4 responses to “Are We Making Disciples, or Are We Entertaining People?”

1. 

   Mark Burnard

   June 7, 2011

   Hi Bill,

   It’s an interesting angle or thesis, I guess my thoughts are that at some point, any movement, including a group of disciples, once it reaches a certain size, needs to organise in one way or another. Along with that organisation comes the administration, and all the overheads that this implies.

   I think of the early Pentecostal movement in the USA coming out of Azusa St – it was a very loose, unstructured move of God but after a couple of decades the leaders of the movement realised that it could not continue to grow and still be unstructured. They had to put standards and organisational processes in place, to ensure that the move of God was not diluted or morphed into complete chaos. They struggled and wrestled for years with the idea of not putting any structure in place, and in the end decided that, for all the philosophical ideas of “purity” and not contaminating the movement with human authority and structures and processes, these were necessary to prevent anarchy. They reflected on the experience of the early church as per Acts and came to the same conclusion.

   I think the video is poignant and should certainly trigger us to examine where we can streamline, and whether the process and maintenance has become the focus rather than the goal (making disciples) being the focus; but I’m arguing against the other extreme, the idea that we can just leave all of the structure and organisation behind and be a pure movement of disconnected individuals making disciples. I know the video is not saying exactly that, but that’s an easy “meta message” to pick up in these things.

   Just my thoughts 🙂

   Cheers,

   Mark

2. 

   Jonathan Sherwin

   June 7, 2011

   Mm, yeah, always intersting to be reminded of where we’re putting our energies. Without wanting to toss the baby out with the bath water it’s so important to take stock and assess what we’re working towards, what are we building, where are we going …

   It’s so easy to start with great intentions and then veer off track, a little bit at a time. Refocussing our vision often is key.

   Thanks for the reminder.

3. 

   Bill Hutchison

   June 8, 2011

   Thank you for the comments.

   The growth of any organisation will definitely necessitate the need for support people. The trouble is when the number of support people outnumber the people going out.

   We also need to be aware of where our resources are being spent. Is more going into the support people, or into the people doing the ministry that God originally called us to?

4. 

   Ron Regnier

   June 20, 2011

   Bill
   Love your honest, forward questions scanning over 4 posts. Refreshing my contact with YWAM after a DTS & staff 85-86, 89.

   For 15 years my wife and I have been supported m-ys to France. How often have I pondered getting out of ministry so I could hopefully spend more time doing arts ministry rather than “marketing”, nursing easily tuned-out or terribly uninformed US partner relations or dealing with the French church’s obselete/uninformed opinions on arts ministry, etc. No answers on the best platform for missions or reducing this unavoidable element of charitable work, fundraising!

   Bonne continuation, as they say in French!

   Ron

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