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Discipling the Laity for Disciple Making (08)
Paul Jang  2008-03-24 03:30:26, hit : 3,768


Discipling the Laity for Disciple Making (08)



It may be classified into three grades: a class for making disciples, a class for making disciplers, and a class for making discipler's teachers. Yoedo Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea has the Educational Institute for the purpose of training the lay leaders (Cho, 1985, 34). Nevertheless growing churchs are more concerned with people than the preservation of institutions because the church doesn't need people--people need the church (Easum 1990, 24).

In this project the writer has named the class for making disciples Disciple College, the class for making disciplers Disciple Graduate School, and the class for making discipler's teachers Disciple Seminary. The students of the Disciple College should be trained to be the disciples, the students of the Disciple Graduate School to be disciplers, and the students of the Disciple Seminary to be discipler's teachers.

In this aspect, the church is a school house for training of Christians. One theologian, therefore, identifies this church as "lay seminary" (Baumann 1976, 45). Of course, such institution can be organized in different way according to the pastor's idea of the local church.

Nevertheless it must have a basic small size-group because it is different from some kind of the Bible study. Tom Raabe insists that it is nearly inconceivable for a growing church not to employ a small-group structure of some type (Raabe 1991, 125). "The recent emphasis on 'small is beautiful' notwithstanding, American culture places great store on growth, and churches have not escaped this adulation of size" said David R. Ray (Ray 1982, vii). This is also true in Korean churches.

To succeed in making disciples the pastor must be very concerned about teaching, training, and transforming the laypeople. Those are the most important because those are the practical fields of disciple making. No matter how good the preparation for the disciple making may be, it is of no use unless the practice of the disciple making succeeds in the local church.

It is very important for the pastor of the local church to activate the laypeople for disciple making. C. Peter Wagner says as follows:

Pastors of growing churches, whether they be large or small, know how to motivate their laypeople, how to create structures which permit them to be active and productive and how to guide them into meaningful avenues of Christian service...This is due to what I like to call the "laymen's lib" movement. (Wagner 1977, 69)

The motivation of the disciples is evident from the Gospel records (Luke 9:57; 14:25-33). Only one promise is recorded as having been upheld before the disciples: "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men" (Matt. 4:18-22). Their motivation seemed simply to be personal relationships. It was transmuted after Pentecost. After this the great truths such as the salvation of humanity, the risen Lord, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the return of the Lord seemed to fill their minds and to be their motivating power (Peters 1981, 120).

And it is very important for pastor to be motivated before he can motivate others. Lasting motivation comes from within (Tillapaugh 1982, 131; McDonough 1979, 72, 78). Unless the pastor is not motivated, he can not motivate other people. The reason many pastors failed to motivate others is because of the lake of self-motivation. Robert E. Maner says:

We must be motivated before we can motivated others. If we are nor turned on, we will never make it happen to others...We will never make disciples out of bench-warming church members until we get excited about it. (Maner 1982, 67)





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