The Gentle Art of Disciple Making
How Dallas Willard Shared the Gospel and you can to.
When we look closely at the messages preached in modern churches, patterns seem to emerges. Pastoral proclamation seems to have one of 3 aims: prepare people to die and go to heaven, prepare people to fight social injustice, prepare people to serve an institution. Yet, all of these lack any real intention to prepare people to follow Jesus in ordinary life.
Last week, we looked at how Dallas Willard diagnosed these three gospels heard today as deficient. This leaves us with the question. What gospel leads someone to live a new life in Christ today?
Dallas Willard offered a clear answer. In Lecture 10 of his Spirituality and Ministry course, he shows the results of preaching the message Jesus preached: the Gospel of The Kingdom.
You find the full lecture or read the transcript at this link: https://conversatio.org/the-gentle-art-of-disciple-making/
Changing the Question
When our message revolves around sin management and reaching heaven, our evangelism often relies on a single fear-based question. We ask, “If you die tonight, what is going to happen to you?”
With this question salvation is reduced to a moment. The conversation focuses on securing a destination after death. We offer a guarantee for the future. We ignore life on earth. We offer forgiveness without offering transformation. We fail to invite people into an interactive life with God today
The issue with this approach lies in asking people to trust the death of Christ for their sins without asking them to trust Christ himself. Dallas made a distinction on this point. He taught trusting Christ means believing “He is right about everything” and He is “completely reliable and in charge”.
Dallas suggested a different starting point. He would often ask a person, “Do you know anything about Jesus?” He would follow up with a further question. He asked, “If you don’t die tonight, what’s going to happen to you?”
If you do not die tonight, Dallas warned, and you do not trust Jesus you miss out on the most important thing happening in your world. Jesus invites us to trust Him and “go into business totally with God” on a whole-life basis. This gospel, centered on the centrality of the person and work of Christ, naturally leads someone to live as an apprentice of Jesus.
Status and Process
What exactly is a disciple? We often confuse becoming a Christian with becoming a disciple.
Dallas brought clarity to this confusion. He taught deciding to become a disciple means deciding to learn from Jesus. In his words, you are learning “how to live in the Kingdom of God as He would live your life in the Kingdom of God if He were you”.
This is a status. You assume a position as a learner or as Dallas often said, an apprentice of Jesus.
The process beginning after assuming this status as an apprentice is spiritual formation. Over time, grace takes more of your life. The Spirit occupies a greater portion of your daily existence. The result is growth into the image of Christ as you apprentice yourself to him.
The Mission Field
Because we have spent decades preaching truncated gospels, we face a problem. We have churches full of people who have never received an invitation into the status of a disciple. Dallas remarked many people in the church have “listened for a long time and not heard anything” to tie onto.
This reality led Dallas to a conclusion. He said he thinks his “primary field for discipleship evangelism is in our churches”.
Our job as pastors is not manipulating people into doing more church work. Dallas taught since “we count on God moving in their lives” we are “out of a position of having to manipulate them.” We pay attention to them. We pray with them. We associate with them. We give them the knowledge of Jesus and invite them into the gentle art of learning to live like Him.
Discipleship is for the World
The primary place of discipleship is not the church building.
Dallas insisted the main place to exercise discipleship is in our work that takes place out in the world, in the real of the ordinary. He noted the “church is for discipleship” and “discipleship is for the world”. We form apprentices of Jesus so they take His life into their ordinary lives.
A Word For Pastors
Understanding the Gospel of the Kingdom is imperative for the Pastor who seeks to be a teacher of the nations in what he proclaims, teaches, and manifests to the world.
When you preach the gospel of the kingdom, you find freedom from the burden of manipulation. You do not have to engineer a response. You do not have to guilt people into volunteering or giving.
As disciple-makers, our primary location for training is within the congregation. We work to help people know and trust Jesus. We do this by encouraging discouraged believers to enter into life in the kingdom with Jesus. They learn from his teaching and encounter him in a fresh way.
Our goal is partnering with God to help people become disciples. We must shift our evangelistic conversations away from focusing on only eternal security. We must offer an invitation to participate in life in the kingdom at present. When we do this, discipleship becomes the method by which ordinary life is overtaken by the kingdom. This transforms individuals and communities into the image of Christ.
For Reflection
Are you calling people to trust the death of Christ for their sins? Or do you call them to trust Christ with their daily lives?
How would your evangelism change if you asked people what will happen to them if they do not die tonight?
Are you practicing discipleship evangelism with the people already sitting in your pews?
I really appreciate this post and the previous one. They brought to the forefront something I've been thinking a lot about as a preacher, and I'm wondering if you might address it. In light of this understanding of the gospel, how do we preach "the gospel" in and through our sermons? In other words, I'm wrestling with the fact that if we preach the gospel of the kingdom and the gospel the way that Dallas understood it and we preach it in such a way that we're calling people into a life with the Lord Jesus, then we're going to be preaching for more than decisions or raised hands or prayers prayed and assurances of heaven on the other side of death. So, how do you do it, and I mean you personally? How is this gospel vision worked into and worked out in your sermons and your teaching? Do you have a template you think through as you prepare? I ask, in part, because I've honestly been wrestling with these things and so have some of the folks in our church. I don't do altar calls and that frustrates some folks. I don't ask folks to bow their heads and close their eyes and that frustrates some folks. I make an intentional effort NOT to talk about the gospel in a transactional way or in a "forgiveness only" way but in a whole life, this life, and the next life kind of way, and that frustrates some folks. In other words, how do I make room for people to respond to the message in a healthy way that invites folks into a genuine life-changing relationship with Jesus, the kind Dallas writes about, and how do I do that in my preaching and teaching and in response times during services? Thanks.
Garrison, I really enjoyed reading this post this morning before I had to travel about an hour to a job site. I was able to click on the link in your post and listen to the entire lesson with Keith’s introductory comments and the rest of Dallas’s teachings. All of so good!
I remember back around 2020-2022, everyday I would walk for about an hour and would listen to hours upon hours of so many of Dallas talks. I remember listening to this series. There was a time when I would sit with pen and paper and would like transcribe Dallas teaching.
One of my many favorites was him teaching on what the Kingdom of God is and he had some really great discussions on the question, Who really has it made in this life? And he goes on to explain that it’s the person who is alive in the Kingdom of God.
I’m not sure there has been another person in the last century or two…or three:)etc…who truly lived and experienced the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed and taught his disciples, as Dallas Willard. What a beautiful lovely and compassionate soul, whose life exemplified what living the with-God life is all about, living life in the Kingdom of God, described as righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Blessings to you!