#173: Dennis Allen: The Disciple Dilemma
Dennis Allen is a "bondservant" to his mission. And in this conversation, we talk about disciple making, the local church, and why it is important that you get involved!
Links:
https://thediscipledilemma.com/about-dennis/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC2aXZKRvzW-8gpJ7l3SoeA
https://www.instagram.com/thediscipledilemma/
EP. 173
Tony: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Reclamation Podcast, where our goal is to help you reclaim good practices for following Jesus. My name is Tony and today is episode 173 of the podcast where I sit down with self-proclaimed bond servant, Dennis Allen. Now Dennis has a brand new resource. All about the discipled dilemma.
Now, why is this important? Because if you've ever thought. To wrestle with the question, why are people leaving the church? Then you need to listen to this conversation with Dennis. He's passionate about disciple making, which I love, love, love to talk about. He's got some great insights and we talk about how Christian leadership's choices, impact disciples.
In discipleship, such a deep, rich conversation. I know you're gonna love it. [00:01:00] And if you do love it, do me a favor. Hit that subscribe button, wherever you listen to podcasts, leave us a rating review on iTunes or Spotify. and the absolute best compliment you can give us, share this episode with a friend, maybe one person who's also passionate about disciple making maybe a church leader, maybe somebody who you know, is thinking about leaving the church so much depth here.
I know you're gonna need your notebook. Take some notes down. Follow Dennis on social media. Let 'em know that you heard him here on the podcast now. Without any further ado, let's jump into it. Here's my conversation with Dennis Allen. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited today to have a discipleship guru with me the author of this latest resource, the disciple dilemma, Dennis Allen, Dennis.
Thank you so much for being here today.
Dennis: Tony to be with you and just delighted to have some time to talk about this with you.
Tony: Well so all of my listeners, you know, how I feel about disciple making and how much it means to me. So we are [00:02:00] gonna nerd out today on disciple making and what this looks like.
So this is gonna be an episode where I, I can just tell you right now, you're gonna want to grab a paper and pen and listen to it twice so that you can think about what this means and I'm gonna Start by asking this question, Dennis, cuz I like to go macro before I go micro. How would you describe the calling that God has placed on your life?
Dennis: The first word that I wanna put on deck for everybody to think about is the word bond servant the Greek do loss the idea of someone who is absolutely bankrupt in their debt and now obligated to another, in a way that they can never, ever possibly hope to repay and therefore must for the rest of their life served.
Tony: That would be a starting point. How about that? Hmm, that's good. How, how did you come? I think that's
Dennis: a really overlooked, it's a really overlooked word. [00:03:00] Wouldn't you say in your own encounters with people in the faith,
Tony: you're the first person I've ever heard use it?
Dennis: Well, I think that this is the beginning of a conversation about discipleship, where we look at it as believers, everybody who's on this, this this little video watching with us to think about this slightly differently. You have a lot of experience in discipleship. You have a lot of experience as a pastor.
So I'm looking forward to kinda lifting up some of the rocks and seeing what crawls out from underneath it. As we talk about this.
Tony: Okay. So I, one of the things that I say all the time is that common language creates common movements. I'm hoping that you could define what the, the term, you know, define the word disciple for us and how you categorize it because I, and discipleship and disciple making, like let's get into the weeds on this a little bit, because I, I think for a long time, the churches looked at.
Discipleship and [00:04:00] disciple as someone who attends a Bible study. And I think that you're gonna go a little different direct.
Dennis: Yeah, I think we should go a really different direction and that'll be fun. L let me start with the point you just made, because this is something I'm trying to emphasize also, and that is we've gotta get away from language that puts us to sleep.
Yeah. We have been steeped in phrases and cliches as followers of Christ for so long that if
we don't alternate our language a bit, I'm not trying to get away from beloved. Thinking I'm trying to get away from numb sedative phrases. So I'm gonna stay away from some of these I think, and I'm probably gonna make some people mad. My quest, my question for everybody is will you please just test drive the car?
You don't have to buy it, just test drive this as we talk today so that you don't freak out. And so to now answer your, your sort of second point here. I wanna define a disciple as. [00:05:00] Idea of a Neu Trino, a particle physics idea. Okay. When we think about the biblical construct of discipleship, a disciple it's someone who is in motion, who is following Christ.
