05.06.2014
Full House Eager to Hear About Creating a Culture of Discipleship
Ireland is moving towards a significant cultural change but we must be more intentional about discipleship if we are to harness that change for the Kingdom of God. That was one of the key messages delivered to the 120 people who attended the ‘Creating a Discipleship Culture’ event in the Church of Ireland College of Education yesterday (June 4).
The conference was addressed by members of 3DM and Network Church Sheffield who aim to equip churches and church leaders to do discipleship, create missional communities and raise leaders. Introducing the event, Network Church Sheffield leader, Paul Maconochie, referred to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission – love God, love your neighbour and make disciples – and asked if people were doing all three.
Later he explained how missional communities work and likened them to lay–led extended family–type groups of about 30 people. Each group builds its own momentum by bringing people to faith. Missional communities work in an incarnational discipleship culture, he said explaining that the leaders first make the changes necessary to enable them to live the lives they were called to live. They then gather a core group – like an extended family – around them.
“Well functioning extended family is something that Ireland needs to be teaching the rest of Europe. To me it looks like Ireland is the last country that still has a functioning extended family culture and that’s what we need to learn and use,” he commented. Paul said that leaders must look for other potential leaders who want to be discipled. Once there are leaders coming through, then there is leadership DNA to create missional communities.
He said those wishing to start a missional community must be prepared to be accountable and the vision of the group must be in line with what the church is doing. They offer a few guidelines and release them to do what God is telling them to do.
Paul said there were a number of things that make missional communities work well including eating together, having a missional vision that is accessible and easy to relate to and include scripture but not necessarily a sermon. Some communities looked like church and others were groups with a common interest (such as hill walking).
Karl Martin, Senior Pastor at Central Church in Edinburgh, highlighted the importance of discipleship and community. He pointed out that Jesus related to large crowds and small groups and it was important to get intentional about the need to create habits that enable these different types of relationships and discipleship to happen. He posed the question: “If discipleship is a principle, what does it look like in our neighbourhood?”
Marjorie Allan explained that Irish people related to one another naturally and lived easily as extended families. However, she said people must live as disciples in that context. “Family is attractive. Unchurched people don’t want to go to church on Sundays but there is a tremendous longing to be part of a family. Irish people are natural as families but we need to work on our intentionality and our rhythms of intentionality. These are disciplines and habits that come over time and allow us to do family as Jesus did,” she explained.
In the final session Rich Robinson, director of 3DM UK, outlined the next steps for participants. He said these could be taken by individuals, leaders or churches. He stressed that they did not want to develop a pattern of dependency but set up a relationship that helps create a connection which will change a nation.
He suggested that people could think about beginning to engage with some of the content they had heard during the day. Their book ‘Building a Discipleship Culture’ contains a lot of the material. The website www.3dmeurope.com contains numerous blogs, articles and personal stories. Intentional coaching is available and a church team may decide to embark on an intentional training process.
Sean Mullen, who is a member of the ecumenical Church Planting Group in Dublin, outlined plans he and his wife Ana have to start a community. He said they would look at what needed to be adapted and changed for Dublin. “We want this to be an intentional learning community which begins to develop the rhythms we’ve been hearing about… I think we are moving towards a significant cultural movement in Ireland and how we respond to these questions [that we have heard today] is crucial to how we respond to the nation,” he commented.
Archbishop Michael Jackson opened and closed proceedings. Introducing the day he said that often in ministry, active discipleship was crowded out by the wear and tear of administration and appeasement of others. “The wear and tear of leadership for the sake of leadership has the double effect of eroding one’s own sense of following God because we can begin to delude ourselves that we are leading God; and of failing to watch out for other disciples as they too struggle in roles of leadership and service which they carry out in the secular world and in church life. Leadership without discipleship leads to a dislocation in human and in Christian happiness; and to the missing of opportunities for missional service in the spirit of the whole of life experience which Jesus Christ came to earth to share with God’s creation,” he said.
Photo captions:
Top to bottom –
Paul Maconochie stresses the importance of discipleship.
Lavinia Heasley, the Revd Adrienne Galligan and Jacqueline Mullen.
Eoghan Heaslip talks to the Revd Dr William Olhausen.
The 3DM team – Nick Allan, Rich Robinson, Karl Martin, Marjorie Allan and Paul Maconochie.