Commission on Evangelism & Missions > CONECAR 2007 - Making Disciples

	INTRODUCTION	TWO ISSUES IN THE EFFECTIVENESS OF OUR DISCIPLESHIP
	WHAT IS OUR COMMISSION?	CONCLUSION
	WHAT IS A DISCIPLE?

1. INTRODUCTION

The Gospel of Christ in various forms has been in these islands since 1492 – that is 515 years. We might quibble about the form of Christianity but it is a long time that the message of Christ in some form has been proclaimed in our islands. Many of our Caribbean countries would lay claim to being “Christian societies”, however nominal that Christianity might be.

I have had the privilege of travelling through our islands since I was 14 and have visited every Caribbean country with the exception of Cuba, many several times. There is certainly a very visible presence of church buildings. However, I am disturbed that life in our islands does not seem to reflect the principles of Christianity. This is not easy to measure and many of the global indices of various factors do not include our small island states in their statistical data. Yet there are a few that help us to look at our societies in very broad terms, cognizant that generalisations can indeed be odious.

The Corruption Perception Index developed by an organisation called Transparency International is one general indicator. “The index defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain and measures the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country's public officials and politicians. It is a composite index, drawing on 12 polls and surveys from 9 independent institutions, which gathered the opinions of businesspeople and country analysts.”1 In the 2007 Index2 released on September 26, 2007 eleven Caribbean countries have been included. Barbados remains at the top of Caribbean countries listed, improving its position from 24th to 23rd with an index of 6.9 out of a possible ten. St. Lucia has entered the index at 24th and St. Vincent and the Grenadines at 30th. Dominica has improved its ranking from 53rd to 37th. These are the only Caribbean countries that have an index higher than five out of a possible ten. Having a ranking below five is indicative of a serious corruption problem.

Cuba has improved its ranking from 66th to 61st. Grenada has dropped from 66th to 79th. Jamaica has dropped from 61st to 84th while under the leadership of a Prime Minister who testified to new birth in Christ and church leaders at the same time claim to have more churches per square mile than any other country in the world. Trinidad and Tobago has maintained its rating at 79th and the Dominican Republic has stayed at 99th. Guyana has dropped from 121st to 123rd and Haïti from 163rd to 177th. At the same time it is claimed that Evangelical Christians make up more than 30% of the population of Haïti and some of the largest Evangelical Christian congregations in the Caribbean are in Haïti.

I read several Caribbean newspapers regularly on the Internet. There is an appearance of growing crime rates but I have been unable to find a definitive study that compares crime rates. One study3 that compared the murder rates in 62 countries over the period 1998-2000 listed two Caribbean countries – Jamaica as 3rd in the world in murders per capita and Dominica as 28th. The increasing murder rate in Trinidad will probably win that country a place in future studies.

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons on June 12, 2007 issued its Trafficking In Persons Report. The report assigns countries into three categories or tiers; with tier one being the best. Of the 147 countries listed only four Caribbean countries are included. Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Guyana are listed in Tier 2 and Cuba in Tier 3 – the worst level. I do from time to time in the online versions of Caribbean news media see reports of women being arrested and deported when they are found to be actively involved in prostitution. Who trafficked them from their home countries to our countries for the illegal sex trade?

These are national indicators that give us some limited understanding of the impact of the Gospel and of the Church in our Caribbean societies. If over time the indicators improve then by implication the Church is positively impacting the society. If the indices show increasingly negative trends Christians must examine why the Church is not having a greater impact.

At the same time I visit many, many congregations from a broad spectrum of denominational flavours. I am concerned about the sermon content that I listen to. There is a very high volume of motivational messages or perhaps massages, “feel good” messages of the God-will-bring-you-through variety, messages centred on the acquisition of material possessions otherwise known as the “prosperity gospel,” and evangelistic messages aimed at bringing persons to faith in Christ. Regardless of what we may individually think of these types of preaching one thing is clear, these messages do not equip our people to live in holiness and maintain a God-relationship that empowers them to be salt and light in their daily lives and interpersonal relationships.

