The current members of our church are about seventy members, with another ten, or a little more, practically ready to be baptized. On Sundays, we have a frequency between seventy and one hundred people (I guess it’s about the same number of urinals found in many mega-churches). Anyway, we are a small church, however, as of October 2015 [i], we will have, at different levels, twenty-five people trained and/or disciplined full-time in various roles.
Now, a lot of those people were real when we accepted them. Some had not even finished high school, some had been addicted and criminals throughout their adult lives, some had suspicious temperaments, and others at first had no idea of the inner workings of a social housing community. I have no doubt that most of them would not be considered, in most of the churches I know, as a human heritage to form. Leadership here at Niddrie Community Church certainly involves a lot of risks and, to be honest, some of those risks?turned to “bite us. ” We are living our fair share of failures. In fact, it would place the failure rate around 50%. JRH had, until recently, four men in training, but one of them tragically decided to return to his former way of life. On the other hand, we have also had spectacular successes. Therefore, we believe that our risk policy is worthwhile and will ultimately reap lasting benefits for the church and for the testimony of the gospel here in Niddria and in our surrounding communities.
- If we really want to encourage indigenous leaders in these areas.
- We have to take huge and loyal risks against local converts.
- Textbooks and theoretical discussions are all good and useful.
- But we have to start putting the principles into practice if we are to pass the baton on to faithful men and women.
- For example.
- At Niddrie.
- One of our most recent interns was rescued less than twelve months ago.
- Yet he has demonstrated incredible theological ability that accompanies his youthful evangelical zeal.
- (I can already hear the sigh of some people reading this).
- How to explain this? And the character? And maturity? Great questions.
- Indeed.
- Good questions.
- But let me ask you another question: How can we teach and even evaluate these things in our area of ministry without a practical context in which character and maturity can develop? Won’t the next generation of leaders? maturity only from the pulpit or in a weekday Bible study.
- They will do so by being.
- As soon as possible.
- Deeply involved in the service of their Christian walk.
- Sparkly.
- So how do we get to this stage of our ministry here in Niddria? Is it because I am a brilliant and wonderful thinker? Unfortunately not.
- Let me tell you how we got to this point in our ministry.
This year, I left for a day to reflect and pray, so I began to wonder why many of our new converts did not reach their friends and family with the gospel of the Lord Jesus. They loved Jesus and God was certainly working in their lives, they attended all bible studies, sometimes up to four a week. They attended Sunday services, were excited about their faith, were disciplined and guided, but there was still a lack of momentum to take on new ministerial ideas and lack of active participation in the dissemination of the gospel to the community. Did they seem to be coming? Make no mistake, they were growing at a remarkable rate in terms of biblical knowledge, but we didn’t see leaders stand out. It was like one-way traffic. Obviously, the reasons behind this are long and complex, but one thing in particular began to annoy me: what if we over-discipline (in a bad way) our new believers?What if we encourage this passive and consumerist Christianity? After thinking a little more, I came to a definitive conclusion.
We were guilty of having exercised a paternalistic disciple. Much of the conservative culture of the evangelical church operates with a 1 Timothy 3-like mantra that goes something like this: “We must not promote new believers spiritually so soon. ” Of course, there is great wisdom in this, but this particular characteristic of conservatism, however, is even more evident if the new believer in question comes from a criminal record, does he have a testimony? Interesting? or is it a “trophy of grace”. The reaction in many middle class churches, in my experience, to these converts is to put them on the sidelines and push them into strange events of witness. I am not saying that these new converts are not educated or disciplined, but in my experience in the UK I have met some of these men who are actually in ministry. There are a few, but we are very few. Now that I know, the answer to Niddrie was to make sure we quickly connect our new believers with a mentor, make sure they quickly participate in regular Bible study, and become part of community life. . Due to the high level of unemployment here, it is not uncommon to have people in two or three Bible studies per week outside of Sunday services.
The problem was, as I could see, we had started spoiling them. to the point that they inadvertently learned to become simple consumers like many of these participants? (I mean the church as a whole, not just the church here in our community. ) Did I start to worry that we would discipline ourselves? our new people. We study too much with them, we protect them too much instead of letting them fly; we innocently bought the lie that they were too weak, too ill-prepared, or too young to break free from themselves. Worse still, due to the victim mentality that exists in needy communities, this in turn has produced, in their sense of entitlement and disability, overdependence. So instead of serving, evangelizing and contributing, they would take their treasure, dig a deep hole, close it in a box, and keep this beautiful gift for themselves. But the really terrible thing is that we, those of us who work so hard to help them, provide them with the shovel, the box and also keep the key for them. I decided that we had to give our new converts, in prayer and wisdom, opportunities to fly, if we really wanted to see them grow, flourish and mature to be future leaders. It was very painful to conclude that our celebrated, planned, missionary, intentional and gospel-centered focus of discipleship was in fact helping to slow the growth and development of leadership in our community. What hurt our people was not much discipleship, but the wrong kind of discipleship. As a result of this reflection, this year we have made some minor adjustments. One of them is? Push? people faster at other levels of responsibility and service, insignificant as it may seem. Additionally, we teach our new believers more quickly not only the facts of faith, but also how to share them, conduct a simple Bible study, and lead a person to the Lord. In fact, we take off the training wheels faster and trust that God, by His Spirit, will help them grow and mature more fully.
So far, this approach has simply been deastrous on the one hand and a supreme blessing on the other. It’s inastrous because we’ve already had an accident, where the “victim,” as soon as she got some freedom, got into drugs and started chasing the girls. Another, on his first trip to the “work center,” ended up getting drunk in the local pub, which led him to withdraw from our care, but led another to approach Christ, encouraged him to perceive how community and responsibility is important in the battle against Satan and the sinful ego. We expect more confusion and more loss, but the important thing is that people are our converts, or rather converted to the Lord. If they are ours, then they will fail, but if they belong to the Lord, they will finally persevere, no matter how many times they fall.
Pray for us. Pray for our people
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[i] N. T. Esseartigo was originally published on February 5, 2013.