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Dream Disciple · The Don't Pastor Alone Podcast

• 0:05
  Bob Bumgarner: Welcome to the Don't Pastor Alone podcast, where we connect pastors and churches
• 0:09
  Bob Bumgarner: with trusted people and practical resources so they don't pastor alone. I'm Bob Bumgarner.
• 0:15
  Jimbo Stewart: And I'm Jimbo Stewart. Today, Bob, what we're going to talk about is intentional
• 0:19
  Jimbo Stewart: disciple-making through a framework that we at First Coast Churches call the Dream Disciple.
• 0:26
  Jimbo Stewart: Bob, Dream Disciple is a phrase people may not have heard before, so walk us through.
• 0:32
  Jimbo Stewart: What is dream disciple.
• 0:35
  Bob Bumgarner: Yeah, it's a great concept that I think is, it's built on this idea.
• 0:42
  Bob Bumgarner: Pastor, what kind of disciple would be a dream for you to lead?
• 0:46
  Bob Bumgarner: So in other words, if your mission statement is going to get accomplished,
• 0:51
  Bob Bumgarner: what kind of disciples do you need to be making in order for it to be accomplished?
• 0:55
  Bob Bumgarner: So a dream disciple is the kind of follower of Jesus your church is intentionally
• 1:00
  Bob Bumgarner: designed to help people become.
• 1:03
  Bob Bumgarner: What's interesting about it though, is this, as you intentionally help people
• 1:08
  Bob Bumgarner: mature in this way, there's this phrase that's part of the definition.
• 1:13
  Bob Bumgarner: And that is that, what kind of disciple are you helping mature and multiply,
• 1:18
  Bob Bumgarner: that your community desperately needs more of?
• 1:22
  Bob Bumgarner: So in other words, one of the things that we believe, and when I say we,
• 1:25
  Bob Bumgarner: it's Clarity house, and we'll talk about that more in a second,
• 1:29
  Bob Bumgarner: is we tend to think of what kind of disciples does our church need.
• 1:35
  Bob Bumgarner: But really what we need to be asking is if we're going to reach our part of the city,
• 1:40
  Bob Bumgarner: What kind of disciples do we need to be making that our community desperately needs?
• 1:45
  Bob Bumgarner: In the same way, if you and I were going to live in Brazil for two years with
• 1:48
  Bob Bumgarner: an unreached people group, I mean, we would be asking what kind of disciples
• 1:52
  Bob Bumgarner: do we need to make to live in this community to reach this unreached people
• 1:57
  Bob Bumgarner: group? So I love the idea of the dream disciple.
• 2:00
  Jimbo Stewart: So why do you think that every church needs to, I know this about you,
• 2:06
  Jimbo Stewart: you believe every church really ought to consider how to get clarity on this.
• 2:11
  Jimbo Stewart: We're obviously called to make disciples in the Great Commission,
• 2:14
  Jimbo Stewart: but why is it so important to define specifically the kind of disciple that
• 2:19
  Jimbo Stewart: you're trying to develop?
• 2:20
  Bob Bumgarner: Okay. Without clarity, programs compete with one another.
• 2:27
  Bob Bumgarner: And you really don't know how to set priorities. So what happens?
• 2:32
  Bob Bumgarner: Your leaders, you're multiplying leaders, the leaders who are for you,
• 2:36
  Bob Bumgarner: they don't know where to throw down.
• 2:38
  Bob Bumgarner: Like they don't know what to be all in on because everything feels equal. People stay busy.
• 2:45
  Bob Bumgarner: But purposeless busyness creates exhaustion. It's not exciting. It's not fun.
• 2:52
  Bob Bumgarner: By default, success becomes attendance. Yeah.
• 2:56
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah, I was going to say like the by default success piece, I think is such
• 3:00
  Jimbo Stewart: an important part of why you have to do this because it becomes, the bar becomes so low.
• 3:05
  Bob Bumgarner: Yes.
• 3:06
  Jimbo Stewart: Because are they here? Yeah. Do they serve in some way?
• 3:11
  Jimbo Stewart: Do they give in some way? All right, great. They're a disciple.
