Statistics indicate that traditional methods of reaching pre-disciples are no longer effective with many people groups. This is especially true for post-moderns who tend to distrust institutions, including the religious institutions. Many people have an interest in the spiritual, but don’t see the church as the pathway to becoming a more spiritual person. Many also admire Jesus, but wonder why their experience with the church doesn’t match up with their perception of him. As the church, called to be on Christ’s mission to “make disciples”, we must redefine what “church” means to many pre-disciples. We must live our lives with “Gospel intentionality”, following the leadership of Christ through the doors he has placed in the lives of the people to whom we are sent.
Traditional church, emerging church, missional church, whatever we call ourselves, we must work together to reproduce disciples in ways that work. Many of our church models have a great vision and mission, but their structure is not easy to reproduce or sustain. Because of this, the goal of Disciples Church is not to simply be another church, but to work with other churches in building a missional discipleship movement.
Church planting pioneer Dr. George Patterson categorizes churches in three ways: “the elephant” - big and difficult to reproduce, but powerful; “the rabbit” - small and highly reproducible; and “the rabbi-phant” - a combination of the two. DC seeks to be a “rabbi-phant”. Instead of building up, we want to “build out” by forming a reproducing network of highly effective churches working together with common vision, mission, and values. Our goal is to combine the resources of “the elephant” with the effectiveness and reproducibility of “the rabbit” so that “Christ in us” will be revealed to all people.
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