Our Discipleship Problem (Part 7)

With the way that much of the conversation regarding church and discipleship are going these days it’s easy to feel like the role of the pastor, the role of church leadership is useless. After all, we are constantly told that “we are the church,” and that the ministry is “our” job, not the job of the paid staff. And I wholeheartedly “Amen” that sentiment. But it can, at times, leave a pastor and a congregation wondering, what is a pastor for? I believe that the pastor still has an extremely important role in the church, and particularly in this area of discipleship. His role is really two-fold: (1) Example, and (2) instructor.

For good or for ill a church usually takes on the character of its leadership. What the leaders do the congregation will largely do. What this means is that if the pastor teaches on discipleship but never participates in discipling others the congregation will not see its value either. If a pastor is not pulling people alongside him, spending time with them, doing life with them then the congregation won’t do it either.

The apostle Paul encourages the churches to follow him insofar as he is following Christ. “Be like me,” he says. It should be so with all pastors. If you, pastor, aren’t involving yourself in the lives of others, and inviting others into your life then you cannot reasonably expect the people you lead to do it. They will follow their leader. And don’t underestimate the place of good modeling, it is really what all of us need. When we see it done faithfully and see it done consistently, even if not perfectly, we have something to shoot for. The truth is if something isn’t valuable to the pastor the congregation won’t find it valuable either, no matter how many sermons he preaches on it.

Secondly, the pastor is the formal educator of the church. In most cases the leadership team have spent years getting education, studying a subject, pursuing careful understanding of it and how to do it. So it seems only reasonable, then, that they should be the ones to help the rest of the congregation do it. A man who has spent years thinking about discipleship and how to effectively do it, should help those who haven’t had any time to really think about it between work and home.

So as a pastor models the way to do disicpleship he should be training others in how to do it. He can offer formal classes, he can simply invite men to participate in discipleship with him and show them how to do it with other people. He can welcome guest speakers, point people to useful resources, etc. The key here is that the leadership of the church should be helping the congregation establish good habits and methods for discipling.

How do you “do life” with someone? That may be a nebulous term for some in the congregation. A good pastor will walk them through what that looks like in his own life. For me that meant a young couple inviting me into their home to watch as they did family devotions. I got to see first hand how this husband led his children, prayed with them, disciplined them, and cared for his wife. I also go to see how he made mistakes, and how he dealt with them. I got to wash dishes with him, take out trash, and other things. All of this was presenting me with a tangible picture of what a godly young man my age was doing to be a spiritual leader in his home. That’s one of the ways I was discipled. As a pastor, it is now my job to do that with someone else and to teach my congregation to do that too.

Perhaps this is also part of the reason we have a “discipleship problem” in the church: we have pastors who don’t do it. Good pastors are necessary for good discipleship. And neither a congregation nor a leadership can forget that.