Guest Post: Luke 10 Principles In Social Communities
This article originally appeared as a Google Doc by my friend Rodger Shull. I felt like it was a great fit for these Entry blog posts. You can find the original here. From here on out you are hearing form Rodger!
I hope these learnings of mine can be helpful to you. I’m currently testing out the principles I discuss below, so I am hesitant to say that this is the definite answer to my entry strategy problems, but the early signs are promising and I’m excited to continue to test these things out. If you apply what I said, please contact me and let me know because I would love to hear your experiences!
My First Experiences With Sharing 2X2
Years ago, when I was studying the passages where Jesus sends out his disciples 2X2 to proclaim the gospel in Mark 6, Matthew 10, Luke 9, and Luke 10, I was trained to apply the biblical principles in these passages to go out sharing with strangers. At first, this was at my university, and when I graduated, it was in various apartment complexes and neighborhoods. After a few years of doing this, I found that I did not make or multiply any disciples, which was my ultimate goal. I asked other people about their experiences and found that almost no one had multiplied disciples with this method.
Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely some strong benefits to this method. You could do it anywhere in America, it was easy to share the gospel with large numbers of people, it was an easy method to train others to do, and some people even professed Christ and got baptized. However, I rarely found anyone who was able to follow up with these new disciples for longer than a few months. Since long-term discipleship wasn’t happening, the multiplication of disciples was also not happening.
Swinging the Pendulum to Oikos Sharing
I realized that sharing with oikos was leading to more long-term discipleship (not much, but more than nothing), so I simply switched to training everyone to share with oikos. This was temporarily satisfactory, but being someone who wants to model his ministry off of Jesus and the early disciples, it started to gnaw at me that I was not following the Luke 10 principles that Jesus clearly taught and embodied. However, I was unwilling to go back to unfruitful practices, so I simply carried my mild discontentment with me.
Not only this, but I started to see the drawbacks of training people to only share with oikos: people who moved to a new location no longer had any oikos to share the gospel with and when someone had shared with all of their oikos, I struggled to think of who they should share with next. The best I could come up with was trying to teach people to build their oikos. I didn’t see people doing this in the Word, which bugged me, but I didn’t see it contradicting the Word, so I guess it was okay?
Finding the Middle Ground
Recently, God pointed me to how Paul entered synagogues and showed me how I had been thinking about this all wrong. I realized that when Paul entered synagogues, he applied most if not all of the Luke 10 principles that Jesus taught. This was confusing as it was different than the way I had been thinking about Luke 10, but I realized that this was only natural for Paul.
He went to the synagogues because he was a Jew himself. Therefore, it was a place where he could build relationships naturally with lots of lost people and tell them the gospel. So he applied the 2X2 principles to a socially-connected community not just a geographically-connected community. In fact, I have to believe that the small villages where Jesus sent his disciples in Luke 10 were places where everyone was connected socially as well. Thus, even Jesus sent them to share in social communities! The synagogue was an urban “village” for Paul.
Making It Practical
This was a breakthrough for me as I now had practical ways to train people to apply the Luke 10 principles to social communities rather than geographic communities. For example, almost no one knows one another in my neighborhood and it is not super natural for me to go up and talk to my neighbors. I can definitely pray for people and share the gospel in my neighborhood, but history has proven that this wouldn’t result in multiplying disciples. However, it is very natural for me to meet people at my disc golf league where people want to talk and everyone is at least somewhat connected. I find it quite natural to get into gospel conversations in this environment.
To help others find people to share with, I have begun training people to find an urban village using the acronym BLT. An urban village is one where you can Build relationships naturally with Lots of lost people and Tell them the gospel. Once you find an urban village that fulfills the BLT criteria, find a partner who can come with you and go find a person of peace! Some potential urban villages are work places, sports leagues, clubs, or meet up groups. If you have kids, you could meet other parents at the various activities that your children do.
One Important Caveat
There are some geographic locations where 2X2 principles can lead to discipleship multiplication because these places are very socially connected as well. Colleges and prisons are two examples that come to mind. It’s also important to note that multiplication happens a lot more readily in locations that are well-connected both geographically and socially!
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