Ep. 296: Legion of Disciples

Announcer:

Welcome to the Indoubt podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week, we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on Indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Daniel Markin:

Hey. Welcome to Indoubt. This is Daniel Markin. On today’s episode, I have an opportunity to chat with a friend of mine. He’s a pastor friend of mine. His name’s Bryan Hurlbutt and we’re having a discussion about discipleship. He has a new book on discipleship that he’s written and he’s actually implementing in his church.

Daniel Markin:

So, we have a little bit of a discussion on what that looks like to disciple and be discipled well. Is it organic, or is it structured? What’s the balance there? But then, also one of the things I find really valuable at this episode is council towards young people in the sense of making sure that you stay in a place long enough that you can really put your roots down into that place. And so, I hope you find this episode helpful.

Daniel Markin:

Hey. Welcome to Indoubt. This is Daniel Markin. And today, I’m joined by a friend of mine and a distant friend, someone that I’ve gotten to know over the years, and almost like a distant mentor, because I’ve been listened to his preaching and connecting with him at conferences here and there. But his name’s Bryan Hurlbutt. He is a good friend of one of my mentors. And I won’t introduce much more of him. But Bryan…

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Hey.

Daniel Markin:

Good to see you. Good to have you here.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Daniel, it’s great to be with you, Bud.

Daniel Markin:

Want to just quickly ask you, what are you doing these days? What is your ministry? Because the name Bryan Hurlbutt doesn’t jump off the charts to a lot of people.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

I know.

Daniel Markin:

I remember, of the huge-

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Can you imagine that?

Daniel Markin:

… evangelical circle, or maybe you are, under a different pseudo name or something like that. But Bryan, tell us a little bit about who you are and what your ministry is.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Yes.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Well, I thought this might happen because I left the Bible Belt almost 20 years ago and went to a dirt road off the evangelical highway in the State of Utah, which everybody associates with Latter Day Saints, Mormons. A beautiful place. And I planted a church here 18 1/2 years ago and have been here since, did a master’s degree in Historical Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. And then, did doctoral work down under a philosopher named JP Moreland. Did some writing here and there and some speaking. And, yeah, just a local church guy trying to serve the Body of Christ here in the State of Utah. And then do a radio ministry here in the northern half of Utah and little bit of Southern Idaho, areas like that.

Daniel Markin:

Interesting. I didn’t know you did that. What does that radio ministry consist of?

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Well, they break up my sermons. So, I’m on the radio five days a week, 9:30 AM, 9:30 PM, KUTR. We call it the Hot AM 820. And then, it’s also 95.3 FM here. And then, I also have a podcast and a radio show that plays 9:30 on Saturdays here. But then, this podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Play called Life on the Line, where myself and one of our staff members process through areas of a subtext, like we’re doing a whole summer series on some of the LGBTQ dynamics, things like that. But then, we also talk about the subtext of life and philosophy, life of the mind, theology and how that interfaces with the local church.

Daniel Markin:

I was listening to you guys talk through the problem of evil, not too far back.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Okay.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. It was really good, really helpful. So, I want to recommend that to our listeners, as well.

Daniel Markin:

Bryan, I want to also recommend to our listeners your new book that you have written on discipleship. And then, from there I want to launch into talking about discipleship. Because you know what we’re doing in ministry, life, in the church is about discipleship. Jesus calls us to make disciples. And so, I want to hear some of your perspective on that. And as we make our way around that, hear what discipleship looks like when it’s done well. And also, what bad discipleship looks like in your time in ministry. Because many of us maybe are in churches that are doing things really well. Some of us might be in churches that we don’t know that discipleship is being done really poorly. So, we’d love to get some of your wisdom on that very thing. But maybe we just start with this question, which is, what is a disciple?