It was in the Philippines in December 2006 that I first heard Baptist Bishop Dr. Cesar Punsulun talk about the Congregation Continuum. On one extreme are the congregations which only emphasise a social message and on the other extreme are those who only emphasise evangelism and salvation. Both are extremes, though many of us Evangelicals are proud to identify ourselves exclusively with the latter extreme. Yet an honest reading of Scripture causes us to conclude that the Gospel is meant to be transformational – transforming the individual, the family, the community and ultimately the society. Being salt and light is not a position of great reverence and ceremonial importance. Being salt and light is the practical outworking in daily life of the teaching and principles of Jesus in such a way that change results in our lives and in the lives of the people with whom we interact.

This brings us to the theme of this congress: Making Disciples: Developing Christians to Make a Difference. So:

2. WHAT IS OUR COMMISSION?

For many years I read the Great Commission in Matthew 28 as, “Go and win souls in every nation.” After all, “He who wins souls is wise” (Proverbs 11:30).

It is not known who said, "The church today is raising a whole generation of mules. They know how to sweat and to work hard but they don't know how to reproduce themselves." But, it is a statement of extraordinary insight. Mules are hard workers. They have carried supplies, plowed fields, pulled wagons and transported people. The only problem is that they are almost always sterile and thus cannot reproduce. They are hard workers, but they are the end of the line. They do not produce more like themselves. The church is full of hard workers. They teach classes, serve the physical needs of others, clean up and mow the grass, cook, move tables, organise social activities, visit and even write letters and cards, and do a host of other things. There is just one problem. They don't “reproduce.” They don’t teach the gospel to the lost so others can become hard workers. They are the end of the line. The real job the Lord gave us is to go into the world and “reproduce ourselves” by making disciples of others. It is a tough lesson to realize that you may have worked hard and yet still haven't gotten the job done. Let us say it plainly. If we are not evangelising, we are not doing the job completely. If we are nothing more than a generation of mules, we are on the road to extinction.4

The evangelist or missionary is, therefore, a critical gift to the Church. Evangelists and missionaries bring people to the place of repentance and commitment to Christ. We need more evangelists and missionaries in this hour to bring in the harvest. Too many of our people are afraid to, or are incapable of, sharing their faith. There are far too few who commit to “do the work of an evangelist,” as the Apostle Paul instructed young Pastor Timothy (2 Timothy 4:5). Perhaps more of our congregations should participate in the training available from Evangelism Explosion. EE is a member-body of EAC and very willing to help equip our people to share their faith with confidence. James Montgomery Boice has correctly stated that “A disobedient church is one that does not evangelise, begins to dry up, or even dies.”5 Without a doubt evangelism is the life blood of the Church.

While evangelism is critical it really is not the total essence of the Great Commission. The instruction from Jesus is unambiguous, “Make disciples of all the nations … teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” Turning to James Montgomery Boice again, “Without what follows, evangelism is at best one-sided and perhaps unreal.”6 When we primarily do evangelism we bring many to Christ but there is a wide open back door through which almost as many go out. Evangelism must be accompanied by real discipleship.

The gift of pastor-teacher is just as critical as the gift of evangelist. When we fail to teach converts to obey all Jesus has taught we fulfill the Great Omission and the Church suffers. Converts who are not discipled remain spiritual infants and the society is not impacted by the salt and light that potentially exists within our church gatherings. Unless converts learn to obey Holy Scripture their salt has no savour and their light is “under a bucket,” (Matthew 5:15).7

For decades Bible schools in our region have almost exclusively taught theology and Bible-related subjects in the mistaken belief that they are producing leaders. Teaching theology produces theologians, not leaders. When Bible schools only produce theologians the Church becomes spiritually constipated and introspective, able to lead an occasional soul to Christ but unable to impact the society and effectively disciple the nation as Jesus commissioned us to do.

When I was elected Superintendent of the Barbados District of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the West Indies I soon discovered that I had no training whatsoever for the task. All my training was in theology but I found myself leading a staff of over 40 credentialed workers, a denomination of thousands of people, and managing assets well over BD$10,000,000.00. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I was able to rectify the situation somewhat by pursuing a Diploma in Administrative Management at the Barbados Institute of Management and Productivity. But it didn’t take me long to realise that management was not sufficient. I needed to understand leadership and develop leadership skills.

While managers can keep a complex system functioning, leaders define the future and enable the people they lead to reach that future. Leaders are going somewhere and taking their people with them. This is fundamental to fulfilling the Great Commission. God has described the future in the Bible. As leaders it is our task to guide our people into that future. When we fail to lead our people into full discipleship we’re a lot like the Israelis wandering in the desert for 40 years and, as we know, wandering in the desert buries an entire generation.

