I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.
Acts 20:24
The shortest route from Dallas, Texas to Fayetteville, Arkansas takes about five and a half hours by car. It took me eight. We scheduled an afternoon for my daughter to tour The University of Arkansas as a potential college choice after high school graduation. Several days earlier, I went online to book a hotel room “near the University of Arkansas” and, on our travel date, simply entered the hotel address into my phone GPS. How was I supposed to know that the University of Arkansas apparently has a remote branch in Little Rock...more than two hours south of where we needed to be!? I drove to the right place in the wrong direction. Some would say that we took “the scenic route,” but we finally arrived.
For me, the road to missional discipleship hasn’t been a direct one. God has taken me along the scenic route to bring me to a greater understanding of His purpose for my life and for His church. Several key lessons have shaped me and have formed the foundation for my life as a disciple of Jesus and, eventually, for this book.
Lesson #1: Strategic Discipleship
I graduated from Denver Seminary in 1993 and returned to Austin, Texas, to start my first pastorate at First Evangelical Free Church (now Austin Oaks Church). A year later, I accepted the opportunity to lead our college ministry—a fertile mission field in a city with more than 100,000 college students within reach. At that time, we had 30-40 collegiates attending a class on Sunday morning and a handful attending a mid-week Bible Study. Though I could see the fields were “white for harvest,” I was still learning how to “farm.”
Fortunately, the Lord provided two faithful servants to help me. Gayle Greenwood Clark had been serving on our church staff for several years, even raising her own salary support, because she believed college students were one of the best investments a church could make. Cheryl Fletcher served with a parachurch ministry, but gave her time and ministry insight as a volunteer to our students. Today, I’m still convinced that these two women were two of God’s generous gifts to college students, and me, during that critical season.
Gayle and Cheryl demonstrated remarkable faithfulness to a disciplemaking vision during this time. They intentionally pursued students, challenged them, trained them and mobilized them to make a difference with their lives. I remember confessing to both that “I really wasn’t sure what I was doing” when it came to making disciples. But Gayle and Cheryl became a living textbook to sharpen my ministry skills over the next 10 years.
One of the most important lessons I learned from these ministry partners was the value of developing an intentional strategy—in our growing ministry and with specific students. The principle is true: “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”
We met frequently to consider how we might be more and more effective stewards of the time, resources and people entrusted to us. Rather than operate from a one-size-fits-all template, we worked to consider the uniqueness of each student and how we might strategically help them grow in their personal relationship with Jesus.
Over the next 10 years, ECHO, our college ministry, exploded. By 2003, almost 1000 students were meeting at our church for our student-led worship service. More than 100 discipleship groups had been formed and, each year, nearly 200 students were sent on shortterm Spring Break and summer mission trips around the world. During that time, God gave us the privilege of training future pastors, missionaries, church planters, elders and teachers, not to mention the hundreds of business professionals who are making a difference with the Gospel in the marketplace today. Watching the Lord “change people to change their world” through our intentional, strategic efforts became the first stop on my journey of missional discipleship.
Lesson #2: These Are Your People
In 2003, God called me to CrossPoint Church in Bloomington, Minnesota, to take the Senior Pastor role in a smaller congregation. Though the culture and climate were a shock to our southern-born systems, Tiffany and I connected in some treasured relationships. Today, I still stay in touch with Stann Leff, a former white-collar executive, who has been a shining example of how all Christians can leverage their God-given gifts and present circumstances to reach those who do not know Jesus and encourage those who do.
During my brief time in Minnesota, I learned many leadership lessons which would become indispensable for my ministry future. But, one missional lesson stood out among others: Every church exists, in part, for those people who are not there, but should be. God places His people in particular places at particular times (Acts 17:26-27) to participate in His grand mission. So, the people in the vicinity of our church are “our people,” the ones we’re called to reach.
Normandale Community College, the largest institution of its kind in the state, is right across the street from CrossPoint Church. Though we had a small handful of faithful adults who connected with international students at the college, we had little witness among the almost 10,000 others enrolled there. We were their church, but we failed to reach our people.
The blame for this neglect rests squarely on my leadership shoulders. While I was busy arranging the pieces of personnel, policies and programs, I missed the very missional purpose of the church: to reach unreached people with the glorious Gospel of Jesus. I eventually learned that this problem plagues more than a few churches today. We “step on dollars looking for dimes,” so to speak, missing the very reason for our existence. And, if the local church doesn’t champion a missional outreach among its neighbors, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the people in the church won’t cultivate concern for their neighbors across the street, colleagues at work or friends at school.
Lesson #3: Mission Is Worship
Through the providence of God, my family moved back to Texas for me to become Senior Pastor at Central Bible Church in 2005. Before I arrived, I was contacted by another church in the area asking me if I would teach the first lesson in a missions training course they were planning to offer months later. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement is an excellent 15-week intensive seminar designed to help Christians examine and embrace God’s purposes in the world. I agreed to teach Lesson #1: “The Living God is a Missionary God,” and, over the next several years, taught this biblical foundation in dozens of other venues.
While I was eager to teach others, God used my immersion in Perspectives Lesson #1 to radically shape my own missional heart. I was reminded of God’s initial plan to magnify Himself through people designed to reflect His glory. I reflected on how sin abdicated God’s reign and contaminated God’s reflection in each person. I recalled how God’s covenant with Abraham laid the foundation for God’s redemptive work in Jesus Christ, first for Israel and then for the church. I remembered that the Missio Dei is ultimately the redemption of people for the glory of God and that worship and mission are inseparable. In the end, I determined that missions is not “one of the things a church does.” It is what the church does! God had given me a new perspective.
