“It all looks good on paper.”
You can say that about a mathematics equation or an insurance contract. It sounds like a complement you would give to a tech company’s terms of agreement. You could apply those same words to the rest of your life and know that everything you have written down will be upended in a matter of days.
Life is unpredictable.
Spiritual life is unpredictable. You can’t reduce it to a formula. When Jesus said make disciple of all nations he was talking about people and people can’t be restricted to flow charts. People are not widgets or machines made in factories.
That’s why a significant chunk of the Bible is poetry and not operating instructions. Poetry is the narration of life as it actually is. The raw emotion you can only experience in the reality of celebration, suffering, and the quiet every day moments.
Life can’t be gauged by numbers or statistics. We can attempt to do this with disciple making and it can actually backfire on us. People are not numbers. Numbers are clean and neat and tidy. People are messy.
Real life humans move and grow in fits and starts.. Everything is not up and to the right. There’s dips and plateaus and valleys. Some kids walk at 9 months. Other kids wait until 15 months. Some kids learn to read at 4 years old. Others don’t pull it off until their six. Then there’s the ones who land in between – the average.
It’s the same with making disciples. Some people are curious to hear what you have to say. Then without warning they ghost you. No communication. A wall of darkness. Then nine months later they emerge hungry like nothing happened. Others make it seem like you are talking to a mannequin. No motion. No action Then all of a sudden they are discipling others and asking your opinion on how to train people to pray.
There is no way to predict people so there’s no way to predict your disciplemaking journey. This is where the Western idols of control and certainty go to die. From the ashes rise faith and obedience. It’s Abraham trusting God so much that he takes his one and only son Isaac to be sacrificed on the altar. Abraham was not focused on the outcome. He was focused on obedience.
“Save me from the vanity of not being willing to obey like a child, and of wanting to be like a grown man who has to understand”. – Soren Kierkegaard
This is the paradox of making disciples. The more you try to control the less you multiply. It’s counterintuitive but you have to look at nature. It grows wild outside of the realm of humans…like abundantly wild. When it comes to plants and animals overrunning a patch of land it is painfully obvious nature prevails. And nature is messy. Some things grow immediately. Others settle in and take their time. Small sprouts get choked by creeping vines. A dead tree falls and soon a colony of mushrooms emerge from its bark. Ants proliferate inside the trunk and many are eaten by toads. It’s dangerous and difficult but nature is life and nature multiplies.
And life is what we want to multiply. A certain kind of life. Eternal life. The life of Christ. We want to do this with the most unpredictable beings on the planet: humans. As a species we don’t just run off of programmed instinct. There are emotions and relationships and situationships. There’s ex-girlfriends and boyfriends and new girlfriends and boyfriends. There’s kids with autism and the uncle who always needs help. There’s childhood trauma and hope and aspirations for the future. Throw in a 24 hour news cycle and addictive social media apps spewing out content based on your customized preferences and you have a messy path to making disciples.
Formulas always work on white boards and in classrooms. They don’t always work with people. People have schedules they need to keep up with. In spite of their best intentions they pile too many things on their plate and get overwhelmed in the whirlpool of busyness. They get distracted by work tasks, doomscrolling, and planting their hydrangeas. People make mistakes. They may go to fast or say the wrong thing. I should know I’ve been prone to foot-in-mouth disease on many occasions. Sometimes it’s the opposite and they move at a snail’s pace or don’t move at all.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”-Mike Tyson
Since it’s messy what do we do? We need to adjust our timeline and our tactics and we need perseverance.
On a practical note, this means we have to be more flexible and adjust our timeline and our tactics. If someone is going through relational issues with their spouse they may need a discovery study on marriage and perhaps some marriage counseling. They may need to work some things out before they are sent off into the field to make disciples. We also need need to consider people’s background and context. Leading off with gospel presentations is probably not the most optimal for someone with an Islamic background or even someone in a already churched environment. Maybe telling a story about Jesus/Isa or offering prayer for a specific need would have much more impact…or not. Some folks may not be social and have a weak relational network. You may have to point this out as a discipleship issue and help them build that. The point is we need to be discerning and Spirit led about where people are on their journey.
There is also the need for perseverance. Not just perseverance but persevering love. People will ghost you. They may look at you like a deer in headlights when you challenge them to start their own discovery groups. Others may get involved in a toxic relationship that derails the disciplemaking process. Our job is to have the heart of the Father like the prodigal son story in Luke 15. He was waiting for his son.
Our hearts need to align with God’s heart for people. Broken. Messy. People.