Hey everybody. Welcome back to the practitioners podcast, where we're applying Jesus style disciple-making to every day life. This episode in all of our episodes are powered by navigators church ministries, which focuses on helping churches, make disciples who can make disciples for more information, or to get connected.

Check out their website, navigators church ministries.org. Good afternoon, Justin. Good afternoon, Tony. It's a rainy day on the cusp of spring break here in Centerville. And I have a very random question for you. Okay. Favorite spring break of all time. Favorite spring break of all time would have to be, when I was in Thailand and we took a trip to grabby, which is one of a famous beach in Thailand.

I mean, just. Magnificently beautiful movies were filmed over there. I mean, it was just, it was amazing. How about you? Oh, for me, mine is not nearly as cool as that. a couple of years ago for spring break, we went camping in Houston woods and camping at Houston woods is not very luxurious or fun. I mean, it was fun.

I just met. The extravagant. but it was so cold that our family just had that like shared experience in the pain of it all. our water froze one day. Like it was just, it was like one of those epic family memories, you know what I mean? It was like when my family gets together, we, we talk about it as that kind of idea, you know?

That's fun now for our non-local listeners. Houston woods is not in Texas. It's not in Texas. No, you're right. It's in the Southern Miami valley. It's honestly, it's about 45 minutes from, From where we live. So it's not far at all. It was, it was a good spring break because I still had some work I had to do, but, we wanted to get the kids from being home all the time, which is if you're not going anywhere for spring break, that is the real challenge is your children are home the all time.

And it's like, it's like the. Shot before summer comes. Right. Right. That's awesome. Tell me that. That was a good, that was a good random question. I love it. Well, thank you. I put a lot of effort into it. A lot of planning, usually one to two minutes before I hit record, we come up with a random question.

There you go. So Tony, today we are going to continue or. Playing off fence in disciple-making last episode, we talked about playing defense. And so today we're talking about offense and as you guys will remember from last step, so defense is when we are responding to what the disciple is bringing to us or what the disciples going through in their life.

The offense playing offense is kind of the opposite of that. It is. Moving something towards a disciple being proactive, coming up with something that you want to develop in the disciple, and you're bringing that to them. It's something you've thought up planned on, and are, moving forward, because as you're moving towards that destination, you need some offense.

You need to know where you're going and how you're going to get it. Yeah, offensive disciple-making is like, finding a play and executing it. And you and I are both big sports guys and a lot of our listeners are sports people, some aren't, but the deal is like in football, you drop a play. To get to the common goal, AKA the touchdown, and then you run the play and it's very similar and offensive disciple-making.

And as we think about it, right, the intentional scale versus the relational scale, the offensive idea of a disciple maker. Is on the more intentional side, meaning that, you're going to walk in, you're going to have a plan and we're kind of assuming right. That when we talk about it, that nothing's gone wrong.

That's the defensive side. That's a skill. When we respond, we react, we move together. And so on the offensive side, it requires. Hi intentionality. And you're going in with a specific purpose to draw something out. So, I'm going to share one of my fate, you know, one of, one of the ways that I do that in disciple-making and then Justin will share one of his, I often believe that one of the most important things we can do in offensive disciple-making is casting the vision of disciple-making.

Right. And so if I'm meeting with somebody on a regular basis, It's easy to lose the vision of spiritual reproduction, especially because I'm so relational that it's really much easier for me to play defense and offense. So oftentimes I have to kind of ride out a plan to catch the vision of spiritual reproduction as a part of my offensive game plan.

And I'll use scripture for example, that, that the scripture where God tells Abraham that his spiritual descendants outnumber the. One of my favorite, visions of disciple-making. I will bring that burse ready to go, ready to share. And I'll talk through it with my disciples as a way to be offensive in spiritual re reproduction.

Justin, what about you? What's one of the ways that you stay, ahead of the game on offensive. Disciple-making. Yeah. So when I think about offense, I'm thinking about what are the things I'm trying to build into this person that I'm discipling. you know, you use the analogy of a play and sports for our non-sports people.

We can think about it as, you know, if you are trying to get to a destination. you need to know how you're going to get there, right? So you need, you don't just arrive there by accident, getting in your car and making random turns and things like that. You need a plan for how you're going to get there.

And so for me often is really thinking through what are the. The skills that need to be developed the heart that needs to be developed. What's the foundation that I need to lay to help this person become a disciple maker, become someone who first of all, is, you know, madly in love and developed intimacy with Jesus.

 and then from there, how do we help them develop in helping others and loving others effectively? And so, you know, it really depends for me on where is this person that I'm discipling, you know, at what place in their spiritual development, we talked last season. And for those of you that just joined us this season, do you go back to season one?

 episodes 21 to 23, we talk about the different phases in a disciples development. And so if they're an infant disciple, I'd be doing things like foundation. Right. So thinking about developing some core disciplines in their life, developing some assurances and things that they can really hold as bedrock in their faith.

