Evangelism & Discipleship

By Tim Harlow

Imagine this scenario with me.

You”re at a wedding. The idyllic young bride and groom are exchanging vows with that faraway look in their eyes, pledging their everlasting faithfulness. Warm fuzzies galore.

That night, the groom returns to his bachelor pad, alone. The couple keeps separate checking accounts, independent schedules, and their own apartments. When you get a chance to speak with the mother of the groom, she defends the arrangement: “Well, he”s only 25, you know! He”s not ready to be a full-time husband. They don”t really have the same taste in food or furniture . . . they just need some time to adjust to the concept of being married.”

Now, no one has ever given me credit for being the smartest husband on the planet, but I can tell you one thing: you don”t become a good husband by avoiding your marriage! Staying away from your wife so you can “ease in” to the idea of marriage is a surefire way to kill whatever love was there to begin with.

Which begs this question: I wonder what Jesus thinks about the thousands of people who have pledged their lives to him who spend most of their time in a separate apartment?

 

John 3:16 All the Way

Evangelicals for the last 100 years have been””true to their name””all about evangelizing. And evangelizing has been all about getting people saved. So, huge amounts of time, money, and energy have been poured into spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ so that people all over the world could hear that Christ died for them, forgives their sins, and wants them to have eternal life with him. It”s been John 3:16 all the way. So we”ve got John 3:16 churches all over America (and the world) full of converts who are glad to be saved but are not sure what to do with themselves while waiting for the eternal life that was also promised in that verse.

Now, as usually happens when the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, there is a movement to swing it back. A few decades ago, a “new” concept was introduced to the church, and that was the idea of discipleship, sometimes called spiritual growth. Obviously we”ve got to pay some attention to all these born-again Christians in church.

So there gradually came to be two things that happened in your spiritual journey. One was to be saved. The other was to grow deeper in your faith.

This two-stage spiritual growth development is so prevalent in our thinking that we have built a complex system of spiritual language and spiritual practice around these two areas.

If you”re like me and grew up going to church camp or crusades, you probably remember having invitations at the end of the week, and you basically had two options: either you came forward to “make a first-time decision to accept Christ as your personal Savior,” or you came forward to “rededicate your life to Christ.”

Of course, the first one is the one we”re really looking for. We hardly even count the other one, because Freddie rededicated his life last summer and then spent all year copying off of my homework. It could be one of a hundred times a person will rededicate his life to Christ with little or no lasting results (probably because no one”s teaching him what it means to actually follow Christ).

Another example is the way we differentiate between accepting Christ as Savior and accepting him as Lord. “Savior” comes first. “Lord” comes later. Apparently you can obtain your “Get Out of Jail Free” card and your ticket to Heaven without encountering the Lord of the star fields and Ruler of the universe or falling down at his feet.

(I wonder what Jesus thinks of this? As far as I know, he”s always been Lord. If someone didn”t accept him as Lord, you have to wonder who it was they thought they were accepting? You can see how ridiculous this division has become and how it skews our thinking about the Lord, ourselves, sin, forgiveness . . . everything spiritual.)

It”s dysfunctional””like peanut butter without jelly. Chicago without the Bears.

 

Bisected and Conditional

We have bisected our belief about evangelism and discipleship””concepts that were never two things in the mind of Christ and should never have been separated in ours.

What”s more, we”ve made them weirdly conditional. Salvation is required. Discipleship is optional. It”s kind of like extra credit. It”s for those people who want to go deeper in their faith. When we disciple in our born-again, John 3:16 churches, we don”t disciple everyone. Just the ones who are “ready for it.” Jesus would want to know who all those other people are. What do we even call them? Members? Jesus knows only about disciples.

Let me say it again: JESUS. KNOWS. ONLY. ABOUT. DISCIPLES. HE DOESN”T HAVE ANY OTHER OPTION IN MIND.

“If any man will come after me, let him take up his membership and follow me . . .”?

I don”t think so.

Jesus didn”t even bother with making converts. He skipped that step and went right to making disciples, assuming that in order to be disciples you would, of course, need to be saved first. It”s the great omission of the Great Commission, and we”ve missed it for the last hundred years.

Let”s reassess. The goal obviously is not to point the finger at the church on the other end of the spectrum, be it “that shallow, seeker-friendly church” or “that legalistic discipleship church,” depending on which way you lean. The point is we need BOTH to have a healthy church.

We should be having a lot of weddings. The angels in Heaven party like crazy when one sinner repents, and we should too! But we need to teach those people how to be married.

Which part does your church do well . . . and which part are you neglecting?

 

Tim Harlow serves as senior pastor with Parkview Christian Church, Orland Park, Illinois, and is president of the 2014 North American Christian Convention.