DISCIPLING THE STRUGGLING CLASS
WHERE IT BEGINS: LIKE A TWELVE-STEP PROGRAM
Discipleship begins with someone first accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The principle call of the gospel is to leave the world of sin and by faith in Jesus enter the kingdom of God, the realm where we worship God and love others. In Colossians 1:13, Paul writes, “He (the Father) has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” It is in this kingdom that we “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).
Some churches have a discipleship program. For some, this is a series of lessons that prepare people for profession of faith or for baptism. This often is a review of the basic gospel message: that we have all disobeyed God’s law with the result that we are lost and separated from God’s favor, that we are restored to God’s favor by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and that in gratitude for God’s gracious gift of salvation we gladly devote ourselves to love and serve God and our fellowmen.
It often adds instruction in discovering and using spiritual gifts for the building up of the church and advancing its mission. Hopefully, this will help the new member become an active church member and engage in some form of church ministry.
This approach to discipleship is based upon a reality that once existed in many areas of the country. As recently as the mid-1970s the church evangelized and won converts in a culture where premarital sex was understood as adultery. If a woman became pregnant in a dating relationship, the couple often got married. If not, she often opted to give her child away for adoption since she was not able to provide for its upbringing. Marriages were understood as uniting one man with one woman, and at the wedding ceremony the couple pledged to be faithful to each other until death separated them. In the resulting homes, children grew up with the nurture, love and discipline of both father and mother. This held true even when a couple was “incompatible,” and had to “put up with each other.” Somehow, they made it work out of a sense of obligation even if it was a struggle.
In that world, it was generally understood that work, gainful employment, provided an income to live, a place to live, and often some recreation. The work ethic was the basis for success and well-being. Work, along with living within one’s means and saving, either by investing in a home or depositing funds into the bank or stocks, provided status and security for the future. It would also allow one to help their children get a higher education.
It was a time when people accepted the Biblical world-view and standard of morality, even if they did not go to church. Some people associated terrible storms with judgment and they had a fear of death and hell, even while resolutely rebelling against the authority of the church. A gospel presentation that focused on helping people understand that eternal security was based on God’s promise was very meaningful. By trusting in the completed work of Christ, they did not have to fear the future, but could live with joy and confidence.
Today, this world no longer exists in American society at large. Date sex is practically universally practiced. If a woman becomes pregnant, she keeps her child even though she may never marry or live with its father. She receives governmental aid to live independently of both parents and the father of her child. She can receive and reject whom she will. As a result, her children often do not grow up receiving loving discipline of both father and mother.
This way of living is frowned upon by the church, and the poor have interpreted this as rejection. A common phrase is, “I was injured by the church.” Maybe they were shamed by gossip or expelled harshly. As a result, at least two generations of members of the struggling class have grown up without a firm knowledge and conviction of the validity of a Christian world-view and a respect for God’s law. They may have largely bought into the prevailing media’s critique of the Christian faith, which it interprets as extremely narrow-minded.
When someone from the struggling class decides to accept Christ, a program of discipleship that entails attending several classes to prepare for church membership is not enough to modify a way of life that has held sway in the home for over a generation or two. It is for this reason discipleship should take the approach of twelve-step recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous that highly encourage daily participation at meetings. As reported in the book of Acts, the new converts who were added to the church through baptism, devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to celebrating the Lord’s Supper, and to prayer (Acts 2:42). They met daily in the temple courts and shared meals together in their homes (Acts 2:46). The making of disciples involved activity that transformed people to become active participants in a new way of living, a new lifestyle. It was a daily reinforcement of putting of the old way of life and its sinful ways and adopting a new way of like that was patterned after the life of Christ. It was a community of mutual encouragement, forgiveness, and strength to endure hardship. Even when sinful behavior was disciplined and involved shunning, it was done with love and a view of restoring the sinful brother through repentance (1 Corinthians 5:1; 2 Corinthians 2:5-8). Those of the struggling class need the basics of the Biblical message, and they need constant support to establish behavior patterns. They need a lot of fellowship along with hearing the Word, lots of praise, much prayer, all bathed in love and compassion.
Another reason for my going to quite some length in expounding the Biblical message about finances, work, marriage, and more is that it is possible to downplay the hard reality of the consequences of a life of sin. Preaching about judgment does not attract like a message of total love and acceptance. A pastor might think, “The way these people live is just cultural. We as a church must adapt our ways to appeal to them.” The trouble with a “feel-good” message is that it leaves people to continue practicing behavior that further enslaves them into a lifestyle of poverty. It allows people to think they are OK, when in reality they are drifting on a raft that will plunge down a waterfall into the abyss of hell.
