Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said that, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” As we work towards growing missional church communities that flourish in our secular age, then it’s evident that making discipleship normative will be critical.

Enter stage-left the second edition of Discipleship Explored, from Christianity Explored Ministries…

Back to Discipleship

I count myself a long-term fan of Christianity Explored Ministries. I realised when writing this that I’ve been involved in leading Christianity Explored (CE) courses for nearly ten years (CE was first developed in the late 1990’s, but is now on its third edition). Indeed, I’ll happily give you 10 reasons why I love it. Off the back of the popularity of CE, and seeing a need for a ‘next step’, CE Ministries launched the first edition of Discipleship Explored back in 2008. The teaching films and Bible-studies focused on Philippians and gave people a grounding in what it meant to go on as a (new) Christian. Completing the ‘Explored Trilogy’, Life Explored came into being in 2016 (and my review is here). It wasn’t so much a replacement or a prequel/sequel to the other two, but more sought to engage people with the gospel who might not be in a place where they’d consider CE, and yet its idolatry lens had a powerful knack of challenging existing believers too. Together the three DVD-based resources have become a main player in the ‘outreach course’ market over the last few years.

So when I heard that Christianity Explored Ministries was re-designing Discipleship Explored, I was keen to explore the new material. Presenter and co-writer Barry Cooper kindly took the time to answer some questions a few months ago about the new-look DE. Of course, at one level video-based resources will inevitably date quickly, so there will always be a pressure to keep ‘re-freshening’ such resources. However, ‘DE 2.0’ has more than just a facelift: all the material has been completely re-written, as well as being re-shot, whilst still retaining its focus on Philippians. Old-timers will recognise many of the same session titles, even if the content is different.

Real World Stories

If you’re familiar with the recent Life Explored, then Discipleship Explored comes with a similar quality of film production. The teaching films are beautifully and professionally shot, with Barry Cooper visiting a different location for each episode. Rwanda, Jordan, Serbia, India, Greece, Peru and the USA each provide the context for eight documentary-style films, giving DE aninherently international feel to it – as well as being visually engaging.

One of the other obvious differences is that the teaching films now include snippets of interviews with Christians from these different locations. Each session’s theme is therefore grounded in the reality of lived experience. Whereas Life Explored introduced a series of thought-provoking but fictional visual stories, intentionally taking the viewer into a ‘different world’, Discipleship Explored now introduces us to ‘real life’ stories capturing the richness, variety and earthiness of Christian faith in the ‘real world’.

Good to Go

The main components of each DE session are fairly straight-forward and, again, there’s no surprises if you’ve used the other Explored resources. Simply put, it’s a case of watching the film (15 mins), before spending a longer chunk of time time (DE recommends 45 mins) going deeper into the week’s passage from Philippians by working through some provided discussion questions. Over the eight sessions participants will read through the whole of Philippians, and each film picks up on a theme from that session’s passage (e.g. Living in Christ, from Philippians 1:1-11, or Righteous in Christ, from Philippians 3:1-9). Hosts are encouraged to introduce the film with a ‘question to keep in mind’, which tees up the issues about to be addressed. The corresponding discussion after the film is effectively a Bible-study on that session’s passage.

As part of the resource package, a Leader’s Handbook provides extensive resources on Philippians, running DE, following-up pastoral issues, as well as a rough ‘script’ to lead each session, e.g. prayers to close the session and introductory sentences. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be tempted to decide you already know what you’re doing and just crack on with running DE before having read the Leader’s Handbook. However, it’s worth pausing and having a gander at the suggestions provided to reap the wisdom ‘in the box’. It’s also recommended that DE participants each have their own Member’s Handbook (one of these is included in the DE kit, and extras can be purchased separately – they work out as just over £2 each, depending on how you buy in bulk). These also provide ‘Follow Up’ daily readings and questions for the following week, picking up on a particular theme from the session (e.g. assurance, the Holy Spirit, meeting with other Christians, contentment) and then taking the participants through various Bible passages to complement what has been discussed in the session. This is commendable because it gently helps someone establish a simple pattern of daily Bible reading, prayer, and, particularly admirably, Scripture memorisation too.

Turning Up the Music

Again, if you’re familiar with the other Explored resources, you’ll know what you’re getting in terms of teaching content. DE doesn’t disappoint. Presenter Barry Cooper (who wrote & presented on the original DE and has worked for CE Ministries for the last 20 years) is engaging, clear, and provides a compelling vision of Christian discipleship that is both solid and fresh; re-assuring and yet unashamed in its call to follow Christ. The metaphor he uses is that we can often think about discipleship as like teaching someone to dance by simply explaining a series of moves. But that’s no use without someone hearing the music. Cooper hopes that the apostle Paul’s vision of Christ and His love would be like turning up the music in our discipleship. And our experience of DE was that even for people who have been Christians for decades there was much that was invigorating and tellingly put.

