Stop Calling Your Sunday Service Discipleship

Why good preaching alone won’t form your people, and what small churches can do about it.

Good Message, Pastor

As pastors, we’ve all heard it: someone walks out the door and says, “Great message, pastor.” Yet, you know the person. You know their life. You have been with them through many tough challenges. But you also know not much has changed. Week after week, they come, they hear, they congratulate you on a great sermon, and walk out the door, perhaps determined to change, but only to end up being the same person as they were when they walked in. It is frustrating for pastors. I know. I have been there and still find myself wondering what is going on at times. The challenge of seeing people change and become more Christlike is not new. Even in Ezekiel’s day, people heard the Word of God, and not much else happened. Note the tone in Ezekiel 33:31–32.

“And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.” (Ezekiel 33:31–32)

God Himself warned Ezekiel that people would treat his preaching like a lovely song. They’d enjoy it, and they wouldn’t do a word of it. I think many of us can relate.

Here is the issue as I see it. Sunday preaching and discipleship are not the same thing. Thirty minutes of preaching on Sunday (45 if you are me, just ask my people) isn’t going to cut it. Hearing the Word of God during that short amount of time may produce faith, but by the time people leave, they are right back in the world, and most likely, right back where they were when they walked in. For true discipleship and spiritual growth to happen, people must be constantly challenged after Sunday to see themselves in the light of Scripture and make real change. This can happen even in small churches. The pathway of discipleship doesn’t require big budgets or big staffs. All it requires is the Sunday morning sermon and letting it ride with your people the rest of the week through a simple, structured discipleship method.

I Know What You’re Thinking

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: people get saved on Sunday. Amen, they do. Faith comes by hearing. But look at what happened after Peter’s sermon in Acts 2. Three thousand people were saved in one day, and then “they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship” (Acts 2:41–42). The sermon brought them to new birth. Continuing is what raised them. A birth isn’t the same as raising a child.

Hearers, Not Doers

James 1:22–25 sums it up:

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” (James 1:22–25)

God calls each believer not just to hear the Word, but to do it. Verse 25 clearly states that the mirror of God’s Word brings change. But for it to bring about change, we must continually look into it. That’s what I call biblical self-confrontation: looking honestly into the mirror of God’s Word and dealing with what you see. This means more than 30 or 45 minutes on Sunday morning.

We all know Matthew 28:19–20.

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” (Matthew 28:19–20)

As pastors, we’re committed to all of it: going, baptizing, and teaching. But look closely at what Jesus said. He didn’t say “teaching them all things.” He said, “teaching them to observe all things.” Discipleship isn’t measured by what people hear. It’s measured by what they obey. I’ve seen many churches do evangelism well. Preaching the gospel and calling people to Christ comes naturally to most of us. We struggle with the follow-through: keeping God’s Word in front of our people long enough for them to actually live it.

Lifeway Research recently asked Protestant pastors if they were satisfied with discipleship in their churches. About half said yes. But only 8% strongly agreed. Lifeway concluded that in many churches, discipleship is assumed rather than designed. I think that’s exactly what happens. We assume the sermon is doing the work.

Stop Letting the Sermon End at the Door

My own personal struggle with church discipleship began in earnest when I was an assistant pastor at my former church. During my last few years there, our senior pastor challenged all of us on staff to develop a systematic discipleship approach. We had long staff meetings talking about how to set up and implement such a strategy. We debated the ins and outs, the pros and cons. After some time, we made some headway. We identified key issues, set up discipleship levels, and developed a plan. However, it wasn’t long before we realized the end result was too hard to manage, contained too much information, and was cumbersome to implement.

Later, I became senior pastor of a different church. The burden of discipleship grew even greater. I struggled knowing that what we did at our former church was good and right, but it failed. It failed because the system was too complicated to sustain. Even early in my current ministry, our attempts at discipleship were chaotic, to say the least. As we struggled, we began, as a staff, reading some books about small groups. One of the books was Sticky Church by Larry Osborne. In this book, he described how their church built its entire small-group ministry around the Sunday morning message. Then the question hit me: What if our entire discipleship approach were sermon-based? You see, the answer isn’t in another program. The answer is to stop letting the sermon end at the door. The Sunday sermon, extended through the week, is the answer. From that moment, I began building sermon-based discipleship around each Sunday’s message.

It works. It’s simple. Preach the sermon on Sunday and, throughout the week and through various mediums, keep the conversation going with our entire church body. How do I know it works? Just a couple of weeks ago, as I write this, we were having our annual Small Groups kickoff. As we talked and shared the importance of small groups, one of our ladies spoke up and succinctly shared our entire discipleship process as a testimony to the whole room. She noted that it all starts with the sermon on Sunday, continues through the notes in the bulletin, the daily devotionals, and the midweek podcast, and finishes with small group discussion at the end of the week. We’ve never explained our process to her or laid it out as a program for the whole church. We just implemented it, and it started working so well that our people easily began understanding and embracing it. Through that same process, one of the men in our church was saved and baptized, and I’m still discipling him today.

But I Don’t Have Time for This

One of the biggest deterrents to starting a new discipleship program is that many small-church pastors are overwhelmed. Many think they don’t have enough time in their day or week to do this, especially bi-vocational pastors. Hey, I get it. My dad was strictly a bi-vocational pastor for many, many years. I know the struggle of working all week and barely having enough time to visit people in the hospital, prepare a Sunday school lesson, and prepare two Sunday messages. I watched my dad do it for years.

Moses knew that weight too. In Exodus 18, his father-in-law Jethro watched him sit from morning until evening, handling every need of the people by himself. Jethro didn’t praise his dedication. He told him the truth: “The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone” (Exodus 18:17–18). Notice that the problem wasn’t Moses’s effort or his heart. It was the design. And notice who else wore out: “this people that is with thee.” When the pastor carries everything alone, the people suffer too.

That’s why I’m not proposing another discipleship program. I’m suggesting you turn your Sunday sermon into the discipleship program. You’re already in the text every week. Let that work ride with your people the rest of the week. And when you do, something else begins to happen. Paul tells us that God gave pastors and teachers “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). Our job isn’t to do all the ministry. It’s to equip our people to do it. As you disciple your people, you’ll find faithful men and women who step up and start carrying some of the load. At CBC, more than 75% of our people now serve in some way. And that man I mentioned earlier, the one who was saved and baptized, is now stepping into a deacon’s role.

Whose Life Will Look Different by Friday?

The biggest question is this: If my sermon didn’t stop at the door this Sunday, whose life would look different by Friday? I wholeheartedly believe discipleship works. A sermon can change people’s lives. But the sermon must live past the front door of the church. We must be intentional about keeping the conversation going throughout the week.

If you’re a small-church or bi-vocational pastor who is wrestling with this, email me. One pastor to another. I’d love to hear from you: jhester@calvarybaptistbedford.org

John Hester is the senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Bedford, Virginia, and the son of a bi-vocational pastor. He helps small-church and bi-vocational pastors build simple, sermon-based discipleship pathways that form people all week long.