The Discipleship Challenge: Engaging and Equipping the Church | Robby Gallety

0:00 Hey guys, welcome back to the Disciple Makers podcast. This is your host Josh Howard, and today we have an episode that features Robby Gallaty, who challenges listeners to apply Jesus' disciple-making mandate, arguing that believers can't expect Jesus' ministry blessings while ignoring his method. Let's take a listen.

0:32 I want to finish by just really challenging you. I want to motivate you, I want to empower you to leave and really not just hear the message of disciple-making, but actually apply it. So much so that you'll make Jesus' final words the first work of your life, right? So here's what I want to do. I want to give you the master's model for making disciples.

0:55 People say, how did you guys figure out this process for discipleship at Replicate? Or even you can ask any of the ministries here. And I tell people, we didn't make it up. Like Jesus did this a long time ago, right? Like we don't have a monopoly on making disciples. Now here's the statement I want to make, and I want you to get this.

1:11 Write this down. You and I cannot expect to experience the blessings of the ministry of Jesus and divorce ourselves from the method he used. Do you believe that? Let me say it again. You and I cannot expect to experience the blessing of the ministry of Jesus and divorce ourselves from the method he used.

1:31 Now I do on Sunday, and if this was a normal service at my church, I do what's called expository preaching or exegetical text-driven preaching. What that means is this. I believe that the word of God is inspired. You believe that? Inerrant, infallible, sufficient. It's the word of God. These aren't words on a page.

1:51 This is the actual word of God. But not only do I believe, follow me, that the words are inspired, I believe the encounters are inspired. Now think about this. Who's that? I've never heard this before. Think about this. You would agree with me that the woman at the well on that day at lunchtime is not just there by happenstance when Jesus just walks through Samaria, wouldn't you agree?

2:13 Like God planned before the foundation of the world for this woman to be here. So if that's the case, if the encounters are inspired, then the method Jesus used for making disciples is inspired. We can't experience or expect to experience the blessings of the ministry of Jesus and divorce ourselves from the method he used.

2:32 Now before I give you the method we use at Long Hollow and different churches that I've pastored, I want to give you the two challenges we're up against. Because when you leave here, I just want you to be aware of the challenges we're up against so that we can really combat them. Number one is this. Here's the first challenge.

2:49 The first challenge is that believers in our churches do not understand the mission they're called to. What is the mission that Jesus gave us? What are the final words Jesus gave us or gave to the disciples? Do you remember? The great what? The great commission. Does anybody know what the great commission is?

3:12 Can anybody say it? All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, therefore what? Go make disciples of all nations. Now this is what's cool about this group. When you're with a disciple first tribe, they know this. When I'm with a normal tribe of pastors and teachers and leaders, sometimes they don't know that.

3:29 But you guys get that. Isn't it interesting that the one thing Jesus commanded us to do, in fact the only thing Jesus authorized us to do, is the one thing sadly we don't do. So in a recent study, they polled hundreds of churchgoers, thousands I think, and asked them this question. People who go to church.

3:51 They asked them this question. Do you know what the great commission is? Guess how many people said, I don't know what the great commission is. 51% of churchgoers. Now what's even more startling is that 25% of those in addition to that said, I think I've heard of the great commission, but I really don't know what it is.

4:12 You see the dilemma here. 76% of churchgoers either don't know the great commission or have heard about it, but don't know. Do you see the challenge we have? So one of the challenges we face in the church is that people who are born again, adopted into the family of God, filled with the spirit of God, do not even know the mission of God that he's called us to, number one.

4:34 The second challenge we face is this believers don't know where to begin in the disciple making process. Here's the cool thing about the great commission. When Jesus write this down, when Jesus gave us the great commission, he didn't give us a stop. He gave us a step. It's not a stop. Here's what I mean.

4:54 It's not a point you reach. The great commission is the process of your life, right? Here's the newsflash. We never graduate from disciple making, amen? It's not a destination you arrive at. I tell people, it's not even a class you take. It's not a 12-week study. It's not a certificate on the wall. It's not a class you take.

5:16 It's the course of your life. This is kind of the rhythm, as DA said, of your life. This is the ebb and flow of our life. I had the privilege two years ago to be appointed by the Southern Baptist Convention, which I'm a pastor, Southern Baptist Convention, to lead what is called the disciple making or was the disciple making task force.

