Hey everybody. Welcome back to the practitioners podcast. We'll we're applying Jesus style disciple-making to everyday life this episode and 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 navigators church ministries.org. Hey Tony how you doing today? I'm good brother. Doing real well question for you today. If you could live anywhere other than Dayton Ohio where would you live? I would like to live and this is a no-brainer for me. I would like to live on a lake in Tennessee or Northern Alabama.

I want I want a mountain lake with a little cabin wraparound porch and a dock that I can walk down to where I've got this sweet ski boat. That's what I want. What about you? Wow. That sounds nice. I would live in Thailand actually where we used to live with our friends and just be back there. So that's where I would be.

Okay. I like it. And I you know since knowing you I've learned more about Thailand than I ever have before it's it's got quite the diverse environment there. It would be beautiful. I would imagine that the pictures seemed incredible. Yes. We lived on a on a property that had eight acres. We were renting a house on it but eight acres and surrounded by Palm trees and we have banana trees and all sorts of beauty around us.

So yeah that was a good time you know I I think when we talk about scenes and environment it's probably a really good. A really good transition for us in today's topic because we're talking about the type of environment where someone is not able to be discipled or UN Undiscipleable. Is that the word that we're going with?

Undiscipleable? Yeah. Undiscipleable. You can't disciple them no matter how hard you try it's not gonna. Now that it sounds so counterintuitive because we know that Matthew 28 tells us to go there for and make disciples. And so as we dive into this topic w what does Undiscipleable really mean? Yeah.

Yeah. So it's people who as they are today They're not going to trying to disciple them. It's not going to work because no matter how skilled you are how much you care about them the condition of their heart and where they're at spiritually is going to prevent any movement from happening. and so.

And he said it does kind of sound weird but we're not we're not trying to be judgy here. you know in fact I was Undiscipleable about a year before I was very Undiscipleable and so just because somebody is about a year ago about a year ago Right. So just because somebody is that way today it doesn't mean there'll be that way a week from now or a month from now or a year from now.

It just means that something's got to change in their heart or what what God's doing in them before. What we're trying to do in terms of helping them become more like Jesus is actually going to to work in a in a measurable perceivable way. Yeah. That makes sense. I don't know if no I think it makes perfect sense.

And it actually you know for me I think one of the things I've had to learn is that undiscipleable doesn't mean bad person or a. Or somebody who isn't worthy of being friends with or you know as a as a matter of fact there was when I first started making disciples I was trying to pour into anyone that I could.

And so I would often times try to disciple guys who who. Really ready. They just weren't spiritually there. And I remember there was a young man who I was meeting with on a on a somewhat regular basis and we were going to lunch and every time I would meet with him I felt like I would leave the meeting going what did I just do with that?

60 or 90 minutes? And. And I love the guy right? It's not that I it's not that I didn't think that he was worthy of my time but I was trying to tie my weak and disciple-making relationships which is a goal for me. And here I am meeting with this gentleman on a regular basis I'm pouring into him.

And what ends up happening is nothing. And so and so I you know I just found it really interesting that it it wasn't it's not even his fault actually. I think I think it was more my fault because as the the person who's going to be the discipler I need to be more in tuned with where the person I'm trying to disciple is.

Yeah no that's really good. Because like you said it doesn't mean we shouldn't love them or be in relationship with them. In fact we would we would disciple people like that. If we had infinite time avoiding. Right. And so the very fact that we don't have infinite time available means that if we're going to make a good investment of our time we need to be prayerful.

We need to be strategic and intentional about who we are choosing to engage in that way. And so that's why we're talking about this right? It's not because we want to. Say oh these people aren't ready and these people are but it's just a matter of well we have a limited amount of time. We want to make disciples who make disciples.

And so we want to invest in those who are ready for the type of investment that we want to make in them. the other caveat Tony that we should say is that sometimes God might just ask you to invest in somebody and to spend a lot of time with somebody who isn't ready. Yeah and that's okay too. Right?

We want to be following what what God's asking us to do but what we're talking about is in general most of the time you're going to want to consider the person that you are thinking about discipling. Are they one of these types of four four types of people? Because if they are it's probably not going to go very well or at least quickly.

and so that's why we're talking. Yeah. W one of my old pastors Mike slaughter used to say everyone is equally valuable to God but not everyone is equally strategic.

And I think that's probably a good reminder. Yeah. Yeah exactly. Right. So Tony why don't you start us off? We got four types of people who you can't disciple. What's the first time. Yeah. The the first type of person is the unfaithful person. Right. And unfaithful Christian is somebody who has a desire to grow or help others but doesn't actually follow through right before.

