Malphurs, Aubrey. Strategic Disciple Making: A Practical Tool for Successful Ministry. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009. 191pp. $17.99

Dr. Aubrey M. Malphurs serves as the senior professor of pastoral ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is involved in a number of ministries ranging from church planting and growth to leadership development. He has pastored three churches and is the author of over fifteen books and articles on leadership and church ministry. Currently he is the president of the Malphurs Group and is a trainer and consultant to churches, denominations, and ministry organizations throughout North America and Europe. His research and teaching interests include church planting, church growth, and leadership development.
The catalyst for Strategic Disciple Making, according to Malphurs, is an oft repeated dictum, he cites, encountering across the years while either attending or pastoring in his Bible church context, “That if you preach and teach the Bible, everything will fall into place. He rejects this notion stating that it simply has not proven to be the case in his experience. His assertion is that though most people might be able to agree that the Great Commission identifies the mission of the church as making disciples, they likely will not be able to agree upon what a disciple is or how to make one. Malphurs, a veteran church consultant, is keen on processes and strategic planning. Consequently, the burden of the book is that “every church should have a simple, clear pathway for making authentic disciples (8).” His stated goal is to help churches establish a strategic process to assist their people in becoming disciples or believers and eventually mature disciples. (10).
Strategic Disciple Making is organized into two parts. The first is about preparation for making disciples. Part one is comprised of six chapters aimed at understanding biblically what a disciple is and how to make them. Introductory matters about the precise nature of the church’s mission and the present evangelical landscape with regard to disciple making are raised in the first two chapters. Malphurs gives chapter three to the discussion of the two terms disciple and discipleship. Chapter four seeks to establish whose responsibility discipleship is and in chapters five and six he compares how Jesus made disciples in the gospel and how disciple were made in the epistles.
Part two is about the process of making mature disciples. Malphurs seeks first to guide his reader into determining what the characteristics of a disciple ought to be. His experienced indicates that many in the church wouldn’t know how to describe an authentic disciple. Next, he aims to offer suggestions for evaluation of the effectiveness of our present disciple making processes so that we might determine how we are doing. This section asks how we ought to go about this process. Malphurs contends that if we are to become serious about this task, we must develop a means of measuring our success which is the focus of chapter nine. Chapters ten and eleven take up the matter of staff and budgeting for the development of a clear and intentional process of discipleship. Questions are provided at the close of every chapter to aid reader reflection and promote discussion among church leaders. In addition, several helpful tools are included in the appendices.
Malphurs rightly contends that a church’s core values whether implicit or explicit determine their mission. He helpfully describes “missions” that fall short of the mission which is making disciples. We are all familiar with the designations, stated in various ways, identifying good things that easily become the main thing if we fail to heed Jesus’ Great Commission variously stated in the gospels and in the book of Acts. The church, the people of God, is to be about making disciples. The process is circular in sense, in that we come into the family of God by means of contact with disciples and in responding to the gospel they bear, we become disciples. A disciple is a believer, a follower of Jesus Christ. The church, according to Malphurs, must see its mission as moving people along the “disciple-making continuum” from unbelief, to belief, and on to growth. This is obedience to the Great Commission. It is not either or with respect to evangelizing or making disciples that one entails the other. Malphurs contends for a mission statement as is popular with many. For my part, I find it redundant. Matthew 28:19-20 is what Christ has given us, it is complete, concise, and memorable. I see no cause to improve upon it. A statement of strategy is how this body shall set about this task in our context may be beneficial, but the mission is clear and settled in Scripture.
Malphurs believes that emergence and influence of parachurch ministries and the vast amount of literature that these have produced on the topic of discipleship have flooded the market and our minds contributing to confusion about what a disciple is. Four common misconceptions he cites are that the disciples are the learners, the committed, the ministers, or the converts who have agreed to make Christ the Lord of their lives (33). This section of Malphurs was very frustrating to me because he takes his swipe at the lordship salvation crowd and subsequently winds up talking out of both sides of his mouth.
In his evaluation of the “converts who make Christ Lord” understanding of what is a disciple, Malphurs says, “to argue that, in addition, one must agree to serve Christ as his disciple is to add a second requirement for salvation. This does not square with grace.” (32) I disagree with his objection. Authentic faith acts, moves, responds, and obeys. These are not secondary requirements, they are descriptions of what disciples do by grace in accord with the measure of Christ’s gift (Eph 4:7). Authentic faith is fruitful. Can one really imagine Jesus Christ receiving one as a disciple who refused to serve Him?
Interestingly, in Malphurs’ discussion of the term discipleship, he reminds us that this word is not used in the Bible and remarks, “If we want to use it biblically, we must use it to describe the ongoing life of a disciple (believer in Christ) that involves following the Savior and becoming more like him.” (34) It sounds as if he has now taken up the Lordship side of the debate. For hesitated earlier there is only one class of Christian. (31) I agree there is only one category of Christian. But, if what he intends by only one class of Christian is mere mental assent to Christ’s person and work, I do not concur with his terminology.
Part of the problem, perhaps, is with the term discipleship. We have somehow allowed this coined and admittedly extra biblical word, to subvert the more helpful and, more importantly, biblical word: sanctification. Were we using the word sanctification in its progressive sense, rather than the word discipleship, much confusion would be averted. We make disciples (saints, the sanctified -- in the positional sense) through evangelization and move them along by means of grace (edification) so they grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ (sanctification – in the progressive sense). Over and over I see his use of parenthetical explanations could be avoided if we would recover the biblical word: sanctification. There is not enough space to take this on here. I will say that in part he seems to agree, for when he speaks of gthe believer’s role in their development as a disciple of Christ, he says, “This broaches the topic of the doctrine of sanctification.” (41) This doesn’t broach it, this is what this discussion is about and we must understand it and lead our people to it or we will continue to communication the sustaining grace that accompanies all true converts. Malphurs doesn’t seem to get it. He is at his best when addressing matters of process and organization, but not theology. Pastors of a reformed perspective will have trouble with much of what Malphurs says in the first part.
Despite the difficulties I continued to have with regard to matters of theology in the first part of the book, I found much of what Malphurs did in the second part of the book helpful with strategic planning of staff and budget. But in the end, your theology drives your methodology, and the theological premise he laid muddied the waters for me. I also felt that he tried to do too much in the book. Several times I got lost in the various charts and lists. I was distracted by the whole discussion of whether or not there was a difference in the way Jesus made disciples and the way the churches of the epistles made disciples. The way he described the role of the Holy Spirit to act as though the Holy Spirit was not active in making disciples was problematic as well. He stated that in the gospels “he [Jesus] and no one else, was the primary maker of disciples.” (57) Did the Holy Spirit not have an illuminating role in the life of the disciples (Matt. 16:17)? I realize the difference Pentecost brought but Malphurs leans too far on the discontinuity side for me.
When reading this work I could not help but compare it to Coleman’s Master Plan of Evangelism, which winds up, as it should, also being about discipleship. It is this reader’s opinion that everything right about Coleman’s Master Plan is wrong about Strategic Disciple Making. I can only summarize this book’s weakness in this way. Just as many people wrongly make too sharp a distinction between justification and sanctification, when in fact they are links in a chain that cannot be broken. The same is true with respect to this sharp distinction evangelism and making disciples. The truth is we come in to the family by the gospel, and we are sustained by the same.
I would recommend pastors who struggle with strategic planning consult and interact with Malphurs for help with steps to organization and long range planning, but beware that he is going to present a corporation or business model that is in my opinion very success oriented and borders on outright pragmatism. ( )