The Disciple-Making Pastor: Leading Others on the Journey of Faith

by Bill Hull

Christ commanded the church to make disciples, to produce people who love and obey God, bear fruit, and live with joy. The crisis at the heart of the church is that we often pay lip service to making disciples, but we seldom put much effort behind doing it. For the pastor who is ready to put words into action, The Disciple-Making Pastor offers the inspiration and practical know-how to do so. Bill Hull shows pastors the obstacles they will face, what disciples really look like, the pastor's role in producing them, and the practices that lead to positive change. He also offers a six-step coaching process to help new disciples grow in commitment and obedience and practical ideas to integrate disciple making into the fabric of the church.

Genres: Discipleship, Leadership, Christian, Church, Church Ministry, Christian Living, Christianity

320 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1988

About the author

Bill’s passion is to help the church return to its disciple making roots and he considers himself a discipleship evangelist. This God-given desire has manifested itself in 20 of pastoring and the authorship of many books. Two of his more important books, Jesus Christ Disciple Maker, and The Disciple Making Pastor, have both celebrated 20 years in print. Add his third in the popular trilogy, The Disciple Making Church , and you have a new paradigm for disciple making.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this book 30 years ago and reread large parts of today. Still a good book though a little simplistic and repetitive. The most important task in the church remains raising up disciples who show to the world the likeness of Jesus, to the glory of God!

[Albert Morse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the laymen needs to read this. This is not for the pastor only. If the laymen will read this with an attitude of helping the pastor grow the church, he will multiply his contribution to the church. The pastor needs to read this if they want to learn how to quit being the center of attention. It teaches pastors how to multiply their efforts by developing people in the church to become disciple makers. It encourages pastors to view themselves as a coach instead of the paid player. It views people in the church as the players on the field instead of spectators. The person who reads this will be shown a different perspective of the church model.

[Bradean Marius · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a pastor that just celebrated 25 years of ministry. This book has shaped and sharpened my vision concerning the mission of the church during all these years. I quoted it in essays, I used it in articles, I used bits and pieces from it academically and in my descopăr making. But now I read it again entirely and I can say that it helped me realize the mistakes I made, it revealed my weaknesses and it demolished my preconceptions. Yes, I know this is not a good review for this generation. But I had to start with this confession… However, now that I reread the entire book, I can say that it helps me see what I need to be in the rest of the years in the Ministry. Bill Hull wrote it with passion and in a way that the pages of the book transferred in my heart this passion to fulfill the Mission of the Church. All his arguments (some a little too passionately argued) helped me understand and appreciate disciple making more, and provided the sharpened tools that I needed to be and become a real disciple making pastor.

[James Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Make Disciples
Bill Hull makes a great argument for the fact that the church has lost direction. He blames this on two overreaching observations: First, the church continues to try to reach the world without making disciples. Hull makes the point that Christ commanded his followers to “make disciples.” But he believes that the consumer culture in which we live has stripped the gospel of repentance and the basic call of Christ to deny oneself and follow Him. Therefore, no disciples are being made. Second, it is more important to be a disciple than to have a plan to make disciples. Hull believes that most pastors fail at discipleship because they themselves are not developing as a disciple. Every church should arrange their ministries around the practices of Jesus. If you want to be a disciple and reach the world by making disciples, then read this book.

[Ethan Callison · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me about 10 years to read this book. With a 9 year hiatus in the middle. I thought there were a lot of amazing principles and philosophy in the book. There were some theological and pragmatics that I would differ from with the author and some of the topics in the book were constructed in a time that no longer has relevance. I would’ve given a 4 star except for the last chapter. The author self identify as an idealist, and as an idealist myself, the last chapter simply seems way too concrete in his writing that is not and will not apply in all contexts. However, the author did state he didn’t want to put this chapter in the book simply for this reason. But, for me, it’s too impractical in today’s world.

[Shawn Hurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had some very good things in it. It also had some error. Hull believes that not everyone is a disciple, or that disciples are made not born. All believers are followers of Christ and hence disciples. There is plenty to learn from Bill Hull's minstry and this is the third time I have read this thankfully I still have my original copy that I have marked out the complaints I have with his teaching.

[Jim Valekis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my ministry and added immensely to its fruitfulness. It enabled me to understand what a disciple was supposed to be and do---and is easy to understand and if you're courageous enough, apply. A must for every Christian pastor and leadership team who wants to serve God with their lives and ministry.

[Dani Pop · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't believe that there are books about pastoral ministry out there that almost say that knowing some philosophy is more important than knowing the Bible, especially when that philosophy is one proposed by that very book (not really a philosophy, would say). Disappointed.

[Hunter See · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid book and content, but very repetitive throughout.

[Josiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for any believer not just pastors! I would retitle it The Disciple-Making Believer.

[Justin Ruszkiewicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for a class on holistic disciple making. Not bad!

[Phil Whittall · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book (although with a new cover and updated) by Bill Hull caught my eye at a recent conference. Discipleship not conversion is the biggest challenge of our day, how to produce a church of people that don't merely give assent to Christ as their Saviour but follow Him as Lord.

Across 9 chapters and 300 pages Bill Hull works through the issue of disciple making. The book was first published in 1988 and in this revised and expanded edition we have the original text plus 'further reflections' from Bill, 20 years on. It's interesting to read the insights of the forceful younger Bill and then along comes older Bill to temper (or not) his words with the wisdom and perspective that comes from being in your 60s and not your 40s.

