Latest / Gospel Talks Podcast / #54 - What Do You Mean by Discipleship? Guest: Pastor Brad Stille | Host: George Binoka

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#54 - What Do You Mean by Discipleship? Guest: Pastor Brad Stille | Host: George Binoka · Gospel Talks Podcast

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Welcome everybody to Gospel Talks podcast where we help Christians all over the world become more effective in relational evangelism and discipleship.
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I'm George Menoka and I'm your host today and joined with one of our exchange trainers, Pastor Brad up in Wixom.
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And so pastor, senior pastor of Wixom Baptist Church and a very excited to have him today.
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We're going to be talking about discipleship in this episode.
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Pastor Brad, you know, we were talking just a little earlier, discipleship is such a broad topic.
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What do you mean by discipleship?
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would you define it?
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George, thanks for having me today.
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Discipleship has become just a real important part of our church ministry, which sounds a little bit redundant, really, because discipleship is following Jesus, and that's what
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church life should be all about.
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But for us, you know, we've uh needed to take the conversation a step further, because there's a lot of people who make a profession of faith in Christ who don't truly
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followed Jesus.
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There's nothing about their life that you would characterize as following, actively following Christ.
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And so over a series of years and time, the Lord's impressed on me to help people actually learn to walk with Jesus and what that looks like on a day-to-day basis.
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And so for us, when we use that term discipleship, what we're really talking about is structured relationships that are for the purpose of uh
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prioritizing and promoting what Jesus wants, his kingdom, his priorities, his name, his gospel, and doing that for one another in meaningful and tangible ways has become the for
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us here.
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that's wonderful.
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As you're working with people there and leading them to that very, very biblical definition you just went through on discipleship, how do you help people evaluate if it's
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truly a Christ-centered discipleship relationship versus just a friendship, just an ordinary relationship?
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Yeah, I think you're hitting on a danger that is both a danger of um relational evangelism and it's also a danger of just church life in general, but discipleship relationships in
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particular.
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It can be really easy for any of these things to become social in nature, right?
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Evangelism can just become about being a nice guy or a good neighbor.
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and having friends, unsaved friends in the community and never get to the conversation about Jesus, which you and I know is the dividing line between religious talk and
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gospel-centered talk.
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And so the same thing can be true in church.
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The same thing can be true in a one-on-one relationship where we're intending to promote Jesus priorities in one another.
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But what we end up doing is just having coffee and talking about the grandkids and hanging out with her a little bit and then
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up, we're out of time again, let's just pray and leave.
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And so what we've instructed people to do, we give a very prescribed definition of what an hour of discipleship would look like.
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But a couple of the things that we um really want to emphasize to people, first of all, both people in the conversation should be naming the name of Jesus Christ.
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If you're not talking about Jesus and talking about your relationship with him and what it looks like to follow him, then you're not truly doing
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discipleship, right?
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Because Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11, 1, follow me as I follow Christ.
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So discipleship is really about following Jesus.
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That's the end goal.
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But this is true of evangelism, church life, and discipleship.
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We've got to get to Jesus.
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And one of the things that we challenge our people often with is when's the last time you spoke the name of Christ to someone else, to an unbeliever or to a believer?
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If you're not doing that, you're really not
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being a disciple, actively following the Savior.
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And that's what we want to push everybody to do.
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So because sometimes these discipleship efforts are being led through a program, whether it's the exchange or several other programs out there that are discipleship, evangelism,
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how do you kind of prevent it from just being, okay, this is the next thing in the program, to actually maintaining that spirit-led, if the spirit leads us down this road,
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we can follow him that...
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that we're not just tied to the book, the curriculum, while that's important to have a structure, how do we make sure we're also spirit-led and sensitive to his leading in this
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relationship?
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How have you encouraged your people to do that?
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Yeah, a couple things come to mind, George.
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One is uh we try not to use the term program.
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We try to use the term culture because what we really want is we want our church to feel like it's normal for two people to be standing or sitting together and talking about
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Jesus.
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And we want people to be very comfortable with that and see that as the norm.
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So we're trying to develop a culture rather than a program, but you're right.
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Because it is structured, it can feel very programmatic.
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There's two things that come to mind.
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One is the pastors have to stay involved.
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um This is not delegating all of the work of ministry to the saints.