Now that. Means today. Of course we can't physically be with Jesus walking around, following behind a person. But what it means is I'm in motion. Following the Lord, Jesus Christ, a Neu Trino, a particle physics concept is only measurable. In its status by its velocity. You can't measure it in mass. You can't measure a disciple by a resume by an activity or a task.
You can only measure them if they are in motion in following Christ. And I think I can make that argument biblically with sort of an exegenical view of the new Testament. So that would be my, my play. Right. A disciple is a follower of Christ. A disciple is not someone sitting in a pew, not someone [00:06:00] on a mission trip, not someone who's singing a song.
A disciple is someone who is wholeheartedly following Christ. And in that I'm gonna start talking about the idea of the disciple and why the disciples that we see in churches today are fragile, brittle on mute or walking out the door what's going on underneath all that. That's really where the book is going to.
I'm gonna prep just a little bit into this. This is a book, not so much about how to be a disciple, as much as it is a book saying leaders. You have to change the culture or you're going to continue to replicate and reproduce fragile, Brit mute and deserting disciples.
Tony: Yeah. One of the things that I've said for the last couple of of years is that for the previous two decades, the church has taught people how to come to [00:07:00] church and not how to follow Jesus.
And so we cared so much about the attractional church model here that we didn't really didn't really like teach people how to be resilient in Christ to be dependent in Christ, to be expectant in Christ. And I, and I'm curious As, as you kind of talk about in, in the, the resource, the, what we call the, you know, the iceberg and some of these things, what are the ramifications of not of not teaching people to follow Jesus?
Like how do we see, how do we see that play out? I have some thoughts, but I I'd love, love to hear yours first.
Dennis: Well, let me piggyback on your point about the attractional church model, I'm gonna use a couple of models here for people to think about for a minute. Some churches. Are into brand building and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make this brand really hot.
And people are gonna really want to come here and show up. So that's a model, that's an attractional model. There's an intellectual model. I'm going to [00:08:00] build my brand by making sure that when you come here, I'm gonna make you a black belt and theology. You're gonna be an apologetics ninja. You're gonna be capable of just kind of devastating the universe with your force of logic.
And if you really wanna be powerful for Jesus, you show up here so that one's not so much attractional as is inte. then we also have what we call the transactional model. Transactional model says, Hey, you show up here. This is my brand. I'm gonna make you wealthy. I'm gonna make you feel really good. I'm gonna make you really capable of amping up your personal horsepower in the social space that you run in.
And so churches run with brands. So the macro point is I think Tony not only is the attractional model in bristling disciples, but also the intellectual models in bristling disciples. Because if you try to say, Hey, discipleship is all about what I know and or how I feel and or what I get. You've created a very sub optimum creature.
And by the way, it's not biblical. You can't make the case of the new Testament. There's a [00:09:00] start for you. How about that?
Tony: I like it. What, what are the personal consequences when we do this? I mean, in think, talk to the, talk to the person who's listening, who grew up in the church, they're on the treadmill right now.
And they're like, okay, so I'm supposed to be a disciple. I haven't been a disciple. What are the consequences to that person who is like, I don't know that I am, or am I.
Dennis: Let me let me tell you some statistics that we found from research when we were working on the book, the disciple dilemma, this is this is stuff that's done by some very credible research houses.
We didn't just dream this up by eating too much pizza and coming up with a bunch of statements. We're looking at folks like pew barn, the international research center, even the humanist society in, in the UK. Contributed to a lot of our research, that's all in the book. So if you're on the treadmill right now, let me just tell you about the 10 people that are sitting in the pew with you right now, nine of 10 people sitting in the pew, think it is either not my job or I have no capability or no [00:10:00] obligation to be able to talk about my faith.
That's nine out of 10 mainline Protestants church, attending evangelicals folks who call themselves church attending Christians. That's nine outta 10, eight out of 10 people sitting in that pew have. No spiritual life aside from going to hear Tony preach 1.7 times a month. They have no prayer life, no Bible study, no connection with anybody else spiritually.
They just check in either online or in the pew. Get the latte, listen to the sermon, pick up the kids and go home. That's eight outta 10. Mm, six out of 10 who are millennials. So if you think about somebody sort of in the 25 45 range ish, roughly six out of 10 millennials who started life in the church have walked outta the church are about to walk outta the church.
