Yeah. So a FAT person is the irreducible triumvirate of selection. So when we think about selection, so who are we going to choose to disciple?
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Hey Tony, how are we doing today? Good man. How are you? We, well, I'm doing good. Can't complain. I have a big question to ask you kind of focus of our episode today. Does it matter if I'm the site, if the person I'm discipling goes to a different church than me. Okay. So stick with me. Imagine for a moment that somebody told you that you should never disciple somebody, that doesn't go to your church, because if you discipled them, you'd actually be doing spiritual damage to them.
I'm sorry, what? That doesn't make any sense to me. So this is, an author Mark Dever wrote a book called Discipling. he's somewhat well-known and he asserts that in one of his chapters that you should not do that, because it could spiritually damage the person that you're discipling because instead of encouraging them to get to a better church, Your spiritual input into their life will enable them to stay in a church.
That's not very healthy to them. And so what would be better is to not help them so that they can later on, I guess, see, what's not going well in that church and get to a better one. What are your thoughts? I mean, like, as I listened to you say that, I thought, well, this is, this is different. Right, right.
This it's it's obviously it's not what I would suggest. I mean, it feels like that we're called to make disciples regardless of where the person is. And if someone's in an unhealthy church culture, they. Need help seeing that it's unhealthy. I think a lot of us have grown up or experienced churches that are unhealthy.
And until we get to a healthy one, a disciple-making church, then we probably didn't even know it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, when I first read that, and this was maybe three years ago, I'd been in discipling ministry for over 17 years. And it's the first time I'd ever heard anyone make this assertion.
And so kind of my eyebrows perked up right away of like, whoa, really? and the way that he kind of defends it, in addition to what we've already said is. You know, you're going to regularly see the people that you go to church with. And so as a result, when you regularly see them, you'll be able to have a greater relationship with them.
You're probably committed to similar doctrine. If you're going to the same church, you're kind of submitting and being led by the same sort of leaders in your head. And so when you take all those things away, and are trying to do that with somebody outside your church, then, then you just don't have those advantages that that would naturally be there if you're working with somebody in your church.
Yeah. Th I find this line of thinking rather infuriating. Okay. Tell us more about that strong word. Yes, but let me, I'm going to rant a little bit if that's okay. So here's the deal, right? This is, this is classic 1990s church growth. Right. I'm going to build this incredible place where people can come and we're just going to keep our people together.
And yet when I read the scriptures and I would, I would guess that when you read the scriptures for Lowe's listening, when you read the scriptures, right, like I'm guessing you don't see anywhere in the Bible that Jesus says, go and make great churches. Right. Matthew 28 says go therefore and make disciples.
It would be different if it said go therefore and make great churches, churches. So this is, this is a church doctrine versus a kingdom doctrine. And, and I believe with all of my heart and soul, that one of the things that has done more damage. To the American church than anything else. Our pastors who think their only job or their primary job is to build up their local body instead of building up the kingdom of God.
Hmm. Yeah. I like that because so much of what I see out there in disciple-making comes from a pastor centric perspective. Right. And so it's looking at disciple-making through the eyes of a pastor. which is not bad to do, especially if you're a pastor, you need to do that. I've never not done it. Right.
But that's like a dad joke. You're welcome. but the problem is that most of the people that were calling and asking to be disciples and disciple makers, not only aren't pastors, but are never going to be pastors. And so when we primarily teach disciple-making through pastor, pastor centric lenses, then we end up with things like this that are benefiting.
What the pastor is mostly concerned about rather than what the everyday disciple maker might be primarily concerned with, or, primarily called too. And I think that this is an important distinction, right? Because as a pastor, this is my, this is my job. It's my vocation. Now not every pastor is as a full time.
Vocationally serving as a pastor. I'm fortunate enough. I get to. And so this is my job right now. Part of my call as a Christian is still to make disciples and those two, while they parallel each other in a lot of ways, they are different. Right. Everyone's called to make disciples, whether you're a pastor or whether you're a construction worker or a property manager or whatever the case is, we're all called to make disciples.
And so when we talk about selection, we have to look at it through kingdom, kingdom lenses, right, Justin, right. Absolutely. Yeah, because that idea. Well, what's our job and what's God's job. Right? So as you referenced, like, God tells us that we're to go in to make disciples, but he says to Peter that it's his church, right.
And that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That Jesus is the one that. God, the father is the one that's caring for the church as a whole. And seeing that, that it will grow or not grow, but we know the end, right? That that hell is not going to prevail against the church on earth because God is, is caretaking that.
And we are stewards of that as well. And, and co-owners of that. But our primary focus should be making disciples because when we make disciples, eventually we'll have a choice. Right. If we make disciple after disciple, I have to say, we're going to have a church that we're connecting to. And a lot of times that, bad churches often spin inwards.
and so what I mean by that is, you know, we, we pull people into this ecosystem that we call the church and the local church, and we need to be there and need to be a part of it, et cetera, et cetera. What happens is that we take people's time and availability and we fill it to such a degree that they don't even have time to make disciples outside of there, or to have relationships outside the church.
