Dear Pastor,

Thank you. Thank you for preaching the Word and leading people in prayer. Thank you for counseling the hurting, serving faithfully, and carrying burdens most people never see. Thank you for your faithfulness through discouragement, criticism, and exhaustion. Many of us know and love Jesus because someone like you faithfully pointed us toward Him. This letter is written with gratitude. It is written with respect for the weight pastors carry and the faithfulness many have shown. But it is also written with concern, because every church is discipling people whether intentionally or unintentionally. 

The Question We Must Ask

The question is not whether we are making disciples. The question is: "What kind of disciples are we producing?"  This is not a rejection of preaching, services, or programs. It is also not a rejection of pastoral leadership. These are good gifts that God has used to nourish His people throughout history. The problem is not the gifts themselves. The problem comes when they end with exposure rather than response. When preaching, services, and programs are disconnected from reflection and self-examination, they lose much of their formative power. When they are not accompanied by obedience and shared practice, truth is heard but not fully embodied. 

The goal of discipleship is not merely exposure to truth, but the embodiment of truth. Jesus did not call people merely to hear His words. He called them to put His words into practice. James did not tell believers to be hearers only. He called them to become doers of the Word (James 1:22-25). Paul did not describe church leaders as performers of ministry for the saints. He said leaders are given to equip the saints for the work of ministry until the body grows into maturity in Christ (Ephesians 4:11-16 - Article: God’s Vision for Leadership and the Fivefold Ministry). This is the burden of this letter: "Are the gifts we steward actually forming people into active apprentices of Jesus?"

Every Ministry Model Forms People

Every ministry model forms people. Every repeated practice trains them. Every rhythm establishes expectations about what it means to follow Jesus. Over time, these practices become habits. Habits become assumptions. Assumptions become convictions about what normal Christianity looks like.

People learn what maturity is by what we consistently celebrate. If knowledge of Scripture becomes the primary marker, people may conclude that information is maturity. If agreement with sound doctrine becomes the primary marker, people may assume that believing the right things is the same as becoming the right kind of person. If listening to sermons and teachings becomes the dominant activity of discipleship, people may conclude that consuming more is growing more.

Yet Jesus did not merely call people to know, agree, and consume. He called them to follow Him, obey Him, and become like Him. Without intending to, we teach people how to follow Jesus. And what we repeatedly practice often forms people more deeply than what we occasionally proclaim.

Exposure Is Not Transformation

The assumption many of us carry is that exposure to Christian things naturally produces spiritual growth. But exposure is not transformation. Access is not apprenticeship. Participation in religious activity is not the same as becoming like Jesus. In fact, some forms of Christian activity can unintentionally reinforce habits that make growth more difficult over time:

• A person can spend years listening to sermons and become increasingly dependent on "the experts" to feed them spiritually rather than learning to feed on God's Word for themselves. 

• Believers can faithfully attend church while becoming more passive in their faith, assuming that showing up and receiving information is the primary work of discipleship.

• We can consume endless Christian content while never learning to confess sin, seek accountability, or pray with others. We may also remain underdeveloped in reconciling relationships and practicing obedience in everyday life.

It is possible to become deeply practiced in forms of Christianity that actually make it harder to become like Jesus (see Matthew 23:1-15, 23-28).

When Church Trains People Into Passivity

This is one reason I have become increasingly concerned about the entrenchment of the traditional church model. By “traditional church model,” I do not mean every church that gathers on Sundays, preaches sermons, offers programs, or has trained leaders. Many such churches have formed deep, mature, faithful disciples. What I mean is a model centered mainly around services, sermons, and programs. In this model, ministry is carried largely by professionally trained leaders, while the congregation is mostly expected to attend, receive, and support the system.

The concern is not trained leadership. The church needs faithful leaders who are equipped to teach, shepherd, and guide God’s people. The concern is a model that depends heavily on professionally trained leaders while failing to raise up, train, and release ordinary believers for ministry. When that happens, the church may affirm the priesthood of all believers in doctrine while denying it in practice. A small group of leaders do most of the ministry, while the larger body remains undertrained, underused, and unreleased.

Week after week, people come to a church service, sit, listen, and leave. The professionals preach. The professionals pray. The professionals lead. The congregation receives. Over time, this repeated rhythm teaches something powerful that gradually forms a mindset about church and discipleship: "The leaders do ministry. My role is to attend."   What begins as a pattern of participation eventually becomes an assumption about who is responsible for ministry. 

• People become habituated to passive intake. 

• They become accustomed to receiving rather than contributing. 

• They learn to evaluate church by what they receive from it rather than by what it is forming them to become. 

• They expect to be fed rather than learning how to feed on God's Word themselves.

