DWJD Instead of WWJD

Simple Discipleship Missional Model

Recently I had a conversation with a friend that revolved around the popular acrostic WWJD, which stands for “What Would Jesus Do?” Of course, Charles Sheldon’s book titled In His Steps, popularized WWJD and it sparked a youth movement in recent years. Sheldon encourages Christians to think before they act by asking themselves, “What Would Jesus Do?” The problem is that either many Christians ignore the answer to their question or they get “analysis paralysis” and fail to do anything. Many Christians and churches seem to be suffering from analysis paralysis, because they spend more time asking “What Would Jesus Do?” instead of doing.

The discussion about being “mission-al” addresses and provides the prescription for the church disease of analysis paralysis. The cause of the disease is an inversion of “Doing What Jesus Did”. A reading of the Gospels is therapeutic for curing the disease of analysis paralysis. Most churches spend great amounts of time, money, and resources on teaching, which of itself is a good thing, as long as they get out of the classroom for practical application. Many churches do not provide either the practical application opportunities or positive accountability that encourages people to apply the teaching. Churches essentially use a teaching/application ratio of 95 to 5, meaning they spend 95% teaching and only 5% applying. Jesus’ model was 5% teaching and 95% application. Again, this inversion of Jesus’ model is the cause of the disease of “analysis paralysis” as seen in churches.

The treatment is to become a church that moves from corralling disciples to making disciples. A fair organizational development analysis of many churches would suggest that developing great programs is the primary purpose of the church, but the primary purpose of the church is to make disciple-making disciples. We must move from simply wearing WWJD necklaces to actually doing what Jesus did. The early church spread across the world as Christians did what Jesus did instead of studying what Jesus did. WWJD must become DWJD. Simple Church structures such as Simple Discipleship provide a natural movement from WWJD to DWJD.
 

SD Blessings!

Dr. Tom Cocklereece