Before we disciple someone we need to check to see how faithful they are are aren't right. And and it's easy to select an unfaithful person because he or she often speaks with passion or conviction around how much they'd love to grow yet. a person who's unfaithful ultimately has an integrity problem.

So let me say it like this. an unfaithful person says all the right things but does none of them. And and when you run into someone who is unfaithful You end up just leaving the next meeting. Disappointed. You may not leave the current meeting that disappointed but you leave the next meeting.

Disappointed because what we saw was an absence of follow-through a great example of this is when I typically end a disciple-making meeting we do it with a smart goal right? And we talk about you know for example scripture reading and if they wanted to grow in their scripture reading. And so we say Hey Before the next time we meet you're going to read these many chapters and you're going to do so by this date.

And then we get to the next meeting we show up and they haven't done it. Right. And and now we're not talking about a lack of grace for that. We want to be graceful but a continuous behavior of being unfaithful as somebody who ultimately isn't ready to be discipled. Hmm. Yeah that's good. Is there any scripture or how would you discern whether somebody is that way maybe before you're into.

I I you know I I think watching their behavior ahead of time is important. I'm also reminded of Luke 16 10 whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So sometimes before I enter into a relationship but particularly if I'm in a season where.

My plate feels especially full. I'll give a test assignment right. And it's it's like Hey before you meet I'd like for you to read this so that we can talk about it in our time together. You know? And even even though one of the gentlemen who pours into me if he gives me a book to read he won't schedule our next appointment until I finish reading the book.

Oh okay. Yeah. And that he just went through. Yeah that's right. He's not going to waste his time. Right? Like so Hey text me when you're done reading the book and then we'll schedule our next appointment. Now I'm not in a point in my walk where I need to meet with him every week or every other week. And so when we meet it's typically for a longer time but but he you know I want to be faithful to his mentorship and and spiritual fatherhood in my life.

So that's what we do. Right. Huh? Okay. That's awesome. So unfaithful right. Second one give us the second one. Yeah. So the second one is you cannot disciple somebody who is unavailable. All right. It's just not going to go well. So in our culture this is a big one because there are so many people in our world and our society that their plate is just.

They don't have anything else to put on it and they whatever gets put on is not going to sit on there. It's going to get pushed off by the next thing they're trying to put on. And so it might be the biggest it's certainly one of the biggest obstacles to making disciples in our culture. And really we can discern it because if people don't have time to go deep in their relationship with you or others or I might see it in the context of a church if they're not they're not able to be.

Church a lot. If they're not able to be in a small group because of time considerations then chances are it's because they're not available. And so it's easy though Tony to select somebody who's unavailable because when you're with them they might be off the charts on faithfulness and you know just eagerness to learn and grow.

And they might be saying all the right things but you know When you're trying to get another time with them it's just hard to do or you might schedule it and then they don't show up. And so that's really hard and I've found a lot of times that that people who are unavailable again it's easy to select them because of the other stuff might be right in place.

But ultimately it's a priority issue right? We all have the same number of hours in a day. And they're choosing to engage and to invest their time in other ways and other places. And so yeah don't try to disciple somebody it's unavailable because it's not going to work. Yeah. Unfortunately this third one.

Well I was going to say before we go to the third one yeah the. A lot of the pastors that I know often run into the unavailable part right. They don't keep enough margin in their schedule in order to disciple someone. Well because they're so busy doing the work of ministry they're not actually doing any ministry and that's that's always disappointing.

So if you're a pastor listening to this make margins for disciple-making it's so important so important. And you referenced it when you were talking about the first one of trying to tie your time into disciple making relationships. So as a pastor that's a great goal right? Is all right. Well let me look at the hours that I normally work.

How could I take 10% of those and invest those into disciple-making relationships? So good. So yeah unfaithful unavailable. What's our third. Third one on teachable right? And the unteachable Christian is interested in understanding but not in learning. This is the person that when you sit across from them is they they have a really hard time applying the truth to life.

So you know They're normally a little bit more ahead than heart right? They want to think about it but they don't want to actually live into it very well. Right. And so you know it's it's an a very dangerous kind of place to see the unteachable person because oftentimes you can get into some really great discussions but it's hard to get to a place where you're really impacting life.