And so, that's kind of one phase, right? There's the child disciple, which I'm really trying to build commitment and discipline in their life. Young adult disciple. I'm really working on some of those things that you just talked about. Ministry, vision, and skills, like some, some tools and things like that that they can share.

And then as we grow, progress almost towards maturity or at mature maturity, we're looking at alignment in terms of character and application. And so. It really depends on where they're at in terms of what I'm doing and the plays that I'm running or the turns. if we use the other analogy, the turns that I'm trying to make in that relationship to get us where we're trying to go, a mature disciple.

Yeah. One of the things that I think is important is, I, and I hear this all the time from disciple makers that they're not sure what to do next. And so this can be a really hard thing. And I'm interested in, in just a moment to get your thoughts, Justin, I would share that I almost always start with the.

Right. So when I'm working with someone and we've talked about the wheel on a recent episode, what I'll do is I'll number them as I take them through the wheel, the different spokes, I'll number them one to four, that one to four kind of becomes the playbook that I'm going to run for. Amount of time required to accomplish the task.

So here's an example, cause I know that can kind of seem ambiguous. The example is if the number one thing is scripture, they're struggling with right on a list from one to four, when you're doing the wheel, the number one thing that you're struggling with is scripture. I may stay in scripture for two or three weeks and I'll use some of the tools like we'll read some scripture together.

We'll set a smart goal around scripture. We may do, some scripture reading and intentional kind of, discussion around it in our time together. And I'm going to stay on scripture until they go back to the wheel. And that's not as difficult as it was before. Right. So then maybe scripture moves down to like, Hey, that's my third.

 worst. And now the, my first worst is prayer. So then I'll go to prayer, right? And I'll just kind of go through the numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 being the worst and four being the best that they're at. And I'll use that as a way to develop a plan now, because we believe in intentional and relational.

Disciple-making what we don't want to do when it comes to offensive. Disciple-making is you don't want to lock in a playbook. long-term that you have to use all the time, AKA, you don't want to pick up a book and be like, Hey, we're going to do a chapter a week. Whether you understand the chapter or not, and oh, by the way, you're going to like it.

Right. Like, and, and I know some disciple makers want to do that because it's easier, but authentic disciple-making is intentional and relational. So I always encourage people to spend as much time there as necessary until the person that you're working. Understand it we're we're, we're striving for understanding, not just for acceptance.

Yeah, Tony. That's so good. Cause we're not even in that. Right. We're trying, we're striving for understanding towards application. Right. And so a lot of times people will, instead of developing their own authentic plan or their offensive playbook, they will default to somebody who they don't know and who doesn't know the person they're discipling and they'll say, oh, well, I'll just use this playbook.

Like you said, just find a book and move through it chapter by chapter. It's not that it's totally ineffective because sometimes there is some growth that happens out of that. But to me, it's almost the difference between, you know, plopping down in some lecture hall, where a professor is, you know, pontificating about some specific subject that, you know, he's an expert.

He knows what he's talking about, but at the same time you could do that. Or you could have, a personal tutor to focus on what you need. Right. And in terms of a disciple maker, that's really what we can provide for disciple is no, I'm going to look into your life. I'm going to walk beside you. I'm going to engage you where you're at.

And we're going to, through my, as a disciple maker, through my experience with God and my experience in growing towards maturity, I'm going to draw on all those things and bring something to you that will help you. And it's tailored specifically for you to grow from where you're at to that next step towards maturity.

And so that's why I'm often, you know, one of them, one of my, things I'm really passionate about is when we disciple, we should disciple. Out of who we are out of the word of God, the spirit of God and his movement in our life, not just become a book jockey where we're putting books in front of the person we're discipling and hoping that that's going to get them where we need them to go.

Because most often it doesn't and we lose tons of momentum and tons of motivation on the other side, with that disciple, when all we're doing is moving through curriculum or book. Yeah. W and I think one of the, one of the places that we see this really well done in scripture is when Jesus sends out the disciples.

So he's being very intentional. He sends them out, he tells them, Hey, if you're not welcomed anywhere, shake the dust off your feet. And then he brings them back together. So this is what I would call an offensive play by Jesus. Now, I'm not sure he would use that language, but. For the thought of disciple-making he was super intentional in sending them out because what he's trying to do is prepare them for a time when he's not going to be.

