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Our Dilemma
We’ve lost our way. We have become all about our weekend services and religious consumption. We have substituted being the church for doing church, and God is showing us a whole new way. He is inviting us into a journey of rediscovering the simplicity of Jesus and His Way. He is inviting us to be and make disciples not just any kind of disciples, but gospel disciples. I invite you to join me on this journey." This is the opening paragraph of my forthcoming book, “The Gospel Disciple Journey.” I’ve been writing it for the past few years. I was waiting on my heart to mature and for the right time to be heard. It seems like It’s now or never. COVID-19, in many ways, has served as a wake-up call for all. By all, I mean those us who lead and work with the church, faithful churchgoers, and even those who are what we call disconnected or far from God. As Michael Frost has reminded us in a recently released webinar, we have lost our queen, comparing the chess piece with our weekend services. He goes on to say if you want to master the game of chess, learn to master it without your queen, and then reintroduce your queen. We have lost our weekend services as we know them, and now is the time to learn to be the church. In the next couple of weeks, things are likely to start returning to normal. Returning to normal will be slow and will include setbacks. Some recent indicator suggests that there will be limits to our worship gatherings for up to a year. Yet we will return to a normal we are familiar with, or for some, perhaps we will venture into a new normal. A new normal could mean transitioning from a weekend-only to a disciple-making culture. A new normal where we gather to equip disciples to be the church where we live, work, and play. A new normal where parents are the primary disciple-makers for their children. A new normal where praying for and with our neighbors is a regular practice even when our neighbors are “far from God.” A new normal where we are using our resources to serve those who are in need, including the widows, orphans, and the poor. A new normal where churches work together for the restoration of their cities. A new normal where the church is more scattered than gathered, and when we do come together, our gatherings will be so special and certainly not taken for granted. I could go on-and-on, but you get the picture. How do we steward a new normal in our churches? It begins with our culture. Now is the time to get on our knees and gather a few leaders and begin to seek God for this new normal. With a renewed heart, there are Five Irreducible Questions of Disciple-Making we must ask. They are: • What is our disciple-making mission? • What are our disciple-shaping values? • What is our disciple-moving strategy? • What are our disciple-forming measures? • What is our disciple-guiding dream? Clarity around these five questions can change everything. Now is the time to grab your most trusted staff and leaders and go on a journey together into a Better Future. 1 http://www.forgeamerica.com/podcast/2020/3/23/special-episode-mike-frost-and-alan-hirsch-on-covid19?fbclid=IwAR37k1tdXl4k7vyOSPCqfYSXzN6dfms7aQByfFIC7bY_wXwBwnF8sIE0DD8
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Like so many Jesus followers, I sat in my family room with my wife, Tami and watched our church service online this past Sunday. I missed attending church with my children and grandchildren. I missed Sunday brunch at my favorite spot with my family. However, what I gained was a lot of time to process what I was hearing and what’s happening in our world with Covid-19.
Here’s what I came up with…
My encouragement to you is not to focus on what you can’t do but focus on what you can do. Take a few moments this weekend and develop your own Covid-19 Response Plan. For me, this came out of a sermon I heard, a conversation I had, reflection time I took, and simple journal notes I made. If you already have a plan or develop one, I would love to hear from you. Let’s encourage one another. Excerpt from David Putman’s newest eBook
One-Hour Theology I was in a remote location deep in Central Africa. On a previous trip, the children who were plagued with sickness and disease struck me. We hadn’t been there long when I noticed it. We were conducting a Bible School under a large Baobab tree that shielded us from the African heat. Most, if not all, of the children had what appear to be upper respiratory issues. Their breathing was labored, their eyes were bloodshot, and their noses were crusty with mucus. On the way back to our camp that evening, I noticed a group of kids gathering water from one of their favorite waterholes. The animals were drinking and defecating from that same waterhole. No wonder they were sick. Like so many parts of Africa, they had a water problem. I knew then that we would have to return. On our return trip, we were completing a water project that would potentially address the sickness we first saw in the children, and transform the entire area that consisted of three villages. It was our last day, and it was now time to dedicate the Well. People came out in droves. The village Chief joined me on the hillside as we celebrated our new friendship and the potential for a new and healthier future. I asked for permission to share with the people. Chief Waya graciously granted. I spoke from the passage found in John 4 on living water. I contrasted the benefits of water with the gospel. Giving my best Billy Graham invitation, I invited the village people to drink from His Living Water, and then I waited. Nothing happened. No one responded. I walked off the mound of dirt perplexed. What had happened? I had spoken on other occasions in various parts of Africa, and dozens, if not hundreds, always eagerly embraced the message of the gospel. As I stood there praying, asking the Lord what had happened, the Chief sent for me. He and the elders were requesting a private meeting. I made my way back to them, unsure of what to expect. That's when, through my interpreter, the Chief said, "The words of Jesus have strangely warmed our hearts. We want to know more." I shared the gospel the best I knew how. God did the rest. Their hearts did open, and they received Him. That day they began to drink from the Well that never runs dry. As we prayed together, our driver came to let me know our flight back to the USA would be leaving shortly. It was time to go. With so much to tell them, this caught me off guard. We had worked all week for this moment. The Chief and his elders had just embraced the gospel, yet they knew so little about it. There was so much I wanted them to know. I didn't know what to do or say. I looked at my interpreter and said, "When we get to the city, we will buy Bibles, and when you go back to the village, start with the Sermon on the Mount and teach them more about Jesus and His ways." And with that, I was gone. I never even took into consideration that most of the village, including the Chief, were illiterate. Since that encounter in central Africa, I've asked myself a question. If I only had one hour to disciple someone, what would I want him or her to know? After spending many days, and now even years, reflecting on this question, here’s what I would like for them to understand. I would want them to be able to answer three questions. I believe these questions form a foundation for everything they need to know to begin the journey as a Christ-follower. They are: 1. What is the gospel? 