Conversations: Proactive and Reactive Mission
We will never accidentally disciple someone to maturity in Christ. Discipleship that brings the Gospel to bear in all of life must happen in the rhythms of normal life together. But we often confuse discipleship with being a strong witness of God’s love and character to others.
In this episode, we continue in our Conversations series. You’ll hear a short conversation between two close friends as they take a few minutes to sit and chat about the differences between their proactive and reactive missional opportunities.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- The difference between proactive and reactive mission and opportunities.
- Several examples of a clearly identified proactive mission.
- What to do with those who fall outside your proactive mission.
- Why “witnessing for Jesus” is not our mission!
From this episode:
“A proactive missional opportunity is when we say as a community, “we’re going to give ourselves, together, to radically reorient our lives and incarnate amongst certain people and make disciples amongst them, specifically, and we’re going to agree to do that together.“
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Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Free Download of the Big 3 For Episode #372
Coaching with Caesar and Tina in discipleship and missional living.
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Transcript
It's one thing to be a witness to someone.
Caesar:And it's another thing to disciple them in all of life.
Caesar:Don't confuse those two.
Caesar:They're both valuable, but if you can't do life with someone, because maybe you met them at work, just use that as an example, and they live 45 minutes away.
Caesar:And they don't go to any of the same things you do there.
Caesar:Life rhythms are going to be very, very different than chances are.
Caesar:That's a reactive opportunity to be a witness, to show them what God's like to serve them, to be kind to live generously with them.
Caesar:But you're not going to get to disciple them in all of life in your community.
Caesar:If they live nowhere near you.
Caesar:So you get to be a witness, you get to show them what God's like.
Caesar:So here's a question who specifically are you proactively making disciples of with others in your community?
Caesar:You get to, I think you need to identify who.
Caesar:Proactively making disciples of
Announcer:welcome to the Everyday Disciple podcast where you'll learn how to live with greater intentionality.
Announcer:Faith that naturally fits into every area of life.
Announcer:In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle, this is the stuff your parents, pastors, and seminary professors probably forgot to tell you.
Announcer:And now here's your host Caesar Kalinowski.
Caesar:Okay.
Caesar:Here we are back together.
Caesar:another episode of Everyday Disciple.
Caesar:I'm glad you're with.
Caesar:I'm in a good mood today.
Caesar:I'm loving getting a little bit extra time home.
Caesar:This week is, uh, a week off the road and not, you know, in airplanes and all that stuff.
Caesar:So I'm getting to go deeper with my own community and friends and family and get to do a whole lot of fun stuff here.
Caesar:But I got to say, man, I love it.
Caesar:When I get to come out and be with you and do live training there in your context, things have opened back up here this last year with the travel again, and my schedule is filling back up.
Caesar:With training opportunities, things like that.
Caesar:And I love getting to do it so often we get to come and do the story of God experience.
Caesar:We take everybody through the full narrative arc it's it's narrative and dialogical.
Caesar:We do that whole training last week.
Caesar:We were with some friends in Texas.
Caesar:Do the Everyday Disciple workshop, which is a packed day of all the basics of identity and mission and all that, it seems like it moves the ball forward about six months in a weekend together.
Caesar:So that's of course fun to do if you'd ever have any interest in that, having.
Caesar:Do some training and equipping with you with your team, either staff or Missional, Community leaders, or small group leaders that you want to start moving more towards a Missional incarnational existence.
Caesar:Let me know.
Caesar:I would love to do that.
Caesar:Just get ahold of me.
Caesar:I'm not hard to find, drop me an email or go over to Facebook, send me a message or whatever.
Caesar:I would love to talk to you about that and come and see you and get to be with you.
Caesar:If it works out, that'd be awesome.
Caesar:Also speaking of training, we do some of the same types of training in our Everyday Disciple challenge.
Caesar:And maybe you've been a part of these before it's four days live on the internet.
Caesar:It's not four whole days.
Caesar:I do 45 minutes of live training a day.
Caesar:Over four days where I also kind of lay foundations of Missional living and understanding discipleship in all of life.
Caesar:That's been a very popular thing.
Caesar:We've had many, many thousands of people join me for the Everyday Disciple challenge.
Caesar:That's coming up again on March 21st.
Caesar:So depending on when you're hearing this March 21st.
Caesar:2022, there will be registration links and things like that.
Caesar:Coming up here in the days ahead.