Tony, it was about six months ago. I was talking to an elder of a church here in date. And he was just being honest. He said, I don't have time to build relationships with anybody. Right. Because Monday is this saying a church this day as an elders meeting this day is this thing. And he said, I would like to get to know my neighbors, but I can't because I'm never home because I'm always out doing things.
at churches and he was lamenting it and was starting to get the picture that this was not the healthy, life of a disciple that, that we need to have if we're going to reach those who are outside the church. Yeah. W what I love about this reality is that it's a, it's an easy switch. When we begin to have kingdom minded thinking, and, and it changes everything right?
Well, one of those scriptures that comes to mind is in the book of Matthew when Jesus begins to preach for the very first time comes out of the wilderness, Matthew chapter four, and he preaches a message that says repent for the kingdom of heaven. Has come near, right? He, he doesn't say repent for, you can go to church this weekend.
He says, repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near Jesus was kingdom minded. He was building the kingdom of God, even in, in my, theological roots in Wesleyan roots. What John Wesley would say is, Hey, you need to go to a class meeting, which was a gathering. It was a social gathering of, Holy people that were there to grow with Christ before you can come to worship.
Now what's interesting is that this is a, a fundamental shift from what we see in the majority of churches today. Right. Are you worshiping out of your relationship with Jesus or are you worshiping to get a relationship with Jesus? Hmm. You see the difference there is that inward outward spin cycle, like you were talking about, right.
When we have a deep, personal discipled. Relationship with Jesus. And when we help someone else do that, we'll never have to worry about church attendance because people who truly love Jesus, people who understand what Jesus did for them, people who know the word of God will always want to. Hmm. Amen. So you, excuse me, you kind of highlighted this idea of kingdom thinking kingdom perspective versus church thinking and church perspective.
can you tell us more about that as far as where do you see this kingdom sort of mindset unfolding? How do you see it happening? In scripture or maybe, you know, with Jesus, how did he move away from just being, kind of honed in far on like a Jewish sect or something like that? Yeah. I mean, if we think about the way Jesus just lived his life, he interacted.
Every person that he encountered. Right. And so from, from the woman at the well, to using the story of the good Samaritan, Jesus was always like, Hey, we're, we're expanding here. We're expanding. From just even Jewish thinking to kingdom thinking. And so when he talked about this, he lifted up and elevated people that would otherwise not be welcome in the temple or in our case, in the church.
And he did so in such a way to really show us that kingdom mindedness, right, is, is part of this. Whole whole process and, and the salvation of the world, right? Jesus came to save the world, John 3 16, 17, you know, like this is all part of this idea. even, even in the stories of Kias, I just preached on it last weekend.
He says this house, this entire houses for salvation, right? Not just the individual, but the entire house. And I, I love the way Jesus looks at those things. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I like that too, because discipling is about an outward perspective. Right. And it's not that we neglect those people that are around us in the church or anything like that.
But even as we are a church body together, I kind of envision it like a circle of people holding hands, but facing outside the circle, not inside the circle. Right. And so we're trying to move outwards towards those that don't know Christ and still we're caring about those in the circle. But the focus isn't looking across the circle and, and helping each other in that circle, although we will do that, the focus is all right, where's God calling us to outward.
And another thing is, you know, in our podcast, we always try to go back to Jesus. And what did he do? And what did he model? And it occurred to me that even in the 12, that he selected, he selected from different Jewish sect. Right. You know, the one example that we know. Simon the zealot. So it is a term of a Jewish sect for that day in time.
And what we know for sure is that Simon was different than the other disciples because of that. And so even Jesus, whether whatever sect he was, and I think it's kind of unclear, in the scriptures, but whenever one, he was, he reached outside of that to invite Simon, the zealot in to the 12 and began discipling him.
And so I'd say it, it doesn't, it doesn't pass that test of, well, is this what Jesus did? Is this she's a style? Well, no, he had some, some diversity. amongst those 12. Yeah. I love that. And I think as it is now, we kind of transitioned a little bit to the selection part. This is really important because, if you're listening to this podcast, chances are good that you love disciple-making or you love the thought of disciple-making or you're ready to start making disciples.
We want you to take down the barriers that it has to be someone know. Your church. We want you to take down the barriers that it has to be someone who already knows Christ. Instead, we want you to start looking for someone and I'm going to use the term that Justin has taught me. Right. And then he, then he, and I will talk about it a little bit, but we want you to find the perfect fat.