2. What is a disciple? 3. What is the church? These three questions, answered in this specific order, form the bases of a gospel-centered worldview they would need to navigate their new world. It is also the same three questions we need to navigate our new world. Jesus refers to this new world over and over again as the Kingdom of God. When we change the order in which we ask these questions, it always distorts our view. The gospel is our foundation, and we must begin with a good foundation. Our mission of making disciples follows this foundation, and when we make gospel disciples, healthy churches are formed around those disciples. One question builds upon the other. In practice, we plant the gospel, make disciples, and form new churches or communities around those disciples. As you work your way through these three questions, remember this order matters. Welcome to the journey of rediscovering the simplicity of Jesus and His ways! What is real church growth? In short, real church growth is when we shift the core of our church family from a weekend only culture to a disciple-making culture. In a weekend-only culture, I participate and attend because I get something from it. In a disciple-making culture, I participate and attend because I’m giving something. In this case, I’m giving myself to a shared disciple-making identity and a disciple-making vision. This produces growth because people are moving out of the lower room of preference into the upper room of vision. From the upper room of vision, we move out on mission to where we live, work, and play. In real church growth, this is where disciple-making most begins considering our current western context. Our context is post-Christian and can be summed up in that we have reached everyone like us or everyone who wants to be like us.
You don’t have to look too far back to realize just a short time ago, those who were lost or at least disconnected from the church found their way to our doorstep through a simple invitation and a seeker-friendly environment. Not so much anymore. Where do we go from here? The good news is people still respond to the gospel. Nothing has changed when it comes to it’s power to transform the heart of men and women. I just recently spent a week with a church on the West Coast. They have experienced significant numerical growth in their worship gatherings over the past five years. This year for the first time, this growth has slowed. We spend several days using our visionary planning tool to map out a vision and an actual plan for achieving that vision. They recognize to maintain and even grow their relevance in their community; they must transition from what they call an “invitation” culture to a “for” culture. This is not to say that they are giving up on an invitation culture. Their weekend attendance is still growing. They grew by 4% last year compared to 10% and 15% in the previous years. However, they recognized that for them, the future will still consist of gathering people, but it will flourish only if they send people. More and more churches are getting this, and those that do will have a bright future. Those that don’t will become more and more irrelevant and continue to decline until they die. In our next webinar, I am going to talk about how to develop a visionary plan that leads to real church growth. I’m going to be joined by Matthew Peeples. Matt is a young pastor that walked into a declining church in a declining denomination just outside of New York City. Over the past few years, it has been my honor to work closely with him as he transitions the church to a disciple-making church that is committed to revitalizing and planting churches throughout their region. To join us for this live webinar register by clicking on the link below and join us on February 25th at 11 AM EST. I have the distinct privilege of being a clarity evangelist. I help others with their personal and organizational clarity. My clarity mentor Will Mancini puts it this way, "Clarity isn't everything, but it changes everything." This is my go-to quote when it comes to clarity. Take a moment and reflect on it. Imagine for a moment on having clarity around what we call the Five Questions of Irreducible Leadership. Which are: • What are we doing? • Why are we doing it? • How are we doing it? • When are we successful? • Where are we going? Now apply this to your life or your organization. Imagine how answering these five questions could potentially speed up every decision and action related to your life or organization. You get the idea. Last week I spent time with our Auxano Team in our annual meeting designed to resync our team and our lives. Once again, the impact will be lasting if not life-changing. One statement stood out to me more than the others. I believe it originated with Scott Adams and is "Goals are for losers, systems are for winners." While I'm not too fond of the tone of this statement, the implications of it are significant. In other words, it's one thing to have a goal, but it's another to have a system for achieving that goal. Now imagine what would happen if you had a tool that combined the elements of clarity around your goals with a system for accomplishing your goals. That's precisely what we have in our master tool Horizon Storyline unpacked in Will Mancini's God Dreams book. This tool takes into account that we both see and plan along different horizons. In this case, what we call Beyond the Horizon (5-20 years), Background Horizon (3 years), Midground Horizon (1 year), and Foreground Horizon (90 days). This system we affectionately call the 1-4-1-4. Imagine for a moment ten simple goals along four horizons to a better future. Not merely ten goals, but a system for implementing those goals.  |
AuthorDavid Putman is the founder of Planting the Gospel and a Senior Lead Navigator with Auxano the category leader in vision clarity. When David isn't writing or consulting he enjoys staying fit and competing at Crossfit. Archives
July 2025
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