they do. Or, put another way, “faith without works
is dead” (James 2:17).
Now, I realize that some at this point will wonder if I am
advocating some works-based approach to Christianity. This is where I’m going:
if church-goers have no desire for the things of God, then I would question
whether they truly belong to God. As Paul writes to the Philippians, “Therefore,
my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now
much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and
trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to
fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:12-13). We don’t work for our
salvation, but we work out our salvation because God is working in us.
If disciples aren’t merely students, then what are they? The
word “disciple” is derived from several different words including follow and
“to rub off on.” The model Jesus gave us was to spend 75 percent of His time
with His disciples and 25 percent with the crowd. How much time is spent on the
sermon? How much time is spent making disciples?
Why did Jesus spend such a disproportionate amount of time
with a small group of people? Jesus knew how we learn. People learn by
imitation, not instruction.
Who has been the most powerful influence in your life? For
most people, they would say their parents. You act more like your parents than
anyone else. After all, you could read a dozen books written by experts in
marriage, yet your default is a marriage that more closely resembles your
parents’ marriage than anything presented by the experts. (Depressing thought,
huh?) Change requires intentional effort, committed support, and better models
to imitate.
Paul challenged his followers to imitate him (1 Corinthians
4:16; 2 Thessalonians 3:9). Imitation requires transparency. Imitation requires
time and attention. Disciples make disciples.
Why is the Sermon so Important Then?
Sermons can start something. A presentation of the Gospel
can help someone start their relationship with Christ and their journey of
discipleship. The sermon can lead a congregation to love their neighbors, to
focus on the majesty of God, and to hold on to hope. But, the result of a
sermon is not another sermon. The result of a sermon is a next step – make a
decision, join a group, lead a mission, serve your neighbor, pray…you get it.
This is why I’m a big believer in alignment series and
groups that help church-goers take their weekends into their weeks. The sermon
can deliver a challenge, and the group can provide the support and
accountability necessary to meet the challenge. The sermon by itself, however,
is forgotten usually within 48 hours. If they can’t remember it, how are they
supposed to do it? Groups help with this.
On any given weekend, pastors have the opportunity to lead a
large portion of their congregations to take a step. The weekend service is the
largest things a church does in any given week, but it’s not the most important
thing they do. After all, sermons don’t make disciples. Disciples make
disciples.
For most pastors, whether their churches are 100 people,
1,000 people, or 10,000+ people, would view the sheer scale of disciples making
disciples as completely daunting. The key is to start small and multiply. Jesus
invested in 12 disciples which multiplied over 2,000 years into some 2 billion
people. If pastors invested in just eight people, and then those disciples made
disciples within four years the church would have 4,096 disciples making
disciples (8x8x8x8). Without disciples making disciples, pastors have audiences
for their sermons.
Concluding Thoughts
Back in college a speaker challenged us to think about 5
sermons that influenced our lives for Christ. To be honest, most of us couldn’t
come up with one – not even the sermon from last Sunday. Then, the speaker
asked us to name 5 people who had influenced us for Christ. Those names
immediately came to mind.
Multisite churches have multiplied ministries and reached the lost very effectively over the past decade in the US. What started as a desperate need for expansion at Seacoast Church’s Mt. Pleasant, SC campus and the subsequent denial by their city council to let them expand led to the launch of a new model that duplicated services across counties, states and eventually countries in the case of churches like Saddleback. The fix to a zoning problem became a launch pad for evangelism. Now, for the next wave.
A while back on a coaching visit to Seacoast Church, Josh Surratt mentioned to me that a family from their church had moved to the state of Maine and had 40 people meeting in their living room every Sunday watching the Seacoast service online. I said to Josh, “Maybe it’s time to redefine what a campus is.”
Prior to this, a multisite campus had always been a designated building, either rented or owned, some distance from the main/broadcast/original campus that provided a pastoral staff, worship, children’s ministry and other things associated with a church. Now there’s an opportunity for a new model that requires less overhead and could be put in any situation in a town of any size anywhere in the world.
While many churches will reach into the suburbs or into other metropolitan areas, few churches are reaching into small places. I don’t think it’s on the radar to plant a multisite campus in Possum Kingdom, South Carolina, the hometown of Bo and Bear from the band Needtobreathe. If you’re not familiar with Possum Kingdom, it’s right next to Honea Path. There are a lot of towns that no one’s ever heard of before and some of them have very strange names but every town has a group of people who could make up a microsite church.
Now some would object and say, “Doesn’t every small town have some sort of a small church already?” and the answer is yes. The problem is that we live in a national culture. We watch the same television programs and listen to the same music whether we live in New York City or in Podunk Holler, Arkansas. Small churches in small towns cannot compete with what the culture has to offer. It’s just hard to get people’s attention. There are churches, however, that have proven to develop effective ministries in our culture that have a broad reach. By bringing a microsite campus into a small town, you can bring in the quality and effectiveness of a large church ministry and package it for a living room. You could reach not just thousands of people in a metropolitan area but dozens to hundreds of people in a small town. If you do the math, there are more people in small towns than there are in large cities.