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We are called to equip them, but we don't just leave it up to them.
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What we do is we support them and encourage them.
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So the pastors have to stay involved.
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And by that, I mean in daily conversation.
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Just Wednesday night, I sat down with one of our guys who's following.
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He's a relatively new believer who's gone through some challenges, who's following another person in discipleship.
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And I just asked him, I said, how is your spiritual life right now?
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How is your relationship with Jesus?
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And how is your discipleship relationship enhancing that?
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And so staying connected and...
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keeping a finger on the pulse with everybody in the church is very, important.
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And we're a small enough church where our four pastors can do that.
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And I think that's really important.
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The other thing that we've tried to emphasize to keep uh a discipleship conversation biblical and fresh is to infuse Bible memory.
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And this is something that's like, it's a no brainer from when we were kids, right?
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uh
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Patch the Pirate Club or Awana or Truth Trackers or something.
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We were mostly as kids, as kids we were memorizing scripture.
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Many of us were, that grew up in Christian homes.
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And as adults, we sometimes lose that.
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And I got to tell you, it is remarkable to see the energy that's infused in a discipleship conversation when people start really memorizing scripture together.
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Like taking chapters or books and just, we're gonna work through this for the next several years.
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And the joy and the fulfillment they get.
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from hating God's word in their heart.
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It's a biblical concept, but most adults think they're grown past it.
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And so we encourage a lot of that in discipleship.
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So keys to being spirit-led in that relationship, pastoral oversight, being biblical, thinking through the Bible, not just going through the Bible, letting the Bible go through
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you in Bible memory.
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Personally, too, I'd add prayer because, I mean, if we're not praying for the people we're discipling, how else are we to invite God into that relationship?
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mean, prayer is the main avenue of that.
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But you know, even when you do all that and it's like This happens even in parenting right there are these parenting books out there It's like if you turn all the right knobs and
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pull all the right levers and at the end of it It's gonna come out this great obedient humble graceful child wrong You could you could turn all the dials and levers but Children
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make their own decisions when you hit a wall in discipleship similar to that where you're like I've gone through
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the exchange, I've gone through living the exchange, or I've gone through whatever curriculum you're doing, and you hit this spiritual or emotional wall or, you know, just a
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wall of, I don't want to do this, or there's this one area that me and God are not okay, I'm not uh okay with this particular theology.
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How do you shepherd people through that?
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How does a listener who's a laborer, a lay person, just a Christian in their community, how do they get through that barrier?
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Yeah, that is a tough situation.
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Sometimes you just have to, as Jesus said, kick the dust off your feet, right?
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Sometimes you can't lead someone.
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You know, we've said often, you're not a leader if nobody's following.
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And sometimes the mentee, the disciple is just unwilling to follow.
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And rather than find ourselves in ministry, we've just encouraged people, just move on, find somebody that you can invest in.
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That person's just not ready for it.
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But a couple other things come to mind.
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One is that we talk about this from the pulpit quite often.
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So the pastors that helped me preach and myself, we almost always end messages with applicational points.
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Like these are some things that you should do.
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And often, I would say more than half of our Sundays, one of the applicational points will be discuss this with your discipleship leader.
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or ask this question of your discipleship leader, so that we're constantly putting the preaching and the private conversations on the same page, so that people are, there's
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somewhat, there's an accountability there if a discipler and a discipli are both sitting in the congregation, hearing their pastor say, you guys need to talk about this, and for
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them to get together then that week for coffee and say, hey, we should probably talk about what pastor was discussing on Sunday.
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That infuses life and biblical conversation and spirit-led conversations back into discipleship.
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But frankly, sometimes it just doesn't work.
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And one of the things, one of the beautiful things about doing this over a course of years is that we have disciple makers, the leaders in a discipleship relationship who were at
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one time disciples.
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They were following.
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And we always encourage them, before you go to a pastor,
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go to your discipler, go to the one who discipled you and see if they can help you.
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And I've seen this before where, you know, the first generation, the old faithful disciple maker is helping their spiritual child with their spiritual grandchildren.
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And that's an, mean, the pastors of our church, we, anytime we see that happen and we are just thrilled because that's the way it should happen.
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You don't need the pastors equipped.
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to take that discipleship relationship to the next level and help their disciple.
