Not Every Church Disciples like I do (Discipleship Interviews)

During my interviews today with the members of Freehold 1^st Assembly of God in New Jersey I was able to glean many things from their methods of discipleship. Though at the varying levels of leadership there are different ideas of how discipleship should be done there is still an overall urgency for the need of committed and discipled believers. In the overall leadership when I interviewed the lead pastor I learned that he was looking to make the church the central locus for discipleship by bringing the people into the church and equipping them with the tools necessary for them to be discipled. He provides classes and various ministries where people can get involved in order that they become discipled by being involved in the church ministries. He does not publically advertise small groups but believes that during his sermons he is able to provide the congregation with the necessary tools that they can take home and develop themselves. I think it is interesting to make the church the locus of people’s discipleship experience being that it is where they only spend approximately 3 hours per week. Also, I asked about the size of their congregation and the percentage of people who are attending the classes or involved in the men’s or women’s ministry; and the number wasn’t too high. Thus, there seems to be a gap in the people who are getting discipled on just Sundays and those who are delving deeper into the church community. This opinion changed from the position of lead pastor to that of youth pastor who had a different view. He believes that in the small group setting they are able to break down biblical content amongst groups of friends and peers who would have similar input and struggles. Again, there is no commitment to regular small group meetings but there is at least monthly youth meetings in which the students are broken down into small groups to discuss some material that the whole youth group is discussing. This approach seems better because it allows the youth to break down the hard concepts on their own thus making them less dependent on the church to spoon feed them biblical truth. There is also a 8-week long discipleship class which the youth are able to undergo which would teach them certain biblical principles so that they can process them by themselves. This takes place during the summer time, which often creates a problem because students during the summer time do now want to spend a lot of time in a class learning. Therefore if small groups become an atmosphere where people can enjoy themselves in the presence of other believers who are struggling with the same problems as ourselves then we will not only learn from each other, but we will feel comfortable and grow in relationship with each other. It seems that the struggle with this method and the centralized church group method as mentioned by both pastors is how to get people interested in participating because if it is organized by the church and forced it tends to be less organic and more of an obligation. It seems that the ideas of discipleship that are shared by the lead and youth pastor that discipleship is maturing Christians to walk like Christ are not necessarily captured by the people in the congregation. When I spoke with a regular member of the congregation who has attended for six years they described discipleship as the things that they learn on Sunday morning that make them a better person. When I gave them my input as to how I saw discipleship as helping people know Christ in a more real way so that they can better emulate his characteristics there seemed to be a disconnect because of never getting a true definition of discipleship. Overall, the people of the church are learning how to better themselves and things that are pleasing to God but they aren’t connecting them to Jesus Christ who walked the earth in the flesh nearly 2,000 years ago.