Occasionally it felt like the teaching was covering so many ‘discipleship’ issues that we were slightly gorged out by the time the film finished. All good stuff and sparklingly illustrated. But as a result, what I felt I needed next was some time and questions to help me process some of the issues raised by the film, rather than a seven-question Bible-study. I wonder if this was because some of the teaching films felt more thematic, interspersed with related snippets of interview, rather than being particularly tied to the passage. Again, nothing wrong with that, but the subsequent Bible-study then felt like ‘something more’, rather than just ‘going deeper’. I’d love to hear how others have found making – or managing – this connection, because I’d want to re-look at this next time we use DE.

A few practical observations:

Perhaps it’s worth noting that one of the inevitable consequences of the new DE ‘global’ feel is the practical reality of accents! Depending on whether participants are used to hearing a range of accents in everyday life, some viewers may struggle slightly with following along. We ended up putting on subtitles for most episodes, which helped us better appreciate these interviews with Christians from around the world. (On that, it’s worth being aware that subtitles are presently only available if you’re playing the DVD, whereas the downloadable files (to which you get an access code within the box) don’t contain subtitle options.)

Most of the episodes also begin with a short, unintroduced burst of these interviews, but we found for some people beginning like this took a bit of getting used to – just a line of explanation to know who this person was and why we were hearing from them would help set the scene. As the weeks went on we ended up supplying this ourselves as part of the introduction (“we’re going to begin the film by hearing from X, who will be sharing about…”).

Those practicalities aside, these interviews undoubtedly strengthen the versatility of the DE package. Whether or not your own context is particularly ‘international’, it’s hugely encouraging to see that all over the world the gospel is indeed bearing fruit, growing disciples, and making sense of life. 

Strictly Come Discipleship

The second edition of DE is a strong resource; professional and pleasing in its format, and trust-worthy and compelling in its content. Its evidently suitable for a variety of settings: one-to-one viewing, the traditional group format, or even a summer teaching series. Likewise, I’d say it’s global flavour makes it more deployable, even across the spectrum of culture and class within the UK. So, thank you Barry Cooper, not least for all you’ve given to these three Explored resources. All in all, it’s hard to see how there wouldn’t be some forum within most churches where DE was a welcome and beneficial addition.

You can pick up Discipleship Explored resources from the publisher here, or visit the DE site page here.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of Discipleship Explored for free from the publisher, but I hope this is a fair and honest review!

One of the albums that made up the soundtrack to my late-teens was the debut record from The Thrills, a Dublin-based rock band who peaked around 2004. Titled So Much for the City, it was a homage to small-town America with more than just a hint of The Beach Boys thrown in. One moment they were pining for the bright lights of the city, the next they were finding it had lost its charm and were longing for home.

Dreaming of the City?

There’s no doubt about it: the emergence of church-planting in the last couple of decades in the Western Church has been really exciting. As an undergrad thinking about ministry back in the ‘noughties’, it felt like planting was the epitome of ministry aspiration. Voices from across the pond were undoubtedly a significant part of this: Mark Driscoll was telling us (with rather colourful language) about how Mars Hill had grown out of his living room into a multi-campus church in Seattle. People were starting to notice how years of head-down ministry and thinking from Tim Keller on planting in secular places was bearing fruit. Here in the UK, the London set had their wheels in motion: St Helen’s, HTB and Co-Mission have been courageously relentless in pursuing new planting opportunities, be they ‘grafts’ into existing (but perhaps struggling) churches or fresh start-ups. New student-focused churches were being initiated in university cities and towns across the nation, especially where it was felt there was a lack of existing gospel ministry.

But in pretty much of all of this – or certainly in the way much of this was portrayed, there was a common planting loci: the city.

Hoping to plant a church? Chances are you were dreaming of the city.

And despite the growth and maturity of countless church plant movements and initiatives, some would argue that the ‘citification’ of church-planting hasn’t changed much since then.

Got Nothing Against a Big Town…

Donnie Griggs is out to change that. In his little primer for small-town planting, aptly titled Small Town Jesus, he takes his cue from John Mellencamp’s 1985 hit, ‘Small Town’:

Got nothing against a big town / But my bed is in a small town / Oh, and that’s good enough for me…

Cities are great. We need the gospel planted in our cities.

But perhaps too often we’re focused on the city, and no one else gets a look in.

Just think about the language we use: we talk about redeeming our cities and renewing our cities. We say cities are strategic because, after all, the world comes to our cities. And cities (and large towns) are where the students go, so that’s where we need to plant. And anyway, doesn’t the Bible’s story end with a city?

Small towns, on the other hand?

Well, they somehow don’t grab the imagination in quite the same way.

The Assumption of the Trickle-Down Gospel

And perhaps sometimes going hand-in-hand with this emphasis on the city has been the assumption that if you reach the cities, you’re reaching the nation. Griggs refers to this belief as borrowing from ‘Trickle Down Economic Theory’.