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That's the first Thessalonians model that Paul discussed with the Thessalonian believers, that what you're hearing from us, you're passing on to others, so we don't even need to
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say anything about the gospel.
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They've got everything they need from you.
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It's a great way to multiply leaders.
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um think too, hitting a wall with somebody, at times I believe God is asking us to wait, he's asking us to be patient.
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I know that this is how you are in your ministry just because I've gotten to know you a little bit.
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We don't burn bridges in relationships, discipleship relationships, we don't close doors.
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If God closes a door, closes a door, but you're right.
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If somebody's not, if they've stopped following you as you follow Christ, that's one thing.
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But um I think as Jeff would say sometimes, sometimes God also calls us to pause, sit down and wait with that person as God works on their heart to help get them ready.
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But I love the way you put that, the multiplication of leadership.
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That's a uh thing a lot of churches desire deeply, a lot of.
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uh Christians want to even see happen in their church.
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And so it's a great thing to hear happening with some.
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So in your view, what kind of separates a fruitful discipler from a frustrated one?
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Because there are people that are discipling that sometimes get frustrated.
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And then there are seasons of fruitfulness.
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And so uh what kind of separates that?
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Yeah, I think one thing is a perspective and we try to remind our people that they're not following you.
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They're following you so that they can follow Christ.
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That's really the core of the set ship.
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So when they reject your offer to help them, they're really rejecting Christ.
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And so don't take it personally.
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Have a little bit of thick skin.
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Look for somebody else that you can mentor spiritually for sure.
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So um
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That's part of it is just having a right perspective.
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I would also say that don't take it personally.
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But then going back to 1 Thessalonians, you said um how do you define the difference, to define the difference between fruitful and fruitless discipleship.
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um Paul did a masterful job under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in 1 Thessalonians of describing this.
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And he basically said, if I can summarize,
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He said, I know that my discipleship efforts with you are finished because I see you fruitfully discipling others.
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And people have asked in our ministry and in fact in my personal discipleship relationships, when is this done?
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Well, it doesn't ever have to be done done, but it's ready for the next step when you start discipling somebody else faithfully.
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Now you're doing Great Commission Living.
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And that's the goal.
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The goal is not for me to do Great Commission Living to you for the rest of your life.
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The goal is to teach you how to do it so that you can do Great Commission Living with others.
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And that's really the core that we want to get to is that the Great Commission isn't just evangelism.
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It's teaching them to observe all things Jesus commanded.
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And that takes a long time.
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Yeah.
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So what did it take to get your church to adopt this disciple making culture?
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Cause that's a bit of a trick.
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It is uh somewhat challenging and frustrating.
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We had uh two false starts.
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We tried the first time when I first started pastoring about 13 years ago, I tried and it largely failed.
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uh A few years later, I tried again and I just needed to have some better tools and some more confidence.
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uh The most important thing was to get my leaders on board.
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I'm just talking with my pastors and deacons about what this was when I was saying discipleship, what I was referring to.
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I think the most helpful thing though, George, of all was when I started discussing my discipleship relationships publicly.
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So I have three, I always try to have three ongoing and I have them at different levels.
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I tell our people, I get it, I have a flexible schedule.
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You may not.
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So this is easier for me to have three than it is for you, but you should have one at least.
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My three, I have one guy that I lead.
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I have one guy that I would say is mutual discipleship.
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Like he and I, we're trying to be iron sharpening iron and encourage each other in ministry.
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And then I have one guy that I follow.
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So one of the men, the elder men in our church, a spiritually mature man, I asked him to lead me in discipleship, to meet with me every other week.
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to bring me an exhortation from the word, to challenge me on areas in my life that may look sinful, to give me accountability, to bring counsel, even ask it.
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And at first he was uh hesitant, he felt like that was not his place.
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It has turned out to be one of the best things for our church because our church knows this guy and they know that I go to him for counsel and I talk about it.
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My discipleship leader said this to me.
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He challenged me with this, this last week.
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And if the pastor is doing that, then the assistant pastors should be doing that, and they are.
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Then the deacons and other elders should be doing that.
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And mature people in the church should be saying, you know, I probably need somebody to be speaking truth to me.
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And so that is probably the most important factor.
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We've done a bunch of other things to make discipleship more visually public.
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uh But that was probably the most important factor people in.
