As You Go or As You Gather?

As You Go, or As You Gather?

As you go, make disciples…  (Mt. 28:18)

These are the final words of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of Matthew and these words are commonly viewed as Jesus’ commission to us as we become His body in the days after his ascension.  It seems to be intended to express both the goal and the methodology of Jesus for us.

The goal is to make disciples, followers of Jesus.  A follower is one in whom there is the desire to be with Him both in proximity (presence) and purpose (the glory of God).  It has apparently been in the plan and purpose of God from the beginning to create a people for Himself that would glorify Him.  In the beginning He created Adam and Eve and charged them with the task of propagating His people through procreation and family.  We managed to make a mess of things the first time around so He began again with Jesus to create again a people for Himself.  Having begun again a people for Himself, He has once again trusted and entrusted us with propagating His people, the Church, this time by disciple making.

The methodology is, “As you go make disciples.”  As you go can look like almost anything.  My work, my play, my family, my worship, or what ever I do in word or deed, as the Apostle Paul says can become disciple making when I come to view it as such.  Disciple making is a relational business, life on life, face on face.  Significant transformation of any kind, including from death to Life as the disciple John describes, always happens in the context of relationship.  Disciple making is a “giving” activity, not a “taking” one.  Love is giving of my self; it is a sacrificial act costing me something.

It strikes me as I look at how we often practice being the body of Christ that we have adopted a methodology of disciple making that is an “as you gather” rather than as you go.  As a pastor once said to me, “I am just trying to create a place where people can come (Gather) to be discipled.”

I may be choking on a gnat while swallowing camels here, but let me try to contrast some methodologies to explain what I mean.

• As you go is incarnational, going where the undiscipled are, not asking them to come to where you are.
• As you go means discipling out there where you are “going,” living life.  This can be where we work, play, raise our families, shop, or live in our neighborhoods. As you gather tries to create a place and programs away from those places for transformation to take place.
• As you go moves into a community and asks how it can serve, as you gather moves into a community and creates an organization that offers membership requiring (Asking) you to conform to “gathering” norms.
• As you go values the discipler, his vocation, and location and requires that we trust and entrust the discipler to do his/her work by the power of the Holy Spirit. As you gather tends to create structures and programs that take the discipler out of their location and creates a staff of "professionals" to do and regulate rather than trusting and entrusting them.
• As you go values the “out there”, the work, the play, the family, the neighborhood, as relevant context and tools for disciple making.  As you gather feels the need to create context (Small groups, programs) and tools (4 laws, bridges, etc.) in order to begin disciple making.
• As you go seeks to be salt and light in a culture, as you gather becomes an alternate culture.

It is not my premise that all structure or programming is bad, they are many times necessary, but I do think that both structure and programs should serve to enable “as you are going” rather than inhibit or compete with it.  It is often easier and more comfortable to gather for the purpose of disciple making, there is more control, more uniformity, efficiencies, etc, but we are not called to a life of ease or comfort, we are called to faithfulness and obedience.  If the Master said to do it as we go, I have to believe that there is purpose in the methodology as well as the goal.

I confess that as I write these thoughts I am pretty clueless as to how to implement them in an organized church setting, especially in a mega church setting.  To do this would “deconstruct the church,” again the words of a pastor.  I would agree with this sentiment, though I would use the word reconstruct rather than deconstruct.  I am convinced that the “as you gather’ mentality predominates in our churches and until we recognize what we are doing we will never begin to move toward something different.  If we begin to think differently we will begin to act differently. We will never think differently if we do not question our current paradigm.