Caesar:We're not even to that point yet, but I kind of want to give you a little bit of a, save the date.
Caesar:Maybe start talking that up amongst some of your friends or people in your Missional Community or other leaders in your church.
Caesar:If you can't have me out.
Caesar:Well, next best thing.
Caesar:Join me over a series of a few days for the Everyday Disciple challenge.
Caesar:All right.
Caesar:And also before we dive into today's topic, Can I ask, if you just share this podcast with those you love and you're doing life and ministry with, I think that it will be a benefit if you're finding it a benefit, it will be a benefit for them too.
Caesar:And we can all continue to grow in our gospel fluency and how the gospel speaks into all of life and how we live this out together on mission.
Caesar:What'd you do that?
Caesar:Would you just take that 10 seconds or 30 seconds and takes to share out the podcast, throw a link on there Everyday.
Caesar:Disciple dot com forward slash podcast.
Caesar:Pretty easy.
Caesar:I would really.
Caesar:All right now today's topic.
Caesar:As we continue on in our conversation series, I hope you've been enjoying these.
Caesar:This is the ninth of 10 conversations in this series.
Caesar:So if you're jumping in today and you're, this is the first one, they're all standalone, but I'd encourage you to go back to the first one.
Caesar:Eight weeks ago and listen to that one, it's called we don't go to church and get started that way and listen to all of these.
Caesar:And really I'm hoping you'll be sharing these with key people and leaders in your life, because these are some key conversations that we continue to have over and over and over and you'll need to as well.
Caesar:Now, today, I want to talk about our proactive mission and our reactive Missional opportunities.
Caesar:So we have both opportunities for proactive mission and reactive.
Caesar:I believe a Missional Community should have a proactive mission directed toward a specific group of people in a particular context.
Caesar:Those that you can and are discipling while doing life together, you get to, I think you need to identify who are you proactively making disciples of?
Caesar:it's not a ministry doesn't have to be, but I think you'll also find that all of the people in your group are going to have opportunities to respond to reactive Missional opportunities.
Caesar:As you go along in life, it'll be normal for you to develop relationships with those outside your neighborhood, or with folks who are not a part of your focused.
Caesar:Proactive mission that group of people.
Caesar:So then what happens, what happens with those people who aren't part of your proactive mission?
Caesar:How do you make time for them and actually disciple them?
Caesar:And can you actually disciple those people too?
Caesar:That aren't a part of your proactive mission?
Caesar:Hmm.
Caesar:Let's take a listen to this short conversation between two close friends, as they take a few minutes to sit and chat about this.
Caesar:What a day.
Caesar:I just have to get off my feet for a few minutes before the kids get home from school.
Caesar:And this house explodes.
Caesar:Kim, did you say that you and Dave were having your neighbors over for dinner tonight to your right Kelly?
Caesar:I almost forgot.
Caesar:No biggie.
Caesar:I'll help you whip something up in no time.
Caesar:Many hands make light work.
Caesar:You guys seem to always have someone over.
Caesar:You're becoming quite the socialites.
Caesar:What's even better is that a bunch of people in our neighborhood are starting to have us over to their homes for meals and parties.
Caesar:I'm loving that God is really blessing our missional communities efforts to try and love and disciple the folks right here around us.
Caesar:It's taken awhile, but it starting to pay off in real and meaningful relationships.
Caesar:I don't know how you do it, Kim, you and Dave are just as busy with work and kids.
Caesar:And that's another thing.
Caesar:How do your kids feel about your busy Missional lifestyle?
Caesar:Heck the kids make it even easier, really going to all their school and sports activities is how we started to get to know everyone around here.
Caesar:They love that we're intentionally spending time more and more with their friends, parents.
Caesar:Plus I want our children to grow up focused on loving and serving others more than on building their own little kingdoms.
Caesar:You know what I mean?
Caesar:Yeah, but for me, I just find it's easier to try and be a good Christian to those people at work and a few other friends that I've known for years.
Caesar:Well, that's awesome too, Kelly, as long as you're able to actually disciple those friends, which needs to happen in a community of people I found over the years, that if I was just sort of trying to get people saved along the way as opportunities came up, I wasn't being very effective at making disciples.
Caesar:But when our MC our Missional Community started to focus on a specific group of people.
Caesar:In our case, those right here in our neighborhood, we could proactively engage them over time and began to disciple them toward faith and trust in Jesus.
Caesar:So what happens when God brings someone into your life that doesn't live in your neighborhood?