FAT it's kind of offensive, Tony. Yeah. Well, it's not the first time I've ever been offensive, but Justin help us understand what does F a T stand for and then let's you and I dive into it a little bit. Yeah. So a fat person is the irreducible triumvirate of selection. So when we think about selection, so who are we going to choose to disciple?
we'd like to choose everybody, but we have a limited amount of time. And so we're limited. So we have to focus in and find somebody that is going to be a good fit for what we're trying to do with them and what God is calling them to. And so this acronym really helps us to do that. So the F stands for faithful.
So are they faithful to God? And are they faithful to the opportunities they already have in front of them to grow? Right? So from our, as much as we know the person and can know the person, you know, are they trying to learn more about God trying to grow? Are they involved in a local church? Are they in a Bible study?
Are they small group or whatever? And so that helps us to know. All right. Do we see some faithfulness there? Tony, what about the, a, once you follow up the AA forests, the, a available, available right now available is not like, Hey, dating, available. Like, Hey, how you doing? You know, not that kind of available, it's available in the sense that they are making space in their life for what is it?
Right. So one of the things we talk about is, is, is if you're going to set an appointment, are you going to keep it? Are you going to show up? we almost always in disciple-making relationship have takeaways, just similar to what we do here, the podcasts and the a is. Making space in their life to do this, as I'm praying through who God is going to send me to disciple next, as I pray about what that means and looks like I want someone who's available for what God is going to call them to in their life.
Right. And so you start with faithful and then you move to available and, and ask the question. Is there room for a new relationship with me and ideally, hopefully prayerfully a deeper relationship with Jesus. In their life. And then we go to the, then we go to the T right. Well, just to follow up on that, that's so important because if they don't have time for a relationship with you, then they're not going to have time for a relationship with another person.
Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. When we think about multiplication, that's a great point. So the tea then is a teachable. So are they somebody that's willing to learn from you, about that? Life about the gospel about what it means to be a disciple. Now there's a lot of people. Are faithful and available.
And they're interested in spending time with you, but they're interested because they want to teach you something rather than them learning something. They got it all figured out, even though they're not making disciples or discipling anybody. And they'd love to sit down with you, Tony, because they have some things on their agenda that you need to get.
I mean, as a pastor, this happens all the time. People have lots of thoughts for me all the time. How do you have a litmus test if someone's teachable or not? How do you know. So one of the things I think about is in what people, do my word seem large for them. And they're coming to me sometimes for advice or the things that I'm saying to them.
They just seem to take it and want more of it. Right. And so I have some sort of influence with them in that. that's one way, another way is just looking at how they relate to others, maybe in the context of a small group or, you know, a Bible study setting, like how are they genuinely hungry and learning from others?
Or are they the ones that need to have their voice, their voice loud, right? Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I always look for is to see if that person is willing to ask a question, right? Are they coming to the dialogue? With questions. Are they coming to the dialogue with thoughts? Are they thinking about it or do they just come to the dialogue to express their own beliefs?
So question asking is definitely one of those lists litmus tests for me is, are they interested in, and even just getting to know me as a person, you and I have joked before we both met with people and I'm sure everyone listening as who sit down for a meeting and they have such a. own agenda kind of mindset going in that you can go in and not be asked a single question.
Right. And that's weird because as disciple makers, one of the tools that we often use is the, the question tool. So, you know, maybe they're not teachable, right? Yeah, absolutely. And so, Tony, I know you and I have both tried to disciple people that maybe don't have one of those. Right. And maybe they're not faithful.
Maybe they're not available. Maybe they're not teacher. And I can tell you from experience. It never works. Never, never works. If you don't have all three of these, then the person that you're discipling is not going to become a disciple maker. No. And to be clear, that doesn't mean that we write them off.
Right? W we, we, you and I are both committed to our communities and we play the long game all the time. Right. And the long game is, is, Hey, you may not be in a season where you're fat right now. Faithful available, teachable. But you might be in a season where you'll be fat soon. And so we stay in the relationship.
We continue to lean in. We do some of the things that we've talked about before and, and we wait for God to give us the nod. Absolutely. Yeah. We love them well, where they are, but there's a time and a season where discipling, somebody makes sense and there's time and season when it doesn't. And so, yeah, I appreciate that.
You added that. Tony. How about our takeaway and our action step for this episode? Take away. The goal is to build the church, the kingdom of God, not your church. Right. And that means that selection is important. Find the person that God has called you to be in prayer about it. Look at it, all those things build the church, the actions.
Well, I kind of alluded to it already find a fat person, faithful available. Teachable begin to pray if you're not ready yet to even find a fat person, begin to pray that God would send you a fat person. Right. That's that's what we need to find. Someone who will make disciples, and, and follow and be a strong disciples.
So, that's our episode for the day. I'm so thankful for all of you listening in giving us those ratings and reviews. They do mean the world to us. Hey, do us a favor, share this episode with a friend, maybe another disciple maker, maybe someone who's walking alongside you in the journey of faith.
Thank you guys so much. And we look forward to connecting real soon.