In this episode of the Radically Christian Bible Study Podcast, Wes McAdams and Marcus Stenson tackle the crucial topic of discipleship and how to create a disciple-making church culture. They address common misconceptions about discipleship, explore why many churches struggle to prioritize disciple-making, and discuss how individuals can embrace their role as disciples even in challenging environments. This conversation is particularly valuable for those feeling frustrated with church stagnation or wondering how to move beyond mere church attendance to truly following Jesus.
The episode delves into biblical concepts such as the transformative power of discipleship, the importance of both “growing” and “going” in the Christian walk, and Jesus’ model of investing in individuals. They also discuss how the early church’s understanding of discipleship differs from modern church culture, encouraging listeners to reimagine their approach to spiritual growth and community impact.
Marcus Stenson, the guest for this episode, brings a wealth of experience and passion to the conversation. He currently serves as the preaching minister at the Leander Church of Christ and is a co-founder of Christians for Kenya, a nonprofit focused on equipping Kenyans to spread the gospel. Stenson is also a team member at Be1Make1, an organization dedicated to empowering disciple-making. His practical insights and strategic approach to fostering disciple-making cultures in churches make this episode a must-listen for anyone seeking to deepen their faith and impact their community.
Links and Resources
Transcript (Credit: Beth Tabor)
Welcome to the Radically Christian Bible Study podcast. I’m your host, Wes McAdams. Here we have one goal: Learn to love like Jesus. It is great to be back after a long break. I’ve really missed releasing new episodes, but we’ve still been recording episodes and we have some fantastic conversations to share with you over the coming weeks. We’re starting a new series on discipleship, and today we’re going to talk about how to be a disciple‑making church. My guest today is my good friend, Marcus Stenson.
Marcus currently serves as the preaching minister at the Leander Church of Christ, north of Austin. He’s a cofounder of Christians for Kenya, a kingdom‑facing nonprofit organization that focuses on equipping Kenyans to spread the gospel through education and humanitarian aid. Marcus is also a member of the team at Be1Make1, an organization dedicated to empowering the disciple‑making purpose that lives inside everyone.
I want to begin today by reading from Ephesians 4, starting in verse 11, which says, “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
I hope that today’s conversation is an encouragement to you, and I hope that it, as always, helps all of us learn to love like Jesus.
WES: Marcus Stenson, welcome back to the podcast, Brother.
MARCUS: Hey, Wes, thank you so much. It is always a good time here. Happy to be here.
WES: So excited to have you, and I know that this topic that we’re talking about is close to your heart. It’s something that you’re passionate about. So let’s talk about discipleship. First, how do you define that term?
MARCUS: That’s a great place to start. I define discipleship as closely as I can to what we see walked out in the scripture, with a little bit of context. And what I mean by that is a disciple, speaking of what we read of in terms of a disciple in the New Testament, is a person who has dedicated their entire life to following a rabbi or a teacher. They have decided not only am I going to listen to this person’s teachings, but I actually want to model my entire life after this person. And so when we see the disciples who are called to Jesus follow him, they’re dropping everything. Their life is now all about being like Jesus.
And so our walk with Jesus modernly, in my view, is really about two things, and the first is growing like Jesus grew. And I just look at Luke when it says that Jesus grew in stature and wisdom and in favor with God and man, and, one, just put a little mental note that yes, Jesus grew, as hard as that is to fathom, in all of those different areas. So if I’m going to be like Jesus and a disciple of Jesus, I need to be committed to growing like he grew in those areas, as well. It’s about growing like Jesus grew, and, to me, it’s also about going with Jesus into mission or going where Jesus went. And so when I think of discipleship, I think of those two terms, growing and going.
God tells us many times in the New Testament that the point of our faith and the point of our discipleship is to be continually transformed more and more into the image of Christ. That’s that idea coming through strongly in the writings of Paul, as well, and so when I think about discipleship, I think about that as it pertains to daily spiritual rhythms. What was Jesus doing and committed to that I see exemplified in his walk that I need to be committed to and exemplify in my walk, too? I want to grow like he grew.
And then, you know, Jesus doesn’t grow us just for the sake of knowledgeable acquisition or just to say that we grew or so that we can feel like good disciples. He always grows disciples so he can send them, so then the going part happens, right? And those are the two ways that I would define discipleship.
WES: Yeah, I love that, growing and going. That’s so good. That’s so good. So how do you think that a lot of people misunderstand ‑‑ as you’ve taught, as you’ve made disciples, as you’ve helped others to make disciples, how do people misunderstand the word discipleship? Because it’s kind of a religiousy, churchy word that we don’t really use outside of church context, so how do people misunderstand that?
MARCUS: Yeah, it can kind of seem like a buzzword. It’s kind of a double‑edged sword at this point in time. I think a lot more people are talking about discipleship, and it’s something that’s been talked about in past eras, as well, with varying results and varying applications, and sometimes we have to press up against those a little bit. But just for the common, everyday person that I encounter and that I work with, I think that the idea of discipleship does sound super‑religious. It can sound a little hooey, and sometimes I think that the biggest obstacle that we have individually is that we consider it like it’s another thing that we’re supposed to do. It’s almost like another thing that we add to the list that we keep about how to be a good Christian or how to be faithful or how to incur or curry the favor of God so that he’ll be pleased with us, almost another checklist, if you will, that we need to make sure that we take care of so that we’re in good standing with God.