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You know, uh my pastor calls it three to thrive and it comes from that picture of, know, there's the Paul and Timothy relationship, the, you know, the one where you're leading
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one, then there's the um Paul and Barnabas relationship, which is that peer relationship.
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um And then, you know, you have your, um you have your John Mark and you know, he's, know, uh
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following the lead of Barnabas.
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And so, you see those relationships all along the way in the New Testament where somebody's a leader, somebody's a follower, and then there's these peer relationships.
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uh As you kind of started painting that vision in your church, what helped to move people from spectator to spiritual laborer in the harvest within the church body?
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That's the hard thing.
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That's where the rubber meets the road.
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Here is the discouraging truth.
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What we found is that people just had a very hard time having spiritual conversations at all.
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Many people in our setting viewed their relationship with Christ as a private matter.
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so talking about it at all was hard for them.
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They had a hard time talking about it in small groups.
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had a hard time talking about it in one-on-one.
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And the logical conclusion is, if you can't talk about your faith to a believer, you're not effectively witnessing the unbelievers.
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You're just not obeying the Great Commission.
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And so this is something that just to kind of bring full circle uh to the exchange.
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The exchange was absolutely life-changing for me because it made the Great Commission not about guilty duty,
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but about exciting challenge.
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But it also put the evangelism component of the Great Commission in perspective, that it's not just evangelism.
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It's also baptizing, you might say integrating them into the church body.
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It's also teaching.
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It's about sitting across the table and talking about marriage and parenting and finances from a biblical perspective and how to live life as a follower of Jesus Christ.
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So for me, the exchange put all of that into a discipleship package where the Great Commission then, you know, I was a pastor living with Great Commission guilt.
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I hated hearing messages from other pastors on the Great Commission, oh man, I'm failing at this.
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But it was because of a wrong perspective.
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Now I view it as a really fun and exciting journey to who's next, Lord?
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And what level of discipleship do they need to be challenged in and how can I encourage them?
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So to get back to your question, most people we found are found it impossible to have faith conversations.
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And so the way that we push them over the edge is to is to have one on one confrontations with them.
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Lovingly, lovingly and grace.
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The snowball started very, very slow.
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I remember one of my friends, one of my close friends.
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had this conversation with him and he just pushed back and pushed back and pushed back.
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And then after having been kind of confronted with, what are you doing for the Great Commission?
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Anything at all?
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Nothing?
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All right, here's a place to start.
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He came to me and he said, hey, here's the deal.
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I feel like I wasn't fully honest with you.
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I'm not being honest with the Lord.
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I don't talk about my faith, turns out.
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And you told me that, I didn't like it, but it's true.
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So I want you to give me a softball relationship.
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is what they said.
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Give me a softball somebody who's super easy and so I picked one of the one of the teenage guys in our church who I knew is spiritually minded guy who would take leadership from
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this man I said you two are discipleship partners.
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Here's a book to study Here's some scripture to memorize have some fun, right?
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And these guys are still I mean this was this was eight years ago probably they're still really close friends and
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have spiritual conversations regularly.
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it just, I think it really comes down to the hard work of one-on-one ability and confrontation, lovingly saying, hey, you should be involved in this and I'm going to help
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you do it.
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And over time that snowball has increased in size where now it's more normal when people first come to our church, they're kind of expected to be in discipleship and somebody's
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standing by to take them on as a disciple.
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I love that and inevitably, I'm sure you saw this, people start to catch on, okay, you're being the example, your leadership catches on, they're examples and people start to see
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like, this is possible, we can do this, we start to get a discipleship, then we start getting into evangelism more and inevitably though, what Paul says, right, some sow, some
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plant, some water, but God gives the increase.
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An implication is they're going to people who feel like they're sowing a lot, but they're not seeing a lot of fruit whether it's in discipleship or evangelism How do you encourage
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when people hit that kind of season in their ministry as Christians who are out in the harvest?
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How do you encourage them when they're sowing, but they're not seeing a lot of fruit?
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think it is going back to this idea, this broader idea of great commission living.
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And it really is about developing redemptive relationships.
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Now to go back to our earlier conversation, you have to be careful that redemptive relationships are actually redemptive, right?
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I've got a neighbor, for instance, that is on my find five list.
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know, Jeff, Pastor Jeff, he encourages people to have five people they're praying for.
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This guy's been on my find five list for 10 years at least, right?
