Multiplying Disciples in a Postmodern World
“Twelve men … that’s your plan?”
“Yes, Peter, just twelve men,” Jesus replied. Peter scratched his head, trying to wrap his mind around this strange strategy.
“So let me get this straight, you expect twelve men to spread the message of your kingdom to the ends of the earth?”
“That’s right,” replied Jesus with a bit of a smirk. Jesus knew that it was more than just twelve men who would accomplish this purpose. He had already reached thousands in His short three-year ministry. But Jesus was trying to show Peter the immense potential of a small group of people, filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered with His authority.
Christ’s Plan to Reach the Nations
I don’t know that Jesus ever had an interaction precisely like the story above, but I do think it’s likely His disciples questioned His long-term approach for spreading the gospel. If I were Jesus (and thank goodness I am not), this is not how I would have done things.
Jesus had a far-reaching impact during His earthly ministry, but this did not come at the expense of forming close and intimate relationships, especially with His twelve disciples. If I were the Messiah, my strategy would have been to develop some sort of event or gathering where I could get in front of hundreds of thousands and demonstrate my power and wisdom.
I would have tried to build my own brand, go viral on all the social platforms, and acquire the largest following possible. According to our modern marketing strategies, that seems to be the best way to impact society.
But Jesus chose a different approach.
Sure, He spoke and demonstrated His miraculous power in front of thousands, but that is not how He chose to give His last instructions when He handed over the keys to the kingdom. Instead, Jesus put His trust in the Spirit’s ability to use a small group of devoted followers to change the world. How could this be possible? The answer … MULTIPLICATION!
Jesus understood the immense power of training disciples who would make disciples who would go on to make even more disciples. This is how Jesus always has and will continue to use His church to fulfill the Great Commission.
Relativism in Society - Abandoning the Notion of Absolute Truth
Before we examine how to fulfill the Great Commission in our age, we first need to investigate the culture we seek to saturate with the gospel. We live in a postmodern society infused with new standards of morality, spirituality, gender, marriage, etc.
Merriam Webster Dictionary defines postmodern as “relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language.”[1]
Today, we as Christians regularly bump against a new way of thinking and believing that is contrary to the values taught in Scripture. This “radical reappraisal” of traditional ideals is significantly affecting our ability to make disciples.
I don’t believe it is an overstatement to say that we are in the most unique era of human history. The way in which technology has molded our behavior, morality, reasoning, communication, work, relationships, etc., would be almost inconceivable to previous generations.
On top of that, we are experiencing a new wave of demonic oppression that overwhelms those who are not abiding in the light of truth. Of course, evil and sin have always been in the world, but the relative ease in which we can fall into darkness has never been more expedient.
Modern Case Study: Pornography in the 21st Century
Let’s take sex for example. Before the advent of modern communication, it was far more challenging to engage in sexually deviant behavior. The options were limited to areas such as having a physical affair, visiting a prostitute, or committing some sort of sexual crime.
In the 20th century, illicit sexual experiences became easier to obtain through magazines, videotapes, strip clubs, etc. But still, for most of the 20th century, it was a source of shame to be seen walking into these X-rated establishments or purchasing pornographic paraphernalia.
Fast-forward to today.
Now with just the click of a button, anyone can see almost any form of deviant sexual activity that they desire. People do this from the comfort and privacy of their homes without anyone ever needing to know. What’s worse is that our culture has become so used to this type of sexual access that many have become desensitized to the devastating effects it reeks on human society.
Exposing the Danger of Relative Truth
Many have fallen prey to the notion of relative truth, which means that everyone is free to decide what is uniquely true for them. In regards to the subject of sexual morality, this means that no one has the right to argue against people who believe viewing pornography or having intercourse with someone outside of marriage. This relative form of truth has slowly dissolved the morality of our nation and the world as a whole.
Without absolute truth … anything goes! If you believe it is okay to steal, then go right ahead. After all, who am I to stop you? If you think that all religions lead to God, then simply take your pick, and I will see you at the pearly gates! Do you see how irrational and dangerous this form of thinking is?
Not only does relativism threaten the moral fabric of society, but it also causes the Bible — our source of understanding God and recognizing moral truth — to be completely irrelevant. If we each get to decide what is right and what is wrong, then the Bible presents merely one out of millions of ideologies to choose from. Here is the societal landscape we face in our effort to multiply disciples, especially in the western world.
Pouring New Wine into Old Wineskins
Relativism is a danger to Christianity as a whole but especially threatens our traditional church system in the west. Statistics show that conventional congregations are continuing to diminish in the context of our postmodern society.
For example, a Barna research study completed in 2020 revealed that “36 percent fewer Americans attended church weekly in 2020 than in 1993.”[2] Please don’t breeze past the significance of this statistic! Findings released from this study shed light on the undeniable reality that our old way of doing church is no longer working! We are trying to pour new wine — people in postmodern society — into the old wineskins of an outdated form of spiritual community and discipleship, and the wineskins are bursting!
One of the primary factors for this decrease in church attendance is a dramatic change in how people view the church and the principles it upholds. It used to be that nearly everyone respected the local church and believed that the Bible was our plumb line for defining right and wrong.