God’s promise to the Israelis as they exited Egypt was: “God will make you the head, not the tail; you'll always be the top dog, never the bottom dog, as you obediently listen to and diligently keep the commands of God, your God, that I am commanding you today” (Deuteronomy 28:13, The Message). God’s intention is that His people are to be leaders throughout the society. When we have theologian-managers filling leadership roles not only will our people be inadequately discipled, they will not be the leaders God intends them to be. Willam Kumuyi of Nigeria lays out the comprehensive role of leadership when he describes a leader as “a seer, seeker, servant, strategist, shepherd, sustainer, steward and spokesman8.” Drs. Abdul Kalam and Sivathanu Pillai of India capture the changing essence of leadership stating, “… Leadership is exercising the vision to change the traditional role from commander to coach, from manager to mentor, from director to delegator, and from one who demands respect to one who facilitates self-respect9.” This type of leadership is urgently needed to build disciples across the Caribbean.

Harris Lee10 has pointed out, “The people of God need not only the nourishment from the Word and sacrament; they need as well the nourishment that comes from the right quality and quantity of leadership and organisational attention.” Leadership is critical in leading men and women to Christ, in showing them how to take off the grave clothes of the past and then disciple them in putting on the new man. Then leadership is needed to bring them into the ministry for which God has called them and empowering them to be all God intended them to be.

Without leadership the Church is like a merry-go-round, lots of activity, bright lights, and noise but in reality there’s no forward progress. There is little numerical growth. There is marginal spiritual growth. There is stagnation. With God-ordained leadership the Church has forward movement because leadership gets us going somewhere. Disciples are birthed, matured and thrust out into society. The impact of their lives is transformational and societal norms begin to change.

This kind of societal change can be traced in history. Abraham Kuyper became Prime Minister of The Netherlands in 1901. History11 records the complete change of that country as a Christ-surrendered, Holy Spirit-filled man led the nation into discipleship to Christ. According to Kuyper12, “In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘That is mine!’”

It happened too in Geneva when John Calvin13 was invited back to the city in September 1541 and turned the city from the smelliest city in Europe into one of the most amazing places of his generation. It also happened in Scotland when Prince David, the sixth son of King Malcolm, ascended to the throne in 1124 as David I, King of Scots. A Godly man whose mother has been canonized and is now known as St. Margaret; a man who had a brother who was bishop in the Celtic Church and another brother who was a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church; a man who loved God and has himself been canonized, set out to change Scotland. On May 24th, 1153 when they went to awaken the King of Scots they found David dead, kneeling beside his bed in the posture of prayer. The King of Scots had passed into his Master’s presence on his knees. Nigel Tranter, perhaps Scotland’s most prolific historical writer of the twentieth century, describes King David as one of Scotland’s greatest sons and records that “he left a different nation behind him14.” Tranter also records that in the 30 years David reigned “he had changed Scotland more than any other man before or since15.”

As John Maxwell reminds us, “Everything rises and falls on leadership16.” It is leaders, well-grounded in the Bible and teachings of Jesus, who will disciple the people entrusted to their care. It is leaders who have a vision, call men and women to follow, and disciple those followers until the vision is achieved.

This brings us to the question:

3. WHAT IS A DISCIPLE?

As I have read the available literature it seems that almost everyone has their own definition of “disciple.” Easton’s Bible Dictionary gives this helpful definition: “A disciple of Christ is one who (1) believes His doctrine, (2) rests on His sacrifice, (3) imbibes His spirit, and (4) imitates His example.”17

The Bible Exposition Commentary says that “Apprentice might be an equivalent term. A disciple attached himself to a teacher, identified with him, learned from him, and lived with him. He learned, not simply by listening, but also by doing.”18 In fact, in secular Greek the word for disciple meant “an apprentice in some trade, a student of some subject, or a pupil of some teacher.”19 The importance of the concept of discipleship is reinforced by the use of the verb in the New Testament 25 times and the noun 264 times.20

Michael Wilkins states that “Discipleship is the process by which a disciple (Christian) is transformed, while discipling is the involvement of one disciple helping another to grow in his or her discipleship.”21 Warren Wiersbe notes that the transformation is not just religious but also cultural.22

During the next three days together here in Trinidad a variety of plenary speakers and workshop facilitators will help us work through much of what this means in practical terms. My task is simply to paint the broad brush strokes that introduce us to the topic. I have looked at broad societal indices that could help us determine how much impact the Church is currently having in our Caribbean societies. I have briefly grappled with defining our commission from Jesus, understanding the term disciple and outlining the critical need for leaders. Essentially, being a disciple of Jesus means changes in every area of life and these changes impact those around us. Now let me look at two things that are important issues in how well we are discipling those we lead.