5:39 And it was cool because our convention thought, okay, 46,000 churches in our convention. Are we making disciples in the convention? I was excited because we're actually asking this question, right? It was for the first time in a long time. And so I met with a team, Johnny Hunt, Eric Geiger, other people you may know.

5:55 And we met for one year and came back to the convention and said, there's no way we can figure out if we're making disciples or not in one year. We need two. So we met for two years. It still really felt like, do we really know what's going on? But here's what we did. We pulled large churches and small churches.

6:12 We pulled urban churches and rural churches, mega churches and county churches, just everything in between. And here's what we found out. This study, now let me warn you, is gonna blow your mind. But here's the reality. If you're not a Southern Baptist church, I would submit it's happening in your denomination as well.

6:31 In 1996, 20 years ago, we asked the question, how many people were meeting in weekly worship service in the Southern Baptist convention? Now this is not membership because God knows you can't find half the people. The FBI couldn't find half the people in a lot of our churches, right? But these are weekly worship numbers, okay?

6:48 So these are people who actually come to church. So we asked the question, how many people in 1996 were meeting weekly in the Southern Baptist convention as a whole, 5,224,000 people. Remember that number, 5,224,000 people in 20 years from 1996 to 2016 was the last year we had numbers for. We asked the question, how many people were baptized?

7:15 Fair question, right? How many people were baptized? In that 20-year period, we baptized as a convention 7.1 million people. Does that seem like a big number to you? It did to me. Like 7.1 million people. Now I know you're saying, well, that may be exaggerated or maybe we were quick to baptize. Forget that.

7:34 The reality is 7.1 million people. So you would think in 20 years, the Southern Baptist convention could have grown to what? 12, 13 million? But that's maybe too bold. Attrition, people die. Let's say half of that, okay? So let's say you grow by 3 million. You would think 3 million, right? 8 million people we'd grow to?

7:53 No. 2 million people? No. In 20 years, in our convention, we went from 5,224,000 people meeting weekly to losing 24,000 people. We declined as a convention in weekly attendance by 24,000 people. Here's the question. Where did the 7.1 million go? And I think there's a lot of reasons for this, but I'm going to give you a few of them.

8:22 Could it be in the church that we have preached half the gospel? Here's what I mean. Could it be that we have preached salvation is essential, following Jesus is optional, right? Like, you don't want to go to hell, do you? Like salvation is essential, following Jesus is optional. And in that mindset, guess what happens?

8:43 Discipleship becomes optional. You want to read your Bible? Who cares? Prayer? That's a choice you'll never make it. Come in the church, you're going to see the Titans play or the Cowboys play. That's on you. Listen, you're going to heaven anyway. Friends, I want to submit to you that concept is devoid of the Bible.

9:00 The Bible is devoid of that mindset. Because here's the reality. A person who is called to salvation is called to discipleship. The word Christian is only found in the New Testament three times. The word disciple is found 269 times. Here's the question. What does Jesus want us to make, Christians or disciples, right?

9:21 Big difference. See, the reality is if you preach that gospel, following Jesus is essential, I mean, salvation is essential, following Jesus is optional, the spiritual disciplines in your church for your people become recommended but not required activities. And here's what happens. A person walks the aisle, and let me just, can I just meddle for just a moment?

9:42 This is yes? Somebody's saying, you've been meddling since you got up, right? But anyway, but let me just meddle for just a moment, right? This is what happens. A person walks the aisle on Sunday morning, and I've been guilty of this too, and we say, brother, if you repeat this prayer and say amen at the right place at the right time, we pat you on the back, we say, brother Joe is a Christian, we give him a Bible, and here's what we say, start with the gospel of what?

10:08 Now where did that ever come from? Who ever thought of that? Like, here's a great book, I know the author, by the way, read, start on page 296, you'll love it. Don't worry about that front stuff, just, but that's what we do. We tell them, listen, suck it up, we'll see you next week, and try to decipher this Bible that you have no clue of what to do with, and we wonder why people are going out the back door as fast as they're coming in the front door, can I get an amen?

