Walking Together on the Jesus Road

Intercultural Discipling

Evelyn Hibbert, Richard Hibbert

• Publisher: William Carey Publishing
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780878080717
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

Make discipling culturally relevant. Christians who serve Jesus among people from a different culture than their own often struggle to find a good way to disciple people. Walking Together on the Jesus Road addresses this need by guiding readers through three essential practices for making disciples across cultures: listening to disciples to get to know them and their context, focusing on relationships with Christ, fellow disciples, and others, and enabling disciples to live out their faith in culturally relevant ways. These practices are the foundation for the long-term, intentional process of helping disciples from other cultures become more like Jesus. The book also engages with practical challenges, such as enabling disciples to find and belong to a nurturing community of faith, as well as contextualizing the way we teach the Bible.

SECTION

1

SHARE YOUR LIFE

CHAPTER

1

WALK ALONGSIDE DISCIPLES

The imperative to make disciples is crystal clear in Jesus’ final commands to his followers. He told them to “go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you” (Matt 28:19–20a). In order for the good news about Jesus to be proclaimed beyond the groups of people where the church is already established, Jesus’ followers have to cross cultural boundaries. The discipling they do is intercultural discipling.

Despite Jesus’ clear command to make disciples, church leaders and missionaries in many parts of the world feel that this vital ministry is being neglected. Leaders in Thailand, for example, see making active disciples as the most pressing need in Thai churches.¹ In many parts of Africa, a failure to disciple people is a major reason for the lack of growth in Christians, according to Kenyan theologian Nahashon Gitonga.²

In places where discipling is being done, it makes a defining impact on whether people continue to follow Jesus. Being discipled by a more mature Christian was found to be the most important factor in new Taiwanese believers continuing to grow in their faith.³ Church leaders in China observe that for Chinese students who go to study in the West and become Christians there, being discipled overseas “is key to returnees integrating effectively into churches back in China.”⁴

Many Christians serving cross-culturally struggle, however, to find a good way to disciple people. Most discover that the approaches and methods they rely on when discipling people from their own culture do not work well when they try to disciple people from another culture. Finding an approach to discipling that suits people from other cultures is challenging. “My greatest struggle was to identify a practical methodology of cross-cultural discipleship,” a Korean missionary wrote after serving in Africa for thirteen years.⁵

Very few resources address the felt need for help in this area. There are many excellent books on making disciples in a Western context.⁶ There is also a growing number of resources that guide Christians in how to disciple people from particular religious backgrounds and in how to communicate across cultures.⁷ But the emphasis in the discipling literature has been on Western methods of discipleship. Christians working with people from cultures other than their own are consequently left with little guidance about how to implement biblical discipleship in other cultures.

Our aim in this book is to address the felt need of Christian workers for help in how to disciple people from cultural backgrounds other than their own. We explore the impact of cultural differences on discipling, outline principles that can help disciplers navigate these differences, and consider the practical implications of the cultural challenges they will face in discipling people from another culture. To do this, we draw on the insights of others who have written about discipling and on interviews we conducted with more than thirty intercultural disciplers, most of whom have served or are currently serving as missionaries. We asked intercultural disciplers the following questions:

• Can you tell me about how you began to disciple someone from another culture, how you came to be a cross-cultural discipler?

• Can you walk me through what happened and how the discipling worked?

• What are some things you did that you felt were particularly helpful?

• What were some of the major challenges you faced in discipling this person/people?

• What would do differently now?

• What has happened to the person you discipled?

• How are they going now?

• What have you learnt about cross-cultural discipling which you think it would be good for others to know?

We also draw from our own experiences of discipling Turkish and Millet believers.⁸

What Is Intercultural Discipling?

Intercultural discipling is the long-term, intentional process in which Christians from one cultural background walk alongside people from another culture, sharing life with them in order to help them in their journey of getting to know Christ and growing in their relationship with Him. Intercultural discipling involves new and complex challenges beyond those we face when discipling someone from the same cultural background as ourselves. The questions and issues that people wrestle with in their journey of coming to faith in Christ differ from culture to culture. Intercultural disciplers need to be able to adapt their approach to address these questions and issues in a way that takes into account disciples’ cultural values and learning preferences.

To understand intercultural discipling, we first need to understand disciple-making. Jesus is the expert disciple-maker. When he was on earth, his disciples learned by watching him, listening to him, and doing the practical assignments he gave them (Matt 10; Luke 9:1–6; 10:1–17). Jesus’ example shows us that discipling revolves around the relationship between disciples and discipler in which they spend a lot of time together. The kind of discipling we focus on in this book is similar to the discipling Jesus did with the small group of men who were with him almost all the time for three years (Matt 28:16–17; Mk 3:13).

The word “disciple” is a translation of the New Testament Greek word mathetes, meaning “learner.” Disciples of Jesus are people who are learning from and becoming more like Jesus. The overarching purpose of intercultural discipling—and indeed all discipling—is that disciples become more and more like Jesus. Intercultural disciplers do everything they can to “present [disciples] to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ” (Col 1:28). They invest in disciples so that they can become more and more like Jesus in their character and priorities, including growing to love God and people more and more (Matt 22:37,39).