• 3:15
  Jimbo Stewart: When in reality, we all know that that's not, but I think a lot of pastors don't have clarity on that.
• 3:20
  Bob Bumgarner: And here's, I think I have an answer or at least a perspective.
• 3:25
  Bob Bumgarner: Most pastors grew up in a time when culture was less complex than it is now.
• 3:31
  Bob Bumgarner: Change was not happening as fast as it's happening now.
• 3:35
  Bob Bumgarner: So you did a Wednesday night program of discipleship. You may have even called
• 3:39
  Bob Bumgarner: it Christian Life Institute.
• 3:41
  Bob Bumgarner: You may have been really creative in it, whatever it was.
• 3:45
  Bob Bumgarner: But what did you have? You had some Rick Warren stuff.
• 3:49
  Bob Bumgarner: You had some Henry Blackaby stuff. You had some Dave Ramsey stuff. And it's all good.
• 3:55
  Bob Bumgarner: It's all good stuff, but it didn't point anywhere.
• 3:59
  Bob Bumgarner: Like, so in other words, hey, what do I do next? Well, what haven't you done
• 4:02
  Bob Bumgarner: yet? Like, what's the curriculum offering?
• 4:05
  Bob Bumgarner: So we had a curriculum menu, not a curriculum path that led toward an outcome,
• 4:15
  Bob Bumgarner: of what we really felt like God wanted us to do. So we actually had.
• 4:22
  Bob Bumgarner: Knowledgeable people who didn't know how to use their knowledge.
• 4:28
  Bob Bumgarner: And so I think that's why we need clarity. I think that our people are more distracted now.
• 4:35
  Bob Bumgarner: They have less time to give. So when we say, hey,
• 4:40
  Bob Bumgarner: we would like to help you be better at following Jesus this time next year by
• 4:48
  Bob Bumgarner: being someone who's an undivided follower of Christ.
• 4:53
  Bob Bumgarner: A radically generous person, whatever the label is that you're putting on there,
• 4:59
  Bob Bumgarner: that's attractive to them.
• 5:00
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 5:01
  Bob Bumgarner: And so we have ways to help that happen.
• 5:04
  Jimbo Stewart: One of the things I love about the Dream Disciple framework is that it isn't just one-dimensional.
• 5:10
  Jimbo Stewart: It walks us through four relationships that we have as a follower of Christ. Walk us through that.
• 5:18
  Bob Bumgarner: Okay. So one of the things we do, so think of it this way.
• 5:22
  Bob Bumgarner: Let's pretend you and I, this sounds weird, but let's pretend you and I are
• 5:25
  Bob Bumgarner: building a discipleship puzzle.
• 5:27
  Jimbo Stewart: Okay.
• 5:27
  Bob Bumgarner: So we get at a table and we look at the top of the box and we see the picture.
• 5:32
  Bob Bumgarner: And let's say it's your church's mission statement.
• 5:35
  Bob Bumgarner: First thing we do is we take the lid off, set it over on the side so we can
• 5:38
  Bob Bumgarner: see it, dump all the pieces out, turn them right side up, find the four corner pieces.
• 5:44
  Bob Bumgarner: In essence, the dream disciple is looking at your church's mission statement
• 5:49
  Bob Bumgarner: and saying, what does that look like?
• 5:52
  Bob Bumgarner: And then finding the four corner pieces, an upward piece, an inward piece,
• 5:58
  Bob Bumgarner: an outward piece, and a forward piece that I'm going to talk about here in a second,
• 6:02
  Bob Bumgarner: that allows you to actually put your puzzle together, like your programming
• 6:08
  Bob Bumgarner: together in a way that moves people toward those character and competency descriptors.
• 6:14
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 6:14
  Bob Bumgarner: Okay. So we believe that someone who's a genuine follower of Jesus has an upward
• 6:21
  Bob Bumgarner: component. Like there's an upward characteristic, meaning they have a relationship
• 6:26
  Bob Bumgarner: with God. They have a saving relationship with God.
• 6:28
  Bob Bumgarner: They know Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and they have an affection.
• 6:35
  Bob Bumgarner: There's an affection for the Trinity, for those beings, for those people,
• 6:40
  Bob Bumgarner: for those gods, for that God.