10:32 This is what's happening in our churches today, and I think one of the challenges for us is this, could it be that we have taught people what they're saved from, but we haven't taught them what they're saved for? It's a big deal. Could it be that we've made baptism the finish line, and not the starting line of a relationship with Christ?

10:55 See, that's where the real work begins. Yes, do we high five salvation, people who make the salvation experience? Yes. Do we high five people who are baptized? Yes, but we don't leave them there. See, one of the things about the Lord Jesus is he saves us as we are, but he doesn't leave us as we were.

11:11 So what's the solution? We met as a team for two years, and we thought, what is the one thing we can give in a tangible way that people can see life change in their church? We had the backing of LifeWay, Eric Geiger was the vice president, and he gave us access to research that was not out at the time.

11:29 I'm going to give you access to it now, I think it's come out now, but LifeWay research did the largest discipleship study in the history of anybody ever doing discipleship analysis. And they asked a couple questions to hundreds of thousands of people, and they came up with four things in the area of discipleship, I'm going to give them to you.

11:47 Number one is this, groups matter a lot. And they didn't get specific about what size the groups or how the groups are, but they said groups matter a lot. That's where transformation happens. Number two is discipleship is intentional. You and I both know, discipleship is not going to happen by happenstance, right?

12:08 You're not going to stumble onto maturity. You're not going to stumble into growth, right, spiritual growth. Number three, and here's the two I want to camp out on, Bible engagement is the number one spiritual discipline in the Christian life. If you're an investing person, which we all are, and you're going to invest in one spiritual discipline, fasting, silence, solitude, memorization, journaling, evangelism, worship, you name it.

12:36 Life, the data proves it. Bible engagement, hearing the Bible and applying the Bible is the number one spiritual discipline in the Christian life. You're going to love this. Number four dovetails from the first, and here it is, or from the third, and here it is. People who engage the Bible are more likely to engage in other spiritual disciplines.

12:57 I love this. So people who are engaged in the Bible, give more. You want your people to be more generous, get them in the Word. People who engage the Bible, raise a holy hand in worship. People who engage the Bible, serve more in the local church. People who engage the Bible, volunteer. Anybody need more volunteers in their church or do you have enough?

13:16 That's a joke. We all need them, right? People who engage the Bible, give more. They go more. They're committed more. The answer is this. How are you moving your people? The question is, how are you moving your people through a spiritual pathway or process for growth? I stumbled upon this idea by studying years ago the New Testament, did a cursory study of the New Testament.

13:39 I found out that Jesus ministered in five distinct groups because I realized that not only was his message inspired, but his method was inspired. Jesus ministered in five groups. He ministered to the crowd, but on few occasions, preaching, feeding 5,000, 4,000, Sermon on the Mount, Feast of Tabernacles, a few others, but few occasions.

13:59 He preached to the congregation, the 120 or the 70, but he preached to them just at the end of his ministry. Jesus spent, you ready for this, 90% of his time, according to Eugene Peterson, 90% of his time with 12 men. The community group of 12, the core group of three, and there are, number five, close relationships, which are rare, but he had those close relationships.

14:25 Here's what I did. We took that fourfold strategy. We left out the close relationships and we said, could we apply Jesus' model for making disciples in the local church? Like could it work? And the answer is what? Absolutely. So here's what we did. We started with worship, worship, which is the congregation.

14:44 We led to life group, which is the community group. We led to D groups, which are groups like Peter, James, and John, men with men, women with women. They met for the purpose of accountability and transparency and intimacy. They met for 12 to 18 months for the purpose of reproduction. And then out of the D group, we led to changing the world.

15:04 So this fourfold strategy, worship, life group, D group, change the world. This is about five or six years ago. I just so happened to be speaking, I think at an event in California, and I passed by and stopped at a good friend of mine's house, Bill Hull. And Bill and I were going to check off a bucket list item, a Lakers game together.

15:23 So DA, here we were, LA, Bill and I, two former basketball players, loving life, seeing the Lakers. And I said, Bill, you're going to love this. I got an idea that I think will work in the church. Could it work? Worship that leads to life group, life group that leads to D group, and out of the D groups, we can change the world.

15:43 Bill said, it's a great idea. So the only problem is John Wesley did that in 1750. I said, really? Now, I didn't know about this because honestly, and you probably haven't heard about this because when I knew John Wesley in seminary, it was made basically for his preaching. You have to understand, John Wesley was a masterful preacher, even though he's not known for preaching.

