90 Second Leadership – Your Church’s Discipleship: The Influences Matrix
I am convinced that ignorance is the main reason churches are not experiencing spiritual and numerical growth. I’m referring to the type of ignorance where you don’t know why you do ministry the way that you do. It’s a lack of self-awareness.
That’s why, in my book No Silver Bullets, I outline the Influences Matrix, so that you can pinpoint the way your church approaches discipleship from a systems perspective. Here’s a quick summary.
The Copy Cat Church is convinced that they are only one model away from breakthrough. They believe that maturity and growth is about getting to a destination by offering the right classes in the right order. So they focus on creating a single path for everyone. Unfortunately, to the church, the leadership seems scattered and indifferent since nothing lasts longer than a few months. Constant change is the definition of a low accountability culture.
The Silver Bullet Church coordinates their ministries and contextualizes language so that their discipleship pathway makes sense. While this model may seem efficient, one of the glaring issues is that they see disciples as widgets. At the heart of this model is the belief that discipleship is programmatic.
The Hippie Church believes that discipleship can happen anywhere and anytime because they see discipleship as being deeply personal. They assume that as long as they teach the right things, people will just naturally grow and mature. So there’s a lack of measurement, intentionality, and organizational accountability.
The Intentional Church is very involved at creating environments where church members can take their next step toward Christ. As a result, they have guardrails and a moving sidewalk for their members. The Intentional Church sees discipleship as a long obedience in the same direction and they are going to do whatever it takes to intentionally develop self-feeders by nudging people along that direction.
So here’s my question to you. Where would you place your church in this Influences Matrix?
