A, B, C, discipleship...

 by Peter Tarantal.

Someone recently asked me, “How could we miss such an elementary truth?” After all, Matthew 28:19 compels us to go and make disciples—not converts, although that’s what many focus on. Are we driven by zeal to bring people to Christ? Or are we influenced by donors who want to see tangible, and sometimes immediate, results? After all, making a disciple takes a lifetime.

One reason for the tremendous growth in Christianity in Africa is mass evangelism (true also for Asia and Latin America). According to the latest Operation World, the growth of Christianity in these continents has been nothing short of spectacular. Yet I live on a continent where, athough more than 500 million now claim to be Christian, we are beset by challenges like HIV and AIDS, poverty, corruption and conflict. I find myself asking, “Where is the Church in all of this?”

A friend and colleague who leads Campus Crusade for East and Southern Africa recently told me that while he was the national director of an African country, a well-known evangelist visited a region in that country. About 100,000 attended the conference; about 19,000 made commitments to Christ. A few months later, when my friend and his team researched how many of these people had become part of a local church, they could find no more than 10. An extreme example, but it certainly makes a point.

There is hope, though. In 2006, Dr. Obed from Nigeria launched the Transformational Discipleship Network to focus the African Church’s attention on the critical need for discipleship. The recently released “Cape Town Commitment” from the 2010 Lausanne Congress highlighted the need for true discipleship. The latest copy of Mission Frontiers devotes the entire issue to the subject. One of the best books on discipleship I have read is Discipleship, written by Peter Maiden, International Director of OM.

OM has a role to play, coming alongside the Church around the world to teach and train on discipleship. In OM Africa, a major component of our vision to mobilise people into missions is discipling churches. 'Mentoring' is a trendy word these days, but I would like to see us get back to old-fashioned discipleship. It would be great if we could all be like the Berean Christians in Acts 17, who searched the Scriptures daily to see whether what Paul was teaching them was correct.

OM South Africa has even changed the name of our training from 'South Africa training team' to 'Missions Discipleship Training' to reflect that. Our purpose is more than training for missions; it is (lifelong) discipleship training. In the past, we made assumptions that those joining missions had at least some foundational Bible knowledge. But, this is not always the case. We have had to rethink our own strategy for preparing people for missions.

I pray that throughout the world there will be a new movement to raise disciples who will make an impact for Jesus.