Our forefathers built our country on the assumption that the Bible was the final word in the debate for absolute truth. Daniel Dreisbach, professor at American University, concluded a talk given at McLean Presbyterian Church by reminding his audience,
“From the Puritan fathers, Americans looked to the Bible for guiding principles on political order, civil authority, civic virtue, responsible citizenship, and other features that are a part of a well-ordered political society. The framers drew on diverse political and legal traditions in crafting a constitutional republic. One of the most important but least studied sources of influence on our political culture, and our constitutional tradition, is the Bible. The Constitution contains many features in both content and design familiar to a Bible-reading people, and we cannot understand adequately our constitutional tradition or the historic events that produced our great political experiment in republican self-government and liberty under law without studying, without referencing, the Bible.”[3]
The Bible and its values used to be synonymous with how America defined God and morality. But that is no longer the case. When God and the Bible invoked a heightened level of prestige, the church was respected. Today, much of the western church is seen as an archaic religious system with outdated values and discriminatory beliefs.
Removing Discipleship Barriers for Millennials
The views of our old western congregational system are limiting our ability to disciple a new generation. You see, one of our primary discipleship tactics has been to get someone to go to church on Sunday. We hope the pastor can get them saved at the worship service and enrolled in the structured programs that the church provides (Sunday school, Bible study, youth ministry, small groups, etc.). The problem with that approach today is that an increasing number of people don’t want to go to church. This is especially true among millennials.
The same Barna study I referenced before shows that only 25% of the millennial generation attends church weekly. That is 12% less than the Elder Generation and 7% less than our Baby Boomers.[4] The facts don’t lie! The younger the generation, the less likely they are to attend church on a weekly basis.
The answer to this problem for many churches has been to dilute the gospel message so that our younger generations are not offended by controversial biblical principles. Churches in this category may have larger attendance on a Sunday morning, but are those sitting in those seats actually being discipled? Unfortunately, the answer many times is no.
There is no use gathering large groups of people only to tickle their ears with an unbiblical belief system. Paul the apostle prophesied of this very thing in 2 Timothy 4:3: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.”
I fear that many of these people will experience the fate Jesus describes in Matthew 7:21-23:
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”
Exploring Disciple Making Movements
With people less likely to enter the doors of our churches, how are we supposed to begin making disciples? The traditional ecclesial system, which was once our structure for discipleship, is not making the impact required for revival. Though the much of the old system is fading away, I have good news for you … God is doing a new thing.
Well, I guess it is not really new. This new form of church and discipleship is actually an ancient practice that is now being revived to meet the spiritual needs of our younger generation. But it is not only young people that are attracted to this new move of the Spirt. The model of church and discipleship that we see in the book of Acts is beginning to affect people of all ages.
This move of the Spirit has been labeled by many as a “Disciple Making Movement.” Zume, an organization dedicated to the rampant expansion of the gospel, defines a DMM as “a rapid and exponential increase in disciples making disciples. These movements share a distinct group of priorities which provide the environment for unhindered multiplication.”[5]
Rather than focusing solely on the centralized church, Zume and other disciple-making practitioners devote their energy to seeing the church scattered throughout particular regions of the earth.
More Than Inviting People to Church
Zume is the Greek word for leaven. When mixed into dough, leaven does not gather in a tiny area but expands to affect the entirety of the dough. This is the concept behind many DMMs. Instead of huddling in the corridors of our church building, Christ commissioned us to “go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Paul shared a beautiful promise with the Roman church that “whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). But this promise came with the presupposition that we need to take the gospel to the ends of the earth or else,
How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things’ (Romans 10:14-15)!
In one of His many parables, Christ introduced the concept of leaven, sharing how “the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened” (Matthew 13:33). The kingdom of God is not meant to be contained, but like leaven, it should seep into every area of society.
This is difficult to accomplish while maintaining our traditional church structures. While the conventional church focuses on how many people gather at a weekly service, DMMs measure success in how many people are equipped and released to spread the gospel. I believe this is in tune with Christ’s view of spreading the gospel.
Jesus’s sermon about obtaining eternal life by eating His flesh and drinking His blood demonstrated that He was content with scaring away a multitude of people to find those that were truly committed to Him (John 6:41-71). Jesus was not interested in half-hearted tagalongs. He knew that the only way the kingdom would advance is through disciples who treasured Him above all things.
[1] “Postmodern,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, accessed on June 4, 2021, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postmodern
[2] “State of the Church: Signs of Decline & Hope Among Key Metrics of Faith,” Barna, March 4, 2020, https://www.barna.com/research/changing-state-of-the-church/
[3] Daniel Dreisbach, “The Bible and the American Founders,” C.S. Lewis Institute, June 15, 2018, (adapted from a talk sponsored by the C.S. Lewis Institute delivered at McLean Presbyterian Church, McLean, VA, May 19, 2017), https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/The_Bible_and_the_American_Founders
[4] “State of the Church: Signs of Decline & Hope Among Key Metrics of Faith,” Barna, March 4, 2020, https://www.barna.com/research/changing-state-of-the-church/
[5] “What is a disciple making movement?” Zume, accessed on June 4, 2021, https://zume.vision/articles/what-is-a-disciple-making-movement/