16:08 Wesley was a great preacher. Now, he wasn't as good as his counterpart, George Whitefield, but he was a great preacher. He was a man who really put in the work. He preached 44,000 times over 54 years. John Wesley traveled by carriage or horseback 200,000 miles, 5,000 miles a year preaching with an antiquated system of travel back then.

16:36 But the problem is you and I don't know John Wesley for his preaching. In fact, you couldn't probably tell me any of his sermons, could you? The sermon he preached on the kingdom of God and the way in, or the sermon he preached on the reasons of being born again, or his first fruits of the morning. You couldn't tell me any of those sermons, and I probably couldn't tell you many of them either offhand, but the reason we know Wesley is not for his preaching.

17:00 We know Wesley because he was an organizational genius. Now, he wasn't the best preacher, as I said. George Whitefield was the best preacher. In fact, Whitefield was such a good preacher that it was said that Benjamin Franklin would come hear Whitefield preach as an unbeliever. Like Whitefield had the ability to hold crowds of 5,000 to 10,000 spellbound without the use of amplification.

17:23 He could preach, and Benjamin Franklin was there one day, and he would walk across the edge of the crowd just to hear Whitefield preach. And someone asked him one time, why are you here, Mr. Franklin? You don't believe what Whitefield is saying. Franklin said, I don't believe what Whitefield is saying, but Whitefield does, and that's why I'm here.

17:41 He was amazed with his passion. Now, Wesley was nothing like Whitefield, but Wesley was an organizational genius. In fact, Wesley is known for the contagious Methodist movement which canvassed America. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this, believe it or not, in his book, The Tipping Point. And he compares John Wesley to other men of his time.

18:01 Here's what he says. He says, Methodism's founder, John Wesley, was by no means the most charismatic preacher of his era. That honor belonged to George Whitefield, an orator of such power and charisma that it was said he once charmed a five-pound contribution out of Benjamin Franklin, who, of course, was the furthest thing from a churchgoer.

18:22 Nor was Wesley a great theologian in the tradition of, say, John Calvin or Martin Luther. His genius was organizational. Wesley would travel around England and North America delivering open-air sermons to thousands of people, but he didn't just preach. He also stayed long enough in each town to form the most enthusiastic of converts in religious societies, which he then turned into subdivisions, into smaller classes of a dozen or so people.

18:54 When I was studying this, I was with Dr. Coleman, Bobby Harrington, and a couple of other guys at a conference one time, and I asked Dr. Coleman this question because I knew he was a student of Wesley and he'd known about Wesley. And I said, Dr. Coleman, tell me about the movement of Methodism from 1750 until the death of John Wesley.

19:10 Here's what he said. He said, Methodism had swept so much in America that by 1820, 70 years, 35% of all Christians in America identified as Wesleyan or Methodist. 35% of all Christians in America said, I'm a Methodist. Methodism had outpaced the closest denomination by 20%. How did he do it? He reduced people into simple processes for spiritual growth.

19:39 He moved people from societies to classes to bands. That's what we do at Replicate. We move people from worship to life group to D group, and out of the D group, they change the world. Now, here's the reality. You don't have to use our system. You don't even have to use our model. One of the beautiful things of discipleship.org is there's a lot of models out there that people are implementing that are working.

20:02 That is Jesus' model of discipleship. But here's the reality. You should have a model. Someone came up to me one time. We were teaching and he said, I don't agree with the way you guys make Disciple at Replicate. I said, really? He said, I don't agree with the model. I said, really? Well, tell me about your model.

20:23 He said, we don't have a model. Pulled a line from D.L. Moody. I think I'll stick with my model, right? I'd rather use mine, which is one that we see working than one that doesn't work. So here's the reality. People in our churches want to grow closer to the Lord, but you would agree with me, they don't know how.

20:41 And when people in our churches don't know what to do, guess what? They don't do anything at all. But the question I want to end with is this. What kind of legacy did John Wesley leave? See, Wesley lingered after Whitefield left town and he moved people through this process of spiritual growth. What kind of legacy did John Wesley leave?