4. TWO ISSUES IN THE EFFECTIVENESS OF OUR DISCIPLESHIP

In the latter part of 2006 I conducted a survey in Barbados on the sexual practices of young people in our evangelical congregations. About 50 congregations from across Barbados and the denominational spectrum agreed to participate. I was able to tabulate 420 responses that met the criteria for confidentiality. Church attendance for this sample averaged eight services per respondent in the month prior to the survey – that’s about twice a week. These are largely church-going youth.

When asked if they had ever had sex 42.6% replied in the affirmative but only 4.5% indicated that their first sexual partner was a spouse. Some indicated that their sexual behaviour has changed because of faith in Christ but 26.3% indicated that they are continuing to have sex outside of marriage. Where one in every four of our church-going youth are sexually active but not married we have a discipleship challenge.

When we asked about the number of sexual partners the young women averaged four partners and the young men averaged seven partners. Some did not indicate a number in their responses but wrote things like “many,” “can’t remember,” “a lot,” and even “multitude.” That clearly indicates that the average is in fact higher than I was able to compute from the answers given on the survey forms.

The age at which sex started ranged from age seven (one person) to age thirty-seven (one person). The age for first sex starts to increase around age 12, shortly after entering secondary school, and peaks at age 16, the age of consent in Barbados, with another slightly lower peak at age 18, the legal age of adulthood. When compared with the national survey of all young people the figures for church-going youth are lower in all categories except those having sex for the first time after the age of 18. Clearly the Church is having some impact but I would suggest we need to robustly address this discipleship challenge.

When asked if their pastors talked about sex in church, 9% said never and another 17.4% said rarely. When asked if their youth leader ever discussed sex, 9.8% said never and 17.4% said rarely. If more than 25% of our pastors and youth leaders are not providing discipleship in the area of our sexuality, we have a problem.

Of deep concern to me is that one percent of the respondents indicated that they are already HIV+. That has significant implications for how we do discipleship as we must add to the biblical teachings on sexuality the additional biblical teachings on discrimination and stigmatisation. It is not enough to have high-sounding phrases and great sound bites from the pulpit. We must provide practical, biblical, and relevant teaching to enable our people to order their lives according to the teachings of Christ.

I would like to do this survey in other Caribbean countries so that we can build a basis for comparison and see if the Barbados survey has any anomalies. Then I would like to conduct the survey again after about five years to determine if we’re making any difference. It is expensive to obtain hard data but this type of data helps us to understand what we’re actually accomplishing and where we need to improve what we are doing. The results of the Barbados survey clearly indicate that while we’re ahead of the population in general in terms of sexual promiscuity, we have strong challenges to face and critical issues to address in our discipleship programmes.

A second issue that is vital, though controversial, is the racial culture of Christianity. On its way to the Caribbean Christianity spent centuries in Europe before reaching our shores. By the time Christopher Columbus was sailing for the first time across the Atlantic, the European continent had fully absorbed Christianity and the great artists of the Middle Ages were being commissioned to paint their interpretations of biblical figures. In 1508 Michelangelo began the amazing fresco in the Sistine Chapel. Of course all the figures represented, from God to satan, were white Europeans. By the time he died on February 14th, 1564 he had produced an astounding array of work including the final architectural design for St. Peter’s Basilica. Numerous other artists like Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo and Raphael were also producing prodigious amounts of religious art, all depicting biblical figures as white Europeans. It is quite possible that some of these artists never even saw a black person and had no other reference point than what they personally knew and experienced in white, European culture.

When the Roman Catholic Church declared Africans to be only three-fifths human it was quite clear that they could not portray Jesus, the Apostles and Prophets as people of colour. So as the missionaries brought us the Gospel, they brought it fully clothed in the culture of Europe – artistic expressions of biblical characters, music, traditions, architecture, vestments, etc. Having enslaved the Africans, the Europeans could not allow the European culture to be removed from the Gospel.

