ARE WE ON THE BRINK OF A NEW REFORMATION? Part I

ARE WE ON THE BRINK OF A NEW REFORMATION?

If you could have a big tree with only a little fruit or a small tree with lots of fruit, which would you choose? It’s about a choice, right?

But we’ll get back to that in a second.

I’ve noticed there seem to be two things I can do with Jesus. Either I can increasingly look like Jesus, or I can make him look like me.

I can look like Jesus or I can try to make him look like me.

The funny thing about Jesus is that I’m never sure we give him quite enough credit. Sure. He came to earth, left the throne of heaven, took on the nature of a servant and died on the cross in our place, rose from the dead and now sits at the right hand of the Father. Yes. All that happened.

But we really don’t give his three years of ministry much reference.

Here’s what I mean: We think Jesus was the Son of God, but when we read the Gospels, do you think he was the smartest person who ever lived? Most accomplished? Best fisherman? Best evangelist? Best church planter? Best movement leader? Best discipler? Most successful leader?

For instance, in Luke 9 and again in Luke 10, Jesus gave the most detailed strategy you will ever find in the scriptures for how to evangelize, and then we see the exact same strategy used in the early church. Shouldn’t we be using that same strategy? I’m guessing we’re not arrogant enough to think we’ve come up with a better strategy than Jesus. (Example: for most churches, the evangelism strategy is “invite your friends to church and then let the professionals take over. We’ll do the heavy lifting if you get them here.” Not exactly Jesus’ strategy!)

We acknowledge what Jesus did on the cross, but what about what was started before the cross? What about the movement he began that changed the course of human history when it was released and catalyzed after the Resurrection and Pentecost? If being a disciple is “who Jesus would be if he were me” (Dallas Willard), shouldn’t we be learning the patterns and practices of the best whom ever lived if we too want to change the world for the Kingdom?

Yet often when we look at the Western church, I’m not sure we see many of the practices of Jesus among the way we lead. Though…that’s starting to change!

Back to the original question: Big tree/little fruit or little tree/lots of fruit?

It feels that at some point, we might have lost our way. Perhaps we became more concerned with success than fruitfulness. Jesus says we evaluate things in the Kingdom on their fruitfulness…but somewhere along the way it became about the size of your tree. Now having a big tree is a fine thing. Just know you’re only successful in evaluating yourself against the size of other trees, and God has never been terribly concerned about tree size. Just fruitfulness. That’s it. The point of a tree isn’t how big your tree is but how much fruit you have. It’s about fruit! And in the Kingdom, fruitfulness is always about reproduction. (Specifically, reproducing disciples…multiplying Jesus’ life into the life of others who can then go and do the same.) 

My experience tells me having a big tree doesn’t mean you have a lot of fruit. In fact, what I’ve seen happen a lot more often is people going after the big tree and hoping to get fruit, rather than going after fruit and knowing you get the tree along the way.

Choose the best, and you always get the good. Choose the good, you very rarely get the best.

Are we trying to start or lead churches, create Kingdom movements and aspire to all the breakthrough Jesus saw apart from the way Jesus did those things? Am I trying to make Jesus like me or do I honestly believe he was the best in the Kingdom business?

The Reformation was a significant moment because among other things, it put the Bible back in the hands of the people. But when we look at the church of the last 100 years, I have to wonder if we have been more influenced by the Enlightenment than the Reformation.

This is the gut check question: If you had to choose between being known as a movement leader but not really having one, or actually being a movement leader but no one knowing it…which would you choose?

Tree or fruit?

Here’s the good news: I believe we are on the cusp of a new Reformation, one that sees the kind of fruit we saw from Jesus’ ministry, because we, once again, embrace not simply what Jesus did on the cross but the way he led and made disciples. Yes. I think we are on the tipping point of a new Reformation and it is about putting discipleship and mission back into the hands of ordinary people. Because when we equip the people of Jesus with the patterns, practices and way of Jesus, it will once again be ordinary people equipped to do extraordinary things.

The key is to embrace the mission of Jesus AND the way of Jesus. He’s just the best there ever was!

Hopefully you hear what I’m trying to convey clearly. I’m not suggesting we should go after a new Reformation. I’m suggesting it’s already happening. And maybe we don’t see it on every street corner yet, but I see it happening all around. A small group of communities, ready to be bloodied in going through the wall first, who are getting the beachhead of breakthrough for the rest of the church.

It’s already happening!

At the end of the day, I don’t want a big tree. But I don’t want a small tree either. I want an orchard. I want a Kingdom movement where reproduction of Jesus’ life within individuals and communities is happening on every level. I’ve seen this happen before. I know it because I’ve seen it. And I think we are starting to see glimmers of this reality again. Lord, may it be so! May we see a Kingdom movement wash upon these shores.