• 6:42
  Bob Bumgarner: And so within that, not only is there an affection, but there is attention.
• 6:51
  Bob Bumgarner: Like on a daily basis, they're giving attention upward.
• 6:57
  Bob Bumgarner: Okay? Then there's inward. And inward is the relationship with God's family.
• 7:04
  Bob Bumgarner: So what does that mean? It means that I value other people who have an upward
• 7:10
  Bob Bumgarner: perspective of God, and we're traveling together. We're learning to love one another.
• 7:15
  Bob Bumgarner: We are in unity, and we're serving.
• 7:20
  Bob Bumgarner: So the first one is being with God.
• 7:24
  Bob Bumgarner: Inward is being with the people of God. Okay. Then there's outward.
• 7:30
  Bob Bumgarner: And this is our relationship with people who don't know Jesus yet.
• 7:35
  Bob Bumgarner: Okay. So we're on mission. We're on God's mission. That's what outward is.
• 7:41
  Bob Bumgarner: And when we're on God's mission, we need compassion. We need evangelism.
• 7:46
  Bob Bumgarner: We need to understand what neighboring is.
• 7:49
  Bob Bumgarner: And then there's forward. And forward deals with generations. So in other words,
• 7:57
  Bob Bumgarner: A disciple has an upward, an inward, and an outward focus, but if we're going
• 8:03
  Bob Bumgarner: to have generations of that, then we've got to be forward.
• 8:07
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 8:09
  Bob Bumgarner: So what are the... So 2 Timothy 2, what are the third and fourth generations of what we just...
• 8:16
  Bob Bumgarner: It's a triangle that we draw in the process.
• 8:18
  Bob Bumgarner: So it deals with mentoring, multiplication, and generations of disciples.
• 8:25
  Jimbo Stewart: I think it's become so helpful even for not just the leadership to know what
• 8:30
  Jimbo Stewart: they're trying to lead towards, but for the church member to know.
• 8:36
  Jimbo Stewart: I'm not just called to just show up, attend, give my money, serve in kids' ministry
• 8:41
  Jimbo Stewart: once a month, but I'm actually trying to become something.
• 8:47
  Jimbo Stewart: What happens, though, if you don't have one of those four dimensions?
• 8:51
  Bob Bumgarner: Yeah. Before we jump there, let me put a little bit of the problem with discipleship
• 8:58
  Bob Bumgarner: in the church, not on the lay people, but on us.
• 9:03
  Bob Bumgarner: I believe the average lay person in a church is behaving just like they've been trained to behave.
• 9:10
  Bob Bumgarner: So we've trained them to be attenders.
• 9:13
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 9:13
  Bob Bumgarner: We've trained them to see the church as a place where I consume religious goods and services.
• 9:19
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 9:20
  Bob Bumgarner: I think what you're asking is exactly the right question. How do we...
• 9:25
  Bob Bumgarner: How do we get it to where all four of those are working in tandem?
• 9:29
  Bob Bumgarner: Because if there's no upward relationship, I mean, if,
• 9:36
  Bob Bumgarner: I love my church and I'm on mission and I'm even thinking generationally,
• 9:40
  Bob Bumgarner: if I'm doing that because I'm a Baptist, then I have no power.
• 9:45
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 9:46
  Bob Bumgarner: Like the power for spiritual living is in the upward characteristic and competencies of a disciple.
• 9:53
  Jimbo Stewart: What about if there's no inward?
• 9:55
  Bob Bumgarner: If there's no inward, then it is isolation. Like in other words,
• 10:00
  Bob Bumgarner: we're Lone Ranger Christians.
• 10:01
  Bob Bumgarner: Like I've got my coffee and my Bible and my Instagram that I show that I do
• 10:04
  Bob Bumgarner: my quiet time in the morning.
• 10:06
  Bob Bumgarner: And then I may even go down to the food pantry and might help in the community,
• 10:10
  Bob Bumgarner: but I'm not doing it with believers.
• 10:13
  Bob Bumgarner: So what happens is the transformative nature of living where there's a spiritual
• 10:19
  Bob Bumgarner: accountability, I miss that.
