A personal trainer
Discipleship is highly personal and individual. Group approaches can go only so far. Human leaders are finite but God is unlimited in his capacity.
In my last blog post I offered that it's best to know the people we disciple so we can introduce them to the right information and experiences at the right time and at the right pace. To do this, we generally sort people into categories.
But then we notice: within each category, we have a new set of categories. And within this new set, still more categories. Inevitably we get to individuals—every one unique. And that's overwhelming because we are limited in our capacity—we are finite.
Here's the game-changer: God is infinite. If a person's discipleship depends on us, we will be exhausted and the person will be short-changed. But if it depends on God, every person will receive exactly the training they need, when they need it.
The greatest training we can give people is to train them to be trained by Him. Train them to pray, to fast, to read and memorize Scripture, to observe God's work in others, to journal, to serve, to give, to step into places where they will certainly need God's help.
Don't train them to do these things 'because they should'. Train them to do these things because, in doing them, they will be trained by God. And it will be the most customized, most personalized training.
The ol’ college try
Different people need different approaches to discipleship. Not like the way ‘some people’ do their laundry in college.
Two ways to wash clothes:
Throw everything in together and press 'Start' (like I did in college).
Carefully sort the clothing and use the most appropriate settings for each type.
Two ways to cook a meal:
Throw the ingredients you can find in a pot and apply heat (like I did in college).
Carefully select the best ingredients, add them at the appropriate times, monitor the heat and other conditions, and adjust the pace.
When discipling people, 'the old college try' comes up short. Getting Things Done (GTD) is too blunt. We need to know our people, choose the best materials, offer information and experiences at the right times, and pay attention to context and pace.
Do the right thing anyway
Have you noticed there are pharisees who live one way and heap heavy burdens on others? They can be a stumbling block to those who want to do the right thing from the heart.
“Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.”
There are regions of the U.S. where governments are a little more 'hands on'. These areas tend to have lower speed limits and feel others should too. "Don't you care about the environment? What about safety?"
But a visitor to one of these places—who drives at the speed limit—will feel like she's riding a bicycle on the Autobahn.
We see this attitude often; sometimes in ourselves. The Christian's response is always to follow Jesus—even when religious people make it hard.
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