Even when sermons call people to obedience, the structure itself often requires very little response. Rarely are people given space to reflect deeply. Even when sermons include one to three preacher-chosen application points, people are often not invited to personally discern, “What is Jesus asking me to do in response to this?”  And Sunday services usually do not set aside time for people to share that response with others. Even more rarely are they called to return the following week — whether publicly, in small groups, or in trusted relationships — to testify how they obeyed, what happened, where they struggled, and what they learned.

Many churches have built a rhythm for proclaiming the Word, but not a rhythm that helps people obey the Word together through loving accountability. Many Sunday services move from proclamation to dismissal without creating space for shared response, encouragement, and follow-through. Over time, people can become habituated to hearing the Word without practicing immediate obedience. Through this church-reinforced repetition, passive reception becomes their default posture toward God’s Word: 

• Listening quietly replaces wrestling.

• Consumption replaces participation.

• Observation replaces practice.

• Attendance replaces apprenticeship. 

Eventually, this posture feels normal. People sincerely believe they are doing everything God requires because they have faithfully embraced the pathway that was presented to them as the way to follow and be formed by Jesus. What began as a way of doing church — a choice made and repeated by pastoral leadership — can become cemented in the believer’s mind as the way to follow Jesus. That is the danger of an unexamined discipleship pathway.

The Unwritten Curriculum of Leadership

There is another concern. People are shaped not only by what leaders teach, but by what leaders model. Our practices interpret our preaching. For example, a father who smokes while telling his children never to smoke sends two messages. Children often learn more deeply from the life they observe than from the words they hear. The same is true in the church. If leaders preach evangelism but never share the gospel, people learn that evangelism is optional. If leaders preach prayer but demonstrate little dependence on prayer, people learn that prayer is secondary. If leaders speak of vulnerability but remain guarded themselves, people learn that honesty is unsafe. The life of the leader becomes the unwritten curriculum of the church. People rarely imitate our aspirations. They imitate our actual practices.

When Volunteers Serve the System More Than Their Calling

There is yet another way our structures shape people. Because many churches revolve around programs, events, and services, much of the congregation's volunteer energy is directed toward sustaining those activities. Chairs need to be arranged. Sermon and worship lyric slides need to be advanced. Coffee needs to be prepared. Children need to be checked in. Guests need to be welcomed. These tasks matter. The issue is not practical service. The issue is practical service becoming the main way people are allowed to participate. If this becomes the primary vision of ministry we offer people, we unintentionally communicate something devastating: "What matters most is not who God created you to become. What matters most is how you can help keep the system running."

The Holy Spirit has gifted every believer. God has uniquely shaped each person for the building up of the body and participation in His mission. Yet many faithful believers spend decades in church without discovering how God wired them, exercising their gifts, or being released into meaningful ministry. They become volunteers for church programs rather than ministers and ambassadors of the kingdom. The church gains dependable helpers, but the kingdom loses the full expression of the gifts God intended to release through His people.

Inherited Models Must Be Examined

Pastor, none of this is written to condemn. Many of us inherited the very models we now lead. We were taught them by sincere men and women who loved God and served faithfully. But inherited models should never become unquestionable models. The call of leadership is stewardship. And stewards ask difficult questions.

• What kind of disciples are we actually producing?

• What habits are we reinforcing?

• What assumptions about God and spiritual growth are our people absorbing?

• What postures toward discipleship are we normalizing?

• What gifts are we cultivating or neglecting?

• Are our people becoming increasingly like Jesus?

This should humble all of us first. One day we will give an account, not only for what we taught, but also for what our ministries consistently trained and empowered people to become.

Returning to the Way of Jesus

If our inherited models are forming people in ways that differ from Jesus, then our task is not merely to improve our programs. Our task is to return to Jesus Himself as the pattern and measure of discipleship. Jesus did not merely gather audiences. He...

• formed disciples

• invited participation

• expected obedience

• debriefed experience

• corrected misunderstandings

• modeled dependence on the Father

• taught His followers to minister to one another

• sent them out to practice what they had learned

• formed people who could reproduce His life in others

If Jesus is our perfect model, then His way of forming people must become the pattern we continually return to, examine ourselves by, and seek to imitate. 

The Question Before Us

Pastor, this letter is a wake-up call. Not to novelty. Not to abandoning everything inherited. It is a call to honest reflection on our discipleship pathways. It is also a call to humble self-examination of our own lives as leaders and models. Are we modeling a life worthy of imitation? It is a call to humility. To repentance where needed. To faithful stewardship. May we have the courage to examine the long-term fruit of the discipleship pathway we have built, inherited, and embraced. May we ask not merely whether our churches are busy, attended, and functioning smoothly. May we ask whether they are forming people into the likeness, practices, and mission of Jesus Christ. The question before us is not simply, "Are we doing church faithfully?"  The question is this: "Are we faithfully forming people into the kind of disciples Jesus intended them to become?"

With gratitude, hope, and holy concern,

Raimer Rojas

(A fellow brother, deeply passionate about discipleship and the stewardship entrusted to us)