• 10:21
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 10:22
  Bob Bumgarner: Like I miss out on the sandpapering that that happens.
• 10:26
  Jimbo Stewart: Okay, what if we've got inward, we've got upward, but we don't have outward?
• 10:32
  Bob Bumgarner: Yeah. If I want to be really snarky, we have our country club because we have
• 10:37
  Bob Bumgarner: the people who vote like us and do like us.
• 10:39
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 10:39
  Bob Bumgarner: We're comfortable.
• 10:41
  Bob Bumgarner: Uh, but that's, but that's it. I mean, we're comfortable doing our religious thing.
• 10:47
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah. And you touched on a little bit earlier, but this is the one I think so,
• 10:52
  Jimbo Stewart: so key that we, we maybe miss. I think a lot of churches have some thought towards,
• 10:58
  Jimbo Stewart: the upward, inward, the outward.
• 11:00
  Jimbo Stewart: Um, but what, what, what ends up happening if we have no forward identity that we're working towards.
• 11:08
  Bob Bumgarner: Yeah. So I, you would know this with your work with the North American Mission
• 11:12
  Bob Bumgarner: Board, you have lots of churches to revitalize.
• 11:15
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 11:16
  Bob Bumgarner: Because the church did not, since it wasn't moving forward, it didn't continue
• 11:22
  Bob Bumgarner: reaching its community.
• 11:23
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 11:24
  Bob Bumgarner: And so when Hispanics or African-American or Asian or Anglo lower middle class
• 11:32
  Bob Bumgarner: people moved in, they didn't fit.
• 11:36
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 11:36
  Bob Bumgarner: There was not a place for them because we weren't thinking generationally.
• 11:41
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 11:42
  Bob Bumgarner: Uh, and so, um, so it, it's the, it's the end. We, we're.
• 11:48
  Bob Bumgarner: There's no future without forward.
• 11:52
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah, I would agree. I think it's so key is one of the reasons we see,
• 11:57
  Jimbo Stewart: I think, often churches have a really strong season for one generation,
• 12:03
  Jimbo Stewart: and then it doesn't pass to the next generation, which is why it ends up struggling
• 12:09
  Jimbo Stewart: and end up being a church that we're working with.
• 12:11
  Bob Bumgarner: So think about this with me for just a second. Okay. Let's pretend that we were
• 12:15
  Bob Bumgarner: at a church where these four characteristics weren't named.
• 12:19
  Jimbo Stewart: Right.
• 12:20
  Bob Bumgarner: But we did them. We behaved them. However we got there.
• 12:23
  Jimbo Stewart: Right. You don't have to do the dream disciple process.
• 12:25
  Bob Bumgarner: Yeah, we don't have to. But somehow the Holy Spirit showed up and we did the four things.
• 12:29
  Jimbo Stewart: Yes.
• 12:30
  Bob Bumgarner: What makes it so hard is when Pastor Smith leaves and Pastor Adams moves in,
• 12:37
  Bob Bumgarner: now he's brought something different.
• 12:39
  Jimbo Stewart: Yep.
• 12:41
  Bob Bumgarner: And probably it's unlikely that he's going to land on the four same things.
• 12:46
  Jimbo Stewart: Yep.
• 12:47
  Bob Bumgarner: And by the time that he convinces you, if he even has them named,
• 12:52
  Bob Bumgarner: like, so in other words, if he doesn't have them named, how does he even lead toward change?
• 12:56
  Bob Bumgarner: The beauty of the dream disciple is the church articulates them.
• 13:01
  Bob Bumgarner: So when a new pastor comes, if he, first of all, he can join you in your mission.
• 13:08
  Bob Bumgarner: But even if he sees a little bit of tweaking, you at least know,
• 13:11
  Bob Bumgarner: okay, this is the thing together now.
• 13:15
  Bob Bumgarner: We've been together two years. It's time for us to maybe tweak this.
• 13:19
  Bob Bumgarner: So you tweak it together so you know the four corners that you're going after. That's helpful.
• 13:25
  Jimbo Stewart: Here's something. Can a church, I mean, I think...
• 13:29
  Jimbo Stewart: churches are always discipling their people, whether they're doing it on purpose
• 13:34
  Jimbo Stewart: or not on purpose or with clarity or with confusion.