But being a disciple and being in discipleship to Jesus, and even making disciples, is not performative in that way. It’s diagnostic, really. When you think about it as another thing that you should do or need to do, it invites a whole lot of other issues to the table because then you start thinking about, well, where do I get the time to go and make disciples, right? How do I fit this into my already busy schedule? And now I feel guilty and now I feel ashamed that I never do this, or I don’t commit to this, or I don’t feel qualified to do this. But when I say that it’s actually diagnostic is that, really, being a disciple is something that you’re called to do in the scheme of your everyday life as it is already, as you go walking along. And even being a disciple‑maker and helping someone else along that path is the same thing. Discipleship is less about creating extra time or finding a way to create extra time, and it’s more about inviting the rhythms of Jesus into the time and life that you already have, and it’s about inviting other people into the life that you’re already living, as well. So it’s not about creating more. It’s about kind of living through a different perspective and lens where you already are, if that makes sense.
WES: Yeah. I was thinking about Colossians 3:17 as you were talking, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through Him,” that idea of this is about everything that you do. It’s about learning to be a follower of Jesus in your workplace, in your school, in everything that comes out of your mouth, everything you think, everything you do. You know, one of the
misunderstandings I think that I encounter ‑‑ and I just thought of this as you were talking ‑‑ is that a lot of people that I talk to think that when you say disciple, you mean apostle, like they think of the 12. They think of the 12 disciples who, as you said earlier, literally followed Jesus, as in they walked where Jesus walked, they lived with him, they learned from him every day, and they certainly were amongst his first disciples, but it’s a much broader term that included a lot of other people who followed Jesus, and the people that would continue to follow Jesus in subsequent generations, including us.
And so I think that maybe there’s a misunderstanding, and it kind of goes with what you were saying, that a disciple is like a super‑Christian or something. Like you have Christians, you know, you have saved people, people that, you know, they’ve been baptized and they go to church and that kind of thing, but then if you ask them if they’re a disciple, they think, well, I don’t know if I’m a disciple, or they think of just a select group of people who literally followed, walked with Jesus in the first century. They don’t necessarily think of that as something that, quote‑unquote, normal Christians are supposed to be and do, and it encompasses everything that we do in our life.
MARCUS: Oh, yeah, that’s such a good point, and I just remember that Jesus told those apostles ‑‑ or those super‑Christians, as we refer to them, to go and make disciples. He didn’t tell them to go and make more apostles, so everybody who becomes a follower of Jesus becomes a disciple. That’s how it’s supposed to look, and so I think you draw out a really good point there not to conflate the two in drawing that distinction there between apostles and disciples. Every follower is a disciple of Jesus.
I do think, though, it can help in a way. Because the word disciple carries such a different kind of flavor and connotation in our church makeup today, it’s a really good opportunity to talk about what that actually means, and it is an opportunity to call yourself deeper into a spiritual rhythm and in patterning your life after Jesus as opposed to just maybe showing up on Sunday, or whatever idea we had of Christianity before, in playing a part in this large matrix. So yeah, I love that.
WES: Yeah. Well, and I think it’s helpful to point out that the word Christian ‑‑ that’s the word we use all of the time. It’s in the URL of my website; it’s in the title of my podcast. So we use “Christian” all the time. It’s not a bad term, but it’s not a term that, apparently, first‑century followers of Jesus used about themselves. It seems to be something ‑‑ it occurs very seldom in the New Testament. It seems to be a term that others used about them, and they said, well, you know, they’re calling us this, but Luke says they called the disciples Christians. They called these followers of The Way “Christians.”
So I think it is helpful for us to really adopt this idea of discipleship and to call ourselves disciples and think of ourselves as disciples because, to your first point, it’s about growing, it’s about going, it’s about doing, it’s about being a follower of Jesus. It’s not just about being saved. It’s not just about eternal destiny. And I think, so often, we think, well, I became a Christian, I am a Christian, and what we think that means is I’m going to heaven when I die. I’m in a saved relationship with God rather than I am in the process of being transformed into the likeness of Christ; I’m in the process of becoming more and more like Jesus every day of my life; I’m doing everything in word and deed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is a much different idea than simply I’m a saved person.
MARCUS: Yes, so much, and one way that I’ve kind of tried to articulate this is even based on what you just said, where Christians were first named that in Antioch. “Christian” is what you are called; it’s what you’re named. But a disciple is who you are; it’s central to your identity, and there’s a deeper aspect to that, and it calls all of you into that being in terms of your identity, your esteem. How you evaluate your standing with God is based on a measure of discipleship and not just the name that the world has to call us because we’re so radically different from what they see around them everywhere else, so yeah.
WES: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s talk about this idea of ‑‑ well, actually, let’s let you share a little bit about Be1Make1. This is one of the reasons you’re so passionate about discipleship and disciple‑making. So tell us about Be1Make1, because I think that that’ll help set the stage for the rest of our conversation.