And while people walking outta the church, isn't a new phenomenon. The phenomenon that research [00:11:00] is showing today is of these six outta 10. Five of those six aren't coming back. Even when the kids are born, which always brought people back before. So I'm a disciple. Who's walking off, totally mute about my faith.
And by the way, I'm just living concierge, Christianity. I come in the catch, my latte here, the sermon go home. Life's good. I'm a disciple, right? The answer is that's not the biblical model.
Tony: Yeah. And, and I think that we miss out on life transformation. Right? So I, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but like the, the consequence of not living into the biblical model is the absence of fullness of life with Christ.
So if, if we don't address this on a personal note, what we end up having and, and, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get on a soapbox for just a minute, right? W we, we, we can't legislate our way to morality is, [00:12:00] is something I feel pretty passionate about. And while legislation's important for a lot of things, when we talk about real world change, the model that Jesus gave us is a disciple making model.
I mean thoughts on that reflections?
Dennis: Well, one of the most. Interesting things. I think that the Christian community has struggled with is what exactly does a disciple look like now in my generation you know, growing up in the 18 hundreds what we had, that was a joke. If you end up with the idea of not much of a joke, if you end up with.
Your faith and your discipleship being good is defined by your capacity to debate anybody else into the ground force of reason, because we have watched our parents take faith as simply a mystical experience of go to church, believe it all and run on, and that didn't work well. So this is the legislate morality point that I think that you're making.
[00:13:00] And if you kind of transition to today's more experiential faith. It's about accepting everyone, which is actually beautiful, but it also has a little bit of a hoist to it. The force of debate doesn't do very well, nor does not having a conversation, not loving someone enough to actually get to know them.
And so it's a very relationship, low experience. I mean, we may have a social media relationship with people, but actually getting into people's lives as nonbelievers and believers. , that's a pretty rare space in discipleship today. And here's, here's where the book's trying to take the conversation. I don't wanna divert what you wanna explore today, but I do wanna make this point.
We can talk for a long time about what you and I, as disciples ought to feel guilty about, but that doesn't do any of us any good. I don't wanna legislate how you ought to feel, and I don't wanna legislate your guilt or your shame in this thing. But what I do wanna do is I wanna turn to the leaders for a minute.
You may be a pastor. You may be an elder. You may be a [00:14:00] deacon. You may be a trustee. You may be a small group leader. You may actually be person who's just leading one other person or a family member. You own a greenhouse, not a pizza hut. You can't do microwave discipleship. And the model that we see in Christ.
Is a long term relationship. It's like growing plants, not microwaving. A pizza leadership owns the soil. That the seeds, the disciples, the people are in, and those people need to grow in that culture that you create leaders and to understand discipleship, you're going to have to create a biblical culture that Jesus told us about.
And you made some very specific statements and gave us some great examples to say, this is the culture. I want your people growing up in, and then this is how disciples emerge from that culture. Imagine trying to raise a [00:15:00] garden where you have a wonderful greenhouse, a terrific sprinkler. You're the manager of the greenhouse in your leadership role.
And the soil has salt in it. How well are the plants gonna do the culture of the church today? You, you brought up the point of the iceberg a few minutes ago, and we used that illustration in the book. The tip of the iceberg, the stuff you can see above the surface are those symptoms. We just talked about people on mute, people walking out of the church.
People having no spiritual life underneath the surface. This is the soil, the culture, the world. There are some root causes that are devastating. Tling making fragile the world of discipleship in Christianity today. That's the long answer.
Tony: Yeah, let's dive into some of those root causes kind of draw this out for us, cuz I, I think it's easy to show up and become as, as somebody once told me part of the frozen chosen and not see the root.
But if, if we're really gonna get better, we've [00:16:00] gotta really understand where this root is coming from. So in your research, what did you find?
Dennis: So the book talks about six. Causes, we call them traditions. There are some traditions in the church that are really good. There are some traditions in the church that are non-biblical.
They're not good. They're not right, but we've been steeped in them, Tony for so long, they feel absolutely normal and they're completely invisible around us. So I'm gonna talk about. One or two. And if you wanna explore more, we, we can go to the six that are in the book. Let me start with one and see if this resonates a little bit.
The culture that we have been raised in, we make the historical case for this, and we try to go long on it in the book. There's a chapter for each one of these causes. One root causes, optional Lordship. I'm a fan of Jesus, but the idea of being a bond, servant a do loss, my life being surrendered, that he is Lord unconditionally of my life.