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

I think sometimes the classic response is a disciple is a follower of Jesus. And I think that’s so generic that it almost doesn’t help answer the question in some ways. I remember years ago, a mentor of mine was the late Charles Ryrie. And he’s a famous guy in Christian circles because of Ryrie Study Bible and things like that. And he had a great definition of what a spiritual Christian is, a spiritual man. And he referred to that as a mature yet maturing person.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

And one of the things I think gets lost in discipleship is, we’ve sort of created discipleship as a little bit of a hoop that I jump through. And you talk to some Christians and they’ll say, “Well, yeah, I’ve been discipled.” And that always makes me super nervous. I don’t know what that means. “I’ve been discipled,” as though it’s like a past tense thing. I went through a course, 101, 201, 301, whatever your basic classes or a series of studies, as though I’ve walked through a hoop and I’ve been discipled and now I’ve graduated the school of discipleship.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

So, in some ways, a disciple is a follower of Christ, but it is an intentional follower of Christ who is seeking maturity in the very next steps of whatever that means for them in their life as they’re being transformed into the image of Christ. And so, as you walk that road, the reason I wrote the book, and we can talk about the approach of the book, is because I have found myself incredibly concerned that people tend to think that discipleship in a local church just happens. And I think that’s really flawed. There’s this whole movement of organic discipleship. And I don’t even know what that means. It’s oxymoronic to me. We don’t make disciples organically. Jesus doesn’t grow in the soil of fallenness, organically. He has to be cultivated. So, that’s what the target of the book is.

Daniel Markin:

And when you think about discipleship, and we’ll get into the book here, but discipleship is not a quick thing. Its’ not a one-and-done, “oh, I’ve been discipled.” I think there’s maybe moments of seasons we’ve been discipled by certain people. But I think we need to just, from the get go, say discipleship is a lifetime of following Jesus. And is it Eugene Peterson who says that it’s a slow obedience?

Bryan Hurlbutt:

A long obedience in the same direction.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

He wrote a book on the Psalms of Ascent.

Daniel Markin:

Okay. Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

And he used the Psalms of Ascent as a tool for discipleship. And that’s what he titled the book. And I’ve shared with people I think it’s the best title of any book I’ve ever seen.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

That is discipleship, a long obedience in the same direction, which means it’s utterly unsexy.

Daniel Markin:

Totally. And it takes a long time.

Daniel Markin:

Just off the get go, too, how would you encourage someone who might be feeling like they’re all over the place. They want to be discipled. They want to be involved in discipleship in a local church, but the circumstances of life are just taking them everywhere.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

I think we have to think counterintuitively. In late January, Christian Smith, the sociologist at Notre Dame, gave a lecture at Wheaton that is called Something Shifted. And he gives an entire sociological analysis of how the young adult community in North America has gotten where it’s gotten and what is the situation that they’re in. And he’s being a diagnostician. And that’s his role as a sociologist. But as a pastor, the next step is to say, “Okay, now what do we do about this kind of a thing.” But one of the artifacts that he brings to the table is what you’re highlighting, which is this sense of displacement, where it’s so transitory. You can work from anywhere. Your employers now are not loyal to you, so why would you be loyal to them? You can make money different places. Value structures have changed. In the early ’70s, the value structure of finding a job, the number one statistical piece was peace and wellbeing. Now the number one piece is making money. And so it’s completely flipped. It’s a much more transient culture.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

So, what do you do out of that? And the answer is, it’s not rocket science. My counsel to young adults is, find a place and stay. That’s actually what I think you need to do. You need to find a place and let your roots go down. Howard Hendricks, who taught me how to disciple years ago, used to say, “It’s the people who stay who make a difference in life.” And you need to stay in a place. Because you need to get into the soil of the place to understand the place and to let the place do its work on you.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

So, I came to Utah 18 and a half years ago, and I’ve stayed. There are times I’ve wanted to leave, but I’ve stayed. And what I realized is that Utah was probably more for me than I was for Utah. And Utah has had its own discipleship impact on me. Because the place has had its own chiseling and framing and shaping as I try to live the Christian life in this context. Context has its own shaping. People then come along and shape you. A church comes along and shapes you. But you’ve got to stick long enough for that to happen. So, my counsel is, find a place and stay.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. And there’s a lot of opportunities because you can work from home. So, find a place, find a church, stay there. And you might be able to have your employment working for a company across the country.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

You might.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. That’s a really unique thing.

Daniel Markin:

Okay. So, now talk about the book. You begin to lay out what this could look like, what discipleship could look like, in a local church. So, what are you proposing that’s different than other discipleship models.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

A couple of things. I’ll start by going back to the organic thing. You have to strategize for it. But then, the question’s been, what does that look like? And part of the challenge is that we’ve created church as a modality in a way where there are these key pieces that we can’t imagine church without. So, if you didn’t have small groups in your church, you’d feel like you were somehow failing as a church. And yet, if you rewind in history, small groups are a pretty recent phenomenon in the modalities of the church.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. Sunday School’s pretty new.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Yeah.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

All these kinds of things. Adult Bible Fellowships, all these kinds of things. So, one of the things I want to encourage people to do is, it’s okay to step back on the secondary levels. Church needs to have the preaching of the Word. It needs to have the communion of the saints. It needs to have the Eucharist. It needs to have baptism. It needs to have the marks of the church, of discipline, certain structures, things like that. But then you step back and you say, “Okay. There’s some things we can do here.”