MARCUS: Yeah. Man, Be1Make1 is an organization that I have the benefit and the privilege of being a part of that the idea really started for back in 2015. Back in 2015, myself and a couple of really good friends, a couple of brothers in arms, so to speak, Chip and Anthony, we sat in a dusty church office in Athens, Ohio, and we had all been in ministry for some time at that point and we kind of started carrying this burden around, and we’d come together because we came to find out that we shared this burden. And what we started to encounter almost everywhere we went, in a lot of different church contexts ‑‑ and this is certainly not prescriptive or descriptive of all church contexts, but in so many we were seeing folks that were incredibly dedicated to the faith, but they were dormant, and they were aware that they were dormant and they were upset by the fact that they were dormant. They were serious about the faith. I don’t really know many folks more serious than our faith tradition in the churches of Christ about their faith and about doctrine and what it means to their lives. But along with that seriousness also came a level of being stagnant that, also, instinctively they knew was not good, but there was just this inertia that it seemed like everyone was incapable of overcoming.
And then the one that really got me the most was that folks that are just genuinely faithful to the core, in every measure by which you could even measure faithful, but absolutely fearful at the same time, paralyzed with fear, and that fear really fed into the dormancy and the stagnancy that everyone was experiencing. And we all three just kind of agreed that we had a passion to see people actually experience the joy and peace and power that Jesus actually promises his disciples, and we started to work very diligently to figure out how we can get back to the original mission that Jesus gave us in a church context, and that is to just simply be disciples who make disciples, and what started there has grown over the last almost decade now. It feels crazy to say.
And we’ve just been endeavoring to help the individual live in that spiritual rhythm that I talked about a few minutes ago, to grow to be more like Jesus and then, ultimately, going with Jesus into his mission, whatever that mission is for them personally that God has called them to; and then also to help church leadership come to alignment in mission and vision and values and how they can start to shift or make the pivot out of what I like to call the Field of Dreams ministry complex into one of a disciple‑making culture.
There’s one thing that I became absolutely convinced of, and that is through being told dozens and dozens and dozens of times by so many people, “We want to share the gospel,” “We want to be known in our community.” But I became convinced that it’s human nature not to share something that they’re not absolutely confident in, and so it was going to take a total ‑‑ not a reimagining, but really just getting back to the heart of where this really begins for us individually, between us and God, and then congregationally, between us and God. And so that’s what Be1Make1 does. We build on mission leaders, and on mission leaders, build or nourish on mission churches, and it’s just our goal to see everybody tap into what Jesus has for them. So I would love to dig deeper on any specific aspect, but that’s where that comes from.
WES: Yeah. Well, it’s that idea of leadership and churches, and you used the phrase “disciple‑making culture.” So if a church is going to become a disciple‑making church, that that’s their vision, that that’s their culture, that that’s their mission, that they are committed to that and passionate about that, what needs to be ‑‑ what do their practices need to be? What does their vision need to be? What do they need to prioritize? Maybe priorities are something we need to talk about.
MARCUS: Absolutely. So there are a couple things here. This is a great question. I love it. The first thing ‑‑ and I say this not to be critical or accusatory of anyone in any church context. This comes from my personal experience in working with lots of different church‑leadership groups. I think the first thing you have to do is you have to change the goal, and I think the goal so many times, especially in a church that maybe doesn’t feel like it’s thriving, is to get people in the doors, and if we’re being honest, if we ask, you know, what do I want for them when they visit our church or when they finally come ‑‑ I want them to like us. I want them to have a great experience. I want them to find people like them and maybe they’ll come back. And if they keep coming back, they’ll get baptized and then our church will grow and we’ll have a young family or we’ll have kids and then we’ll feel really good about what we’re doing.
And that’s not to say that any of that is wrong in and of itself, but I think it’s really important for churches to ask themselves, is what we want for people when they contact the body of Christ here the same thing that Jesus wants for people when they contact the body of Christ here? If you’re gonna be a disciple‑making church, you gotta care more about getting them everything that Jesus promises them, first and foremost, and beyond them just liking what they experience when they come. And that kind of flies in the face of our model that’s really worked well in our country since probably 1960 or ’70, where you try to have the best preaching, the best praise, and the best programs, and that’s why I call it Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come, and, hopefully, they just keep coming. So that’s the first thing: Change the goal to what Jesus’ goal is for every person.
The second thing is to recognize, as a leadership team, that you are chosen and you have relationships and spiritual formation that you are stewarding. And as church leadership, you have a responsibility to provide a picture of what spiritual maturity looks like and a pathway for how it’s achievable, and that means that you can’t hope that your church is going to be filled with disciple‑makers, or disciples for that matter, if you’re not committed to going first and doing that yourself. So be committed first to being what you want to see.
And then kind of a related recommendation on this is prioritize the action over the announcement. Traditionally ‑‑ because above all, especially elders, who I respect and love and always have the best intention at heart, they fear, above all, losing people on their watch or being one of the guys that, you know, the church went off course in some way during my tenure. And so those two fears dominate a lot of actions that are taken or not taken, and then we usually try to craft announcements about new programs or new initiatives that will not upset the people that we don’t want to lose, and, therefore, we have to be really conservative in what we’re talking about and we end up trying to speak to folks that are probably going to be disgruntled anyway and it ends up ruling the culture.
So, you know, be in action first because the thing that will churn over a culture at a church are the stories that are being told and the testimonies that are coming from action that is already happening, right? And that way, when the announcement is made, the demonstration of the benefit and the value has already been lived out live and direct, and you’re not in the position of trying to convince anybody of something new that you guys need to do; you’re just sharing something incredible that God is already doing in your church, even if it starts small.