If these longings resonate with you, here are three things you can do to step more fully into this groundswell:

1. REPOST. Repost this link on twitter, facebook or your blog.
2. RESPOND. Leave a comment on this post. Here’s the question: Where are the places you are seeing breakthrough in putting discipleship and mission back into the hands of ordinary people? We’d love to hear about it!
3. READ. We just released a new book on this subject called Leading Kingdom Movements: the “Everyman” notebook on how to change the world. You can pick up the ebook by clicking here. We think you’ll love it. Write a review. Read it and pass it on to a friend. The thing we are most concerned about is getting this idea out!

ARE WE ON THE BRINK OF A NEW REFORMATION? Part II

ARE WE ON THE BRINK OF A NEW REFORMATION? – MIKE BREEN

in ARTICLES, BLOG, DISCIPLE MAKING, Featured, MISSION, RESOURCES, TOPICS

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Last week I put up a post that discussed whether we are on the brink of a new Reformation. You can read that first post in its’ entirety here.

In summation, I believe that we are heading to that place in as much as the first Reformation had the wonderful effect of putting the Bible back into the hands of the people, the one we seem to be moving towards now is putting discipleship and mission back into the hands of ordinary people.

My suggestion was that when we focus more on the fruit that is produced (multiplying disciples who can do the same), the Kingdom always advances. If you’ve got a big tree (the church)…great…but it doesn’t matter too much if it’s not producing fruit.

Today, I want to look more at that idea of fruitfulness and why we should put all ofour time, attention and energy into it. I think today’s discussion will give us an even deeper look as to why we are on the precipice of something.

To do so, here is an excerpt from my book Leading Kingdom Movements.

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Jesus gave us a picture of a tree and said that good trees are supposed to bear good fruit. It’s a simple picture, really. One tree can give you quite a lot of fruit. But it’s more. In each piece of fruit is the seed of multiplication. Each piece of fruit has dozens of seeds that could produce more trees. And there wasn’t just one piece of fruit on each tree, but lots of fruit.

So let’s run this out:

• One tree
• One tree, hypothetically, has 100 pieces of fruit
• Each piece of fruit has, hypothetically, 20 seeds in it that can multiply into 20 more trees
• One tree = 2,000 potential trees

Multiplication is what Jesus is talking about in the Parable of the Sower. In another, you expect a return of 30, 60, 100 times what you invest with the one seed. It’s multiplication.

Let’s understand the context of what Jesus was going after. When Jesus talked about trees and fruit, he was referring to something very specific: people. He was saying that each person is a tree, and a disciple is someone who produces good fruit. If we take Jesus’ metaphor seriously, he seems to be suggesting that a disciple will produce thousands of disciples.

If you’re at all like me, that can seem incredibly daunting.

Then you realize where we started and do the simple math. You can’t get there by addition, but you can by multiplication. We take what we’ve been given, invest it, and let it multiply.

Multiplication has been the way of the church for thousands of years because it was the way of Jesus.

The early church had two things going for it:

1. They had the Holy Spirit.
2. They knew how to multiply missional leaders.

That was it. No budgets, buildings, or any real cash on hand. All around there was moral relativism, polytheism, hedonism run amok, persecution, and an Empire that seemed to hate the church with a growing intensity.

And they blew the roof off!

At the end of the day, you could launch a missional movement with those same two things—the Holy Spirit and a way to multiply missional leaders. The problem is that many of us don’t actually believe that.

If you were to go to Sheffield (which is now the epicenter of a worldwide missional and discipling movement), they would not tell you how many people attend the church. I doubt most of the people would even realize how big the church is, because it doesn’t function like a huge one.

If you asked how big the church is, they would simply tell you how many people they are discipling. That is what they count. They count how many people are engaged in active, accountable, discipling relationships. Their whole structure for church is built around making disciples and releasing them. So that’s what they count. That’s the metric that matters. That’s the Great Commission imperative.

How many disciples do we have?

St. Thomas Sheffield isn’t a massive church and the center of a movement because it has the best worship service, or the best digital experience, or the best preachers or teachers in the world. It’s because everything they do is about making disciples. They honestly believe that if you make disciples and release them to lead into their destiny, release them to be Agents of the Kingdom, everything will change.

If we are great at making the disciples, church growth will never be a problem, because being a disciple means you’re a missionary. It was never OK for us to be a large church and have very few missionary disciples. So we built something where that couldn’t happen. Making disciples was in the DNA from the very beginning, and it has carried through into the movement of which it is the heart.