Yet a close examination of our Holy Bible shows it to be much more an African book than it could ever be European. There is growing consensus – still fiercely resisted in some quarters – that the Garden of Eden was in fact in Africa, making Adam and Eve black Africans from who the entire human race has descended.

There is now clear DNA evidence that groups such as the Lemba in Zimbabwe are indeed Jewish even though they are clearly black. Egypt was a very black African country during the period of the Pharaohs and during the enslavement of the Israelis there. It would be miraculous if the Israelis emerged from Egyptian slavery as lily white Europeans after 430 years in black Egypt. With this in mind, it would make no sense for God to send Jesus to hide in Egypt if he was a white baby. How could you hide three white people among a nation of black Egyptians?

Moses was raised in the palaces of Egypt. He spent 40 years learning the ways of black African rulers. It is not a surprise to discover that many of the laws Moses wrote into the Pentateuch bare striking similarities to black Egyptian practices and legislation, so much so that some people have called our Bible a book of African philosophy.

Yet we continue to disciple our black Caribbeans into a Christianity firmly wrapped in white, European culture to the point where detractors in our countries ridicule our people for serving a white God. In many Caribbean congregations white, Southern, country and western music is still considered “real” Gospel music and anything that sounds African or Caribbean is termed “devilish.” I wonder where we got that from? To others only the European anthems and hymns can create the right atmosphere for worship. In many churches the art that represents biblical figures and persons from Church history are all European when people like St. Augustine were black Africans and Jesus, all the Apostles and all the Prophets were most certainly not white Europeans. Not long ago a black congregation in one of our islands hired an artist to paint a mural of the last supper. Everyone in the mural was white except – you guessed it – Judas. Thankfully the bishop of the denomination gave instructions to have it painted over entirely.

In all honesty, can we continue to disciple black people in a Gospel that is strongly African but so deeply embedded in European culture it has lost for us its essential African nature? Shouldn’t we lovingly remove the added culture and absorb the Gospel into our own culture? Shouldn’t we be able to express worship, lifestyle, discipleship from the depths of who we are as Caribbeans and not have to become white, Anglo-Saxon in culture and practice to be serious disciples of Jesus? I think so!

5. CONCLUSION

So we have assembled here to discuss discipleship. We have come out of a longing to bring men and women to Christ. We have left home and come here to Trinidad because we want to make a difference for Christ, in Christ and through Christ. We want to see souls saved and lives transformed. But we also want to see the Gospel permeate every facet of society until every societal structure comes under the Lordship of Jesus.

The incarnation is our prototype. Just as the Word became flesh in the incarnation and the divine took human form, so too must we incarnate the precepts of Scripture in our lifestyles and let the principles of the Bible live through our lives. We are not perfect, but we are to lead the people of the Caribbean into discipleship and obedience to our Lord Jesus. Many are the battles to be fought, painful are the ones we do not win.

In his book Led by the Carpenter, D. James Kennedy writes: A man walked into a little mom-and-pop grocery store and asked, “Do you sell salt?” “Ha!” said Pop the proprietor. “Do we sell salt! Just look!” And Pop showed the customer one entire wall of shelves stocked with nothing but salt—Morton salt, iodized salt, kosher salt, sea salt, rock salt, garlic salt, seasoning salt, Epsom salts—every kind of salt imaginable. “Wow!” said the customer. “You think that's something?” said Pop with a wave of his hand. “That's nothing! Come look.” And Pop led the customer to a back room filled with shelves and bins and cartons and barrels and boxes of salt. “Do we sell salt!” he said. “Unbelievable!” said the customer. “You think that's something?” said Pop. “Come! I'll show you salt!” And Pop led the customer down some steps into a huge basement, five times as large as the previous room, filled wall, floor, to ceiling, with every imaginable form and size and shape of salt—even huge ten-pound salt licks for the cow pasture. “Incredible!” said the customer. “You really do sell salt!” “No!” said Pop. “That’s just the problem! We never sell salt! But that salt salesman—Hoo-boy! Does he sell salt!” Salt that stays on the shelf doesn't do any good at all.23

We have been called to do more than win souls. Our commission is to make disciples. May God help us this week to grapple with this issue so that when we head home on Friday we have been renewed, reinvigorated and are ready to make a deep difference in the areas where we’ve been called to serve.