And so when you’re sharing something that everyone already agrees is a need and a desire, as opposed to trying to convince somebody of something new and scary, your chances for success go through the roof as opposed to where you were operating from before. So change the goal. Know that it’s on you, as leadership, to go first and to show a picture and a pathway, and then prioritize action over the announcement. Just start being disciples that make disciples before you ask anybody or try to convince anybody that this should be the grand design of our entire church. So those would be my three.
WES: Yeah. Man, I love that. That’s so good. And, really, going back to that idea of changing the goal and really having discipleship as the goal, it really does change how we, quote‑unquote, do church, how we lead a congregation. And I think often about ‑‑ I keep coming back ‑‑ in this series, I keep coming back to Luke 14 and Jesus’ words, his admonition to count the cost before you become a disciple, and his warning that if you take on this [mantle] of discipleship, if you come and follow me, it’s going to be costly, and not everyone can pay the cost. So if you’re not going to take up your cross and follow me, if you’re not willing to hate your father and mother, your wife and your children, your own life, then don’t bother coming and being my disciple.
And I think how different that is as a strategy than the way that we typically, quote‑unquote, do church or the way that we try to attract people. And we just ‑‑ again, as you said, we want people to like us. We want people to attend. We may even want people to get baptized. But, again, I think there’s a slight difference between what we think of as making Christians, getting people saved, and making disciples, and churches that are really passionate about making disciples, they set a high bar for themselves and for other people because Jesus sets a high bar. He doesn’t ‑‑ Jesus doesn’t go out and say, hey, we’d really like for you to come to church on Sunday. We really want you to be a church attender. He calls people, follow me, like your whole life, like everything, 24/7. I want you to come and follow me, learn from me, become exactly like me, take up your cross and die like I’m dying. I mean, it’s everything. It’s total, 100 percent commitment. And to the people that say, I don’t know; that seems like a lot, Jesus says, okay, see ya, and I don’t know that we’re willing to do that. I don’t know that we are willing to let people walk away.
And I think often about John 6. I think about the fact that Jesus is willing to let people leave. He even asks the 12, “Do you want to leave, as well?” And of course they say, “Where else would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” But I wonder, are we willing to do that? Are we willing to look at our congregations and say this is a place for people who want to be disciples and make disciples; this is a place for people who want to become like Jesus, and we are going to hold each other to that standard; we’re going to hold each other accountable to growing and going?
MARCUS: Yeah, I think you bring up a really good point there. It’s not just the person that comes new to your church that might walk away. It’s ‑‑ unfortunately, there are some folks in your number, when you say to them, hey, we are serious about this. This is what we have been called to as a congregation ‑‑ there’s going to be some uncomfortability there, and that’s why it becomes a challenge for leaderships. And I don’t want to diminish that at all. I’m not saying that this is easy to count that cost and say, you know what? There’s a certain culture that we are committed to having here. There’s a mission that we’re called to and we’re all in on that. It might not be for everybody, and we’re okay with that. That is probably the scariest thing that any shepherd or elder can even think about. But you make a really good point, Wes. I don’t find one place in the New Testament where Jesus was just trying to get someone to synagogue the next Saturday. He was about creating lives that were modeled and shaped and formed after him, and, ultimately, that’s our job, too, and that’s what we have to be committed to.
WES: Yeah. And even talking about, quote‑unquote, doing church or what does the assembly look like ‑‑ I mean, I think there’s so much that could be said about the transformative power of worship, the transformative power of what we do in the assembly, what we do when we break bread together, when we share the cup together, when we sing songs together. In fact, I think we could
spend a whole hour talking about that, about the way that our worship assembly, however you want to phrase that ‑‑ how that contributes to making disciples. And if a congregation, if the leadership has that mentality, that the answer to the question, why do you sing, is not, well, because it’s wrong to do anything else. You know, the answer to why do you sing is because we want to be followers of Jesus. We want the Spirit of God to dwell in us richly. We want to be transformed into his likeness, and singing to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs is part of that process of becoming more and more like Jesus. I think everything that we do, both in our individual lives and when we come together on Sunday and Wednesday, and whenever else we come together, would all contribute to that disciple‑making and disciple‑being process.
MARCUS: Agree. As we kind of talked about in a past question, so much of this comes down to not necessarily not doing things that we’re committed to doing, or even adding something new always. Sometimes that’s appropriate, but it is why we do what we do. Why we do what we do informs everything about ‑‑ everything from how it feels, to how it presents, to what you gain from it, to how it blesses other people. The perspective that you bring into it will change what you get out of it. I like to say the story that you live in is the story that you live out. What is our story as an individual in relationship to this God that has created us and, for some reason, lavished so much favor and grace on us? What is our story as a congregation, a community of believers who come together to pour into each other to that end, to glorify this God every single Sunday? It really changes the dynamic and the why you are there, not necessarily the what, because we need to be in community worshiping the Father together, but it does put a slightly different twist on why we’re there and what it means to us.