Disciples have different personalities, backgrounds, gifts, and strengths. But there are certain areas that every disciple should be growing in. These include:

• BOW—Putting Jesus first in their lives (Luke 14:25–26; Matt 16:24)

• RESPOND—Responding to God’s word (Jn 8:31; Acts 2:42)

• GROW—Growing in their relationship with God (Jn 15:5–8; Col 1:9–10)

• LOVE—Loving fellow believers and other people (Jn 13:34–36; Eph 5:2)

• BE FRUITFUL—Evidencing love, joy, peace and all the fruit of the Spirit (Jn 15:5–27; Col 1:10)

• REPRODUCE—Making more disciples (Matt 28:19)

Discipling is a process in which disciplers help disciples along a journey of transformation from their old way of life to a new life as a member of God’s family. This journey is deeply relational. It is helpful to think of this journey as being like people walking along a road together. We call this the “Jesus Road.” Every Christian is a disciple who is walking on the Jesus Road together with other disciples. The intercultural discipler walks together on this road with those they are discipling for as long as their individual pilgrimages toward heaven intersect. This is shown in figure 1 below. The discipler, shown in black for easy visibility, is walking along the Jesus Road with a group of disciples from another culture (Culture A) who are shown in white with grey outlines.

Figure 1. Disciples and discipler walking together on the Jesus Road

JESUS’ DISCIPLES LEARNED FROM BEING WITH JESUS 24/7: WATCHING, LISTENING, AND DOING PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENTS.

The Challenges of Intercultural Discipling

A major challenge in discipling people from other cultures is the need to let go of our own cultural biases. Our culture deeply influences everything we do as well as the way we think. It also shapes the way we approach discipling. The model of discipling promoted in books written on this subject by Westerners has, unsurprisingly, been deeply influenced by Western cultural emphases and assumptions. Some of these emphases, such as intentionality, obedience, and multiplication, are positive; they reflect biblical emphases.

Other Western cultural emphases though, can hinder the growth of disciples from other cultures. One of these is an over-emphasis on the written word. While it is important to have the Bible available in written form, reading the Bible is not the only way that people learn what it says. Many cultures have a rich heritage of oral teaching and learning. Using an oral approach to discipling in these cultures can be far more effective in helping people to understand God’s ways than insisting on using written materials. When disciplers insist on text-based methods of learning, they unwittingly exclude some disciples who are keen to learn and prevent them from growing in their faith. Educated young people who are comfortable with Western methods of learning then become the focus of disciplers’ attention. Older, wiser disciples who are respected by others in their community can be bypassed or ignored. This can result in the Christian message being devalued in the eyes of the community because it is not endorsed by its leaders.

BELONGING TO GROUPS IS VERY IMPORTANT.

Another cultural emphasis that is a challenge to effective intercultural discipling is individualism. While individualism helpfully encourages personal responsibility, it downplays the importance of groups and the relationships, belonging, and identity they give. When Western disciplers unthinkingly apply their individualistic orientation to discipling, disciples from more group-oriented cultures can feel pressured to ignore or leave their group. This decreases the opportunity that other group members have to hear about Jesus and removes accountability structures, making the disciples more vulnerable to moral failure. It can also lead to disciples feeling extremely lonely, partly because disciplers and churches from individualistic cultures can rarely replicate the quality and intensity of community that more group-oriented cultures provide. The end result can be that disciples ultimately abandon their faith.

In addition to the challenge of needing to let go of our cultural biases in order to effectively disciple people from another culture, intercultural disciplers face the challenge of discerning exactly “where” a disciple from another culture is in their spiritual walk. This is usually more difficult in intercultural discipling than in discipling someone from the same culture as ourselves. The exact moment when a disciple is born again can be very difficult for the intercultural discipler to discern. Too often disciplers assume that disciples who have prayed a prayer of repentance have been born again. But if we too quickly assume that disciples have been born again, we can become frustrated when they do not seem to grow.

INTERCULTURAL DISCIPLING IS A DEEPLY RELATIONAL PROCESS.

A further challenge in intercultural discipleship is the time and patience it requires. Discipling someone from another culture is a long-term and deeply relational process. It takes time to learn the language, culture, belief system, and worldview of people from another culture. It often takes years for followers of another religion to make the decision to follow Christ. A Christian who has served among Turks for many years told us, “It’s a long journey. If a person is not a believer it can take two to three years of you meeting with them before they make a choice. Then they start walking on the road.”

These challenges of intercultural discipling—the need to let go of cultural biases, to commit long-term, and to be patient—are illustrated in the following account of a young woman who discipled her Chinese friend:

I was working together with Lily⁹ in a shoe shop. I had been reading Keith Green’s biography, where he talked about planting seeds. I felt strongly that I needed to talk to Lily about God. So, I asked if she believed in God. She told me that she felt “very dark.” I shared with her how God had given me light and peace and joy because of Jesus. After that, we just spent a lot of time together, not necessarily talking about God, but doing that too. We went swimming; we went shopping, and did a lot of other things together. After months of spending time together, she asked me for a Bible.

The relationship was very important. It wouldn’t have worked without a genuine relationship. For us the discipleship was mainly talking together and me answering the questions that she asked. Someone from university then started a more formal mentoring relationship with her. It was really good for her, though, for us to keep meeting too, as it gave her a person to talk things through with about what she was learning in the more formal discipleship. After several years, she eventually started going to church.

But that commitment took three to four years for her to make.

Throughout those years there were periods when Lily wanted to be very close and talk a lot, and other periods where she didn’t want any contact. It was very important that I was available to her when she needed time and it was important also that I didn’t push her at the other times. At that point, she decided to tell her parents that she had become a Christian. That was very difficult. It took them one to two years to accept. There were two levels of accepta...