Discipling the struggling class is very difficult. It is hard to display always the love of Jesus, and at the same time deliver a rebuke like he did. Illustrative is Jesus’ healing of the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda and his consequent warning to the man (John 5:14). After multiplying the loaves, and the consequent teaching about being the bread of life, Jesus faced the reality that many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him (John 6:66). But this provided the opportunity to challenge the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” (6:67). Peter replied, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God” (6:68-69). Jesus did not compromise the truth, and he was not afraid to call people to a decision and commitment, even though this call could lead to rejection. We need to make the same appeal to repentance and decision, and if necessary, face the pain of rejection. Acting like this, Jesus drew together a community of people who believed in him and who were willing to be transformed by His Spirit. It is a community that has endured and expanded throughout the world, and it is a community that is experiencing in this present world the beginning of the blessings of heaven.
I trust these studies may inform the reader’s thinking and even serve as a study guide for those who want to be disciples of Jesus.
UNDERSTANDING HOW PEOPLE MAKE DECISIONS
Very few people are prepared to make a decision with our first contact. Circumstances will not allow us to spend an hour explaining the gospel. We may only have two or three minutes. More importantly, because of their background, experiences in and outside of church, people are not able to understand nor accept what we are talking about. We need to ask ourselves, “At this juncture in their lives, what can our listeners understand? What can they accept? What can they decide? What can they believe and obey?”
James Engel and Wilbert Norton in their book “What’s Gone Wrong with the Harvest?” (Zondervan, 1975), display a table that shows a person’s possible response to the proclamation of the gospel. Those most removed from making a decision only become aware of a Supreme Being, but have never heard about Jesus Christ. Others have a vague awareness of the Christian religion, the church, and the labels that the media attaches to various branches of Christianity. Exposure to a further proclamation of the gospel should lead our listener to understand the fundamentals of the faith, like the main elements of the Apostles Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer.[1] Later contact and instruction may lead our listeners to grasp the implications of the gospel: people need to repent, leave a life enslaved to this world and surrender to Christ and his authority and love. An important step towards making a decision is to have a positive attitude toward the gospel. It makes sense and it brings benefits both now and for the future. At this point, our listeners may come to realize that what is going on in his life is wrong and needs to change. This is personal problem recognition. “I can’t believe the truth about Christ and continue to live the way that I have been living.” Finally comes the decision to act, to repent, to turn from sin, and to transfer trust to Christ and follow him.
Anywhere along this journey, people can reject the message. They may ignore it for a time, or decide that it will not work for them. This may be a temporary or a permanent moving away and turning back. If people show no response, it may be necessary to wait six months or a year before making further contact to ask how they are, and test whether they are willing to hear another part of the teaching about Jesus. If someone shows acceptance by starting to attend worship services, personal engagement can occur weekly or monthly, depending upon how much our listener can absorb and put into practice..
Follow-up and confirmation also follow progressive steps of growth. Immediately following a decision, new believers are likely go through severe testing. A spouse may be aghast at the decision and this will affect their marital relationship. They may lose their job, be involved in an accident or become sick. There may be a death in the family. New believers may have thought that they would not sin anymore or be tempted to drink alcohol again. They face the reality that their life is not easier, but more complicated and difficult. They need to be assured that Satan does not want to let them go, but that Christ’s love is stronger. Maybe they thought that there would not be any sin in the church. However, they will soon realize that they need to learn how to forgive other Christians who are walking along with them on the journey of faith. They will need to correct the language they use to describe Christians. Instead of calling them hypocrites, they will now describe them as fellow travelers along the way who are struggling with sin and temptation. They will learn that it is a mark of authenticity to admit sin, ask forgiveness, and seek help to overcome. They will learn that after identifying one area of sin that must be confessed and overcome, they will identify another area, and then another, and still another, in a process that is life-long.
While this is happening, the new believer should be incorporated into the church, the body of believers. This may involve a new-members class, baptism, and discipleship meetings with a more mature member of the church. In the fellowship of believers, the new Christian will be helped to share his or her testimony, and learn how to explain the way of salvation to others.
In our ministry, we may encounter someone who rejects our message and invitation to follow Christ. It is helpful to understand that this may not be the last word from that person. The person may have plateaued at a certain stage along the way to a decision. God may need to orchestrate experiences to prompt the person to actually hear what we or some other Christian has told him.