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Now this neighbor considers me one of his best friends.
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When I see him, he gives me a hug.
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Man, I'm so glad that we're neighbors.
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We have a really close relationship, but I've been tempted many times to not bring Jesus in because I'm enjoying having a great friend and I don't want to mess things up, right?
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But then it's not redemptive.
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Right.
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the Lord often reminds me, Brad, I didn't put you there to be his best friend or to be a great neighbor only.
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I put you there to share Jesus.
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And so I try every time that we talk to in some way, give him biblical truth, hopefully a quote from Jesus or a truth from the gospel that will help his life.
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And he, even though he pushes back, he keeps coming for more.
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And so there's some...
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There's some respect there, there's some appreciation there.
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And so you just gotta get to Jesus.
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You just have to keep getting to Jesus.
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And if you do, here's what we tell our people to go back to the answer to your question.
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What if they're discouraged that they're not seeing any fruit?
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If you do, if you're getting to Jesus in your conversations with believers and unbelievers, you are doing the Great Commission.
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You are doing what we are called to do.
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And you should feel great joy from that.
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And in fact, in our discipleship classes that we do, we highly emphasize Paul in 1 Thessalonians where he says, what is my joy?
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What is my crown of rejoicing?
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Is it not you in the presence of Jesus?
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Like I cannot wait to stand in front of Jesus with you by my side saying, Lord, I brought this person along in their relationship with you.
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What joy?
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It didn't matter if they were unsaved or saved.
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I brought them closer to you.
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That's great commission living.
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That is a fulfilling task.
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And if you're feeling a little dragged down, just go out and make a redemptive relationship.
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Get to the Jesus conversation with a believer, if you're hesitant or with an unbeliever and see what the Lord will do with it.
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I think with the right spirit, the Lord will use it.
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Yeah, I think I'm with you.
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Keep going.
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it's like Paul said, I mean, we have to zoom out sometimes and think of the bigger picture.
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Some water, some plant, but God gives the increase.
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There was a missionary, I think it was Adoniram Judson that said, I need to be willing to continue to sow the seed and also expect that it might not sprout until I'm in the ground.
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And that's exactly what happened with his ministry in Burma is
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He didn't really get, I mean, he got to see a couple hundred people come to Christ in the entire country.
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The thousands of tens of thousands and the hundreds of churches that were planted after that came after he was already gone, after he was promoted to heaven.
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So I think having that long-term vision is key.
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But I do think once you get this rolling, and I really think it's God's intention that we successfully disciple people in this life and are busy with people work because, you know,
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we're only given a short vapor.
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We have to make it count.
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know, it's like C.T.
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Stud said, only one life will soon be passed.
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Only what's done for Christ will last.
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You take that into account and you start multiplying.
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see multiplication.
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I know you're crazy busy with people.
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I mean, the amount of hours I spend in discipleship, evangelism and those things really just to relationships.
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And then the Bible studies on top of that and then on top of the rest of everything in church and I mean, a Christian's life can get really crazy busy.
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How do you guard against burnout while pursuing people?
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Well, that's a great question.
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And I think an age old question in ministry guarding against burnout.
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um A couple of things just come to mind, just practically speaking.
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I think one, you have to make sure that you're leading from a position of full rather than a position of empty.
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It's just really tempting in ministry to be giving out so much word, so much truth, so much effort, so much energy that you...
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You pat yourself on the back for that effort, but you fail to minister to your own soul.
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You fail to spend time in the Word and in solitude and in prayer.
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You must do that.
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You must refill yourself.
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Otherwise you become a dry sponge that has nothing to give to other people.
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I think that's really important.
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I would also say, and George, this one.
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This one sometimes catches people a little bit by surprise.
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It did me.
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At my ordination, the guy who was leading my ordination said, the one thing I want you to tell me that you'll do is to regularly exercise and take care of yourself physically.
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Because a lot of guys in ministry, they just wear out too early because they're not taking care of themselves.
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That was a surprising bit of counsel that I got in my ordination.
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It's the one thing that I've remembered the most because it's just really easy to
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uh throw yourself into ministry and not take care of your body and your own spirit.
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And so I think as cliché as that might sound, take care of your own body and take care of your own spirit so that you can minister well to other people.
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Yeah.
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So how could somebody listening to all this help their own church culture in this direction, even if they're not in leadership?
