A CGGC Pastor Comments on How CGGCers Define Disciple Making

Gang,

I received this response to my blog on disciple making in the CGGC.  It is from a pastor, someone who has been a part of the CGGC for many years.  I give no other clues to his identity, other than he's a he.

The comments are slightly edited to assure anonymity.

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​I've never understood the term 'better disciple." In my way of thinking you are either a disciple or not.

I believe a disciple is essentially a learner, one who invests time, energy, and maybe some other resources, to read, study, and understand Jesus teachings. But I think many people want to stop there, happy with the accumulation of knowledge, so they would be great on the Biblical category on Jeopardy. But a true disciple, or perhaps the CoG's 'better disciple", is one who takes that knowledge of Jesus teaching and teaches others, who in turn, as disciples teach others, and so on. We grow by teaching others about the Kingdom.

But also in teaching others about Jesus teaching, we have to [understand that] another part of discipleship is serving, because Jesus main mission was as a servant. And serving not just ourselves or our immediate church family but expanding beyond the walls of the church. That is a radical change for many of our 60, 70, 80 year olds who still hold sway (because of money) in many of our churches. We have older white churches in communities that are increasingly non-white, and they are not comfortable changing to meet the community. It's Ok when the community comes to the church building, but a hard sell to get the church to go to the community.

And I agree with you that church to many of our people is either the building or the Sunday morning show. Leadership seems to think it's about programs and new endeavors, but it is really about heart change of our people: Realizing what Jesus actually meant about disciples and...making an honest evaluation of ourselves to see if we really are disciples.

I'm probably rambling too much. I hope this makes some sense.

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Note the comment: "Leadership seems to think it's about programs and new endeavors, but it is really about heart change of our people."

Can we all agree that this guy has nailed the reality that CGGC leadership has it all wrong!?

The CGGC is declining and the rate of the decline is increasing.  When will we understand that the sort of long-term problem we are facing is not a problem with the people in our pews.  It is a problem with our leadership culture.

We may have new people sitting on the mountaintop, in some cases, than we did a year ago at this time.  The crucial issue, however, is this:  Do we have a change in leadership?

I'm watching to see if there is any significant change in leadership values in the CGGC.  So far, I'm only seeing minor tweaking at best.  I'm seeing, on the level of the big picture, more of the same.  The same leadership value system that has been fashioning our decline for decades.

In my opinion, the guy who wrote this is most correct in calling for "heart change."  I would add though, that the hearts that must change first are the hearts beating from the mountaintops.