On Pentecost, Peter found an audience fully prepared to make a decision. These were people who knew about Jesus and how he was crucified. They also believed the prophetic scriptures. They heard the sound of a rushing wind and heard the disciples and those with them speak in other tongues. They were ready to make a decision based on Peter’s explanation of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit by quoting from the Prophet Joel (Acts 2:17-21) and applying it to that present moment. After the people heard Peter’s indictment of their participation in the rejection of Jesus and his crucifixion, they asked, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). Peter challenged them to repent and be baptized; and they followed his instructions.
As for the Apostle Paul, whenever he came to a city, he first went to the synagogue where he argued that Jesus was the Messiah by extensively quoting passages from the Jewish scriptures (The Old Testament) and explaining their significance (Acts 13:13-48). Gentile followers of the Jewish God were prepared by their disgust of pagan idolatry and the weekly instruction from the Scriptures to hear how the life, death and resurrection of Jesus fulfilled prophecy concerning the Messiah. Once they understood the truth, they were ready to decide. They understood the implications and were ready to obey and follow the Messiah. The Jewish members of the synagogue, by and large, were unwilling to change their thinking about the traditions handed down from generation to generation.
When meeting a pagan audience, Paul used a different approach. He saw a need, healed a cripple and the sick, and cast out evil spirits. These miracles, as Paul explained, were the powerful works of a living Christ. In Lystra (Acts 14) the people concluded that Paul and Barnabas were gods and merited sacrifice. In this context, Paul was constrained to proclaim that God was the Creator of all and the only one who deserved worship. Paul and his companions were creatures of God just like his audience. At that moment, Paul was not so much concerned about explaining the gospel, but about stopping their attempt at worshipping him and Barnabas.
In speaking with the Greek philosophers in Athens, Paul directed their attention to their longing for the one true God, by noting their erection of an altar to “The Unknown God,” by quoting from their pagan poets, and by directing their thoughts to the Creator who made all things and governed the destiny of peoples and nations. Then he called them to turn from idols to serve the true God, because this God would judge them through the Messiah, the one risen from the dead (Acts 17:22-31). Even then, only a few accepted. For most of them, the idea of resurrection from the dead was foolishness (Acts 17:32). Even after valiantly trying to connect with their worldview, the majority still considered him a foreigner babbling strange ideas.
What follows are various stories about people who were ready to decide to follow Christ and others who were not. I trust that they will help you see people as those on a journey, moving toward or away from Christ, moving forward or shrinking back in their walk with the Lord.
This principle played out in my interactions with Miriam, an immigrant from Bosnia. I first met Miriam in the client line at a mobile pantry that came to our church once a month. I was handing a half-sheet of paper with a scripture passage and greeting the people with “Hello, how are you? By chance to you have something that you’d want me to pray for?” In her short reply, I noticed that Miriam had an accent, so I asked what nationality she was. She said, “Bosnian.” I asked, “Are you Muslim?” She replied, “Yes.” Then for the next several months, she made a very successful attempt at avoiding me. As the months passed, she told me a few things about herself in little bits at a time. She said that she divorced her husband because of his abuse. I surmise that in America she now had the freedom to resist and put an end to it. She had two boys about eight to ten years old who often came with her. They are in school, getting accustomed to America faster than their mother. She said that her parents still lived in Bosnia and that they communicated at least once a week. I asked her, “What do you know about Christianity?” She was non-committal, but did say, “After midnight I watch Joel Osteen on television, and I like what he says.” After maybe a year and a half had passed, I asked her if she would accept a New Testament along with a self-help Bible study on the Gospel of Luke. She said she would. I may have seen her one more time, but never had opportunity to ask her if she read the story of Jesus. This woman had a curiosity about Christianity and about Christ, but she did not feel free to make a decision that would certainly cause her to feel the wrath of those dearest to her—her parents. If she is to move closer to a time of decision, she will have to go through some crisis, call out to God for help, see a vision or hear a supernatural word from God, or meet someone else, maybe some other Muslim who was converted.
Once I met a Muslim man who was vocal in expressing his beliefs and who had been talking with other Christian men where he worked. One evening, my wife and I went to a dollar store to buy some birthday cards. We chose this particular store because its cards carried Bible verses just behind the cover. I told the son of the owner who was at the cash register that I appreciated the Christian music and the cards. He replied, “Joe, in the next aisle, is a Muslim. I bet you’d like to talk with him.” So, I introduced myself to Joe. Right away, Joe said, “So you’re a Christian. Tell me if a Christian can pray for forgiveness and have all of his sins forgiven. Then, can he keep on sinning and have all of his future sins forgiven as well, based on that one prayer?”
