Graduation Day!
I remember it vividly. It was the culmination of months of anticipation and preparation. I had listened to the instruction of my teacher and thought I was ready to tackle the years ahead. When the day arrived, a flood of anxiety came over me and I didn’t know if I could go through with it.
“I don’t think I’m ready! What if I mess up? What if I forget something that I was taught? What if I fail?” I thought as I contemplated the high stakes. Life and death now depended on me.
As the nurse shut my car door, she smiled and said, “You’re going to be just fine,” My newborn first son, Caden, just stared at me as I graduated into fatherhood.
The next 18 years have been a blur, and this month Caden will walk across the stage as a new high school graduate. He has developed into a fine young man — thanks to his mom. He is academically solid, a great athlete, a servant leader, and a Jesus follower. His development was not the result of one program, but of a variety of people who have shaped his life and poured into him as a person.
Discipleship is not a program. A third shift for the church in the future is to shift from “program dependent” to “people development.” The pandemic has exposed our great dependence on church programs for disciple-making to reach those far from God. When the programs were canceled, evangelism came to a screeching halt and baptisms took a sharp decline as a result.
When Easter, youth camp, and Vacation Bible School shut down, all we had left was relational evangelism. Those who had this culture of relational disciple-making won the day. Reggie McNeal writes in “Missional Renaissance” that this shift requires us to move from standardization to customization.
Who are we attempting to “graduate” from our programs? Are we satisfied with faithful attenders or disciple-making disciples who live like Jesus? Programs in and of themselves aren’t the problem — but if they are not producing disciple-making disciples, make the shift.
Typical church programs aren’t designed for the service industry worker who is on the job on Sunday mornings, or the shift worker who works two Sundays a month. If we are going to reach every life, we must shift to an individualized discipleship plan that connects them with people developers who love them and opportunities to love like Jesus.
So how many disciple-making graduates did your church see this year who are developing someone far from God? Are you one of them?