WES: Yeah, absolutely. And it gives us a metric, too, doesn’t it, to be able to look at ourselves and to look at what we’re accomplishing as a church family, also, to say, are we accomplishing that? If the goal is simply being present and checking that off of our list, that, yep, I showed up, I showed up, I showed up, I showed up ‑‑ for 35 years, I’ve shown up. If that’s the goal, if that’s the metric, then we feel like we’ve accomplished something even if we haven’t grown, even if we haven’t gone, even if we haven’t done this process of becoming more and more like Jesus or going and making disciples of others. But if that’s the metric ‑‑ if the metric is, are you becoming more like Jesus, well, that really requires some introspective examination, and that requires us to go and actually do something in addition to just showing up. And, again, showing up is important, it’s good, but to what end? What are you accomplishing in showing up? What are you trying to accomplish? Or do you even realize there is something to be accomplished in the showing up?
MARCUS: I think, just to add to what you’re saying, we really have such an opportunity because churches that are looking at this and wrestling with this ‑‑ not even just churches corporately, but disciples that are wrestling with this and looking at this, I think we leave so much on the table in terms of our ultimate purpose on this planet and in this life by not tapping into this. Jesus is saying I’m going to give you a life of significance, not just a life of temporal significance, but eternal significance. If you become like me, if you walk with me, if you live this life, the things that you do and the life that you live are going to matter forever.
And if it’s really just about attending for 35 years, you may wake up 35 years later and still be racked with anxiety that you haven’t done enough, that you haven’t been good enough. You might wake up and never be able to share with another soul because you’re really not confident in your own security and well‑being. It changes the way that you can treat your brothers and sisters because you carry this guilt or shame around with you on a daily basis. You haven’t really gotten to the bottom of why God has actually put you here on this planet. And I think just walking with Jesus in a daily rhythm, and understanding what that looks like and letting God work on you, coming together and letting God work on you in community with other disciples, provides you so much more depth and richness of life as you go from day to day, and resources with which to even meet stress and the trials and tribulations that are sure to come, that this really is the best way to do life.
It’s not just something that we intellectually know, and we read it and we go and hope that it actually comes to pass someday. Right here, right now, living as a disciple is the most fulfilling and rewarding way that you can walk this thing out. And I just hope and pray that more and more brothers and sisters can kind of latch onto that and sink their teeth into it because it really is beautiful and powerful.
WES: Yeah, yeah, that is beautiful. And I think it goes back to what you said in the beginning about this confidence that comes from knowing that we’re saved by grace through faith, that we are saved as a gift from God and that it’s not about this legalistic checklist of things that we’re trying to accomplish, but about a relationship that we have with Jesus and a relationship that we’re trying to share with other people because we know how good it is, we know how wonderful it is, and we’re so excited to have experienced it ourselves, and we want other people to experience it, as well.
MARCUS: Yeah, a faith and a sharing that comes from an overflow of gratitude as opposed to one that is compulsory or something that is something that you have to do is totally different. I am famous ‑‑ well, famous is definitely an overstatement. I shouldn’t use that word. I have been known to say that we’re all disciple‑makers anyway. We make disciples of all sorts of things. You make disciples of the books that you read and the shows that you binge on Netflix and the restaurants that you eat at. I don’t even live in DFW anymore, but everybody knows about [Hutchins] BBQ. Shout out to those guys over there. They’re doing good work. I make disciples of lots of things. Anything that has truly blessed and impacted my life, I’m prone to make a disciple of it and share with people.
And so when I say being a disciple or disciple‑making is diagnostic, if you don’t have that with Jesus, it might be a red flag or a clue to you that something is a little bit convoluted in your conception of how this works between you and him, what you’re actually doing here.
So I want everybody to have that overflowing joy. It’ll take the pressure off of you. If you think, you know, I need to go and share Jesus with somebody because that’s what I need to do to be good, it’s always going to be arduous. It’s always going to be stressful. It’s always going to be ridden with anxiety. You’re always going to feel like you need the perfect script and the perfect words to say instead of it being what Jesus really designed it to be, an as‑you‑go, organic exercise in which someone is actually just asking you, “Why are you the way that you are?” “Why do you have joy when I know that your life is going through utter turmoil right now?” “Why don’t you lash out at people? Like I would have lashed out, but you never lash out. What is that?” “What is this peace that you have? I’ve seen you in grief and it doesn’t look like grief that I’ve seen before.” These are the things that become present in a life, the fruits of the Spirit that cause people to ask questions, and your opportunities to make disciples are going to come much more naturally than you ever imagined. It’s just going to be sharing from the overflow. Not something that you do, but it’s just who you are.
WES: So what do you think we do ‑‑ and you may have already touched on some of this, but what do you think we do collectively, as churches, as congregations, that build hindrances or roadblocks, obstacles that keep us from being disciples and making disciples and growing as disciples, things that become part of our programs, our systems, our cultures that become a roadblock to accomplishing this mission because we sort of had a different mission in mind and we didn’t have this perspective, and so we’ve set things up that actually have unintentionally hindered people from growing as disciples?
MARCUS: Yeah, there’s probably a lot that comes into play here, and we did talk a little bit about ‑‑ I briefly mentioned that sort of Field of Dreams ministry approach, and I only would go into a little bit more depth on that because I want to make sure that everybody knows that I’m not critical of this. I think that the way that we kind of learned to set up church and do things and do church successfully was a product of a very unique period of time in American history. What I mean by that is, you know, there was a point in time where, you know, the data will tell you that 70 percent of people were in church somewhere every Sunday, and in that place and time, you can devote an awful lot of energy to just being the best church out there, and this is where Rick Warren and those guys over at Saddleback kind of patented the three P’s model, and everyone else adopted it with varying degrees of success.