That was a loaded question. It was evident that Joe was asking questions. He was curious. Since he was a man in a position of authority in the Muslim family, he had more freedom to make a decision, even though he was arguing against Christianity. Other men where he worked in construction were witnessing to him, probably explaining some version of the sin-salvation-service outline and urging him to confess sin, ask for forgiveness, and receive Jesus for the eternal forgiveness of sins.
My answer began by saying that once someone becomes a follower of Christ he no longer desires to sin; rather, he makes progress in leaving it behind. But I also explained that when Christ died, he died for all of my sin, in fact, he died for the sin of the whole world; so indeed, all of our sin is forgiven forever. Then Joe replied, “Jesus did not die. He was too good for that. Allah took him straight to heaven. It was someone else that died on the cross, and the people thought it was Jesus.” Previously, I had been challenged to prove the resurrection of Jesus, but this was the first time that I was challenged to prove his death.
This interchange showed how a wooden presentation of the gospel can overlook a point of crucial importance to someone from a different cultural and religious background. My prayer was that it helped Joe move forward in his readiness to make a decision.
In our second term of missionary service in Brazil, Lisa came to church with her two girls in their pre-teen years. She was seeking a new way. She had found a clump of dark feathers in her pillow, a fetish planted there by her spiritist husband, and she linked that “curse” to the sicknesses and problems that were plaguing her family. She had accepted Christ and was starting to prepare for baptism by taking lessons from the catechism, which I gave her by going to her home on a weekday afternoon. This was when her husband was home after sleeping following his third-shift job at the bakery. With blurry, sleepy eyes and obvious disinterest, he sat on the couch with his wife during the lesson. In due time he started to attend worship with his wife. Once he got into an argument with the Sunday school teacher, a military sergeant, about the Trinity. He came to me for a better explanation. Well, how do you explain a mystery to a “rational mind?” Two weeks later, he asked me to visit him. He said that about mid-afternoon he was praying to his “guide,” an indigenous Brazilian, transformed into a spiritist deity. As he was praying, he saw this man sprout horns from his head and legs that transformed themselves in to calves legs with hooves. Suddenly, he knew it. He had been worshiping and seeking help from a demon, and the help that he got was only making his life worse. Within a couple of weeks, he presented himself at church for baptism.
The next three stories illustrate how women in Brazil came to faith and what that taught me. It started shortly after our arrival to the city of Bauru. The pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church passed on to me about 200 copies of the Gospel of Matthew in a trial, more up-to-date translation. To hand these out like a gospel tract would be as good as throwing them into a waste basket. I had also noticed that most homes had received at one time or other a Gideon’s New Testament that was gladly received and then quickly relegated to the bottom of some drawer along with clothing or other objects. I decided to make a self-help Bible study with multiple-choice or true-false questions. A topical study where people were forced to jump from one text in one place to another text in another place would be confusing, I thought. Opened ended questions, a favorite in North America and which I translated, tended to be answered with, “Jesus,” “faith,” or something similarly vague, which usually missed the intent of the question. The multiple-choice format would be easily corrected and would force the reader to make choices between right and wrong answers, some of them tricky.
What happened? My, own adolescent daughter, who was somewhat of a rebel, was prompted to ask for the study on Matthew when she witnessed the trauma caused by the motorcycle accident of two young men of the youth group. They ran into the back end of a truck and could have died, but survived even though they suffered gruesome, but minor injuries. After completing Matthew, she asked for the study on Romans. In the time that she did these studies, she turned from someone in the loyal opposition to a person who, in effect, was telling me, “Dad, I’m now on your side. I’m going to cooperate with your efforts to control that rebellious nature of mine. I want to live for Christ.”
The next woman visited our church and showed a willingness to read the Bible using the Matthew course. She had been studying with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but had not made a commitment with them. She did, however, adopt the idea that Jehovah is God alone and that Jesus was his non-divine son. When she was finished with the study, I visited her and corrected the study. I came to the question about Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee, “Is Jesus the Lord of nature?” ( ) True ( ) False. She left it blank. I asked her why. She said, “I was taught that only Jehovah is the Lord of nature.” Then her eyes opened wide and she exclaimed, “After reading the book of Matthew, I see that Jesus can do everything!” In that moment, she came to understand that Jesus was indeed the Second Person of the Trinity. A short time later, she and her husband joined the church and within the year, her two sisters and their families also joined.
The third woman was Sonia, whose aunt was single and a long-time member of the Central Presbyterian Church. Twice I met with her and another sister or brother and attempted to explain the gospel. Each time our discussion came to an inconclusive end. Their excuses or doubts were not answered satisfactorily, or if they were, they were unwilling to surrender their lives to Christ.