• 13:38
  Jimbo Stewart: And so I would say that churches could accidentally even make the wrong type of disciple.
• 13:45
  Jimbo Stewart: Is it possible for a church to be successful and still produce disciples that aren't fully formed?
• 13:50
  Bob Bumgarner: Yeah, I guess it depends on how you define successful. Can a church stay open
• 13:54
  Bob Bumgarner: and have a good budget and,
• 13:58
  Bob Bumgarner: even do some international mission work? I mean, yeah, if you're a regional
• 14:02
  Bob Bumgarner: church and nobody moves into where you are,
• 14:08
  Bob Bumgarner: I mean, the people, you don't reach your neighborhood, but people drive past
• 14:12
  Bob Bumgarner: everything because there's a unique preacher or whatever that's there.
• 14:16
  Bob Bumgarner: I mean, I suppose you could be that, but we understand the church at its best
• 14:21
  Bob Bumgarner: is a neighborhood expression.
• 14:23
  Bob Bumgarner: It starts as a neighborhood expression. It may be regional, but to skip your
• 14:27
  Bob Bumgarner: Jerusalem is not helpful.
• 14:30
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 14:30
  Bob Bumgarner: It is, because somebody's got to own your Jerusalem, and if it's not you, then who?
• 14:38
  Bob Bumgarner: So what I would say is, by wrong disciple, how I would hear that is,
• 14:45
  Bob Bumgarner: can you make a disciple who is ineffective at reaching the neighborhood right
• 14:50
  Bob Bumgarner: around your church? Yeah, you could.
• 14:52
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 14:53
  Bob Bumgarner: I mean, if you live in a neighborhood that largely doesn't speak English and
• 14:57
  Bob Bumgarner: you have no accommodation for that, then you have a discipling system.
• 15:02
  Bob Bumgarner: that doesn't work for the people that you're most easily responsible for.
• 15:09
  Jimbo Stewart: I think about a mission trip I took to Kenya, and the missionaries were trying
• 15:14
  Jimbo Stewart: to change a culture that had happened there from the first missionaries that
• 15:17
  Jimbo Stewart: went to Kenya, or at least that reached this particular tribe or group of Maasai.
• 15:23
  Jimbo Stewart: And they were like one of the last primitive tribes left in that part of Africa.
• 15:28
  Jimbo Stewart: And they, whether intentionally or unintentionally, communicated that when a
• 15:34
  Jimbo Stewart: Maasai started to follow Jesus, that they needed to no longer wear their traditional
• 15:39
  Jimbo Stewart: garb, and they needed to get a suit and a tie.
• 15:42
  Jimbo Stewart: And the missionaries I was working with was trying to reverse that and help
• 15:46
  Jimbo Stewart: them realize, if we're going to keep reaching Maasai, you need to keep being Maasai, right?
• 15:53
  Jimbo Stewart: And we don't need you to become Anglo and American or English.
• 15:58
  Jimbo Stewart: We've got to shift in that.
• 16:01
  Jimbo Stewart: So how does a church become really intentional in this?
• 16:07
  Jimbo Stewart: So maybe a pastor's listening to this podcast and they're thinking,
• 16:10
  Jimbo Stewart: I don't know if we've ever defined what a dream disciple or disciple ought to look like here.
• 16:16
  Jimbo Stewart: Where would you say they begin?
• 16:18
  Bob Bumgarner: Prayer. So I think it's kind of a Venn diagram.
• 16:24
  Bob Bumgarner: Who lives in their community? What kind of people? Who are they? Who lives there?
• 16:31
  Bob Bumgarner: What does the Bible say? What are the characteristics in the Bible?
• 16:34
  Bob Bumgarner: What does the Bible say that disciples are or do?
• 16:38
  Bob Bumgarner: And then lastly,
• 16:45
  Bob Bumgarner: what do you need them to do? So in other words, when you think about your community,
• 16:50
  Bob Bumgarner: when you think about what the Bible says, what are the skill sets,
• 16:53
  Bob Bumgarner: the competencies that you think that you need them to do? And then just begin to pray.
