Internet Discipleship

What has Jesus called us to do as Christians? If you have been attending an evangelical church for any time at all, you will immediately answer, “Make disciples!” Of course. Matthew 28:19-20 records Jesus’ words commissioning each of us to go into all the world and make disciples. So is it any wonder many of us labor under a sense of failure? After all, how many disciples have you made recently, and how many parts of the world have you touched? Don’t answer that. It will probably only make you more miserably guilt-ridden.

Let’s face it. This matter of making Christian disciples is really tough today. The media has sold the public on very unappealing caricatures of evangelical Christians, the gospel has been maligned and misrepresented over and over again, and the church, whose mission it is to train and send out disciplemakers, seems impotent. As if that is not enough, Satan has effectively blurred the lines between being a church attender and being a disciple of Christ. I live in Lynchburg, Virginia. After just five months here, I am convinced that at least 90% of Lynchburgers would consider themselves Christians. They attend a church, they have a “Not I but Christ” sticker on their car bumper, and they know that Amos is a book of the Bible, not a character on an old-time radio series. So how am I supposed to find people who want to know the Lord, and desire real discipleship? How am I to become actively involved in helping people come to faith and grow into maturity?

My wife Penny and I spent several years on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. Two things about that organization became very clear: first and foremost, Crusade is all about evangelism; and second, the organization has not put enough emphasis on discipling new Christians. But that seems to be changing. With the creation of a worldwide internet outreach ministry called Global Media Outreach, Crusade has tapped a seemingly endless well of spiritual inquiries and directed them to trained workers who can encourage and equip their contacts.

Not sure about the value of spiritual inquiries online? Look at these recent statistics. In July alone, 9,373,000+ people visited Crusade websites to make spiritual inquiries. Over 1,128,000 decisions were recorded (either first-time decisions or recommitments), and 196,000+ of these were followed up with contacts by workers. In the period January to July, the figures look like this: 70,711,000+ visitors, 9,318,000+ decisions, and 1,433,000+ email follow-up contacts by trained workers. And this is not just a matter of recording numbers, like so many evangelistic efforts of the past have been. These web-site visitors who indicate a decision are contacted by a real person who has been equipped to respond to them individually, resources are offered to allow the new disciples to begin to grow, and their progress is tracked and made available to their disciplers.

Sound interesting, but a little daunting or beyond your capabilities? Believe me, it is easier than it sounds. And Crusade is recruiting more online disciplers all the time. Go to www.GMOJoinUs.com for a 4 1/2 minute video summary of what is involved. If you sign up, you will be trained to answer inquiries, given suggested responses and websites to direct your disciples to, and assigned a training community to monitor your progress through the preparation process.

Over the past few months, I have been in contact with 121 people, and I have had extended online conversations with 17 of them. They come from all over the globe, from Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Animist backgrounds, as well as various Christian points of view. What a blessing to be extending the kingdom all over the world. Join me, and you too can find an outlet for that desire Jesus has given each of us to create disciples.

An Easy Burden

If you have any propensity for music, you know what it is like to have a song stick in your mind. Sometimes it is a melody line that you just can’t seem to shake. Or it may be a lyric that repeats itself again and again in your head. But when a songwriter combines a captivating melody with inspiring lyrics, you are doomed. That has been my plight over the past couple months as a song titled “Come to Me”, written by Scott Baker and distributed by EarReverent Music, has been used in worship at our church. The lyrics come from Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-30. Here is how Scott has chosen to present that message musically:

Behold my child
my chosen beloved
the pleasure of my soul

I will put my Spirit upon Him
to bring justice and hope to the world

Come to me (all who are heavy-laden)
Come to me (weary of being your best)
Come and take this easy burden
and I will give you rest

This question keeps running through my mind: What exactly is the easy burden? Do you find being yoked to Jesus an experience you would characterize as “easy” or “restful”? Or would you at times describe your Christian life as a “burden” which causes you to feel “heavy-laden”? Evidently Jesus found Himself surrounded by people who were of the “heavy-laden” camp because He addressed them specifically in this passage (“Come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden…”). And if I am brutally honest, I find a lot in the Christian life that makes me weary and heavy-laden myself. Obviously Jesus did not intend the life of a disciple to be this way. His words make that clear. So what are we doing wrong?

Here are a couple possibilities I have come up with. First, the burden isn’t easy because we are trying to be good. Scott Baker calls it “weary of being your best.” When we find ourselves trying to measure up to a self-imposed performance standard, there is no possible outcome but weariness. The answer to this laborious approach to the Christian life is found, I believe, in the opening lyrics to the song. We are the chosen of God, beloved by Him, and endowed with His Spirit. God loves us just as we are, and could never love us more no matter how “good” we are able to be. So our task is to live in that Spirit and relax in the knowledge that we are the beloved of our Creator, and we are totally accepted by Him because we have the righteousness of Christ Himself.

A second mistake we make that can bring weariness to our souls is to accept someone else’s idea of what our lives ought to look like, and hammer ourselves because we don’t measure up. The whole issue of personal evangelism is a good example. You have heard this kind of directed application, or read it, I am sure. “You should be sharing your faith with everyone you meet.” Or this one: “Not everyone has the gift of evangelism, but everyone is called to evangelize; so get out lead someone to Christ.” For some, this is an invigorating message, but for others such a call can bring about feelings of failure and a guilt-ridden existence. I don’t want to minimize the scriptural admonition to be ready to defend your faith and explain the hope that it within you (1 Peter 3:15), but our primary calling is to live the life of Jesus before people. It is His Spirit who will do the wooing and softening of hearts, and He alone is tasked with creating the divine appointments that result in true disciplemaking.

These are two of the ways I have become a weary disciple in the past. How about you? Are there things about the faith that seem burdensome to you? Share your experiences in a comment on this blog. Maybe Jesus can help us learn from each other and we can all find the “rest for our souls” that He intended.