In due time Sonia’s sister Beth came to faith along with her husband John. John was a fervent Catholic who was troubled by Catholics who made confession on Saturday, took part in the mass on Sunday and lived a self-centered and crude life the rest of the week. Their common language was immoral and laced with profanity. Sonia’s aunt urged him to seek out the pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church, who led him to saving faith. John and Beth went through this decision process together. As a result, the noose was tightening around Sonia. Both John and Beth forcefully argued the cause of Christ. Sonia visited our church—it was closer to her home—and I gave her the Matthew Bible study. When she finished, I asked her if I could explain the gospel to her. This would be my opportunity to talk about our need, about how Christ paid for our sins, and how he calls us to say that we are sorry, to ask forgiveness, and to ask Christ to come into our heart. She said, “I don’t need you to explain anything. I have read the story of Jesus. How do I accept him?” Right there she prayed along with me to receive Jesus into her life.
These stories taught me that the good news of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels is Jesus himself, through the recorded witness of the evangelists, calling people to put their faith in him and to become his disciples. What Jesus said and did constitutes a powerful, maybe the most powerful evangelistic tool that God has put at our disposal.
I have learned in the course of years that what we did in Brazil does not work in quite the same way 35 years later in a North American context. People here, in general, are unwilling to read the Bible unless they have already come to church on a somewhat regular basis. However, we used these self-help Bible studies with great profit in the weekly ministry to inmates at the Oceana County Michigan Jail. We literally had a captive audience with a lot of time on their hands. So, to take advantage of this opportunity, we developed more studies in both English and Spanish: Acts, Romans, John, James, and Ephesians, and I John. We were unable to gauge the effectiveness of this type of ministry because we were not able to accompany the inmates after they were released. We have faith that their reading of the gospel in due time produced the fruit of changed lives.
Today, people can read the Bible from their cell phones. They have been bombarded by competing messages from YouTube, social media, television, and more. I rarely find someone who has the time and the desire to sit and study the Scriptures. For several years, based upon my Brazilian experience, I would knock on doors in a certain neighborhood filled with people receiving government rental assistance, and ask, “Would you like a self-help Bible study that you can do in the privacy of your own home to learn about what Jesus said and did?” More than half of the people would accept. Their names and addresses were dutifully recorded in the log of my visits. About a month or two later, I would drop by again, “How are you doing with the Bible study of the Gospel of Luke?” Over 90% of the time, I heard, “It’s on the night stand by my bed. I have not forgotten it. I just haven’t gotten started yet.” I finally realized that in the three minutes that people gave me at the door, I was not communicating anything substantive about who Jesus is and the blessings that result from following him.
Within the last year, I would continue to knock on a door, introduce myself and my companion, offer an invitation to church along with a token gift, like packets of hot chocolate, or an artificial flower, and ask how they are doing and if they have a prayer request. Then, after a pause and a sense of some receptivity, I would ask, “I’m sure you would like to go to heaven, right?” “Did you know that Jesus brought heaven to earth? Just look at his miracles. Remember what he said about forgiveness, about love for God and for our fellowman.” “Do you know that you become like the God you serve?” Those three minutes would help me gauge whether to only leave an invitation to church or continue to engage the person in a conversation that would be welcomed on their part. If the person would become a regular attendee at worship, they would then be motivated to read the Bible.
I have shared, mostly from personal experiences, what lies behind someone’s decision to follow Christ. As you share the gospel, you, too, will be able to add to your memory the stories of people who have come to faith. You will see what crucial part you played in the life of the new convert. You will also realize that you were but one of a series of events that God was using to bring someone into his family.
You are not limited to your own personal experience, however. As you build relationships with fellow believers, you may ask, “Tell me how you came to faith. What caused you to move from a critical bench warmer to an enthusiastic member serving in the body of Christ? What happened that revealed the Spirit igniting a flame in your heart?” What you hear will help you better understand the Spirit’s work. You know that a car moves forward on tires rolling on the pavement. Through a person’s testimony, you will be able to see the tread marks that the tire leaves on a specific section of road.
We meet people who say, “Two things we never talk about are politics and religion. Period.” For them religion is something to argue about. Our task is to help them understand that Jesus comes to them to meet their deepest needs and longings. Others are inquisitive and would like to learn more and are willing to try something. They are willing to accept an invitation from a friend. And then once in a while someone says, “I’m convinced. What do I do now?”
[1] Various Creedal statements of the Protestant Reformation, including the Heidelberg Catechism, expound these three things.