[00:17:00] That's really fine print and overlooked in a lot of Christianity today. How's that first starter. Yeah.
Tony: Do, do you think that this just was born out of a what's in it for me? Istic culture. Is this. I mean, Lordship is a, a big issue in, you know, Jesus is teaching obviously, you know, he tells the, he tells the disciples, I'm thinking John 13, right.
You call me teacher and Lord and rightfully so for that is what I am. Right. When did we give up, when did we give up the teaching of Lordship? It just seems so fundamental to our faith. Or maybe why did we give it up? One of the.
Dennis: One of the interesting reasons why we gave it up was because around the third and fourth century, Christianity was emerging from significant persecution.
This root cause goes back 1800 years [00:18:00] folks. And if you look at a church, think about Tony pastoring, a church, and he's got 10 people think about the relationship Tony has with 10 people. Or on any given Sunday because the cows needed to be milked or something was wrong. There's five people there, but the intense relationship with five or 10 people and the walking alongside them five or 10 people.
Now imagine the next Sunday, some guy let's call him Constantine walks in and he goes, Hey, Christianity is now totally legit. And by the way, if you want a Curry favor with me, you better join the club because we may decide to rock, to sleep using really big rocks. If you don't wanna join up with our new culture called Christianity.
When Constantine's legitimization of Christianity happened the next Sunday at Tony's church, weren't five or 10, there were 500 people from all around and they said, Hey, we're here wanting to sign on at this point. What does a church do? Discipleship [00:19:00] to assimilate 500 people. There's one story that you gotta just, just think about that one for a minute in your head.
Think about as a disciple maker, you just went from having five or two to 50 or 500 or a thousand. Think about that for a minute. The idea of who Jesus' Lord began to collapse largely because I I'm arguing in the book again. You don't have to buy the car, just test drive it, but I'm arguing largely because the persecutions.
Where we walked up to Tony and we said, Tony, your kids and your wife were taking their heads off. If you don't bow down and declare Caesar as Lord, what would you like to do? Tony became a very difficult question. And a lot of people said, ah, I'll sign on right now. And they were called the Lape. They were the lapsed.
Their thought pattern. If you really check this [00:20:00] out in history was as much a part of God's. Grace will let me back in the door later. Once this is all over. And Lordship can be that optional thing I do. So I can get by in life, you couple that with the onslaught of Constantine's legitimization of Christianity, where all these people show up and you have a church that is thinking, Jesus will always be good to me and I can get away with most anything.
And by the way, now I don't even have to really worry about being a servant. I'm just a member. That's optional Lordship in a Nu. That's one of six causes Tony.
Tony: Yeah. Well, and I, for me, I, you know, as I'm just sitting here thinking about this, right, this is the one that this is. The Lordship feels like such a, you know, like a foundational part of, of what we believe is Christians.
And it's, it's also why people, when they when they become members and not actual followers, they don't feel the need to [00:21:00] tie or serve, or like they, there's just a different amount of buy-in when I can raise my right hand and, and all of a sudden become a member of the church. You know, either by social constructs or by choice, right?
Like if I can become a member, it's a membership in church has nothing to do with your Lordship as Jesus being Lord of your life. Right. And that, that requires disciple making. One of the interesting things you do in this writing is, is you take these kind of traditions. You give them a Christian tradition and a business tradition.
And I, I want to go back a little bit to. Idea that you talked about with soil and how important was it as you wrote this? And as you thought about this was to give it a, a Christian context and a business context because because it, they, they both add such value to the dialogue. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
That was a poorly worded question too, but there's, there's one in there. I'm sure.
Dennis: That's a terrific question. So [00:22:00] now it's confessional time, right? So I'm a turnaround CEO. I, my, my business career as a chief executive officer is working with privately held corporations. I work really for a lot of the wall street firms and I go in.
To corporations that they own wall street firms own lots of businesses. And inevitably some of those businesses are wrecked for a whole bunch of different reasons. And so I joke about my, my career is in corporate repentance. You know, the idea of repentance is to turn around, right? Yeah. So I go in for corporate repentance and my world is in helping companies become healthy again.
And I found an eerie echo as a business guy. So I. I'm an, I'm an elder in a church, deacon in a church we're, we're moving around the us, but I keep seeing the same thing in churches that I'm seeing in the business world, which is we can't keep employees. They have no idea why they're there. They're really upset.
