Discipleship-Part I

I experienced a true move of God in the 1970's called the Charismatic movement. It was a wonderful ecumenical movement powered by the Holy Spirit. Duquense University hosted several Charismatic conferences during that time and the euphoria around the conference was truly exciting and powerful. Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopals, and many more participated in the conference. There were no barriers. We were one. The body of Christ was uniting around the Lord. It was a miraculous occurrence. In hindsight, I can honestly say that this was clearly a movement initiated by the Lord himself. The movement intensified the commitment that we needed for one another along with the recognition that we were not each others enemy and that there was another sinister power out to divide us.

Along with this heart warming movement came the spawning of new independent fellowships all over the land. Northfold was just one of many new independent pioneering churches of the 70's. Much of this happened because some of the denominational hierarchy rejected the movement and so many folks left the denomination to start their own church. This created a rather large network of churches that were governed sovereignly from within without any accountability other than their own local leadership. In retrospect, I believe that this spawned a movement called "shepherding" or discipleship. The premise behind the shepherding movement was good and had a lot of merit supported by the scripture.

The shepherding movement really tried to address some deficiencies that existed amongst the independent churches. The whole idea that each man should be under authority was the leading edge of the movement. The intentions were noble and the leadership of this movement was trying to prevent the "Lone Ranger" mentality that can lead to deception and even corruption in church leadership. The sheperding movement really began to address the role of the senior pastor and his solo act as a shepherd. How can one man pastor 500 people? This was the type of question being raised by this movement. It was a good question and there was an honest desire to develop a network of leadership that were all under authority and to divide the congregations accordingly and assign smaller groups to under-shepherds appointed by the senior pastor. The idea of Paul-Timothy relationships was the biblical premise for mentoring and expanding the leadership for the purposes of properly caring for the flock.

The concept was noble. The intentions were noble. The implementation was a disaster.

Up Next......

Discipleship-Part II