I think I see this the most and people who are struggling with. Being open to talking about character deficiencies you know like oh I don't you know like if you start to use absolutes like I never have a problem with that or that's not something I've ever wrestled with. And now I begin to wonder if someone is unteachable because well I've just done this long enough to know that I struggle with everything but a.

so yeah I think when we when we look in an unteachable person it's easy to select them because they may be faithful and they may be available. but it's you know it's one of those things for me that's much harder because. They feel a little bit like a brick wall where you're just like come on you're almost there.

You got it. You almost got it. Oh we didn't get it. Right. And so that unteachable person is is going to be somebody who may cast blame instead of choosing to accept their own role in it. So just somebody who has a hard time seeing themselves. Yeah. No that's really good Tony. so if you're listening you might've heard in these first three.

faithful available teachable we've kind of talked about the other way right? We don't disciple somebody who is not but we've had episodes where we've referenced the fat acronym faithful available teachable is what we're looking for in somebody that we disciple. And so this is me building some tension and suspense on the fourth one right?

Because it doesn't fit into that acronym. But there there actually is one more thing that if you try and disciple somebody that is like this it's not really gonna work to the objectives that we're trying to to create right. Somebody who is a disciple who makes disciples. And so that last one so the fourth thing for type of person that you cannot disciple is an unbeliever.

And so this is you know a bit different. Some people would argue that you can disciple a non-Christian I disagree. Right? And so the reason I disagree is because prior to being in relationship with Jesus we we should walk with people. A lot of those same principles of disciple makings applies. So we need to be relational with them.

We need to be intentional. We need to be sharing the gospel but you know we call this evangelism. Not disciple-making because Jesus didn't look at people who were opposed to him and what he was about and say Hey come follow me. And you know hopefully I can bring some transformation so that you're kind of on board with God.

He chose people that already had a soft heart towards God. And that we're interested in pursuing pursuing God. And so for us if we are going to disciple somebody they at least need to have faith that Jesus is the son of God. And they want to be more like him. Cause that's what we're discipling them towards just like Jesus.

Right. So. Jesus is trying to help them become like him. We're trying to help people become like Jesus. And so if they're not interested in following Jesus or learning about Jesus are committed to the mission of Jesus then we're not going to be able to effectively disciple them. We should love them. We should be in relationship with them but that is a different sort of relationship that is an evangelistic sort of relationship.

and so don't try and disciple people that don't have faith yet. Right. First we need to help them develop a relationship with. faith in him and then we can begin to disciple them. And so disciple-making can't begin until at least they have that commitment to becoming like Christ. so those are four Tony right?

So don't disciple somebody that is unfaithful unavailable unteachable or unbelievable. it just does not work and believe me I've tried Tony. I don't know how many of these you've tried so far. Most of them I think I've been a couple of them along the way. I mean honestly there and you know and I think it is important to know that sometimes it's a season of life that someone's in where they might be in one of those seasons.

And you know the holy spirit will do incredible things to move us and to move our hearts. And all of that is good and important to know. And it's okay. It's okay for someone to be in a weird season I think. Yeah. Yeah absolutely. And really we're just starting about categories of relationship or levels maybe is a better word for it.

Then if somebody is faithful and teachable but it's not available. Well we still want to be friends with them and love them and continue to offer input to them as we're around them because chances are as they're following Jesus they might see that their priorities need to be changed a little bit and they might begin to offload some of those things that they are putting more priority.

And then then they're a great a great person that God might be calling you to disciple. So like you're saying it's not a final determination of oh I gotta write that person off. They'll never be a disciple maker. It's just all right. Well I need to continue to pray and wait on God for that person to be the type of person that's ready for a discipling a Jesus style relationship of discipling.

We gotta wait we gotta wait. Tony. How about our take away and action. Yeah. Oh no. I was going to say let me give us our takeaway and action step. So great great minds. Think alike. Our takeaway understanding not everyone is ready to be discipled right? Understanding not everyone is ready to be discipled which is what we're just talking about.

And our action step today. Hey I want to challenge you or we want to challenge you to evaluate if the person you are trying to disciple is truly undecipherable in this season of their life. If they are undecidable we want you to know next week our next week episode is all about how to gracefully end a disciple-making relationship how to gracefully end to disciple-making relationship.

we're excited to bring that to you next week and to make sure that you don't miss next week's episode. Stop right now that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts. And also if you could leave us a rating or review on iTunes or whatever platform. And the greatest compliment you can give us is to share this episode with a friend.

I know I speak on behalf of Justin. When I say we are so thankful to be on this journey with so many of you who give us such incredible feedback about this little podcast that we're doing all about. Disciple-making so we're thankful for you and for the mission that you have to walk in faith and make disciples.

We'll see you guys real soon