They have no enthusiasm about their businesses. These are the [00:23:00] lousiest corporate disciples you could ever imagine. And I keep thinking. Well, those dull, dumb people, they just don't get this. I need to, I need to teach them more stuff and they'll get this. And what I began to realize over time is the culture of the businesses is how you foster the healthy seedlings, the, the plants, the employees of the organization.
And I began to look at this and go, wait a minute. This is the same stuff we're seeing in the church. We've gotten away from the mission. Jesus gave us in the new Testament ever so slightly. We've tried to upgrade discipleship because Jesus, obviously hadn't thought of these great ideas that we had, except they're not great ideas.
Right. And I started going, wow. Businesses used to look at the church and say, here's how you make people really do good work. And they followed the church except the church had already gone over the hill with the Constantin problem. They're not doing it great then businesses realize, and I see this everywhere in corporate turnarounds.
We don't [00:24:00] do a good job making great employees, corporate disciples, right? Hmm. And then the church starts looking at the business world and they're going like, well, obviously those guys know how to do it. I mean, they went to Harvard or they went to Yale, they got their MBAs. They know how to run corporations.
Let's follow the business model churches today without knowing it operate in leadership. Largely as managers chasing brands. Identity and market share, not the mission Christ gave every single church. In making disciples,
Tony: Hey, everybody just pausing this conversation with Dennis to remind you that the reclamation podcast is part of the spirit and truth podcast network.
We are a ministry of spirit and truth, an awakening and equipping ministry that goes all over the globe, talking to church leaders in the areas of evangelism. The power of the holy spirit and of course, disciple making. I'm so thankful to be a part of this team. If you wanna support our mission and what God is doing through [00:25:00] spirit and truth, you can become a regular giver@spiritandtruth.life where 5 0 1 C three.
So all the donations that you make to our ministry goes back into podcasts like this, and to helping us equip the local church, to learn more, to get to connected, or to become a giver, go to spirit in. Dot life. Now let's finish up this conversation with Dennis. One, one of the things that you talk about in the book and in the.
I, I suggest you pick up a copy of it. It's it's worth it. It's, it's dense. There's a lot of things there, right? Like this isn't this is a, you spend a lot of time talking about the problem. You spend some time talking about the effects of the problem. And then the, the kind of the last part of the book is this idea about the path forward.
And there are two words. That you talk about a lot in that part and that you just mentioned and that's mission and culture. And so talk to me about the importance of mission and culture. And one of the [00:26:00] things that you say in the book is that, Hey, we don't need a new mission. We just need to recapture kind of the old mission.
Could, could you. Tell us what the old mission is. If there's a lack of clarity around that. And then how do we begin to reclaim that in a new culture, in a church that's already, you know, kind of steeped in these traditions that you talk about earlier? Cuz col fighting the culture in the church is, feels like turning the Titanic.
It's sinking while you're turning it at the same time. And I'm just speaking from my own personal experience, I've turned around to church. It was the hardest, most painful thing I've ever done in my life. Like if you said Tony, if you had to choose between going to war or turn around an old church, I would have to really pray about it.
Dennis: That idea of not of, of having a root canal without anesthesia is really actually pretty attractive when you think about it. Yeah. Yeah. People. Typically want to think about discipleship as the things that I do, the status that I have. And I wanna go back to your original point. As I launch on the [00:27:00] conversation about mission and culture.
Discipleship is the transformation of a human being. A disciple begins as a nonbeliever. There are probably about four heart attacks that just happened when I said that, and people are gonna sign up and ask you to hand out my address so they can come stalk me and burn my house. Right. But. Discipleship begins with nonbelievers who are invited, who come and check it out.
Who then begin to realize who they have just met, not me, not you, but the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah. And in that encounter, surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the muscle memory of my life begins to change the spiritual nature of the default. The operating system begins to rewrite in my life and I become a different person.
That's the disciple. Now let me take you back to mission and culture. You asked the question about mission. I would point to [00:28:00] this phrase and this is great. Please. People comment, you know, throw barbs, help me get better. But Matthew 28, when Jesus in verse 19 tells us, here's why you exist people. Here's why you as an individual exist.
And here's why you, as gatherings of individuals exist, go to all nationalities and make disciples. Hmm. That's your job. And do not guilt out on me about, well, I'm not an evangelist. That's absolutely biblical. Everyone is not an evangelist, but every one of us is a disciple. You have no option in that. Yeah, that's right.