• 16:58
  Bob Bumgarner: And here's the thing, when you do your missiology,
• 17:02
  Bob Bumgarner: Then begin to pray how to articulate that in a way that is, I like this word,
• 17:08
  Bob Bumgarner: sticky, in a way that's easy for your people to remember. First Coast Churches can help with that.
• 17:14
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah, as you say, pray, step two, give us a call.
• 17:18
  Bob Bumgarner: Yeah, call First Coast Churches. We can help you with that. As a matter of fact, I just started,
• 17:24
  Bob Bumgarner: probably a four-meeting journey with Refuge Church this week on Monday.
• 17:30
  Bob Bumgarner: They have seven people on their team. I'm meeting with Gather Church on Friday.
• 17:36
  Bob Bumgarner: We're doing it in a different way. We're working just with the pastor because
• 17:39
  Bob Bumgarner: it's still a church plant and they're still trying to figure it out.
• 17:42
  Bob Bumgarner: So there's multiple ways that we can do this. But you clarify what you need. You describe it.
• 17:49
  Bob Bumgarner: Here's the thing. Imagine this. Imagine knowing the kind of disciple you need
• 17:54
  Bob Bumgarner: to make, pastor, and then imagine that it's time to do your preaching calendar.
• 17:59
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah. How would this impact?
• 18:00
  Bob Bumgarner: Yeah.
• 18:01
  Jimbo Stewart: Preaching calendar, once you get this.
• 18:04
  Bob Bumgarner: Okay. So it's done. It's done. Whatever it is, it's done.
• 18:07
  Jimbo Stewart: What's the downflow implications of that?
• 18:11
  Bob Bumgarner: So you would do a five or six week series to kick it off, to explain why we're
• 18:17
  Bob Bumgarner: naming our disciple, what each one means.
• 18:21
  Bob Bumgarner: So then every time you preach a sermon, a series, I mean, like you're in a series,
• 18:28
  Bob Bumgarner: think about finding illustrations that are those four things.
• 18:34
  Bob Bumgarner: You and I know this, people do what is celebrated. So whenever you come to a
• 18:38
  Bob Bumgarner: place in a sermon that there's an illustration of somebody doing something,
• 18:41
  Bob Bumgarner: which one of your four discipleship characteristics is it?
• 18:45
  Bob Bumgarner: and say something to the effect, hey, you know, one of our characteristics of
• 18:49
  Bob Bumgarner: a disciple is an unhindered follower.
• 18:53
  Bob Bumgarner: So, let me tell you about Sally. Here's what Sally did last week with a middle schooler.
• 18:59
  Bob Bumgarner: And you talk about what an unhindered follower of Jesus looks like.
• 19:04
  Bob Bumgarner: People begin to say, oh my gosh, I never knew. I mean, we have no idea how distracted
• 19:09
  Bob Bumgarner: people are by giving them illustrations that do that.
• 19:15
  Bob Bumgarner: So now it's time to train. And it's in the fall, and you're training for all your volunteers.
• 19:22
  Bob Bumgarner: Yes, there are certain things that greeters need to be and certain things that
• 19:25
  Bob Bumgarner: worship team needs to be, but everybody is a dream disciple.
• 19:30
  Bob Bumgarner: So you give skills to that. I mean, you give resources for that.
• 19:36
  Bob Bumgarner: At least once a year, There ought to be an emphasis in your small group curriculum.
• 19:42
  Bob Bumgarner: There's a very large church here in town that they spend the first two weeks
• 19:46
  Bob Bumgarner: of January going over. They don't have a dream disciple, but they have a triangle that they do.
• 19:51
  Bob Bumgarner: They explain their discipleship process and they illustrate each section of it.
• 19:55
  Bob Bumgarner: And then they say this, hey, everybody pull out your calendar because we want
• 20:00
  Bob Bumgarner: you to save these dates because these five or six dates this year amplify what
• 20:06
  Bob Bumgarner: we're doing in our dream disciple.
• 20:07
  Bob Bumgarner: So we're going to baptize on this day. Our revival is going to be here.
• 20:11
  Bob Bumgarner: And so see the empowerment that that gives.
