As we wrestled with this question, we went back to define "What is a Disciple?" and "How do we know when we've made on?" This led us to do two things:
- Create a Profile of a Maturing Disciple (e.g. a growing follower of Jesus Christ), and
- Clarify the process of spiritual formation, beginning with the "pre-Christian" (e.g. how do we turn someone who is far from God and the church into a growing follower of Jesus?
What we have defined as our target (end goal) is a person who is pursuing:
- Spiritual Intimacy
- Biblical Community
- Missional Living
We are now in the process of placing behavioral identifiers on each of these charactersitics, ways that we can know that this person is becoming a growing follower of Jesus. We are also defining the steps along the process -
Far from God & the Church ---------------->Growing Follower
We are identifying our metrics so we can evaluate how we are doing along the way. We are identifying the knowledge, character, and skills/practices that we want to develop in our people. We are also continuing to refine our profile of our outreach target group.
Are you making disciples? How do you know? You cannot manage what you do not measure. But what you measure will be your mission. Are you measuring the right things?
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2 comments:
Glenn,
Awesome questions that you guys are exploring. What you are attempting to measure makes so much more sense than nickles and noses. I love your target, but I do want to throw a word of caution in there too. If you create a list of what a maturing disciple looks like, you might end up with a list that describes the pharisees better than the original disciples. Checklists are good for measuring things, but not as good at identifying Christ's work in someone's life. I wish I had an easy solution, but I don't think there are any. Someone with tons of baggage may shed half of their junk and still look pretty "sinful" while someone raised in a "churched" household may meet a lot of criteria and still be very shallow in their faith. Just food for thought. Many blessings on your wrestling.
Shiloh Lohmann
Glenn,
I'd love to see some of what you guys put together as it comes together, to see if you catch a bead on something we've missed. Those are the right questions.
Fran
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