Right. So you can't get to Matthew 28 and less. Jesus sends out the disciples first. Right? And so this is kind of the idea, Hey, I'm sending you out. I want you to come back. We're going to talk about it and then I'll send you out for real in Matthew 28, when I'm no longer with you. I mean, when I'm on earth, surely I'll be with you always to the very end of the age.

He says in Matthew 28, but this idea, right, this is an authentic play by Jesus. Making sure that the disciples are prepared for the, for the persecution that they're going to receive later on in their ministry. Right? So this is about getting good reps. This is about making sure that the disciples are ready.

Now, this is important, right? Because as a disciple maker, it's not our job. To make sure that we're ready. It's our job to make sure that the person we're discipling is ready. So if we think about offensive, disciple-making, it's offensive for the other person, right? I'm trying to get that other person ready to make disciples who can make disciples.

This is the reproduction part. So it's not just about like, Hey, I need to make sure, like, if I was discipling Justin, for example, it's not just about making sure that Justin is. Okay. Reading scripture, that's part of it, but it's making sure that Justin is reading scripture so that Justin can teach someone else to read scripture.

Right. And so is it, is it a pass audible? Is it a tool? Is it something that he can use and grow with forever endeavor? Does that, does that make sense? That's kind of a, a kind of a big. Yeah, it's that next step, right? So it's not enough for the person you're discipling to do something. That's the step towards them being able to help somebody else do it.

And so a lot of times disciple-making fails or it fails to reproduce because the discipler hasn't. been intentional in developing that in the person they're discipling. So asking the question, oh, Hey, I noticed that now you're in the word every day and you know, maybe six months ago you weren't, how might you help somebody else get to that place?

How would you explain it? How would you. take them into the word and show them the importance of that. How would you talk about the difference between what it's done in your life now versus when you weren't doing that? Right. And so that example of Jesus sending them out it's that development process.

And so what Jesus was clearly doing, he wasn't just explaining something for their understanding. He was helping them become something. Right. And so it's not enough to know it's what we have to do is continue to move towards Sally and ourselves. But those were discipling. Continue to move towards becoming like Jesus, not just knowing like Jesus knew.

Yeah. And one of the things we're going to talk about in our next episode is the disciple-making, scale, like how quickly disciple-making scales. I would say that it's scale. And we'll talk about this again more next week, but it's scales that our ability to be intentionally, minded, right. To be an offensive disciple maker.

So if we want to create a culture that says, Hey, not only do I want you to know the material, but I want you to know the material well enough so you can share the material. Then that makes a huge difference. And I'm just going to throw this in here, because I think it's really important for church leaders.

Oftentimes in previous church cultures, we taught people how to come to church, right. And we, we didn't even, we never taught people how to follow Jesus fully. I won't say never. That's an overstatement, but we rarely taught people how to follow Jesus or offensive disciple-making is teaching them how to follow Jesus to the extent that they could teach it to someone else.

This is the essence of spiritual reproduction. And building the kingdom of God in your city. And so if, if you want to make sure that your church is growing, pastors, make sure that you have an intentional plan to make disciples who can make disciples. Yeah, that's so good. Tony. And the other thing we should mention is a lot of times often doesn't happen because it's easier just to sit back and play diff.

It's easier just to sit back and play defense. Cause I can walk into a meeting. And just sit back and wait for what comes to me. But in authentic, I have to be prepared. I have to plan beforehand. I have to think beforehand, what am I going to do? How am I going to move these things forward in this disciples life?

What questions do I need to ask? What skills am I trying to develop? What tools do I want to pass on? Right. And so it's all those things that require some intentionality and some thought and some preparation before you're in the meeting. that defense doesn't require. And so for a disciple makers out there, if you are finding that your disciple-making relationships are feeling stagnant, that the person you're discipling isn't growing or moving in the direction that you want them to at the pace that you want them to, you might think about, well, how well am I actually playing off offense in this relationship?

Or am I just showing up and being responsive and being more of a defensive disciple me? I love it. I love it. And you know, our hope with this kind of series where we do often send defense is to cause some intentional thought about how you enter into these relationships so that you're successful.

Disciple-making is, can be hard. It can be arduous and a good plan and good skills, offense and defense go a long way to help you make disciples who can make disciples. Justin, will you give us our takeaway and action step? Yeah. So our takeaway today is skilled disciple makers have the vision, the intentionality, and the tools to play off it.

Skill disciple makers had the vision, the intentionality and the tools to play offense and our action. Step, draw up a play and run it with the person that you are discipling. Hey everybody, we're really excited that you're continuing to tune in. We love hanging out with you guys. We love sharing about disciple-making with you guys.

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