I admired the passionate advocacy of the primary importance of making disciples, I admired insistence that we make disciples not clones of mega-churches, that we realise that TV is discipling our societies and doing a better job of it than the church. To all his passion and commitment to make disciples I say a hearty 'amen'. This should have been a book I just gobbled up. It wasn't.

There was quite a lot I struggled with. A book called 'The Disciple Making Pastor) that has to repeat on p290 of 313 that 'it is my firm conviction that every believer is called to be a reproducing disciple' is missing something. I caught the thought, 'hey Bill, I think we've got that point now'. In short this book is longer than it needed to be.

Plus the guy is a process monster. He has a very different approach to the authors of say, Total Church (click here for my review of that book). Jesus, it seems, had a six step programme for making disciples, specifically designed to produce disciples over a couple of years. If we adopt the same six step programme, with the addition of some exams, a covenant, an intense two year programme and some tough coaching then we too will produce self-feeding, self reproducing disciples. The disciple is constantly referred to as 'the product' ie what we produce from our church. Do we have a quality product? Discipleship it seems is a competitive business and an aggressive focused response is essential.

I'm unconvinced. It's one thing to say I see these things in the way Jesus worked and it's another thing to say this is the way Jesus meant for it to work. Did Jewish rabbi's 2000 years ago really develop a six-step intentional disciple making process that perfectly fits our business oriented western minds? Or perhaps it was something more organic, more relational than that. The ebb and flow of follow, learn, do, with mistakes being made, successes, failures, understanding and non-understanding, people leaving and people joining being a part of Jesus' own disciple making process for the entire time He was on earth. I'm not sure it looked neat when everyone was running away at Gethsemane.

And there's something about making a small group covenant that strikes me as thoroughly legalistic. It's the ingredients of grace, love, friendship, prayer and compelling vision that keep me involved not a commitment to arrive on time to group meetings, aggressively make contact with the unchurched and giving leaders permission to confront me when I fall short.

So I'm glad I read this book because it helped me realise I don't think there's a formula to it all, but there is a need to be intentional and focused. Disciples are made not born, some intentional shaping is necessary and the question remains 'how', I'm just not sure this is quite the way for us.

[Nathan Good]

In this book Bill Hull presents some really good ideas. He says himself that they are basic, but sometimes the basic is not so obvious and sometimes the application is not so basic. One thing that definitely gives him some more credibility is the fact that he has already used this system and it is working well. I definitely believe that he based his theories off of correct ideas. One of these is the idea that the main purpose of the church is evangelism and therefore this should also be the main focus of the church. So often we get caught up in the building up of Christians that we forget that we're supposed to be reaching the lost.
The next point he makes that I think is critical to the discussion is the fact that all believers are to be ministers. And also, we are called to make disciples. Without these two ideas we would just go out and make converts but this is not what we are called to. It is important to build up disciples, so therefore I think that it is important to reach out to those that are lost, but I think that it is also very important right now to mobilize the church to do the same. This is something that hasn't really hit me till recently, but now I'm really noticing all the things that should be getting done but aren't, and the more I look at it I realize that it's not enough for me to just go do them, what would be more effective would be for me to train others to do those things. I go to the park sometimes to read and there are at least 30 teens in the park there who are obviously searching for Christ, but for me to just go witness to them and maybe even lead some of them to Christ isn't enough, it is also important that there is some sort of training ground for them in which they can learn and grow. This would take more work than just what I can do, it takes the mobilization, the regeneration of the church. It would take others stepping up and realizing that it is something that needs to be done. Not that this lessens my responsibility to reach out to those teenagers, but I feel that my responsibility to them is different. I feel like God has given me the responsibility of enabling others to go out and reach those teens, with me by their side.
All of this to say that I think that some of Bill Hull's ideas in this book are very practical and possible to use in reality. Since they are based off of Jesus' ministry with his disciples and they are proven through Hull's church I think that they have credibility as well. I think that the two things that stood out to me the most while reading through this book was the idea that we teach by example and it is essential to our Christian walk that we evangelize. These are two truths that I will take with me for the rest of my life.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was difficult because I agreed with his thesis, but disagreed with a lot of points on how to get there.

There should not be a difference between a disciple and a Christian. I agree those terms should be synonymous.

He them proceeds to give a TON of power and authority to churches and pastors. He thinks pastors should only be seminary trained, that the authority of the church should not be questioned, that people in charge of the church are the ones responsible for discipling.

I disagree. Pastors should be trained in the Bible, Paul says the church should even test his teaching, and the responsibility of discipleship is with the individual reading their Bible daily.

His how to get there was spotty. Maybe in the 80's things were different, but I'd be highly suspect of some of these teachings now.

[David Cowpar · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I've been reading this with a specific view in mind, and for that it has been really helpful.

However, the language used is quite business-like. The author constantly refers to the disciple-making process as 'the product', which is very off-putting.

However, it is full of great insight into what a church needs to do to be the people who produce disciples as Jesus commanded.
The author basis these around four things Jesus said, comprising of six phases or steps on the road to being a mature, disciple-making, disciple of Christ.

If you can get past the church being talked about with business language, this book is worth a read.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good follow-up to "Jesus Christ Disciple Maker"

[Dennis Thurman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A vital study--a must read for pastors and other church leaders.

[Todd Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

challenging book on the biblical philosophy of reaching the world through training disciples.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some good concepts in this book but it seems to be written form a very male centric perspective

[Kason Bloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on discipleship

I like that this book talked about how pastors should focus on discipleship mode than preaching or visiting. I needed this reminder in my life.

[Andy]

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