21:01 I'm going to give you one insight from a historian, I'm going to give you one insight from Whitefield himself. Holland McTeer said, it was by this means, the formation of societies, classes, and bands, that we have been enabled to establish permanent and holy churches all over the world. Mr. Wesley saw the necessity of this from the beginning.

21:20 Mr. Whitefield, when he separated from Wesley, did not follow it. What was the consequence? The fruit of Mr. Whitefield died with himself. Mr. Wesley's fruit remains, grows, increases, and multiplies exceedingly. But don't take this historian's word for it. Listen to George Whitefield by his own admission.

21:41 Man named John Poole, who was a Methodist preacher, came in contact with George Whitefield. I found this quote in a biography. He said, Mr. Whitefield, it's good to see you. Whitefield said, John, are you still a Wesleyan? Mr. Poole said, yes, sir, I am and I thank God that I had the privilege of being one of Mr. Wesley's preachers.

21:59 Whitefield said, John, you are in the right place. Watch this. My brother Wesley acted wisely. The souls that were awakened under conversion, he joined into classes, societies, and bands, and thus the fruits of his labor persevered. Whitefield said, this is something I neglected and I feel that my people are a rope of sand, end quote.

22:27 See, here's the thing. John Wesley knew the power of rapid multiplication when the people of God are empowered to do the work of God for the glory of God, empowered by the spirit of God, and he knew how that could work in the people. We just bought some land about a year ago, close to the church, two minutes from our church, and it was six acres of land, which is really, church members sold me the land, it was great, and I needed to kind of get away, and I'd never owned any land before.

22:55 I'm from New Orleans, so I didn't know anything about it. And so, as we were about to build our home, Kenny and I were standing on the land and she's like, she's looking out at the six acres and she said, who's going to cut all this grass? I thought, now, that's a good question, right? I never thought, that is a good question.

23:11 So, what did I do? I went out and bought animals, and that's what you do when you got land, right? So, I fenced in some of the land and I bought some animals and I started putting animals on the Galilee farm, as the staff started to jokingly call it. And one of my staff members said, do you know anything about farming?

23:28 I said, no. They said, have you ever been on a farm? I said, no. Have you ever had animals before? I said, no. They said, well, what are you doing? How are you going to learn? I said, YouTube. You can learn a lot on YouTube, right? First of all, I got three Nigerian goats, little bitty cute goats. I got two lambs, and we named them after Christians.

23:48 You know, one lamb was Lottie Moon, and so, anyway, and then we had the animals, but we needed somebody to protect it because the coyotes. And so, then we had to buy a donkey, my poor wife. And then, once we had the donkey, then we realized one of the neighbor's dogs got in the gate and killed one of the lambs, Lottie Moon, unfortunately, as a Christmas offering.

24:06 But anyway, so, which is true. So, Lottie Moon died. And so, then I had to get a great Pyrenees to protect the animals, and then I had to get some ducks for the boys, and then I had to replace the lamb. And so, we got this galley farm. And so, here's the thing about animals I've learned. There are so many lessons to the Christian life.

24:21 Like, as a shepherd of sheep, there's so many lessons. I'll tell you two of them, and then I'll give you one to close. The first thing about sheep is, if you open the gate of our property, and you have the sheep there, when the sheep are just by themselves, and it goes, when I had the sheep and I'd open the gate, do you know a sheep will never go out of an open gate?

24:36 They'll stare at it. It's not until the goats walk around the sheep and lead, and the sheep immediately follow the goats. There's a lot of biblical insight there, right? The second one is this, a sheep's body is 60% to 70% water. Did you know this? And if a sheep eats too much and falls on its back, just search this on YouTube, sheep back.

24:55 They can't get up. They're stuck. They don't...legs don't bend, so they're like sticks, you know. It's required that the shepherd assist the sheep back up. A lot of biblical insight there. But here's the one I want to leave you with, and I think this is the most impactful for discipleship. Here's what I realized about being a shepherd of sheep.

25:14 Shepherds don't make sheep, sheep make sheep. Shepherds don't make sheep, sheep make sheep. You're saying that's pretty elementary, is it? Brother Pastor, listen, leader in a church, listen. If you keep trying to frustrate yourself by executing all the ministry, you're just going to burn yourself out in ministry and leave frustrated.