You have absolutely no option. That's a hundred percent right. In that mission. If you are leading one or thousands, your job. Is to create the understanding in ways so that the culture think of that as the glue or the soil, the glue of the [00:29:00] society of the organization that you're talking about, or the soil that these people are rising up in create a culture so that when you are not around they're thinking and they behavior and their muscle memory is just the same.
As Christ laid the mission out for us in the new Testament and by the way, echos beautifully in the old Testament that's culture, that's the glue. You have to build that glue, which is always focused on that mission. And this one other point I'll make, and then I'll shut up and let you let you help clean this up for me, Tony, but the idea of mission.
With most people is, oh yeah. That's a statement. A nice flowery statement that we go have a retreat on. Come up with a nice, beautiful wordy virtue signaling phrase. And then we put it on a piece of paper, park it in a binder, throw it up on a shelf and we'll pick it up again in a year or two and take a look and see how it works.
And it [00:30:00] has all of these values and virtues in it. Now I wrote about this in the book, but the mission of any organization is incredibly simple. Most people wanna make it a paragraph, but an mission is an incredibly simple statement. And for the believer, you can phrase it in different ways, but here's the mission of every believer in every church.
Here we go. Make disciples, be a disciple for the rest of your life. Be a disciple. There's no retirement plan. There's no opting out. This goes on forever. You go, you learn, you invite you, make you develop. Disciples. That's what you do. And so that's the mission and the culture becomes every unique church, every unique organization, every unique, small group, every unique pairing, figuring out, given the skills assets that God has given me where I am, where I'm located, what I'm good at, what I'm not good at.
How do I fulfill that mission? [00:31:00]
Tony: Yeah, I I'm, I'm a hundred percent on board with. The, the mission and the culture and the nuances to all of that. And, and I, I guess I'm gonna just rant a little bit, because this is such an important topic. If you're listening to this and you have a seat at the TA leadership table of your church, this is, this is part of specifically for you because The mission.
Everyone can agree, usually that the mission is to make disciples, but the outcome of that is not necessarily a large church. And so for what, what I would suggest is that pastors who, who intrinsically know that they should be making disciples, don't feel like they can make disciples because they're so busy trying to trick people to come to church because that's how they're viewed in success or failure.
So, if you are a leader at, at listening to this podcast right now, and you listen to what Dennis is saying, what I want you to hear [00:32:00] from me is that you have to give your pastor space and time to make disciples do not. Attendance is no longer a valuable metric. And if anything is coming out of COVID. That is valuable.
It's that attendance means nothing compared to disciple making, because disciple making stays the test of time. Whereas attendance will fail away at the first thing right. Wrong or, and different. Right. It's not a statement about COVID it's a statement about, we were so busy making attenders that we failed to make disciples in order to make disciples just for context.
And then I'm gonna shut up. Is. Is that it took Jesus three years of his life, every single day, every single day. And at least two, maybe three of them weren't all bought in at the end. Right. So if, if you're not sure about how long this is, this is a long, arduous, messy process because it involves people and people are [00:33:00] hard.
And so you gotta give your pastor some grace. And some time and a runway in order to, to change the mission and culture I'm done ranting now. I'm sorry, Dennis. .
Dennis: That was a great rant. That was a great rant. You know, the idea, the idea that we can keep on doing it the way we are doing it and we will get different results.
Borders on. And we talked about this in the book, you know, this, this goes back to that idea of the definition of insanity. Yeah. So the dilemma is actually for you as leaders. Can you just let it keep on going with the kind of metrics that we are talking about, the kind of research that we're talking about that is occurring right under your feet.
Right now, six outta 10 of the millennials are walking away. It's more like eight outta 10 outta the gen Zs are walking away that you have 95% of your people on mute because [00:34:00] they don't want to, or don't feel ethical about, or don't feel qualified to talk about the gospel. Those are. Real statistics going on.
If you read the great evangelical recession, a book came out about two years ago, the prediction is that most of your churches think well I said most 40% of the churches that exist today will not be able to afford their capital budgets because of the Exodus rated believers. Yeah. And the decline in tithing.
This current contemporary version of discipleship is not working. And the reason it's not working is we can't expect Tony is the pastor to be in charge of discipleship. Tony is our coach. He's our offensive and defensive coordinator on the line calling plays for us, but the disciples have to play the ball game.
