“Am I afraid of high notes? Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not.”
Luciano Pavarotti
It’s important to address the topic of fear when it comes to leading others in a discipling relationship. And just to be clear, after 25 years of personal involvement, I can honestly say that I still have fear, I still question many things.
1) Will the guys like me? It might sound strange to begin with this, but I guess I’m human; we all want to be liked. And in leading others through a process of learning what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, I’m going to touch on topics that will be challenging, I’m going to ask them to do things that they might not really want to do (think scripture memory) or they might think strange. They will also see parts of my personality that will probably be different from they are expecting. I’m afraid that they might think less of me or think bad thoughts of me or think I don’t know what I’m doing. I fear this.
2) Does the discipling process I engage in work? From a human perspective, I can only see the external impact, what a person is now doing as a result of meeting with me (scripture reading and study, prayer, service to others, etc), I can never see the heart. Are the guys I meet with only going through the motions? Am I wasting my time? Once we have finished connecting, perhaps for up to two years, will they have caught the vision for discipleship or has the time resulted in very little life change. Is fear too strong a word to use here? Perhaps, but I do fear that my approach may not always be effective.
3) Will we like each other? Many of the guys I connect with have never met each other before we begin our journey together. In asking guys to join with me I try to be sensitive to their personalities and life stages so that there is a better chance of us starting off strong, and yet will we? Interestingly, I don’t think Jesus worried about this when you look at the cross section of people that he chose to build into, it’s amazing that they were able to stay together for 3 years without physically hurting each other! And yet I want us as a group to develop a deep intimacy of friendship, that we can trust each other, that we like being together. I fear this won’t be the case.
4) Do I have what it takes? After all, who do I think I am, taking responsibility for the spiritual growth and development of other guys? Am I really qualified? Will I have ALL of the answers to their questions (the answer is no). In reflecting on all the guys that I have met with over the years, I still fear that I may not have the skills to help someone learn what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Have you had any of these fears? Perhaps you have some of your own. Fear can be prolific and it will grow in very unreasonable ways if we let it.
However in all of these fears, I’ve become convinced that I am called to simply enter into these relationships out of a sense of obedience. I look around at what I see as “bored Christians” who are going through the weekend church routine without truly engaging their faith and I think, “Someone needs to do this. If not I, then who?”
If you think about it, we all want to be liked, and yet we won’t always be liked. We all wonder if lives are really being changed, and yet we’ve witnessed enough amazing life changing stories to know the Holy Spirit is still actively working – look at your own life. We all want to be part of the perfect community where everyone gets along, and yet the only way to get there is to model it to others and enter into the hard work of making relationships work. And finally, none of us has what it takes, and yet Jesus still calls us to this work. And in this we can agree with the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians: “But he [Jesus] said to me, ’My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
May you sense the power of the Holy Spirit in your life to overcome your fears as you engage in the wonderful work of helping others become disciples of Jesus.
Blessings . . . Matthew