And as the culture moved away from regular church attendance, we found ourselves in a position of not really relating to the culture so well anymore, not really having talked a lot about discipleship because, you know, it wasn’t really about that. It was about just presenting as the church in town that everyone’s going to go to since pretty much everyone’s in church. But now there are less than 20 percent of people in church every Sunday, and, really, that’s if you’re counting three out of every eight Sundays as regular attendance. So the environment in which we find ourselves is so very different, that if we are still married to that approach to ministry, if that’s how we’re going to make every decision, it will get in the way of organic disciple‑making culture.
Something that’s kind of an aside to that is just the way that we talk about this. Just to go a little bit deeper on action over announcement, in that Field of Dreams approach, we want to make the perfect announcement for a new program or a new initiative, and if that’s the way you want to try and bring an idea of disciple‑making to your church, you make it programmatic, but disciple‑making is not programmatic, it’s cultural, and so it will fail.
If anyone out there is familiar with the product adoption curve, this is just human psychology and how it works. In every single new ‑‑ I guess when you introduce something new to a market, you’re going to have 2.5 percent of people that are, like, innovators. They’re on it because it’s new and it’s exciting. That exists in a church. It exists when Apple drops a new phone. It’s the same phone every year, but they’re going to camp outside. They’re going to wait in line in a tent or something like that because they’re the innovators. After the innovators, you have early adopters. Your early adopters are 13.5 percent of the population, and they will do what the innovators do because they have the influence, and they’ll do it once the benefit has been established or demonstrated to the market. The next 34 percent is early majority, and the early majority will do whatever the early adopters do because the early adopters are people of influence in the community. The late majority will follow the early majority. That’s another 34 percent. And then you have 16 percent of any given population that are just laggards, and if you’re a laggard out there, you still have like the original Razr flip phone, and you are now trendy again because Razr flip phones are back. But that 16 percent is always going to exist. It’s just how people work.
The mistake that churches make ‑‑ and this gets in the way of a disciple‑making culture ‑‑ is what we try to do, since we look at those two, the early and late majority, 68 percent of a church population in any given context, and since that’s the largest percentage, we want to make sure we don’t upset those people. Whatever we’re going to do, those people got to be bought in, and so we will try to craft an announcement that will appeal to that 68 percent and somehow still motivate people to move in a different direction, and that seldom works. Matter of fact, most of the time it doesn’t work, and, you know, you probably have heard story after story after story of, well, we always try to do something and then it just never happens, or it fizzles out, or we do it for a little bit and then it stops. This is the kind of culture that this exists in. But the real cool thing about this is, if you understand how this works scientifically and datawise, in order for any new introduction to reach momentum where it’s going to be adopted by the early and late majorities, all you have to do is get the first 16 percent. A new product will reach momentum when it hits 16 percent. Most people probably have no idea that there are still more Android phones out there than iPhones because there’s such social pressure to have an iPhone and have blue bubbles instead of green bubbles. That’s because they reached momentum a long time ago, but they’re not even the majority in the marketplace.
So if you’re in a church context and you’re saying we really want to be disciple‑makers, we want to be a church where we are disciples who make disciples, what you got to do is you have to be willing to go first. In most churches, that 2.5 percent, those innovators, could be just your elders and your ministry staff. It might be some deacons or a couple of key players there. It’s actually much smaller than you think. If you take your church ‑‑ if your church is 200 people and you say we only gotta get 16 percent of people here to believe that they’re a disciple who’s supposed to make disciples and to start doing it before it will become the culture of our church, that is way different from saying we have to craft an announcement that motivates and moves 68 percent of our people immediately. So the mentality that ‑‑ that Field of Dreams, make the announcement, start the program will get in the way every time because it overcomplicates what this really is. So that’s the first thing.
The second thing is, I think sometimes there’s an unwillingness to create intentional spaces for discipleship to occur, and we come by it honestly because Sunday is so important to us, and it’s going to remain important to us. But when I look at the life of Jesus, we see him operating in different spaces of community, and I think it’s important for us to provide the space as much as we can for every disciple to develop in those same spaces. I’ll give you an example. Jesus spent time in the erémos, the wilderness. Without question, daily, with regularity, he’s got one‑on‑one time with his Father all of the time. That’s a spiritual rhythm that every disciple should be in. I can’t really be responsible for that, or you can’t, as a church leader. That’s up to the individual disciple. Then he had a transparent space with three disciples, Peter, James, and John, who got to see him not only transfigured on the top of the mountain in all of his glory that wasn’t accessible to everyone, but also saw him deep in the dark garden when he’s shedding tears and sweat drops of blood that not everyone got to see, either. So these were people that were doing life with him in a way that the peaks and the valleys were visible, and they kept each other accountable and they walked together. Every disciple needs that, too.