25:41 Or worse, you're going to burn your staff out and they'll leave frustrated. Isn't it a better strategy to empower our people to equip the saints for the work of ministry, leaving the results to God and God get the glory, as we give people the ability to carry out the God-given ministry God has given them and some for the first time taking ownership of their faith.

26:02 Sheep make sheep, not shepherds. Father, we thank you so much that you have given us this wonderful ministry of making disciples who make disciples of all nations. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Let's give Robbie a hand. Wow. That was pretty good. Thank you, both of you. You got us two in the love seat here.

26:36 Yeah, yeah. It's not awkward at all, man. Not awkward at all. Hey, I got my suburban and my urban context for disciple-making right here. Oh, man, that's good. Well, thank you, guys. You know, what we wanted to do, first of all, is such a privilege to be able to talk to both of you and talk about what you just said.

26:58 And you both were super encouraging and super helpful. And what we want to do is bring it home. We want to talk, we've got a lot of friends here. They're in different church contexts and situations. Yeah, can I begin by thanking you for starting off by saying, you know, it's not like I have a lot of people on Sunday morning.

27:22 Can I tell you why? It's really easy in conferences and forums to highlight people who, in the eyes of the world, look really successful, but maybe in the eyes of God, not so much. And when you say, I got like 48 adults, I think you said, and that's why I'm discipling. That's where a lot more people here are living.

27:44 And so, I just thank you for that. But also, it's not saying that small is the only way God works. God works in contexts of thousands like Robbie Gallaty or Jim Putnam. But the common factor is we're committed to making disciples who make disciples. So, as you're listening, D.H. or Robbie, if you were to say one thing that stood up to you to take home, what would it be?

28:15 I think the sheep make sheep. That really resonated with my heart because, at the end of the day, at best, I'm an under-shepherd, but I'm a sheep. And the reality of that helps me sympathize and empathize with the people that I'm privileged, in this season of life, to be an under-shepherd of, but also, it frees me to recognize I'm still following the chief shepherd.

28:46 I can't create. I can't... Basically, why are my life in such a way that I become the shepherd? I'm an under-shepherd at best. And it's very freeing for me, then, to recognize I tip over. And if I'm not making disciples, who's going to set me straight? I can easily follow a goat if I just sit there and look at the open door, if I'm not following Christ.

29:14 And all the analogies that I thought of from John 10, you know, Jesus being the door, the good shepherd, I know his voice. Well, there's seasons in ministry when I'm confused and I don't have clarity. I'm not thinking clear, and I'm wondering, Jesus, where is your voice at? And then I think back to the, well, how much time am I spending in the word?

29:34 How much time am I diving deeply into the ocean of Scripture to say, there's your voice? I'm so sorry, Lord, I was not in this as much as I should. So those were things. You know, I tell people, it's funny you say that, because I tell people, you can't say you don't hear from God with a closed Bible on the desk by the bed.

29:53 Like, people, I don't hear from God. If your Bible's closed at night, you can't say that, because God's already said everything he needs to say in this book, right? And so we don't graduate from the Bible. It's good to say. In fact, you know, there's something unique about both of you. First of all, you are both very committed to the authority of the word of God.

30:15 And when I say that, I don't mean that it's a theory for you, although you do believe in the inspiration and infallible word of God. But you make it practical. You're both, I know your ministries and your lives well enough to know, that's the basis out of which you do ministry. Even, D.A., the talk that you're coming out of Scripture, and you know how to use the hands, and, you know, how to rap, and you could...

30:42 But it's coming out of Scripture. D.A.'s the kind of guy we all wish we preached like. You know, I'm listening to D.A., like, why can't I preach like that, right? He's like a poet preacher. I love it, man. So, Robby, you talked about the study with Eric Geiger and LifeWay, and that engagement with the word of God is the most significant thing going on.

31:00 Now, the context of relationships, but it's engagement with the word of God. Now, I'd like to stick with this for a second. Years ago, many of those who are in church leadership will know, in the Willow Creek Reveal study, they studied, you know, hundreds of thousands of believers in Jesus, and they came down to it, and they said, if you could only do one thing, what is the single most important thing you could do?