• 20:14
  Bob Bumgarner: It really gives you the ability to help people see how valuable what you're
• 20:22
  Bob Bumgarner: doing is. Let me say this.
• 20:23
  Bob Bumgarner: If it feels random from the pulpit, if our disciple making feels random from
• 20:28
  Bob Bumgarner: the pulpit, it will not feel important in the lives of our people.
• 20:35
  Bob Bumgarner: Um, people don't prioritize random.
• 20:37
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 20:38
  Bob Bumgarner: And so.
• 20:39
  Jimbo Stewart: And you have to say things so many more times than you think.
• 20:41
  Bob Bumgarner: Yes, you do.
• 20:42
  Jimbo Stewart: I mean, you're thinking about it as a pastor, you're thinking about it all week, every week.
• 20:46
  Bob Bumgarner: Yep.
• 20:47
  Jimbo Stewart: You're planning around it. Your people are maybe paying attention the one to
• 20:51
  Jimbo Stewart: two Sundays on average that they're attending your church on Sunday morning.
• 20:55
  Jimbo Stewart: If they're paying attention to what you're saying and picking up on the repeated
• 20:58
  Jimbo Stewart: phrases and just, I mean, over, over, over communicating is,
• 21:03
  Jimbo Stewart: is so crucial in us. You've done this with a lot of churches.
• 21:07
  Jimbo Stewart: What's been the most exciting, fun, interesting, surprising thing that you've
• 21:11
  Jimbo Stewart: seen come out of doing this with a church?
• 21:14
  Bob Bumgarner: That when you get the right people
• 21:15
  Bob Bumgarner: in the right room having the right conversation, God always shows up.
• 21:22
  Bob Bumgarner: There's one church, I'm not going to say its name. I don't want to,
• 21:24
  Bob Bumgarner: but I was working with them and we were talking about,
• 21:30
  Bob Bumgarner: their mission statement. And there was a phrase that they had something, it was about,
• 21:40
  Bob Bumgarner: their mission statement said something about opening our doors.
• 21:43
  Jimbo Stewart: Mm-hmm.
• 21:45
  Bob Bumgarner: And we, as I poked around on it, asked questions, I said, well,
• 21:48
  Bob Bumgarner: what else? And somebody said, you know what I just realized?
• 21:53
  Bob Bumgarner: We've opened our doors to our neighbors, but not our hearts.
• 21:57
  Bob Bumgarner: So they told, like, there were tears.
• 22:00
  Bob Bumgarner: Like, the tears were sort of confession.
• 22:04
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 22:04
  Bob Bumgarner: That everybody agreed that, oh my gosh, we've had doors open,
• 22:08
  Bob Bumgarner: but the reason nobody walks in those doors is because our hearts aren't open.
• 22:11
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 22:11
  Bob Bumgarner: And,
• 22:14
  Bob Bumgarner: that is not unusual. Like when you start teasing what it really means to do
• 22:18
  Bob Bumgarner: these things, what we say is you have to drip vision consistently.
• 22:26
  Bob Bumgarner: Pastors, about the time that you're either bored with your dream disciple or
• 22:33
  Bob Bumgarner: you're irritated with it, your people are just now getting it.
• 22:37
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 22:39
  Bob Bumgarner: And one of the things that has happened is pastors typically change something when they get bored.
• 22:47
  Bob Bumgarner: So if you go back and you change your vision frame when you're bored,
• 22:51
  Bob Bumgarner: you've just pulled the rug out from under your people.
• 22:55
  Bob Bumgarner: It really does take a lot longer than you think. That's why you had to drip
• 22:58
  Bob Bumgarner: vision, continually illustrate it, train for it.
• 23:01
  Bob Bumgarner: Your church has to be a teaching center for the gospel, but also a training
• 23:06
  Bob Bumgarner: center for what it means to be a disciple that your community desperately needs.
• 23:10
  Jimbo Stewart: That's good. Let's do some rapid fire before you close this out.
• 23:15
  Jimbo Stewart: What's one characteristic you believe every disciple should have?
• 23:20
  Bob Bumgarner: I don't know if you would, that you're never done learning. Yeah.
• 23:24
  Bob Bumgarner: I mean, that's not always going to be one of your four corners, but the posture.