That's where you're making. That's where you're multiplying you. You talked about that in one of your podcasts with the navigators where it's the idea of multiplication. Not [00:35:00] addition, if Tony's doing the work it's addition, it's Tony is the hub and you got all these people at the spoke, and we're just hoping Tony can hit all these people.
And somewhere past two or three, Tony's gonna. Yeah, but if it's one making two, two making four, that's the model. Jesus advocated. And that's why this will work. The dilemma is leaders. Do you keep the soil brackish? Do you keep the water turned off? Do you keep on working on capital budgets, brand venue, memberships, baptisms, or do you get back to the mission that Christ called us to.
Tony: You know, I am curious. It's not very often. I run into someone who's who's all in on disciple making. It's it's, it's not a very sexy topic in the church world. How, how did this become something that the Lord just like burdened you with?
Dennis: Wow. What, what an interesting question. I As, as I began to experience leadership roles, I [00:36:00] started observing some of these problems 30 years ago and I started going, what is this what's happening?
You know, we're doing church. Great. Look at the thousands. Well, God, I've been, I've been chairman of the elders in a megachurch. I've been head of leadership teams in medium sized churches. You know, the five hundreds to two thousands, the over two thousands and even in hundred. I kept seeing the same symptoms, same symptoms are out there.
The business world started convicting me that I've got the problem in the business world. Why are employees the way that they are? And I, this started to merge in my mind. And then I showed up at a, basically a CEO course at the Oxford center for Christian apologetics and a bunch of theological thugs ambushed me and said the talks you're giving to us about discipleship.
You owe us a book out of that and. Didn't wanna write a book didn't I've never done a book. And they said you're gonna write it down. And they've kind of shoved me along some really cool people. And so I wrote this, my [00:37:00] passion for discipleship, I guess, has emerged from this point. I am beginning to realize at this point in my life that I've been more of a transactional task oriented Christian than a transforming.
Upon serving of the Lord, Jesus Christ. And so please learn from an idiot. You guys take on. The the, the, the, the failure of my own life as a non bond servant for many years, trying to be status success. Everything's cool. Got it all together and realize that it isn't about success and having it all together.
It's about following Christ and life happening around you. Having wingman around you and transforming the muscle memory of my attitudes, my actions, my emotions, my vocation, my civics, my missional work. There's. There's my passion coming out of the book. I, I wasn't following Christ. I was trying to just behave like a really successful Christian.[00:38:00]
Tony: Have you found ha have you been discipled personally? I, my experience most Christians haven't.
Dennis: I have had a fabulous, fabulous walk with some fabulous people. I think about not only the blessing of parents who discipled me, boy did they disciple me when I was a kid, but also mentors, a guy by the name of Calvin Miller, who was a pastor poet.
And a physics guy wrote the singer, the song and the finale, Omaha, Nebraska fabulous mentor there in Christ. My time in the year force, I had some Jedi nights in the military who sure. Came alongside me and said, this is how we're gonna do Christ as warriors. And that was a fabulous experience.
And today yes, mentors today, you, you and I deserve a 360 profiles disciples. I, I deserve, I owe Christ and I must find people who can talk into my life as seniors in an area. We were just joking a few minutes [00:39:00] ago about the fact that you have the ability to mentor me, Tony. Learning about podcasting, even though I'm just roughly 300 years older than you are, I can learn from you.
I can be mentored by you, right. That can help. And I need people ahead of me on the path ahead of me mentoring me. I need wing men beside me who can keep my six clear and say bad guy at your six stupid behavior going on in your life. Let's clean this up. Let's do better. Right. And I can do the same for them.
And I need people kind of coming along beside me going like, Hey. Give me some counseling consulting and helping. That's what we owe the culture of the Christian community today.
Tony: Yeah. I love that. As this book enters the wild. I know that my community loves to pray. They love to pray you know, for authors and for the guests that we have on the podcast. What, what is the prayer that you'd like to be said over this book as it as it, as it now is, is going out to the masses. [00:40:00]
Dennis: Lord, will you bring us.
3000 churches. That's 1% of the us churches. Will you bring us 1% of the us churches who will seriously ask the question? Is something wrong in discipleship in Western Christianity? And if so, what then, should we do.