31:26 And it was daily engagement in the word of God, which is exactly what you're saying. And what I'd like to bring up, and I'm wondering if you guys can bring it down right here. What are some key things that we need to know when we leave here, in addition to us being in the word, but of calling people in our churches into the word?

31:52 Because disciple-making is relational. It's how Jesus did it. But Jesus never intended it to be apart from Scripture. In fact, archaeologists have found out recently, Craig Evans and others, are documenting how people in the time of Jesus really knew Scripture, how highly literate they were. They took Deuteronomy 6, they understood it as a commandment to know the words of God, and it says, these commandments I give you today, talk about them when you walk along the road with your children, when you lie down, when you get up, tie them as symbols on your hands and your foreheads.

32:32 They took that to mean, in the first century, that they had to be able to read and memorize the word of God to teach it to their kids. So they were far more literate than we often think, and archaeologists have demonstrated that recently. I have a concern. We're in a time where all of our people are so busy.

32:56 Your people are busy, people in my church are busy, everybody's so busy, okay? And Robbie, you showed the church attendance stats. So we're not getting them in church, and when they do come to church, even 20, 30 years ago, they'd come to Sunday school, then they'd come to, you know, a worship service.

33:17 They might come back Wednesday night or during the week, but now you're doing good if you can get them there one to two times a month just for the worship service. What are we going to do to get them into groups and into the word? Keep them grounded. Okay, so I'll say there's a lot we can say because you said a lot of good things.

33:37 I've always said this, I think the greatest challenge for the American church is the vast amount of literate believers who are illiterate to the Bible. Wow. Think about that. People who...we're not talking about a foreign culture where they don't have access to the Bible, which right now at Long Hollow, we're translating a Bible into the language of a people in Southeast Asia that have no access to the Bible.

33:57 They couldn't read the Bible if they wanted to. But we in America, we use the Bible as placards to hold our seat, placeholders, and we flip the Bible. We have so many Bibles, we don't even read the Bible. So that's the first thing. Second thing I'd say is, as you said, relational. Another principle about...I mean, there's so many...shepherding.

34:14 But here's the thing about shepherding and having animals. Shepherds smell like sheep. Pastors, you need to be around your flock as a shepherd. A disciple-maker smells like...we're around our people. So here's one more thing, and I'll let D.S. speak. Recently, just to prove your point, some guys from a stewardship company, Generis, told us they just conducted a survey for a couple of years from...

34:40 essentially, write this down, from 2000...in the year 2000, the average church attender, church-going attender, member of your church, went to church 3.2 times a month. 2000, 3.2 times a month. Could be one of us. 3.2 times a month. In 2017, just 17 years later, the average church-going, member of your church, goes to church 1.8 times.

35:08 So, pastor, listen to me. It's not necessarily that your church is declining. Here's what's interesting. It's that the people who call themselves members are coming less frequently. That's why you have such a big service on Easter Sunday. It's all the roamers and casual people who call them, you know, Harpeth Hall, but I come once a month.

35:28 They come on one Sunday. So the answer, somebody said, what's the answer to that? I think the answer is discipleship. If you want to close the back door of your church, you get people connected in smaller context, whether you're pastoring a church of 50 or 100, or a church of a larger size, it's getting people in these smaller context of stick-to-itiveness.

35:47 I just...we got to stick on this for a second here, guys. So, what's happening is people are going to church less, the culture is discipling them more, right, through social media, through movies, through you name it, the culture. Everybody's being discipled by somebody, but how many people are so associated in relationships with our church that they're being discipled by the word of God in the midst of the people of God?

36:18 Because disciple-making, as we all agree, takes the word of God, the people of God, and the spirit of God in the midst of it. And we've got to be calling each other. We've got to be calling all of us as individuals because this is sheep reproduce sheep. It's not going to take the leaders, it's going to take Acts chapter 4, everyday men, they said of Peter and John, they were ordinary men who had been with Jesus.

36:46 The disciple-making movement that Shenanke started us off talking about, it is not seminary-educated people, although there's a place for seminary. It's everyday people who say, I'm a disciple, called to make disciples using the word of God as my authority and my power. Faith comes through hearing and hearing by the word of God.