We believe the gospel will trickle down from the city to the small towns and rural villages. But does the gospel really float down-stream quite so efficiently? Are cities quite so porous, in that sense? Speaking about the UK context, Tim Chester has offered a similar warning:

“It’s often said that we should focus our attention on cities because cities are centres of influence. The idea is that the gospel will then spread out to surrounding rural areas. And there maybe something in that.

But we need to realise that the movement of the gospel to rural areas will not happen by accident. We need to be intentional. We need to plant churches in rural areas. In much of the area where I live people would have to drive at least half an hour to an evangelical church. Unbelievers are not going to do that! We need to take the gospel to them.

And that means scattering areas like the Peak District and North Yorkshire with gospel communities. Our vision has got to be churches planted in market towns, supporting gospel communities in village after village.”

In Griggs’ analysis he counts small towns as those under 25,000. According to the 2011 census, there were 7,339 towns or cities in England, and only 411 of them had more than 25,000 inhabitants. That means to focus exclusively on cities (and large towns) and to assume that the gospel will float downstream will mean over 6,928 small towns are likely to fall off our radar.

To be fair, much is being done to de-mystify the aura of church-planting as being all about the city. There’s the pastiche of planters wearing skinny jeans, using on trend fonts and doing their sermon prep over flat whites in coffee bars, and inevitably it’s an image that is tied-up with city living.

Of course, many pastor/planters in cities would be quick to point out that the reality on the ground is nothing like that. Cities bring with them unique problems and unique and ugly under-bellies. At the moment I’m going to Manchester once a month to meet with other planters and each time I come out of the station I’m reminded me of the sheer scale and breadth of gospel need in cities.

But there does seem to be this latent assumption that church-planting is something you do in the city. The obvious problem with this is that people are less likely to consider moving and planting in the small towns. That’s simply not where planting happens. After all, how can you plant where there’s no constant influx of twenty-somethings to bring on board, or where there’s no Starbucks in sight? But there’s another inherent danger too.

The Danger of ‘Copy & Paste’ City-Planting into Small Towns

The city focus is also problematic for those of us actually in the small towns, because we start to assume that the way to do ministry and plant churches is by modelling ourselves on planting in the city. If that’s all I can see in the projected culture of planting, then I’m going to assume my job is just to reproduce it in the small town. To use Griggs’ phrase, it’s copy and paste ministry. And that’s going to leave me disheartened and envious when I find that my small town isn’t particularly taking a fancy to the version of flat-packed city church I’m attempting to construct.

Here Griggs uses the example of Tim Keller. All around the world he sees people trying to imitate the ministry of Tim Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City. But the ministry at RPC has been shaped by the culture of the context. Keller has “done the hard work of serving, learning, and earning the right to be heard within his cultural context.” The fruit of his contextualisation is the particular ministry & mission RPC. But what we mistakenly do is imitate the fruit, copying and pasting that shape of mission & ministry into our own contexts. We forget that what we should be imitating is the process of contextualisation, rather than the particular contextual NYC fruit. Of course, we probably follow that route because it avoids the hard work of understanding our context too.

Contextualisation can be a bit of a swear word, and, to be sure, there’s a danger of over-complicating it. But equally we don’t need to make it into a ‘baddie’ that is out to get the gospel. Griggs puts it simply when he says:

“Culture is the context that we will plant the seed of the gospel into.”

Know Your Soil

The simple point with small towns is that their culture is a different context to that of the city. (Of course, we equally shouldn’t assume that ‘city culture’ is one clear-cut homogeneous package either.) But the point is that small towns will be different again. Griggs asks:

Do you know what makes your small town tick. What is it that everyone loves? What do people rally around? What do they celebrate? What do they mourn? What fuels your economy?

Interestingly, in the same year (2016) that Griggs’ brought out Small Town Jesus, a pastor called Aaron Morrow authored a book called Small Town Mission. Morrow is located in Iowa, some 1,100 miles from Griggs’ base in coastal North Carolina, but as we might say in England, it seems that books on small town ministry are a bit like buses, right?! Morrow’s book has some really useful practical suggestions and is formatted as more of a workbook for a small group or group of friends to work through.

Of course, there’s no substitute for just being present in a place – the nuts and bolts of observing life and culture and talking with people and hearing their stories, as well as their hopes and dreams. But as I read Griggs and Morrow I find they help me make sense of the cultural and religious realities I see around me – as well as providing lots of wisdom for serving the work of the gospel in such places. At 70,000 people, Barrow wouldn’t be filed under Griggs’ < 25k definition of a small-town, but it’s geographical isolation and wider rural Cumbrian context mean that lots of his reflections apply.

This post has been slow-cooking away for a while, but what made me come back to it was hearing that Donnie Griggs is running his first UK-based Small Town Jesus conference – and on the Wirral of all places – my home! Maybe in due course I’ll share some of the specifics of what I’m learning here, although this may not be the best forum. For now I’d commend STJ & STM, and leave you with the jangly joy of The Thrills performing Big Sur: