When Discipleship Isn’t Enough

When Discipleship Isn’t Enough

Discipleship pathway systems are all the rage in the United Methodist Church these days. And with good reason. These systems are supposed to produce disciples, i.e. growth, and thus enable churches to fulfill the Great Commission, as well as the mission of the denomination.

But what about when discipleship isn’t enough? I can’t help but wonder if this approach to discipleship is short-sighted.  Perhaps even problematic.  The first problem I see is that discipleship as an end game can create passive followers who don’t own their God-given agency.  The second problem is that discipleship without apostleship subverts the Gospels’ meta message.

Let’s start with the first problem.  Jesus didn’t call The Twelve or The Seventy-Two or any of the others for them to be mere followers.  Followership was simply the first stage in their spiritual development.  Apostleship was the ultimate goal of their training.

During the three years The Twelve spent with Jesus, they observed how he thought and how he prayed. They watched how he taught and soaked up what he believed. They watched him engage paralyzed, hurting, desperate people and they noted the way he interacted with others. They listened to the way he phrased things. They were privy to his miracles and glimpsed his inner relationship with God.

But they didn’t stop there. Jesus transferred his spiritual authority, agency, and accountability to them. They were to speak, act, and heal on behalf of him, and of the Kingdom.  Each of these men and women were to be active agents, stewards, of the Kingdom dream.

What’s striking to me is that Jesus never hoarded his power. He freely taught others how to exercise it. After they mastered the kinds of things Jesus had done, The Twelve, The Seventy-Two and likely countless others, surpassed what Jesus had done.  Not only did they heal, preach, and proclaim the Kingdom, they gathered thousands of followers, set up communities in far-flung places, and oversaw the development of structures that allowed the church to grow and expand throughout the known world.

That’s where we get to the second problem with discipleship pathway systems. We’re not going to be any good at making the sort of disciples Jesus made until we are decidedly better at making the kind of apostles Jesus made. After all, it is apostles who make disciples, not other disciples. You can see this shift in the Great Commission. When Jesus commanded the disciples to “Go therefore into all the world,” signaled the ontological change in their status.  From this moment on, they were no longer followers. Their sending signaled they now functioned as apostles.

Yet in the church, we do not teach people, even our leaders, how to be apostolic:  stewards of the dream, agents of change.  We do not teach people that they are co-creators with God.  That their words have creative, divine power.  That they are more Christ-like than they know.  Instead we teach people to give God all the glory.  I’m not sure if God wants all the glory.  Nor does Jesus.  The way I read the New Testament, Jesus expects us to surpass him, to do even greater things than he did.  The only way to do that is to own our God-given agency and our authority.  Settling for discipleship without apostleship undercuts the ultimate meta message of the Gospels.

So before we get too invested in discipleship pathways, we would do well to build apostleship pathways, too. Interested in knowing more about how to do that?

In my work with Creating a Culture of Renewal, I’ve discovered that apostleship starts with Kingdom-oriented dreams. When church leaders know how to dream like Jesus, align others to the dream, and realize the dream, then the dream can expand and draw others to it.  Now there’s a discipleship pathway system.

Adapted from Dream Like Jesus: Deepen Your Faith and Bring the Impossible to Life © 2019 Rebekah Simon-Peter, now available everywhere online.

 

 

What’s the Difference between Discipleship and Apostleship?

Women, Leadership and the B-Word

When a male leader is direct, confident, or decisive, he’s often known by a C-word:  Confident.  Competent.  Charismatic.  He’s prized as a strong leader, a natural leader.  A woman who shares the same characteristics in a leadership position, however, is often stuck with a less desirable word. With less desirable connotations.

 

I told my husband about the title of this blog and asked him what he thought the B-word was.  He answered tongue in cheek.  “Bright?  Balanced? Bold?”  I laughed.  The truth is, we both know she’s more likely to be known as bossy. Or worse, a b#tch.

 

Strangely enough, it’s not just men that make these pronouncements. Other women do too.

 

Why would women resist strong female leadership?  Is it because women are afraid of their own power?  Is it because women fear the backlash that comes when another woman displays such qualities?  Or maybe traditional female gender socialization is so ingrained that it’s simply hard to accept this sort of female leadership.

 

I’m not sure.  But I do know this.  Women, as well as men, are naturally shaped to be direct, confident, and decisive.  As well as tender, compassionate and collaborative. Traditional gender norms tend to skew socially acceptable behaviors, but in studies about personality type, all of the above qualities occur almost equally in both men and women.  Moreover, since each one of us—male and female—is made in the image and likeness of God, there are no mistakes about how we turn out.

 

The church needs strong, decisive leaders who are confident, competent and charismatic.  As well as compassionate and collaborative.  And the church needs them in both the female and male versions.

 

So how do we move beyond the negative monikers of bossy and b#itch? I have three suggestions for the women in the pews and pulpits:

  1. Remember the power women from your past.

    Identify women from your past that shaped their families and communities with their insight, intuition, and ability to get things done. You are part of that history. Women have always been leaders, even if not in the public square.

 

  1. Mentor the next generation of women.

    Elizabeth supported Mary when they both carried miracle babies who would change the arc of history.  In the same way, mentor younger and older women in developing their own confidence and skill.

 

  1. Own your inner boss.

    Get comfortable with your own power.  The power to move a conversation forward, to motivate a congregation, to envision new possibilities. A female colleague gave me a prized mug that says: “I’m not bossy.  I am the boss.”

There is one more B-word that is under-used when it comes to women.  One we should wholeheartedly embrace:  Bishop.

 

In 2006, I attended an international United Methodist celebration of the 50th anniversary of full clergy rights for women.  All of the female United Methodist bishops in the church were in attendance.  They told their stories, spoke on panels, and cheered each other on.  I was amazed not only at their leadership, but at their everydayness.  As I navigated airports on the way back home, I thought to myself that if I had seen any of these women without their episcopal robes or name tags, I wouldn’t have known they were bishops.  They looked like other women I knew:  grandmothers, mothers, sisters and friends.

 

In the same way, women leaders are all around us.  Women who accomplish amazing things in their communities, families, and in the Kin(g)dom of God.  We need you. Yes, in some settings, you may be thought of as bossy, or even bitchy.  But let’s not forget, you may also be thought of as bishop-material.

 

Learn more about our work at www.rebekahsimonpeter.com.

3 Deadly Sins of Leadership

In many churches, this is the time of year when pastors are settling into their new appointments, and congregations are learning to work with their new pastors. In other churches, people are starting to come back to worship.  Across the board, committees are beginning to reconstitute, fall plans are being made, and activities are gearing up.

 

As you connect or reconnect with your people, and prepare for a season of ministry, you may stumble unwittingly into the three deadly sins of leadership.  Although well-intentioned, these sins are deadly because they snuff out aliveness. Not only that, they generate unnecessary conflict.

 

Read on to discover the three deadly sins of leadership, their deadening effect, and how to keep calm in the midst of conflict.

 

Here are the three deadly sins of leadership.

 

Sin #1.  Trying to be all things to all people.  Wholesale people-pleasing never works.  First, because it’s impossible to know what everyone needs.  Second, because people won’t know the real you.  Third, because it demands too much of you, and not enough of them. 

 

Community is based on give and take.  People-pleasing takes away the need for people to show up as they are, and to work through the challenges of being community. Anything less is deadening.

 

People-pleasing leads to internal conflict.  Let’s say you give up your day off to attend to someone’s need. But the needs are never-ending.  So, what’s next—your vacation time?  If so, it won’t be long until you’re giving up your convictions. 

 

The one who suffers the most will be you:  you’ll be resentful, feeling taken advantage of.  And it won’t be anyone’s fault but your own.  People-pleasing is always a choice. Yet, it takes great strength of character, great emotional intelligence, to be true to ourselves. 

 

Sin #2. Make no changes.  Or change everything.  Life is full of change; now more than ever.  We are living in a time when the rate of change continues to accelerate. Pretending like you’ll never change anything is unwise and dishonest.  Equally unwise and dishonest is acting as if everything in place needs to be scrapped. 

 

When I began local church ministry, I abided by the rule to make no changes in the first year.  What I didn’t know was that people were eager for me to make changes.  They were tired of being stuck.  When I was slow on the uptake, they grew more resigned, and more contentious. Following the rules was safe for me, but deadening for them. 

 

Pacing change appropriately reduces resistance, eases conflict, and builds buy-in.

 

Sin #3.  Assume your emotional or spiritual space is universal. For instance, just because you are arriving fresh and sassy, full of ideas and open to the Spirit, doesn’t mean that they are.  Or just because you are tired and burned out, doesn’t mean they are.  One of the challenges of pastoring a congregation of differing ages, personalities, and life experiences is that not everyone is in the same spot, ever. 

 

Conflict comes when leaders don’t recognize the deep work that the Spirit has been doing in that place for generations. Or when they don’t pay attention to the promptings of the Holy Spirit they are receiving.  Either approach stymies the work of God.

 

Congregational Intelligence If sin is missing the mark, then salvation is collaborating with the Spirit.  This collaboration takes courage, and resilience.  It also requires trust in yourself, an ability to sense the Spirit, and an understanding of how to read and lead the people around you. Together, these qualities comprise what I call congregational intelligence. Finally, knowing how to self-regulate during conflict is essential.

 

Not sure how?  Register for a free 45-minute webinar on “Keeping Calm in Conflict,” Noon Mountain Time on August 30.

 

In the meantime, notice what is happening in your spirit.  Are you feeling less than alive?  Deadened?  Perhaps you have stumbled into practicing these leadership sins. 

Be Fruitful and Multiply Like Jesus: 1st Quantum Leap of Faith

Last week, I introduced 5 quantum leaps of faith that Jesus invites each one of us to take. Each of these leaps of faith is grounded in the Bible and exemplified by Jesus himself. This week, let’s look at Quantum Leap #1: Be Fruitful and Multiply Like Jesus.

In Genesis, God commands the first humans to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. In this Quantum Leap #1, however, I’m not talking about making babies. I’m talking about replicating Kingdom leadership. There is more to following Jesus than emulating the spiritual principles he taught.  We are also called to multiply ourselves as leaders by passing on our Kingdom vision and values to the people we lead.

I call this replication a quantum leap because it is so outside the norm of what we consider possible, do-able, or even desirable. I work with a variety of church leaders around the country. In congregations large and small, leaders fall into the trap of thinking that leadership means, “I have to do it all.” They think they have to write and preach all the sermons, teach all the classes, fix all the fights, do all the ministry, counsel all the sick, bury all the dead, visit all the ailing, and lead the charge on every outreach initiative of the church. This is hard to say, but somebody has to: Doing it all is not Christ-like, and it’s not leadership; it’s fear-based, over-functioning. We fear that people won’t like us or respect us if we don’t do it all. We fear that no one will pick up the slack if we delegate, or that they’ll screw things up. We fear that we’ll let God down if we aren’t superhuman. These fears lead to over-functioning.

Jesus himself, in case you hadn’t noticed, didn’t do everything. Yes, he brought Lazarus and a 12-year-old girl back from the dead, healed a wide variety of people, and died on a cross. However, when it came to the day-to-day ministry of executing the vision of the Kingdom, he delegated. He taught others how to do what he did and handed ministry off to them. Even those activities we most associate with Jesus—healing the sick, casting out demons, and proclaiming the Kingdom—were carried out by others.

As leaders, we aim to grow our churches, to make disciples. That’s good as far as it goes. But if we’re not going on to make apostles out of these disciples, we stop short of fully embodying Christ-likeness. Jesus didn’t just make followers; he made leaders. He empowered his disciples to be miracle-working healers, priests and prophets in their own right by commissioning them as apostles. We know of 12 officially commissioned apostles. But Jesus didn’t stop with them. He deputized at least 72 others to act on his behalf and enact the vision of the Kingdom. “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go.” He told them to heal the sick and to proclaim the Kingdom. Clearly, Jesus didn’t do everything himself.

When you think about it, if Jesus had insisted on doing everything, the vision of the Kingdom would have been crucified with him. Instead, 2.1 billion people now check the box “Christian.” Likewise, if we insist on doing everything, the vision will move, retire or die with us, even as the church continues to decline. In the meantime, the stress will all but kill us. Doing it all ourselves translates into not enough down time, not enough family time, not enough rest time; and definitely not enough vacation time. It also means we stunt the growth of the Kingdom by not sharing power and authority with those who wish to grow.

How do you do that, you ask, when no one seems to want to do anything? Here are three strategies for being fruitful and multiplying like Jesus:

  1. Develop a community-based vision that is worth investing in  Let it be big enough, bold enough and impactful enough that your brightest, most committed people would want to be involved. Rev. Ralph had the idea of ending hunger in his county by coordinating the hunger relief efforts already at work to make sure no child group was left out.   He preached about it, prayed about it, and gathered people. The vision garnered tremendous interest.
  2. Invest intentional time and energy in your most promising leaders by sharing the vision with them. When Rev. Ralph began to gain traction, he gathered a vision team around him. This inside circle bought in to the vision with excitement; they began to generate ideas and interest among other church folks, growing the number of people involved.
  3. Demonstrate leadership and invite shadows. Invite your top people to join you in leadership meetings and activities, so they get the inside scoop. Rev. Ralph let them watch him at work and they learned to imitate his actions. He taught them the biblical and theological underpinnings of his work; mentored them in how to preach, pray and act on behalf of the vision. Then, he set them loose to expand the scope of his work.

Jesus didn’t stop with making disciples. He was fruitful and multiplied; he went on to empower apostles to carry his message, speak his words and enact his deeds. They took the quantum leap with Jesus. We can too. Let this be the year you stop doing everything on your own.

Creating a Culture of Renewal is designed to empower you to both Dream like Jesus™ and execute the vision like Jesus so all the work doesn’t fall back on your shoulders.  Please contact us about our Early Bird Rates and see if it’s right for you.

Resolve to Evolve: Be Bold!

This week, I’m continuing to share tips for people of faith who are resolved to evolve in 2014.
 
In case you missed them, Tip #1 was  Get Authentic.   Tip #2 is Get to know Jesus, again.
Here’s Tip#3: Be bold!  
Is there something you’ve been wanting to say?  Or do?  I met with a church leader who told me she has waited 2 years to tell a board that their work was ineffective.  No one was taking action.
The truth is, it was ineffective, partly, because for 2 years, she hadn’t spoken up about what she felt or thought.
I can relate.  I have a persistent fear that if I say what I really see or believe or think then people won’t like me.  Too often I censor what I say.
A friend helped me trace that fear back to it’s roots.  Here’s how it goes:  If people don’t like me, they’ll talk bad about me.  If they talk bad about me, other people won’t like me.  If no one likes me, then there will be no place I fit in.  If there’s no place I fit in, I’ll have no choice but to die.
A-ha!  It’s not an inconsequential fear.  But it’s also not rational.  I thought back to quite a few times when saying something that needed to be said required particular courage. Never once did I die.  Neither did anyone else!  (That’s not true for all people all of the time of course.  Think MLK.  Think Jesus.)
Hmm….maybe the consequences for speaking my mind aren’t as dire as I supposed.  In fact, others expressed relief and gratitude that SOMEBODY finally said SOMETHING.
Leaders lead.  Even when it’s unpopular.
What are others waiting for YOU to say or do?
On this MLK day, as you resolve to evolve, be bold!  When it comes to speaking out for those on the margin, there are no end of things that NEED to be said.   Resolve to say what God has placed on your heart.  Live out your true calling as a leader. Somebody, somewhere, will be grateful you did.
I would love to hear how you are being bold this year!  Or, if you’re having trouble finding the courage to do so.  Let’s talk.