Caesar:Do you just ignore them?.
Caesar:Nope, but this is what's cool.
Caesar:Now that we have a more proactive discipleship thing going on in our MC with my neighbors, I actually have a community to bring those more reactive discipleship opportunities into you've met Kenny Dave's new friend.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:I've seen him over here a lot lately.
Caesar:He's a guy that Dave met at work.
Caesar:God made it clear that Kenny was leaning in to relationship with Dave.
Caesar:And he was pretty open to spiritual things and the gospel, but Dave couldn't disciple him very effective on his own or at the office in between work duties.
Caesar:So he intentionally helped Kenny get to know and do life with more of the folks in our Missional Community too.
Caesar:And now he's a part of the family and I think he is really close to laying his life down completely for Jesus.
Caesar:Kim was getting excited.
Caesar:This is really helpful.
Caesar:I have a whole bunch of friends that are not all that connected to each other, and the best I could ever do before was drop a witness bomb on them once in a while, or fight them to go to church.
Caesar:I need to loop these friends into my Missional Community life.
Caesar:Hmm.
Caesar:It does take a little bit of intentionality Kelly, but we're living proof that it can be.
Caesar:I pray and ask God to show you what's next with each of those friends and then do whatever he tells you to do.
Caesar:He'll lead you there for sure.
Caesar:I got to do that, but right now we better get to make in this dinner or you won't have a prayer tonight.
Caesar:Okay.
Caesar:Thanks for letting me share those two ladies conversation, even though I'm a man, I hope you can follow that.
Caesar:So after hearing that.
Caesar:Let me go a little deeper into the difference between our proactive and reactive Missional opportunities.
Caesar:This is a topic of discussion that really does come up.
Caesar:Often, people ask about this all the time and they kind of confuse the two as if they're the same.
Caesar:And they're not a proactive Missional opportunity is when we say as a community, we're going to give ourselves together to radically reorient our lives and incarnate amungst.
Caesar:This group of people and make disciples amongst them specifically.
Caesar:And we're going to agree to do that together as a community, and that could be people in a specific neighborhood or.
Caesar:That hang out at a local cafe or pub, maybe the staff and it's regulars from the neighborhood.
Caesar:That's what a proactive mission is.
Caesar:And we're choosing proactively intentionally to reorient our lives, our time, our resources around those specific people that make sense?.
Caesar:But we also have in reality, many, many reactive Missional opportunities, meaning things that just come up in life, people that we work with, maybe someone at work, you know, and like someone we run into at the gym or grocery store, maybe someone that's outside of our normal sphere of influence, but God gives us favor with that person.
Caesar:That happens.
Caesar:Do we just ignore them ? no?
Caesar:We don't.
Caesar:And I think what often happens is that people feel like they have to choose between the two.
Caesar:And in reality, we can have both, they actually can work together.
Caesar:But what you can maybe begin to do with some of these folks who are outside of your proactive mission is you could begin to as a community, support them and what they're doing, maybe certain people from your Missional Community go with you to an event that their kids are doing, or some sporting event that their kids are in.
Caesar:And you all go together and you're cheering your heads off and they get to know your friends that way.
Caesar:Or maybe you go to a friend from work's art opening.
Caesar:And a few other people from your Missional Community come along.
Caesar:So they get to see some of that life on life and community.
Caesar:Maybe you go out for drinks afterwards or whatever, but you're integrating these people in.
Caesar:If they live somewhere near you into the rhythms and relationships of your community.
Caesar:But I want to stress that since the goal of discipleship is to see every part of our lives come in line with the truth of the gospel.
Caesar:We have to be sure that we are actually in the normal stuff of everyday life with the people that we're discipling.
Caesar:See, it's one thing to be a witness to something.
Caesar:And it's another thing to disciple them in all of life.
Caesar:Don't confuse those two.
Caesar:They're both valuable, but if you can't do life with someone, because maybe you met them at work, just use as an example, and they live 45 minutes away and they don't go to any of the same things you do there.
Caesar:Their life Rhythms are going to be very, very different than chances are.
Caesar:That's a reactive opportunity to be a witness, to show them what God's like to serve them, to be kind to live generously with them.
Caesar:But you're not going to get to disciple them in all of life in your community.
Caesar:If they live nowhere near you.
Caesar:So you get to be a witness, you get to show them what God's like so here's a question who specifically, are you proactively making disciples of with others in your community?.