Bryan Hurlbutt:

What I’m proposing is that we would lean, in a way, against culture in a couple of ways. One is that we would do a gendered structured approach to discipleship. And the reason why I think that’s significant is a few. One is I think it’s significant, partly because right now we’re living in a culture where the gender piece is just getting flipped upside down. We don’t even want to talk about that. And yet, I think all of us organically recognize that men and women are implicitly different, and so forth. And the reality is, as a man, I struggle with things that a woman doesn’t struggle with and the things I struggle with, if I’m in a small group, as couples, I’m not going to open up while somebody else’s wife is sitting over here about certain things in my life. So, I need a context to open that up.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

The model is a co-horted model of discipleship. But we say it this way. It’s structured. It’s gender based. It’s intentional. And it is perpetual. So, it’s all those things, structured, gender based, intentional, and perpetual. It’s a model that’s scalable where, in our church, we have tons of small co-horted groups, men and women, that meet regularly.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

I put together a curriculum each year. A staff member can put together a curriculum. And that curriculum has buckets. And the buckets are, Life of the Mind study, a Life in the Word study, a Life of Spiritual Formation study. And then, it has a service component where that group is serving outside of the church to extend themselves in the community, representing the church, but learning how to live on mission together. And so, that group then becomes a group that becomes essential for one another.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

People don’t stay in a church because they know everyone. People stay in a church because they’re connected to three, four, five, six, seven people. And as a result that missional community moves forward in a way that’s dynamic. And this curricular buckets then allow them to develop specific key areas of their life together, where then, through accountability, prayer, study, fellowship, hanging together, they can grow together in that way. And that man can become a better husband because he’s around husbands who are pouring into his life. That wife can become a better wife. That single person can become a better single person, as a man engaging life as a man, engaging life with women, engaging life with old and young, and so forth. And so, we do it multi-generationally. We don’t slot it according to particular social affinities. We look to say, here’s a group and let’s get a couple young guys around a couple old guys. Because we need boulders upstream. And the boulders upstream need young people with vigor and new ideas to pour into them.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

So, it allows for cross pollination.

Daniel Markin:

That sounds amazing. And I’m really excited about like reading this book now, because I think you’re onto something there. I think the intergenerational component’s really interesting.

Daniel Markin:

You mentioned something about intentionality. What does that mean? What does that mean to be intentional? What does it mean to have intentionality?

Bryan Hurlbutt:

It means that you look. And we ask a couple of questions. One is, what needs to be formed in the life of every person? And as that’s being formed, how does that map onto the life of mission in general and the life of the mission of the local church that you’re a part of, in particular? For example, when I’m formulating curriculum, I’m looking at different books, great books that are written, but I’m also willing to say where our churches is at right now? Where do I need to take this thing? Where do I want to go? Like recently, I began to think and impressed with the fact that, as the west grows more secular. We always talk about post modernity, but as it is so baked in that it’s just the normative air, what does that mean for us? And pretty soon it’s going to be a completely, and on its way to an utterly, post-Christian context. We’re going to be the new Scandinavia soon. And so, it’s going to be utterly post-Christian.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

As it becomes utterly post-Christian, what does that mean for the church to live as exiles? So I said, “Well, I’m going to take our curriculum and I’m going to angle it that way. I’m going to give us studies that deal with how we become attuned to living as exiles.”

Bryan Hurlbutt:

So, I snagged a book about evangelism as an exile. And began to process through these kinds of ideas and so forth. And as we process through those things, I’m taking the curriculum a particular intentional direction for the mission of our local church. But then, as that relates to what needs to happen in the life of each individual and moving them a direction. And because we’re all in the same curriculum, it allows us in community to be able to have that as a dialogical experience throughout the year.

Daniel Markin:

Because when I think about intentionality, too, I feel like intentionality takes work. Where in your model is the organic side of things? Do you notice that these guys get together and just hang out?