From there, Jesus had the 12, and we’ve talked about them today. That’s a personal space, and he was on mission with those guys in a special way that he wasn’t with others. Churches that are serious about disciple‑making will create a space for people to find their 12 there in that context. That might take the form of a small‑group ministry. It might take the form of another ministry that’s happening at the church. But if all of your energy is just dedicated on get people here on Sunday, and you’re not creating the space for some folks to get transparent with one another or personal with one another, you’re kind of cutting your own legs out from under you in terms of creating a space where folks can be disciples who make disciples.
Social space for Jesus ‑‑ he had the 70. He sent the 70 out. They were on mission with him, too. That’s a little bit more analogous to our regular church gathering on a Sunday, where everybody is coming together. Teams develop, ministries develop. That’s the easy one for us because our entire way of church is centered around that social space. And then there’s the public space. Jesus, you know, sat in front of the multitudes with his disciples. They fed those that were needy. They healed dozens and dozens of people, and that’s the going part. When we’re not together in that transparent space, that social space together as a body, are we still on mission together in public? Are we still going with Jesus in that mission to make an impact positively on someone’s life so that they are provoked deep within them to ask the question, “Who are these people? I need to call them something. I think they call them Christians. What is it about these people? Why are they helping us? Why are they invested in us?” And so that would be one of the unintentional obstacles, as well, just not facilitating those spaces, and the expectation that you talked about before, that this is what it looks like, this is the pathway to spiritual maturity. We are already walking it; we want you to walk it with us.
WES: Yeah, that’s so good. And I can’t help but think that so many of our congregations are set up with the potential for exactly what you’re talking about but without the intentionality. Without the goal or the vision of it being to serve that purpose of being and making disciples, then it becomes something different. And I keep coming back to the idea that so much of what we do is about information, maybe inspiration, but very seldom transformation. And so we like to inform, and sometimes we like to inspire, but it just ends there. But if our goal is transformation, it’s a much more difficult goal. If our goal is actually to take people from where they are to where they need to be, which is more and more like Jesus, that’s difficult because then we have to deal with the fact that, oh, well, we’re kind of resisting the Spirit here. We’re quenching the Spirit here, and we need to repent and we need to change, and there needs to actually be change over time. If we are the same people today that we were 10 years ago, something is failing and we need to repent drastically.
But if we just teach to inform or teach to inspire, well, then we can feel like we did a great job and we can pat ourselves on the back. We’re informing people. They know more Bible now than they used to know, or they feel inspired every week and they feel like, oh, that was a great sermon or that was a great Bible class or that was a great small group or whatever. But if they’re not actually ‑‑ if we’re not actually being transformed, there’s a problem and we’re falling short. But, again, we have Bible classes, we have small groups, we have big assemblies. People are out in the community. They are in the workplace. They are in the school. They are in the public. But if we’re not doing those things with the intention of being and making disciples, then we’re falling short of the mission.
MARCUS: I love that you say that. Actually, I laughed ‑‑ someone said, the other day, if you don’t look at your Facebook memories from 10 years ago and feel embarrassed, then you’re not growing, and I thought that was a really funny way to look at that. But yeah, it’s true. There is no living thing in God’s creation that ‑‑ I mean, if it’s not growing, it’s dying. That’s just kind of the way things work. And we got to be growing as disciples because sanctification is not a process that finishes this side of the new heavens and the new earth.
I want to speak to potential fear. If someone out there is kind of weirded out by this whole disciple‑making pivot and church culture already, let me try to assuage your fears a little bit. What Wes just said is so important because we have a lot of the skeleton in place already. Those spaces sometimes exist almost completely in different church contexts and dynamics. They’re just not purposed towards that. One of the greatest fears that I hear when I sit down with folks is that there are a lot of sacred cows here. Like we can’t get rid of VBS. We can’t get rid of this program or that program, and that’s really not a viable way to approach it. A better way to approach it is to say, okay, here are the things that we are doing already. How do these or how can these be purposed towards the goal of disciple‑making? How can we maybe reinvent this thing that we love to do but has been losing steam and we feel like we’re supposed to do it? How do we revitalize it with this mission that draws us all together and unifies us and galvanizes us and gives it a greater purpose than just we’ve always done this here?
So you might find that you won’t find everything that you’re afraid of ending up on the cutting floor on the cutting floor. You just might find that there’s new life in the places and the context that you already have if there’s purpose and intention behind them, if there’s a unifying vision and a mission and value as the way you carry yourself in that space behind them. So I want to encourage anybody or any church that is looking at this not to get intimidated or afraid of what you might lose by making this a focus because you really only stand everything to gain.
WES: Yeah. So well said. So let’s talk to the person who is not just in the 16 percent; they’re in the 1 percent. Like they’re listening to us and they’re like, amen, Marcus, I 100 percent want to be a disciple. I want to make disciples. I want to be part of the overall mission of the church. I want to be part of the Great Commission and making disciples, but they’re part of a congregation that is stagnant, that isn’t focused on this, that has no desire to do this, that really doesn’t want to change, that they want to keep doing what they’ve been doing and they’re really not interested in reimagining what they should be, what they could be. And so how do we encourage that person that feels like they’re all by themselves and they’re not part of a community that’s committed to this mission, and what can they do in their context, do you think?
