This is a debate that, quite honestly, I’m sort of sick of listening to. If you’re in ministry, you know where I’m going with this. It’s the popular notion that somehow evangelism and discipleship are competing dynamics within the church, and that as leaders, we must somehow choose a side and base our entire philosophy of ministry around that paradigm.
Inevitably this comes to one of two conclusions someone from the opposite side is saying about any given church:
- Either a church is so “evangelistic” in it’s approach that they don’t take care of their own people, because they’re a mile wide and an inch deep, or…
- They are so “discipleship” driven that they obviously only care about themselves and their next Bible study topic and not for their unreached community.
And never shall the two sides meet… right? Wrong! Since when did Christ command us to do something, that contradicted something He told us to do?! I mean, He did say “Go and make DISCIPLES” right?!?!
I know this is somewhat radical, but stay with me, here… what if we looked at evangelism and discipleship as the same thing…? That evangelism is both the first and final (or on-going) part of discipling people?
Well for one, we would have to change the way we do discipleship in many churches. A “mature” believer isn’t just someone who knows their Bible really well, but one who uses that wisdom to grow other believers in Christ.
Secondly, we would stop looking at evangelism as “done” when a person raises their hand in church, checks a block, prays a prayer, walks down an aisle, and/or gets dunk in water. We would look at them as new children in God’s family that we are responsible in helping raise to maturity – which includes making new disciples.
I just find it unnecessary for us to make arguments because someone does it differently than our preferences demand. So what if a church leads people to Christ 50 to 1,000 at a time in their weekend service? What follower of Jesus is actually going to complain about that? As long as they don’t leave them there. And so what if a different church invests into it’s people every weekend to live and proclaim the Gospel during the week to their neighbors, coworkers, and friends? As long as they are actually doing it.
Discipleship and Evangelism are like opposite sides of the same coin – not because they oppose their counterpart, but because you can’t have one without the other. Let’s do both!
Blessings,
Pastor John