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Yeah.

Daniel Markin:

Because I know, off the top of my head, if I want to hang out with some people, I’m not calling up the older guys in my life. I’m probably going to call up my, my younger friends, people in my peer group, people my age, to go out with the guys. But are you noticing that actually these groups, they just hang out with each other. They watch Sunday football with each other.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Here’s the thing. It’s not that I’m anti organic. It’s that organic is second to non-organic. You only get organic after you’ve cultivated. So, here’s the thing.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Community is an affinity. We have churches that, before you know it, if a church is large enough, it’s probably got a group for lefthanded divorcees from Montana who like hiking. And all of a sudden, all the lefthanded divorcees from Montana that like hiking get together. Well, how narrow can you get in the groups? And so, now we pick churches based upon whether or not this place has the social affinity group that I like. That’s not community. Community is when I sit with people who I organically would not connect with. In surrounding the gospel, we cultivate a connection that then becomes by second nature, organic.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

I’ll give you a simple illustration. We have a guy in our church who’s younger. He’s in his mid 30s now, but he entered a discipleship group when he is in his early 30s. He gets into this discipleship group. And there’s guys of all different ages in there. There’s this older guy in there. And the two of them end up cultivating a connection. Fast forward them being in a group for a couple of few years together. The older guy retires. Who’s the one who champions for all of his older friends, a retirement party, throws the whole thing, plans the whole thing, maps it all out. Does it all. It’s this young guy. Because they’ve become fast friends who help each other in life now. And the old guy goes over and helps him fix his water heater because he knows how to do it. And the young guy is breathing life in and connecting socially with this older guy.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

And that’s the kind of thing that emerges. And sometimes it does map onto two young guys hanging out, and all that stuff. For sure. But my point is that you end up with relationships that are unexpected because now one guy gets a vision for what it looks like to be godly at 60, even though he is only 30. And that’s a beautiful thing when that begins to materialize.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Daniel Markin:

It’s funny. You hear about this all the time in the business world. I don’t know how many YouTube videos I’ve seen of young entrepreneurs who are like, “I got to find myself a mentor.” Find someone who will mentor you and someone older than you who you can ask, you know, questions of. And it sounds like organically when you’re in these groups, that’s just kind of the mentorship that comes. And you can ask them questions about things when you’re older. I mean all the questions of me being young and married, it’s like, I have so many questions for people who’ve been married for 20 years. “What are the ways you’ve been able to be intentional and care for your wife in these ways?” Because they’ve done it. And that’s what makes the counsel so valuable, is not just the knowledge, but that experience, as well.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

As a young adult, if you’re hanging and your discipleship is only with other young adults, who’s helping you envision what it looks like to be a disciple of Christ in the next stage of your life? Who’s giving you the tangible, tactile resources to function in that world? And if the answer is, “Well, we’re reading a few book…” That’s great. Read some books. But the books aren’t able to incarnate for you what that dynamic is. The books don’t give you the live interviewed question that you can have. In cohort discipleship, the model that we’re proposing and have developed and have seen be pretty successful, and some other churches are picking up, which we’re excited about. That’s what it does.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Daniel Markin:

Well, and that’s what Jesus did.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Yeah.

Daniel Markin:

He spent three years camping out with guys, walking around, hanging out. They went to cities together. They traveled. They would’ve eaten dinner together, conferences, whatever. “We’re all showing up for the Feast of Booths, guys, and spending time together.” It’s that life-on-life that’s so important. And-

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Can I add something to that real quick?

Daniel Markin:

Please.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

One thing super interesting with that. I start off the book. And I talk about the biblical examples of this. And the first example that I cite is Jesus, but not Jesus just and the disciples, but Jesus and what became known as the inner circle of disciples. But here’s an interesting thing when you study the text.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

There are three events in Mark’s gospel where James, Peter, and John show up with Jesus. There’s three that it’s just him and them. And if you study what the three are, it’s quite fascinating. One is the transfiguration where he reveals his person to them and they get a window into the glory of God. One is when he’s in Gethsemane and they see him at his most vulnerable in pain. And then, the other is when he raises Jarius’ daughter. And the only ones in the room are Mom, Dad, Jesus, and the three.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

And I take from that three things. Jesus shows us that in the intimacy of intentional discipleship, you have personal revelation, you have a window into the most vulnerable parts of your painful experience as a human person, and you get a glimpse of what the power of God can actually accomplish and do. And it’s a beautiful model and structure of how Jesus takes them selectively into those three encounters.

