Church Leaders Must Focus on Discipleship to Turn the Nation to God

The Director of the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity (LICC), Mark Greene has made a statement saying that clergy in the UK are failing to train their congregations in discipleship, thus leaving them with inadequate confidence to make a significant impact and change in society, according to The Church of England Newspaper.

Greene said that churches have not been forward enough in injecting the mission heart into people, and had fallen into a ‘convert and retain’ policy. This had left people simply changing their faith without trying to go out and to proclaim what they had learnt in the Gospel to others; this Greene called ‘warehousing people for heaven’.

Congregations are becoming more and more confused with how to interpret the Bible and the words of God into their lives in a practical way. LICC research has found that one reason why Christians are unable to adequately share their faith, was that they did not know how to live out the message of the Gospel themselves.

The LICC director was speaking at the Keswick Convention, where he pointed out that although Jesus spent most of his time teaching discipleship, church leaders nowadays were spending least time on this.

Greene said, “The Gospel of Jesus is not just a way in, it is a way on. The goal of the church is not to make converts but to make disciples. It is extremely rare to find a pastor who regularly meets with a group of people to disciple them for life in today's world.”

Pointing to the root of the problem, Greene revealed that clergy members themselves were not actually being trained in disciple-making skills during their theological studies, and even after that many were still not taught anything for this area of ministry.

Shockingly, Greene stated the facts from research that showed only 36 out of 1,000 surveyed churches had put on a course to teach people how to evangelise over the past 5 years.

Greene made a call for a new church culture of whole-life Christianity to be created. He stated that many Christians felt that they were in a minute minority of society, and so could not possibly make a difference. However, inspirationally Greene showed that 4.5 million people were currently still attending church at least once a month, and this significant number was clearly enough to reach out to and change the whole nation.

In conclusion, Greene said, “We need church communities where people are briefed, trained, supported and resourced for whole-life missionary engagement in the world.”