• 23:28
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 23:28
  Bob Bumgarner: The posture of an apprentice. I mean, when we think of disciple,
• 23:32
  Bob Bumgarner: we tend to think of a tender.
• 23:34
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 23:34
  Bob Bumgarner: When Jesus thought of disciple, when Jesus said, follow me, he was taught,
• 23:38
  Bob Bumgarner: apprentice yourself to me.
• 23:39
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 23:40
  Bob Bumgarner: Align your life with me.
• 23:41
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 23:42
  Bob Bumgarner: And say the same words, do the same things.
• 23:45
  Bob Bumgarner: And so turn a disciple, a dream disciple into an apprentice.
• 23:51
  Jimbo Stewart: What would you say is the most overlooked aspect of discipleship?
• 23:56
  Bob Bumgarner: The most overlooked aspect of discipleship is the articulation of what it is you're trying to do.
• 24:03
  Bob Bumgarner: I mean, nobody else...
• 24:07
  Bob Bumgarner: If you go to work for Home Depot, they're going to tell you the things to do.
• 24:11
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 24:11
  Bob Bumgarner: They're going to tell you what customer service looks like.
• 24:14
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 24:15
  Bob Bumgarner: If you go to, I mean, we all know this. If you go to Chick-fil-A and you don't
• 24:20
  Bob Bumgarner: want to say my pleasure, you're not going to fit, right?
• 24:24
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 24:24
  Bob Bumgarner: And so, but all of a sudden, I mean, the military does it.
• 24:30
  Bob Bumgarner: Every high performing organization does it.
• 24:34
  Bob Bumgarner: But when we come to church, we just kind of don't expect it.
• 24:38
  Bob Bumgarner: We just think sincerity is going to do it. No, no. Jesus said,
• 24:42
  Bob Bumgarner: follow me and I'll make you what? Evangelists? No, fishers of men.
• 24:46
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 24:47
  Bob Bumgarner: He said it in their language.
• 24:49
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 24:49
  Bob Bumgarner: What they needed. In another Paul, Paul talks about a good soldier,
• 24:53
  Bob Bumgarner: a good farmer. Is he just making up scripture?
• 24:56
  Bob Bumgarner: No, he's describing a disciple. He's saying it so that those people can wrap their minds around it.
• 25:02
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 25:02
  Bob Bumgarner: And behave it. So...
• 25:05
  Jimbo Stewart: All right. One book every pastor should read on disciple making.
• 25:11
  Bob Bumgarner: I guess I would say, I would say future church.
• 25:16
  Bob Bumgarner: And here's why. Because it is a holistic look at disciple making.
• 25:21
  Bob Bumgarner: It covers the organization. It covers the systems. It covers one-on-one.
• 25:28
  Bob Bumgarner: So I would just say, I would say future church.
• 25:30
  Jimbo Stewart: All right. Final challenge.
• 25:31
  Bob Bumgarner: Wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 25:32
  Jimbo Stewart: Yeah.
• 25:33
  Bob Bumgarner: What did I say before future church?
• 25:35
  Jimbo Stewart: You said future.
• 25:36
  Bob Bumgarner: Yeah, future church. I was thinking I said church unique, but it's future church.
• 25:41
  Bob Bumgarner: You said future church, yeah.
• 25:43
  Jimbo Stewart: All right, final challenge. If a pastor only remembers one sentence from today,
• 25:48
  Jimbo Stewart: what would you hope it is?
• 25:52
  Bob Bumgarner: Your ministry system always produces exactly what it's designed to produce.
• 25:57
  Bob Bumgarner: So take out a blank sheet of paper if you've been listening to this seriously
• 26:01
  Bob Bumgarner: and ask yourself one question.
• 26:03
  Bob Bumgarner: If every person in our church became exactly what we were hoping for,
• 26:06
  Bob Bumgarner: what would they actually look like?
• 26:07
  Bob Bumgarner: Write it down, pray over it, talk about it with your leaders.
• 26:11
  Bob Bumgarner: and if you've not articulated that somewhere, give us a call and let us help
• 26:18
  Bob Bumgarner: you articulate it in a way that your church will remember because you don't have to pastor alone.