It was time to put this perspective into practice.
Lesson #4: Community For Mission
In those days, Central Bible Church (then called Pantego Bible Church) was a church vibrant with biblical community. The former pastor had developed a ministry paradigm that encouraged people to “do life together,” and a large portion of the church was connected in Home Groups, practicing spiritual formation, evangelism, volunteerism, recreation, international mission, local compassion and care for one another. This model is still a core tenet of the way we do church.
However, along the way, Central Bible Church had lost its focus on missions. Though the church had a rich history of sending and supporting missionaries, very little of its effort had been focused outwardly in recent years. The church had succeeded in loving one another at the expense of loving our neighbors.
With 10 years of making disciples among college students, the memory of a missed opportunity in my former church in Minnesota, and a biblical mandate of God’s glory in global missions, I seized the opportunity to lead our church to missional discipleship. No longer were we just going to go to church; the time was long overdue to be the church to our neighbors and nations.
We changed our church mission statement to express this new commitment. I preached sermons specifically on the topics of social justice, personal evangelism and global impact. We formed international partnerships with our missionaries and forged short-term trips for our people, not just to send, but to go beyond our borders. In a move of daring faith, our elders agreed to cover the balance of any attendee who felt called to a short-term mission and worked hard to raise support, but came up short of their financial goal. In the next five years, no support gaps had to be bridged among the nearly 600 global travelers. God was blessing His missional church.
In 2009, I finished preaching our morning services when two men approached me and introduced themselves: Pastor January, his chosen American name, had recently arrived in the United States from a refugee camp in Tanzania, East Africa. His Burundian translator, Method Bigirimana, explained that they represented a congregation of resettled Africans living nearby in Fort Worth. They had attended the morning worship service and lingered to ask one question, “Do you have a place where our people might meet with God each week?” The nations were at our doorstep.
Over the next few weeks, we welcomed an African congregation to Central Bible Church. God used the connection of two unlikely congregations to stir our hearts and open our eyes with a global vision. Volunteers immediately started an “Essentials Closet” to provide basic hygiene and home care products not covered under the U.S. welfare assistance program. Every week, church attendees brought items such as soap, shampoo, laundry detergent and toothpaste for regular distribution to our African friends. Next, some at our church went through the necessary steps to become authorized ESL teachers. English classes met twice a week to teach language skills to help our friends move toward American citizenship. In time, our church responded to practical needs of refugee families by providing school supplies and backpacks at the beginning of each school year and gifts for children each Christmas. In the next several years, we began the delicate process of integrating English-speaking African children into our Sunday morning children’s and student ministries in order to mainstream them into American culture. A group of women at our church began to gather home goods—towels, pots, plates and silverware, linens, lamps, etc.—to benefit each incoming refugee newcomer. And, finally, I and other pastors began to meet with the elders of this new church to understand their needs and train them in theological and leadership principles.
Our missional impact didn’t stop there. Over the next few years, individuals and groups committed themselves to orphan and foster care, homeless outreach, ministry to adults with substance addictions and families of children with special needs. Over a three-year span, our church launched five new missionary families into global ministry. A school superintendent changed his life-course and started giving all of his time to serve those in poverty within our community. A woman sold her bakery to begin working with refugees. A corporate CEO and his wife began giving extravagantly to Bible translation around the world. A judge started traveling to Africa to give her legal expertise to war-torn communities. A young boy launched an initiative to provide scholarships to children escaping abusive homes.
We were finally fulfilling, not just our mission, but God’s mission for His church.
We were “making God known by making disciples who are changed by God to change their world.” A major shift was happening at Central Bible Church: from comfortable community to community for the sake of radical mission. Our commitment to the mission of God for the glory of God has permeated virtually every dimension of our church. Today, we can’t imagine not going beyond.
An Invitation Beyond
As we learned principles for moving people from biblical community to biblical mission, we decided to share what we have learned with others. Leadership teams travelled to Africa to partner with African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM) to teach missional discipleship to church leaders there. The principles throughout this book have also been shared in Spain, Cuba and China, and we are expecting to share it with pastors in India. In 2015, I began writing my first book, Next Step Church, as a free ministry resource to train pastors in what you will learn as our “spiritual pathway.” The goal was not primarily to publish another book for an American audience, but to equip missional leaders around the world.
Very quickly, it became apparent that an edited version of Next Step Church could be helpful to Christians everywhere. We also realized that a condensed version would be beneficial in teaching new members of Central Bible Church about our church history and strategic mission. This book was written for this purpose.
Next Step Discipleship is an invitation for you to join a journey. To be a missional disciple is to organize your life around God’s great missional purposes. The lesson from my college ministry days is that discipleship is an intentional and strategic pursuit. From my Minnesota stint, we learn that people must seize the immediate opportunities to reach the people God has placed around them. The Perspectives course reminds us that missions exists for the glory of God. Missions is worship and this has been God’s intent throughout all of history. And, the recent years at Central Bible Church give us a practical picture of the extravagant blessing and global impact of missional community. This commitment isn’t just for our church. It isn’t just for me. It’s for every follower of Jesus.
My prayer is that the Lord uses this work to challenge and change any distorted ideas of church and the Christian life you might hold. As you explore the spiritual pathway described here, I trust the Lord will inspire you to connect in true biblical community with others. I hope you will experience spiritual transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit. And, ultimately, I earnestly desire for every disciple to consider their life not their own, but to run the race and finish the task of testifying to the Gospel of grace. I hope you will go beyond. And may God make Himself famous through you!
Soli Deo Gloria
David Daniels
September 2016