Here are the last five requirements to start a disciple-making revolution in your church.
#6: Empower Leaders:
Revolutions bring out the best in those with leadership skills. And a true revolution buys into the idea rather than personalities. And hear this, cutting leaders loose with the authority to act is essential.
Establish a working strategy that everyone buys into–training, approach, etc. Seek out networks of disciple-makers who are willing to be trained and become active practitioners.
Revolutions need leaders. Small group leaders must identify and coach new apprentices and help their groups to branch and start new groups. Inside each small group must be a desire to spread the good news of Jesus and His transforming power and join in the revolution!
Dissatisfied small group leaders must be identified, allowed to surface, and pointed in the direction where they can begin bearing fruit.
A Disciple-making Revolution must empower leaders that understand the cause, take a stand for it, and live it out in their personal lives.
#7: Take Intentional Action:
Start the revolution among those whom you serve. And. Keep. Going.
Every participant in a Revolution must be a practitioner. Churches must be intentionally making disciples who can multiply themselves. Ideally, they lead their own church to multiply themselves among groups of lost people. Our role as revolutionary disciple-makers is to motivate through a consistent message that is clear, frequent, and accurate.
Revolutionaries must never surrender to the status quo because it’s not working. Set-backs will happen and can be expected along the way. Revolutionaries know that disciples who are making disciples is a higher cause and will not stop no matter the temporal circumstances, recognizing distractions as detrimental to progress.
Align with how God is at work. Join Him to initiate action steps, but the first is to start. Begin the revolution where you serve by taking intentional steps. Commit to make disciple-makers. Pray. Equip. Have faith as you keep going no matter what because our cause is at the heart of God’s will to reconnect with a lost world in need of a Savior.
#8. Be Responsible:
Once mobilized and trained, the status quo cannot be the same. Priorities shift and change. Time spent in relational discipleship is more intentional; more focused on an outcome.
When Nik Ripken encountered four men in a remote location, he recounts in The Insanity of God book, they had one question for him: Are we the last Christians alive? When Nik assured them there were many others, they confessed relief and also said that they didn’t want Christianity dying with them if they were unfaithful. That’s a new level of responsibility. It’ a different game level. It’s a game-changer.
It’s being responsible when nobody else is looking or checking up on you. You are responsible only to God.
#9: Get the Attention of Those Who Wield Power
A Disciple-making Revolution requires hard work. When you see God’s Hand moving in powerful ways, then you’ve got to get the attention of those who can strengthen and even accelerate the revolution among others.
When you see the revolution, don’t sit on it. Here are some ideas:
· Actively report God’s work to those leading other Bible studies in your church. Have a praise celebration in your church. Go beyond your church to Baptist Press, The Baptist Paper, and our state Baptist paper, the Messenger. Speak to curriculum producers like Lifeway and speak up at workshops. .
· Include testimonials from changed lives from the community and Bible study small group leaders who are tracking significant and quantifiable change.
· And continue to faithfully develop relationships with those in leadership in order to intentionally influence them. This will mute criticism and efforts at undercutting the Revolution awakening in your church.
May God bless your efforts at influencing those who wield power! That kind of buy-in cannot be bought. It must accompany a change in their heart to the point of advocacy.
#10: Free the Captives:
Revolutionaries say, “Revolutions bring freedom.”
As followers of Jesus, who would the Disciple-making Revolution break free from the bondage that holds them? There are believers who are slaves to disobedience since they are not making disciples. They are “bound” by life choices that do not align with Jesus’ Great Commission to “obey all things that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:18-20). Their freedom will mean receiving God’s blessings for delighting in the work that honors the Lord (Eccl. 9:10).
Revolutionaries say: “Revolutions change things and take time. They often make demonstrations, they’re costly, and can be radical. He is calling for you to see His glory, tell his story, and make disciples of all peoples. It’s time to do a U-turn; repentance.”
We have come a long way on our journey through these 10 Requirements for Revolution. The starting point is to make disciples among those in your sphere of influence. Make truth stick. Get the Word into people’s lives and on their lips. “Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them” (John 13:17, NLT).
--Mark Snowden serves as director for the Cincinnati Area Baptist Association
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