37:09 Now, I'm the one preaching here. But give us some... Let me say this too, and I don't want to harp, but you got me fired up too. So I'm just going to say one thing. Sorry, I'm just going to say one thing, I'm going to turn to you. I said this before, and people said... So, 5, 10 years ago when I used to say this, people thought I was crazy, and you know what I'm about to say because I've said this before.

37:27 I believe a return to disciple-making will bring about the reformation of the 21st century. I am convinced of that, and here's why. If you study the reformation of Martin Luther in the 17th century, what made that so amazing was that Luther believed as Tyndale kind of led the way and Wickliffe before him, that the plowboy in the field could take the word of God with the spirit of God and understand it for himself.

37:49 You didn't need a priest or a cardinal or a bishop. You could understand the word for yourself. That was the reformation of back then. Here's what's so cool about discipleship and disciple-making. The people of God, any person filled with the spirit of God can wield the word of God, invest in the people of God for the glory of God, and do it faithfully, fearfully, because you don't need a seminary degree, you don't need a sheepskin on the wall, but anybody can do it.

38:13 And I think when we do that more, we can empower people to take ownership of their faith, and we can see a movement. And here's what I tell people all the time. Leonard Ravenhill used to say this. He used to say, because what you're doing is you're getting people on fire for God. Leonard Ravenhill used to say, you don't have to advertise a fire, it advertises itself.

38:31 See, listen, when people get set on fire for Jesus, they become the greatest apologist in our church for a disciple-making movement. I'm just telling you guys, when you get serious about it. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I would definitely add two things, and it goes back to a high view level of Scripture.

38:45 Number one, what we have to help our people understand, because the culture is seeking to pull them away. It's the enemy doing the same thing he did in the garden, sowing seeds of doubt of God's word and God's goodness. Same thing he did at Eve, he's doing today. So you tell the people the tactic of the evil one.

39:03 But then you also look at the fact that we have a transcendent God who stands outside of time and he stands outside of cultural interpretation. His word is greater than both of those things. If his word is truly timeless, there's no expiration date on it. That's right. So it doesn't mean that what was then is then and what is now is now.

39:19 The culture can say that because they don't know the transcendent God that we do, but yet he's also imminent. And so that is where the abiding Holy Spirit that lives inside of us gives us the gift of illumination. So what we have to recognize is that Scripture gives us a framework that we are to recognize everything inside of this is righteousness as a transcendent, completely holy and perfect God has declared, this is righteousness.

39:44 Everything outside of these hard lines that form the framework, that is unrighteousness. As my covenant-keeping people, you are called to walk in freedom in the framework that I've given you. But here's what's happened in America and other countries that are more westernized and that are more industrialized, is that we, inside of the framework, have built up walls of separation, segregation, and division.

40:08 And so what we have to recognize is it's understood culturally in the American landscape of Christianity that Hebrews 10, do not forsake the assembling, is truncated to Sunday only. Nowhere in the text does it say Sunday only. That's right, brother. So the reality of the fellowship and the gathering of the people of God is at any time that we as believers and dwelt by the Spirit of God, come together to commune and fellowship within the framework.

40:35 So what we have the heavy lifting of doing is deconstructing American Christianity, but never take it to deconstructing the transcendent framework of Scripture. That will allow us to operate in more freedom. And in this process of deconstruction, that is what discipleship does. It deconstructs the mythology of programmatic steadfastness.

40:58 And it's now personally driven with understanding the text and living it out in the nuances of the culture and the society that according to Acts 17, 26, God has sovereignly predetermined us to live, move, and have our being in. So when the people of God understand this is the reality of what I'm called to live, it is a high-level view of Scripture, it's a high-level view of the mission of Jesus, and that is where we have the lowly responsibility of living these things out.

41:27 Wow. Isn't that good? That's really good. All right. I could keep talking to these guys all day, but let me tell you what is most important right now. It's that we become doers of what we've been talking about. If we are called to be disciples who make disciples, who take the word of God, believing it's the power of God, that as disciple-makers within the boundaries of Scripture, holding a high view of Scripture, and calling people to trust Scripture as it points us to the Lord of Lord and the King of Kings, we all have the privilege of loving those around us enough to honor Jesus by committing to be disciple-makers.

42:30 Hey, guys, thanks for listening to this episode. For more great content like this, come check us out at www.discipleship.org, and we cannot wait to see you guys next time. Take care.