Leadership Lessons: Discipling Others in the Truth of the Lord

When discipling others it is always worth asking three questions I learned from reading Chick Yuill:

• What teaching do they need to enable them to get a biblical DNA?
• What opportunities for immersion do they need so they actually learn to do what God is calling them to do?
• What structures can we build to help them? NB - structures are for the sake of discipleship and only for the sake of discipleship. Not for the sake of building good-looking church. Read The Trellis and The Vine for a brilliant exposé of the dangers of confusing building church structures with building disciples

I also like to distinguish how to disciple people in the truth of the Lord and how to disciple them in the ways of the Lord. A few thoughts about the former:

1. Building Bible-centred prayerful living (don't make the mistake of stopping here, confusing discipleship with Bible knowledge and Bible study alone)

• Helping others know how to feed themselves from the Word
• Helping them know how to apply what it says to their lives

2. How to disciple others for their spiritual growth

• How to work with them for their progress and joy in God
• How to develop a passion for growing in spiritual maturity

3. How to help others grow in love for God
4. How to help others identify where they are in their spiritual walk and how to take next steps
5. How to live based on a daily appreciation of grace
6. How justification and adoption shape character, ambitions, goals and relationships
7. How to help them grow in the fruit of the Spirit

When Not to Make Peace

I'm reading Jeremiah in my quiet times at the moment and, predictably, finding it sobering stuff. Especially so this morning in chapter 8. 

In 8:8-12 the Lord sets himself against word-handling leaders, who have gone bad. The issues are:

• They claim to be wise because they have the word of God but handle it falsely (v8)
• This amounts to rejection of the word of the Lord (v9) which shows that all their supposed wisdom is a sham
• The prophets and priests are all practising deceit because they are greedy for gain (v10)
• The way they do so is to suck up to people and tell them anything they want to hear. Especially that they are OK with God and that any way they want to live is fine by him. v11:

they dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. "Peace, peace" they say, when there is no peace.

In the sermon on the mount Jesus commends godly peace-makers. Certainly there aren't enough. Evangelicals often find it easier to fall out over secondaries than to make peace. But this is the opposite situation of proclaiming everything is alright when it wasn't, and thereby not dealing with terrible dangers within the people of God.

Every preacher knows the temptation to not say things their congregation will find difficult to receive. I remember one man saying to me "there are any number of things I would have said over the years to churches I have pastored if it hadn't meant causing real tension withe the people who paid me." Peace, peace, when there is no peace. Dressing wounds - or as we would say "sticking on a sticking plaster" - and pretending that everything is all better.

Leaders beware. When gossip abounds in a church and you don't want to risk their wrath. When ungodly clicques jockey for power and you don't discipline. When large givers think that they are indemnified by their giving to behave as they like and you are worried they will stop their giving. When structures need to change or cherished activities are no longer useful for the gospel but you are unprepared to risk upsetting anyone. Not only is your church on the downward curve towards eventually nosediving (no matter how healthy it may seem at the moment), but we are in danger of of being false leaders.

You don't have to want to grab large amounts of money to "be greedy for gain" (v10). You don't have to want to be liar to "practise deceit." You only have to downplay godly leadership and real gospel teaching in order to get an increase in the offering, or fail to apply a Bible message in the ways that your congregation actually need to hear but some will find uncomfortable, in order to gain the praise of people.

The leaders in Jeremiah 8 are living for themselves and the praise of Man. God says they should be ashamed of their loathsome conduct but have forgotten even how to blush. 

Fruitful Leaders

Fruitful Leaders is the featured new book in this quarter's IVP Leadership Club brochure.

Here is an excerpt from the chapter on leaders who love the Holy Spirit and the Bible:

Here are two convictions about the Bible and leadership:

• The Bible is the pre-eminent way through which the Holy Spirit speaks to us. It is impossible to be gifted by the Holy Spirit to be a spiritual leader without a deep and growing desire to be a Bible-centred, Bibleteaching, Bible-applying leader. To say, ‘I love God but don’t have much desire for God’s Word’ is as ridiculous as saying, ‘I love my wife but I’m not interested in what she says.’

• The critical thing in leading and growing biblical disciples is to help them know what the Bible says and to live it out. To say, ‘I love God’s Word but don’t put it into practice’ is as ridiculous as saying, ‘I love it when my wife talks to me but I’m not interested in doing anything she asks.’

The goal of leading people into the Scriptures is so that God will reveal himself and his truth, setting hearts on fire, and make people alive to himself and eager to do what he says. Listen to how the psalmist describes his experience of what God’s Word is meant to do to us:

• I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands (Psalm 119:131).

• I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil (v. 162).

• I long for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight. Let me live that I may praise you (v. 174).

• I delight in your commands because I love them. I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love (v. 47).

• My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times (v. 20).

• The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold (v. 72).

• How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth (v. 103).

You get the idea! This man is meeting God in his Word, exposing his heart to God, and God to his heart, and abandoning himself in worship. He hides God’s Word in his heart so that he will adore God and follow him in joyful obedience:

Your statutes are my heritage for ever; they are the joy of my heart. (Psalm 119:111)

It is impossible to have a heart that is happy in God without enjoying the Bible, impossible to have sustaining delight in the Lord and to lead others in it without delighting in the Scriptures. But it is also impossible to continue enjoying him if we don’t follow what he says. Jesus regularly told the Pharisees that their minute knowledge of the Scriptures was worthless because they didn’t live it out.