MARCUS: Excellent question, and those people exist. I’ve had the privilege of working with a couple, and my advice is always to them, and my advice is to you, if you find yourself in this position, always look at Jesus. We can’t have this whole conversation about patterning ourselves after Jesus and growing like he grew and then abandon it if we’re in a non‑ideal circumstance. It’s always going to be the answer: “What Would Jesus Do,” like an old bracelet we used to wear in 1993. What would Jesus do in this situation? One of the concepts that I like to teach, and I really like to dig in deep on, is called invest in the one. It’s one of the skills that I think Jesus was incredibly proficient at, and what we see in Jesus’ ministry is, whether he was in a larger or smaller discipleship context with the folks he was in community with, he impacted a lot of people one at a time: one person at a time, one feeding at a time, one healing at a time, one conversation that really shouldn’t have been happening at a time, and it teaches us that even that one person, in Jesus’ eyes, is worth it. It’s worth the investment.
And the gospel, when it impacts one life, has infinite power, so please don’t be intimidated or think that you need everyone else to come to consensus about doing this discipleship thing before you begin, because Jesus, in his example, was able to take the most socially outcast, the most destitute and turn them into some of the greatest disciple‑makers and evangelists in history. I love Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well, not because she’s a woman that he shouldn’t have been talking to, not because of the life that she led before that time that we focus on so much, but because she became a woman who led an entire village to Jesus, and not I or maybe anyone else on this podcast right now has that on their resume. So don’t think that it has to be a big movement. The greatest movements start with one. Find the one that you’re supposed to invest in and start making a disciple right there.
And in addition to that, it might not even be somebody that is outside of your church. It might be somebody that is right there in front of you that you see every week, who you don’t really know that well for some reason, or maybe God has kind of been tugging on you, there’s something going on in their life. Huddle up with that person and start walking out these rhythms of Jesus together. Give each other permission to encourage and keep you accountable with one another, and you’re going to be surprised with what God is going to do with that. What will happen in a church where nothing is happening and all of a sudden one or two people start happening is word will spread very quickly, and the question is gonna come, well, how ‑‑ like we haven’t had guests here in at least three years. All of a sudden, you know, Wes has got a new ‑‑ what is going on with that? Or, wow, someone got baptized. The preacher didn’t even do it. What was that? Someone got baptized on Saturday. What are we doing on Saturday? Those stories, those testimonies will be much better at inspiring and convincing the folks that are in your context that this is a worthwhile endeavor. So be the one who makes the one, and you’ll be surprised how fast God can generate momentum like that. I’ve seen that happen several times. So that would be my encouragement to you. You can do way more than you think, and every one person is worth it in God’s eyes.
WES: Amen. Amen. So well said. Be the one that makes the one. I just can’t help but think that, yes, it would be ideal ‑‑ it would be ideal if everybody in your congregation ‑‑ if your elders, if your preacher, if your deacons, if your friends, if everybody was on board, if they were all passionate about this, but we can’t wait for the ideal situation to start obeying Jesus. That’s what discipleship is. Discipleship is obeying Jesus when it’s in season and when it’s out of season, when it’s easy and when it’s hard, and so we just do what Jesus would have us to do. We strive to be faithful regardless of the situation, and that’s it.
And I’m so glad that you said that it might not be a person outside of the body. It may not be somebody who is not a Christian. It might be a saved, baptized person, but they’re really not growing as a follower of Jesus, as an apprentice of Jesus, as a disciple, and your influence, your encouragement, your admonishment, your just being friends with them and walking with them and letting them see you be a disciple might be the encouragement that they need to start being the person that God wants them to be.
MARCUS: 100 percent. So much of this discipleship thing is about the one‑anothering one another that we read about in the New Testament, and it starts there. Ultimately, if you did have someone that you were discipling that comes into your church body, you’re going to want them to see that community. You’re going to want them to see that love. You’re going to want them to see that discipleship on display, so start right there with who’s in front of you and let God create all of the other opportunities organically as you go throughout your day. Keep your head on a swivel, keep your eyes up, ask God to show ‑‑ who am I supposed to invest in today?
When we are talking about people outside of church ‑‑ I used to think that this was where this fits, but, actually, sometimes it fits with folks that are inside of your church. Your biggest opportunity to make a disciple or to create a relationship that matters is probably somewhere buried underneath of your deepest agitation or frustration. It’s the places where you feel hurried, you feel rushed, you feel annoyed. That’s a place where I would be very serious about inviting God into and just seeing what he does with that situation because he has a way of turning those on their heads, and it can be really incredible to see what he does working in those situations.
WES: That’s good. That is so good, Brother. Thank you for this conversation, Marcus. Thank you for being a disciple, for making disciples, and for all your work in the kingdom, Brother.
MARCUS: Thank you so much for having me. This has been a great conversation, and thank you to everyone who’s listening. If you’re feeling the tug that there’s more to this than just showing up every Sunday, there is. And it’s not always easy, but it is beautiful. It is powerful. There’s joy, there’s peace, there’s purpose in it. So chase it down. God will meet you there.
WES: Amen.
Thank you so much for listening to the Radically Christian Bible Study Podcast. If you have just a moment, we would love for you to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you’re listening. It really does help more people discover this content. I also want to thank the guests who join me each week, Beth Tabor, who volunteers her time to transcribe this podcast, and our whole McDermott Road Church family who make it possible for us to provide this Bible study for you. Now, let’s go out and love like Jesus.
The post How to Create a Disciple-Making Culture with Marcus Stenson appeared first on Radically Christian.
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