Caesar:Is it your collective People of Peace within your neighborhood?
Caesar:So you've identified who those specific people that live in proximity and they're leaning into relationship are, and then collectively you're doing life with them.
Caesar:Is it maybe the parents and kids that go to school with your kids in the neighborhood?
Caesar:I was in a Missional Community where that was our focus.
Caesar:It was the parents and kids and staff from this particular school.
Caesar:And we all lived there and a whole bunch of our people, their kids were in there.
Caesar:I think we even had some people that worked on staff there.
Caesar:Maybe it's the staff and customers at your local gym.
Caesar:That's right in the neighborhood.
Caesar:So you're running into people all the time and maybe that's your proactive mission.
Caesar:But here's the thing.
Caesar:If you don't know who you're actually hoping to make disciples of and among chances are you're discipling no one.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:Think about it.
Caesar:If I was to ask you, if you had kids and let's say you do, and you can go, yeah, we got kids.
Caesar:I'm like, well, which of these kids are yours here?
Caesar:And there's a yard full of people.
Caesar:You're like, oh, just, you know, whoever shows up.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:I, you know, it's just any of them, God brings into our path and then we feed them and discipline them and whatever they need.
Caesar:Yeah.
Caesar:That's how we do it.
Caesar:Is that silly, you know, who your kids are.
Caesar:And if you're really truly discipling people, you're going to know who they are.
Caesar:Well as a community, when you get in alignment and you go proactively, this is the people in place that we're making disciples of.
Caesar:Well, it just becomes so much easier to start aligning your schedules and time and resources feel that you feel that difference.
Caesar:So it's really, really important, but we don't have to discount the reactive opportunities.
Caesar:We just need to understand they're different because many of them will probably not be people we will disciple.
Caesar:Because of the proximity and just life on life aspect, but some of them we will get to, we'll be able to loop them in to community.
Caesar:And we'll sort of be that gateway for them.
Caesar:I hope you're getting some clarification on this and you're feeling the importance of having a proactive mission, really identifying that now, as always, I want to leave you with the big three takeaways from today.
Caesar:If nothing else, you don't want to miss these and I've written them all down for you.
Caesar:So if you're driving or at the gym or whatever, you can get a printable PDF of this.
Caesar:Week's big three as a free download.
Caesar:Just go to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash big.
Caesar:now here's the big three for this week.
Caesar:Number one, have you identified your personal and group focus for your proactive, intentional disciple-making.
Caesar:And have you discussed as a community?
Caesar:How you'll handle those reactive Missional opportunities that come up in the flow of life at work or with those outside your closer relational circle, take some time together to pray about this, asking God to clarify your proactive mission.
Caesar:And lead you to better understand who he is calling you to specifically give your best time and focus to number two, God gives us many opportunities throughout each day to show others what he is like to glorify God.
Caesar:In some way, many of these opportunities will be with people who you may never see again, or who live nowhere near you or your Missional community.
Caesar:But we can choose how we'll interact or react in these instances, both in proactive ways and reactive ways.
Caesar:God wants to use.
Caesar:You wants to use us all for his glory every day.
Caesar:And number three, you'll never accidentally disciple someone to maturity in Christ.
Caesar:No discipleship that brings the gospel to bear in all of life must happen in the rhythms of normal life together.
Caesar:Don't confuse discipleship with being a strong witness of God's love and character to others.
Caesar:Discipleship's our mission.
Caesar:That's what Jesus gave us the mission of making disciples of his, and that takes giving our lives to a group of people over a longer period of time together.
Caesar:Maybe that's why there's been so little discipleship going on.
Caesar:And probably even on the reactive side, not necessarily a very intentional display of who God is and his glory not reacting very well either.
Caesar:Hmm.
Caesar:I don't know.
Caesar:Well, that's our time for today.
Caesar:I hope that was helpful.
Caesar:Join me next time.
Caesar:As we finish up our conversation series, you're going to hear a conversation about what growth in the Missional Community really looks like.
Caesar:Let's see from the outside, looking in oftentimes Missional Community is, can with very attractive and it appears to have a straight line of growth toward multiplication.
Caesar:That's not always, so we're going to talk about that.
Caesar:You'll hear a conversation about that and I hope you'll join me.
Caesar:I'll talk to you soon!.
Announcer:Thanks for joining us today for more information on this show and to get loads of free discipleship resources, visit Everyday Disciple dot com.