Building a Discipling Culture

by Mike Breen

What are the questions that keep all of us up at night? What we found probably

Seminary degrees, church classes and training seminars teach us to grow our volunteer base, form system and organizational structures or preach sermons on Sunday mornings and assimilate newcomers from the Sunday service.

If you make disciples, you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples.

process of invitation and challenge would be repeated

Time and time again in the Gospels, we see Jesus functioning as a classic horse-whisperer, inviting his followers into an intimate relationship with him while also initiating a direct challenge to behaviors he knew were either wrong or unhealthy. He drew his disciples closer, loved them, but also gave them the opportunity to accept the responsibilities of discipleship.

Fundamentally, effective leadership is based upon an invitation to relationship and a challenge to change.

many churches, as they seek to create comfortable environments in the form of worship services or small groups,

challenge is always given best in the context of personal relationships.

Small group leaders are supposed to be facilitators of discussion and conversation, creating a culture where people who are new (and perhaps not Christians yet) can immediately come in and feel safe.

If we have churches with warm, cozy, comfortable, inviting environments, someone is paying the price to make sure that happens

all of the invitation that is offered to a large portion of the people in a church, there is another group that is shouldering all of the expectations and challenge of producing that kind of atmosphere:

Usually 15–20% of the people are doing almost all of the work.

their experience is extremely high on the challenge side of things but very low on invitation.

these people are constantly discouraged, frustrated and stressed.

We should expect and appropriately plan for some degree of failure, aim for “low control, high accountability” and invest all we have in creating empowered leaders who can function as producers rather than consumers.

becoming lifelong learners of Jesus.

we learn best when there is a dynamic interplay between all three at one time: 1) Classroom/Lecture passing on of information 2) Apprenticeship 3) Immersion

You don’t simply learn to fix a sink by reading about it; you actually go out and do it.

The key to immersion is having access to the culture you are hoping to shape you.

As we know it today, discipleship is mostly about that first kind of learning: the classroom experience. And really, that’s about it.

Notice that all of this is completely information driven, in some sort of classroom-esque experience. There is virtually no apprenticing happening in our churches.

The hard reality is that immersion works only when people are actually fluent in something.

The way most churches have structured the discipleship process, it is as if we are saying, “If I can just get the right information into their heads, if they can just think about it the right way, then they will become more like Jesus.” Right information/teaching=right behavior=disciple. So let’s think about it practically: How successful has that been for us?

We tell people to pray. We teach sermon series on prayer. Maybe we teach classes on prayer. But we forget that Jesus’ own disciples had no clue how to pray like Jesus and they grew up in an incredibly immersive culture that was focused on prayer. Something about the way Jesus prayed was so profound, was so connective, visceral and life-giving that they said, “Please, please teach us to pray like you!”

Obviously, apprenticeship is happening here. You want to learn to be a plumber? Find a Master Plumber and do what he does. You want to learn to be a disciple? Find someone with the life that resembles the life of Jesus and do what he does. This is what the disciples were doing.

What we see from Jesus is that success isn’t thousands of people and an ever-expanding church. Success is obedience to what the Father asks.

1) A discipleship vehicle (we call it a Huddle) 2) People need access to your life (discipleship can’t be done at a distance) 3) A discipling language (our discipling language is called LifeShapes)

Put simply, we invite only a few people into a discipling relationship with us. If Jesus invited twelve people, we’re going to assume right off the bat we can’t do as many as he did. And we invite these people into a HUDDLE.

A Huddle is the group of four to ten people you feel God has called you to specifically invest in, and you will meet with them regularly (at least every other week) to intentionally disciple them in a group setting. The best discipling relationships always

Huddles do not grow by adding new members; Huddles grow when members of your Huddle start their own.

An organic part of discipling people happens outside a Huddle. That means you need to give these four to ten people much higher ACCESS to your life than other people get or than you are probably accustomed to giving the people you currently lead.

What many have done is jump from ditch to ditch. Rather than taking a posture of learning through Information and Imitation and then Innovating in their own context, they’ve decided that unless they come up with it themselves, they are selling out. Instead of finding and learning the tried-and-true practices for discipleship and mission, they try to re-invent the wheel.

chances are good he or she would start off doing it just like you do it (Imitation). Now that doesn’t mean that a little ways down the road they won’t branch out and discover ways of doing this that might be more suited to his or her personality (Innovation),

The language we use, called LifeShapes, is a collection of eight shapes with each shape representing a foundational teaching of Jesus or principle from his life

Huddle returns to as we continually ask, “What is God saying to me, and what am I going to do about it?”

HEXAGON: PRAYER

TRIANGLE: DEEPER AND BALANCED

SEMI-CIRCLE: RHYTHMS OF LIFE

SQUARE: MULTIPLYING DISCIPLES

PENTAGON: PERSONAL CALLING

HEPTAGON: COMMUNAL LIFE AND HEALTH

OCTAGON: MISSION THROUGH PEOPLE OF PEACE

Lastly, on a very practical note, if you are a pastor, we highly recommend you not teach LifeShapes in a sermon series.

A kairos moment is when the eternal God breaks into your circumstances with an event that gathers some loose ends of your life and knots them together in his hands. In kairos moments, the rules of chronos time seem to be suspended.

As you and your Huddle learn to recognize kairos moments as God’s interventions, you will be able to enter the Learning Circle, and experience growth.

The Circle shows us: what it means to live a lifestyle of learning as a disciple of Christ; how to recognize important events as opportunities for growth; and how to process these events.

Kairos moments are God-given opportunities to enter into a process of learning kingdom living.

Huddle functions as the context for confession, a place of honesty where we are able to challenge each other, share our struggles and experience God’s grace and forgiveness. These are trustworthy friends, who will stand with us, pray with us, fight alongside of us, but will not flatter us with empty words. “Therefore confess

If the group is healthy, they will be above 7 in all three areas. If they come in at 6 or less in any area, time and effort may be required to bring the group into proper balance.

you really can’t do what you are called to do. Opposition and difficulty begin to be overwhelming. You forget the vision and begin questioning how much you really understood it to begin with. There are no highs to balance the lows. You realize you aren’t equipped for the mission and soon descend into the deep pit of despair.