Tony: Yeah, that's a, that's a good prayer. That's a really good prayer. Okay. I have one more question for you. But before I ask it, I know that my my listeners, my family here, they're gonna wanna follow up with you. They're gonna wanna follow you on all over the Innerwebs and subscribe to your podcast.
Where is the best place to learn all things, Dennis?
Dennis: Well, I guess that would be my wife, but I don't think I want you talking to her too much about me. that too.
Tony: That's who should be the next guest on the podcast?
Dennis: Yeah. Yeah, [00:41:00] that would, yeah, you're gonna have to sign a nine disclosure before, before we can go any further here. So I would, I would ask people if you want to get a 62nd snapshot of what we're talking about, go to the disciple dilemma.com.
Or disciple dilemma.com. Just go to either one of those, the same place. And on there, you can read one paragraph that summarizes where you're about to go. If you wanna talk about this, or you can click a video. If you're more of a, a visual guy, you can click the video and they'll give you a one minute down on a what's the problem.
Can you really explain the problem in one minute? We think we can. And then there's just a lot of resources. Disciple. Facebook, you go to another place. The disciple dilemma. If you wanna do it on Instagram, you go to a place called the disciple dilemma. If you wanna go to YouTube, you go to a place called the disciple dilemma, and you'll find the traffic that we're trying to generate.
For example, on YouTube, we're showing you, what's it like to be a disciple in the war in Ukraine? Right now, we actually talk to a friend of ours. Who's. In [00:42:00] Ukraine dealing with the war. We talked to nuns and nuns. Who've walked out on the church. We talked to Christians, we were talking about this before the podcast who have had very large roles in Christian world and corporate world, military world who have paid a dear price for being discipl.
What's it like to do that? We've talked to pastors saying, what's it like to be a pastor in a disciple? That's not an easy picture. Folks. These folks have a. Tough life. So disciple dilemma.com will give you all that.
Tony: That's awesome. We'll be sure to link to that in the show notes. So if you wanna get connected we'll also put a link in there where you can pick up a copy of the book.
Okay. So last question, I'll always love to ask people is an advice question, except I get to take you back to a very specific time in your life. And I'm gonna ask you to give yourself one piece of advice. You know, I'm, I'm gonna take you back to the, the day that you realized that [00:43:00] maybe you had been a a, as you said, kind of a, a, a passionless Christian that, where you've been striving more for success than intimacy with the Lord.
I, if you could pull up a chair. In front of that younger version of Dennis after this massive realization. And just realizing now that in hindsight that your life is about to change forever because of a burden that Christ had placed on your heart. What's the one question, or what's the one piece of advice that you're gonna give yourself?
Dennis: I would quote Darth Vader. It is your destiny here. So good is meaning and purpose beyond anything your dreams of success could ever give you. And it may not be significance in the world's eyes and Broadway's eyes and the wall street Journal's [00:44:00] eyes, but here is your calling and your purpose by the most high holy God.
And what you will do. Is your work then serving him as a bond server will change the face of history because God is using you, not you using God. That's I that's, that's what I would really want this slope headed Neanderthal to here in his earlier years.
Tony: Dennis, I, I think we could have talked about this for hours or days.
Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. Thank you for all the, the, the work that you've put into this resource, cuz I, I really do believe it can be a resource for church leaders. So go pick up your copy today. Hit subscribe to the discipled dilemma podcast where AUL listen and podcasts at.
And and, and let Dennis know that you heard him here on the podcast today, so thank you so much for your heart and for what you're doing for our C.
Dennis: Blessings [00:45:00] Tony for what you're doing, I'm impressed with your work in discipleship, as well as just caring and loving people. Thank you for following Christ.
That way. What I
Tony: love about Dennis is his passion for this discipled dilemma. I think that some of the things that he is saying here are gonna be so important for church leaders. So, Hey, do me a favor, share this episode with somebody who needs to hear this conversation about discipleship, about the local church, about Christianity.
So much goodness here. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you for your thoughts. I always enjoy hearing from you. If you want to get connected with me on social media, the best place to start is on Instagram. That's probably where I hang out the most at T w Milt at T w M I L T. Thank you guys. Look forward to connecting real soon.
We continue our monologue episodes. This. Make sure you hit that subscribe button. So you don't miss any of our future episodes. And as a reminder, they all come to you. Absolutely free of [00:46:00] charge because of the work I get to do with spirit and truth. So thankful for all of you. And remember if you wanna follow Jesus, you must be willing to move.