The idea of Microsite Churches is seminal at this point. A few churches are beginning to pilot this model or are considering a pilot. Let’s think about the keys to a worship service: you need music of some sort which can be prerecorded on video with subtitles and offered in a living room either through a download or DVD. You need teaching. Teaching on video is very common. I worship at a very large multi-site church and the teaching is by video. I’m at a multisite campus I have only ever met the senior pastor one time, but the video teaching makes you feel like you’re really there. The fact is when churches have the pastors on a screen, people will watch the screen even if the pastor is teaching live in the room.
There are a lot of things to think through: giving, childcare, counseling, marriage ceremonies, etc. But, let’s start with these few paragraphs and discuss what might be next. What do you like? What do you not like? Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
By Allen White The new year is an awesome time for new starts. Everyone is planning to lose weight, lose debt, learn a foreign language, and of course, grow in their faith. The new year is an ideal time to start new groups too. Why not leverage the momentum before mid-February hits and new year’s resolutions crash and burn? The way you launch groups in the new year, however, will greatly affect your success. While this is an ideal time to form new groups, how and when you form groups will largely determine whether or not those groups last for more than one series, or in some cases, even get started. Here are some mistakes to avoid in new year’s launches. Mistake #1: Launching in Early January. Senior pastors love to start new sermon series after the first of the year. While the first Sunday of the year may be for vision casting or giving a “State of the Church” address, when it gets to the second Sunday, they are ready to get their preach on and dive into a new series. This is great for sermon series timing, but terrible for group timing. If your church launches groups in early January, it forces you to form groups in December. Have you lived through a December at church? No one is thinking about January. If they were, then they wouldn’t be buying so many Christmas presents on their credit cards. Over the years, I’ve tried to recruit and train new small group leaders in December. I’ve also found myself standing in an empty room wondering if I had missed God’s calling on my life. People don’t think about the new year until they are actually in the new year. To effectively launch groups in January, you need to use the first three weeks to form groups, then launch in late January, or better yet, launch in early February. Mistake #2: Failing to Leverage the Christian Holiday of Super Bowl Sunday. I know some of you might immediately be objecting to associating something as holy and spiritual as a small group with something as hedonistic as Super Bowl Sunday. After all, promoting anything about the Super Bowl will only weaken the attendance of the Sunday night service. At least, that’s the way I grew up. But, think about this: how would your members respond to the idea of small groups if it resembled something that looked more like their Super Bowl parties and less like what they fear a small group might be? No one calls the church to see who they should invite to a Super Bowl party. They invite their friends, co-workers, neighbors and family members. That’s the same group they should invite to their, well, group. In fact, if groups were launched after the Super Bowl, maybe the Super Bowl party could serve as an “open house” for a group and then the next week, the study could start. You may be saying, “Well, not every Super Bowl party would be suitable to introduce people to small groups. They might overeat or something and be a bad witness.” These things could happen. But, what if a small group became more “normal” to the average Christian’s life?. That would be a huge win. Mistake #3: Launching Groups in January without an Easter Plan. The downfall of most church-wide campaigns, including some I’ve launched over the years, is you can experience great success for 6 weeks, then the whole thing falls off the cliff. But, it doesn’t have to. If in the middle of your post-Super Bowl series (formerly called “New Year’s series”), you announced a next step series which would run between the Christian holidays of Easter Sunday and Memorial Day, you could easily retain 80 percent of the groups that start in your Super Bowl series. By offering a next step, your groups are given a good reason to stay together. Now, if your church is about to launch groups this Sunday, it might be time to take a timeout and regroup. Call an audible. Do what you need to do before you have to throw a Hail Mary or punt! If you try this, you should get at least 50 percent of your people connected into groups. If you don’t, call me. We’ll figure something out!
by Allen White Some of you know me because I was your pastor at one time. Some of you know me as a fellow small group pastor. Some know me as the guy who wrote an article about Robin Williams that half a million people read. And, some know me as the Vice President of Lifetogether Ministries. Lifetogether has had an amazing 12 months. We’ve created projects The Daniel Plan curriculum for Rick Warren, Destiny and Elijah for Dr. Tony Evans, Lifegiving Relationships for the Association of Related Churches (ARC), I See a Church with Greg Surratt and Josh Surratt at Seacoast Church, What If with Jonathan Falwell at Thomas Road Baptist Church, You Have It in You by Pastor Sheryl Brady at The Potter’s House of North Dallas, Believe with Dr. George O. Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God, and In the Gap by Pastor Wilfredo (Choco) De Jesus. And, I’m forgetting a bunch of others. I am not a video producer. I am an executive producer, which means I solve the problems and pay the bills. While it was fun developing these projects, the greater fun for me is coaching churches who are launching small groups using these curriculum titles. It’s not about numbers. For me, it’s about an ordinary believer gathering a few friends around a user friendly curriculum and experiencing God using them to serve others. That’s why I do this every day. What do you think about video curriculum?
by Allen White Check out this clever video from The Potter’s House of North Dallas. Marc Jeffrey and Travis Simons not only deal with their church members’ fears about joining a group for the first time, but also address a few of their own in a humorous way. They cast vision for what their groups should be and give everyone some guidelines for going forward. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-KbzSKKoFw]