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I mean, our audience are laborers in the harvest.
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So I mean, everything's aimed at helping arm them as they go into the harvest.
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It's not necessarily a podcast for pastors.
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I mean, there might be pastors listening, but we want to help all Christians, all the members of the Body of Christ.
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how do you how do you help even if you're not in real leadership start to take the church culture in this direction
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Well, I think you start by doing it.
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There's nothing that keeps any one of us from doing Great Commission Living.
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We can all do that.
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Even if our church doesn't have that vision, even if our church leaders don't have that vision, I would say do it.
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This is what I would say as a pastor.
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So if I can just give the other perspective for a second.
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If somebody came to me and said, pastor, I'm super passionate about X, Y, and Z.
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The first thing I would ask is, are you doing X, Y, and Z?
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If you're not doing it, I just don't believe you.
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You might think you're passionate.
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You might be passionate for me to do it, but you're not personally passionate if you're not doing it.
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So to go back, then if somebody says, hey, I want my church to be discipleship oriented, that starts with them being discipleship oriented.
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Be a disciple maker.
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Someone.
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I remember when Jeff first came and presented the exchange to our church, I leaned over to my wife and said, I don't know anybody who's unsaved, right?
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And the challenge was find people that you can pour into spiritually.
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Find somebody.
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There's somebody.
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There's somebody younger.
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There's somebody who's been saved ah just a few years or a few weeks that you can pour yourself into.
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There's somebody who's just been baptized in your church that needs leadership.
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There's somebody you can disciple.
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So go pour yourself into them spiritually and demonstrate for your pastors, demonstrate for your fellow church members what it might look like.
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That is organically exciting.
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And by the way, if your pastor is not a disciple maker, it will convict him and it'll challenge him and it'll push him towards that way of thinking.
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Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, like after you buy a car, you didn't notice that type of car too much on the road.
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But all of a sudden, after you buy it, you see it everywhere.
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It's kind of like until you start looking for lost people, you don't really notice them.
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But then as soon as you start looking for them, you're like, wow, I've got lots of opportunities right in front of me.
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I just didn't notice.
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um I think is a key.
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And like you said, lead by example.
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I also think pastors, they're pastors for a reason, right?
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They do they are tender towards the Lord and they do love spiritual things and they get genuinely excited when they see God working through their people that is more potent to
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get a pastor's attention in your church than is just sitting down and describing it to him is just showing it to him or you know by example.
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Yeah.
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I'll give you a quick example.
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So I had two guys that were serving as interns.
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So these guys were ah just between their senior year of high school and freshman year of college, and they were serving together.
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they came to me, unprompted, they came to me one afternoon.
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said, hey, pastor, we challenged each other to memorize the book of 1 Timothy.
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And I said, that's awesome.
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That's a...
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That's a pretty big book.
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Are you guys up to the challenge?
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They said, well, we got chapters one and two done in the last couple of weeks.
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Now these are like super smart guys in the prime of their life.
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And I was shocked by it.
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And I said, well, I want to hear it, like tell me.
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And so these guys, they both quoted first two chapters of first Timothy.
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And they said, yeah, we're going to memorize all six chapters by the end of the summer.
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This is what we're challenging each other to do.
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You know what I did?
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I went home and I thought, I need to memorize some scripture.
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The last verse I memorized was like three months ago when it was a single verse and these guys are memorizing dozens.
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Their spiritual journey stimulated me.
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So you're exactly right.
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When we're doing right living, when we're really truly disciple making, it will stimulate others to do the same.
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Yeah, no, that's incredible.
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It's the privilege.
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One of the privilege of just being in the kingdom of Christ, all of us as Christians is, you we get to see God do incredible things in other people.
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has nothing to do with us.
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I mean, he might use us as an instrument, but but it is truly awesome to have a front row ticket to see that.
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Well, thank you so much, Pastor Brad.
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We're going to wrap this up.
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We are going to come back.
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There's a couple more.
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uh second half that I'd like to do with pastor Brad when he has a Time to come back to the podcast, but thank you so much for your time today, brother and thank you guys to Thank
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you.
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Thank you guys to those of you that are listening Be praying with us as we pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers We know that the harvest is
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plentiful, but the laborers are fluid few.
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So thank you guys We love you and we'll see you next week