Daniel Markin:

When does discipleship end? I’ve been in church circles where you’re with someone, but then the idea is like, “Hey, we’re a sending church. We want to do a church plant. And we’re going to send you to another church.” And some of those relationships end.

Daniel Markin:

Maybe someone’s listening and they’ve been at a church for a long time, but now they’re sensing like, “You know what? I love being here. I love being discipled. I love the small group I’m a part of, but I feel pulled and called away to go and be a part of this church.” And they’re like, “I can’t explain it. Everything makes sense for me to stay here, but it’s almost like the Lord’s tearing me away from something good.” What kind of counsel would you give in regards to that? When is it the right time to eject from one discipleship location into another?

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

The last way you phrased that is a key way. Discipleship never ends. The venue might change. So, how do you know the venue’s changed? Well, a couple of things. Number One is, where is your discontent emerging from? And there’s a different texture to a divine discontent. And what I’ll say is a fleshly born discontent. You have to be honest and assess that. You have to find, “Is my discontent missional or is my discontent have to do with my own sinful patterns. And I’m not getting along with people or this place. I don’t like this place anymore.”

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Is it preferential? Is that the whole focus? In other words, it’s got to be substantive, and it’s got to be missionally driven. Second thing is, have you sought council about being launched.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Years ago, I had a friend who moved up to Utah, and he came to the church. Really godly guy. He’s one of the leaders in a nationwide ministry, now. And he came to our church. His family fellowships in our church. Wonderful people. When they came, he shared a story with me that, when he was getting ready to leave, he went to his pastor and asked his pastor to pray about him moving out of state for the sake of mission. The pastor came back and said, “I prayed, and I don’t think now’s the right time for you. I sense the Lord saying, no. So he didn’t go. A year later, he went back, and said, “I’m getting a sense again.” Asked the guy to pray again. The guy prayed and said, “I think it’s time for you to go, now.” The point isn’t that you just have one trigger man. The point is that, if wisdom really is in a multitude of counselors, don’t be an idiot and not seek a multitude of counselors.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

The Bible’s telling you what to do. So, seek counsel.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

The third thing is this. God never, I don’t think, opens the door well if you close the door behind you poorly. So, if you leave a place mad and upset, and you did not reconcile and close things up, don’t expect the land of discipleship to be fruitful in front of you. Because it won’t be. Because you’re taking you with you. And you’ve got to close the door really well. So, I think counsel. I think discerning where discontentment is coming from. And making sure you close the door well, is really important.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

And by the way, one quick thing, because this is every young adult, boy I wish I’d heard this when I was a young adult. I always had questions and I’ve always fielded questions as well about the will of God.

Daniel Markin:

Totally.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

And here’s the thing. Take your Bibles and just do some good study on what the will of God actually is. And here’s what you’re going to be surprised by. Almost always when the will of God is talked about in Scripture, it is not directional. It is moral. Because the issue is not where you are, it’s who you are. So, wherever you go, don’t overthink the room on it. Just be godly wherever you go. And you’ll be in the will of God.

Daniel Markin:

Amen.

Daniel Markin:

Well, Bryan, thank you for your time. We should probably close it up here. We could keep going. We should have you back on at some point, because I do want to talk to you about some of the context where you are and talk a little bit about what it’s like to minister among the Mormons. So, maybe that’s the title of the next episode that we do one day. But again, thank you for your time. Look forward to connecting again soon.

Bryan Hurlbutt:

Thank you, Daniel.

Announcer:

Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes or Spotify, or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media. So make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

Daniel Markin:

Indoubt is a ministry that exists to engage young people with biblical truth and provide answers for many of today’s questions of life, faith, and culture. Through audio programs, articles, and blogs, Indoubt reaches out to encourage, strengthen, and disciple young adults.

Daniel Markin:

To check out all the resources of Indoubt, visit indoubt.ca in Canada or indoubt.com in the US. Or if you’re in a position or share a passion for the ministry of young people, you can support the ongoing mission of engaging a new generation with the truth of the Bible. First, you can pray for this ministry. And second, and if you are able, please consider a financial gift by visiting indoubt.ca in Canada or indoubt.com in the US. Your gift of any amount is such a blessing and an answer to prayer. Thanks.