The Disciple Making Pastor, Bill Hull & JBL Articles- Spring 2024
Book Review Below.
Journal Articles
I’ve been trying to read some academic journal articles periodically (see what I did there!). I’ve been pulling from the Society of Biblical Literature’s “Journal of Biblical Literature” (with one exception below) here are the ones that I’ve knocked out so far this year:
“The Promises Fulfilled for Whose Children? The Problem of the Text of Acts 13:33 in Contemporary Debate” - Daniel B. Glover. Vol. 139 No. 4 (2020) pp. 789-807
“Contradictions, culture Gaps, and Narrative Gaps in the Joseph Story” - Richard C. Steiner. Vol. 139, No. 3. (2020) pp. 439-458
“Death in the Garden of Eden” - Bruce Wells. Vol. 139, No. 4 (2020) pp. 639-660
I thought this one was excellent
“Junia: An Apostle before Paul” - Yii-Jan Lin. Vol 139, No. 1 (2020) pp. 191-209
“A Linguistic Analysis of Pistis Christou: The Case for the Third View” - Kevin Grasso. Journal for the Study of the New Testament. Voil. 43(1) (2020) pp. 108-144
This is one of the most important works for New Testament studies in recent times. Grasso essentially deals a death blow to the objective genitive translation of pistis Christou (the one that is presently represented in the overwhelming majority of our English Bible translations) and surprisingly also pushes away from the subjective genitive view argued by Richard Hays, N.T. Wright and others to argue for a “third view” which reads the phase in question as an adjectival or qualifying genitive.
As Matthew Bates has said. No one will be able to seriously discuss these texts or the debate surrounding this phrase without dealing with Grasso’s work going forward.
My Read Next List:
The State of New Testament Studies - Ed. McKnight & Gupta (very large, will read in 4 sections with other books in between)
Jesus and the Powers - N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction - Eugene Peterson
Exiles - Preston Sprinkle
The Didache - Thomas O’Loughlin
Book Review
Author, Bill Hull
The Disciple Making Pastor (Revised and Expanded) makes a case for why the primary job of a pastor should be discipling disciple makers and then gives programmatic instructions for how that pastor should execute that task. Bill Hull is a prolific author on the topic of discipleship. This book was originally written in 1988. This edition is revised and expanded with “further reflections” sections at the end of each chapter where Hull can modernize or sharpen his original work. It is 320 pages long and published by Baker Books, Grand Rapids.
The first third of the book makes the case for why discipleship (relationships with the goal of (/intense) spiritual growth towards the end of producing more disciple-makers) should be the main job of the pastor and Church leadership. and the latter two-thirds outlines Hull’s uncompromising plan for how a pastor and the Church should get this done. Hull’s plan primarily features small-group multiplication where disciple-makers can first be identified, then trained, and then put to work making disciples in a cycle that multiplies. It is a model that tries to untie (mostly) the pastor and key Church leadership from the task of general church-body welfare, which often includes pastoral care and invitational ministry for the on-the-fence or non-committed membership. Hull admits that this will create a somewhat tiered congregation (or a Church within a Church) - those who are being discipled and discipling, and those who are just attending, even possibly serving in non-disciple-making ways.
Quotes:
“Not much will change until we raise the issue and create controversy until the American church is challenged to take the Great Commission seriously…until congregations allow pastors to spend most of their time on teaching and training the spiritually well minority rather than servicing the whims and desires of the unmotivated and disobedient majority until pastors can be unleashed from evangelical “busy work.” it must be done; we cant allow this to continue; there must be a change.” (22)
“The most common Myth is that effective preaching leads to effective ministry. Effective preaching is a good start to the process but falls far short of effective ministry.” (120)
“One of the deepest rooted Church pathologies is exhortation to action without a means to action. The ugly results are frustrated, guilty, angry Christians who give up on making their lives count for Christ.” (159)
“If a pastor primarily focuses on preaching, without vehicles to apply the preaching… He does not teach… and he creates an environment for guilt and failure…. this is the prostitution of the pastorate and the exploitation of God’s people. (250)
I was challenged by Hull’s work. He is intentionally confrontational towards the standard model of attractional/invitational pastoral ministry. some of the critiques he offers do apply to my ministry practice, and I was glad to hear them. I’m processing what it would look like to shift more toward Hull’s model, and, truthfully, that is a shift that had already begun due to the encouragement of some of my peers with whom I discuss ministry regularly.
However, I generally did not enjoy reading this book for three reasons. First, it felt too long for what it accomplished - Hull’s emphases felt belabored. Second, Hull’s programmatic prescription is not universally applicable. In my very rural, small-church context with seasons where work schedules vary dramatically according to the farming calendar, I found much of what Hull prescribed to be simply unfeasible. Third, Hull is extremely over the top and exclusivistic about his ministry model, and his predictions of doom for the Church and pastor who do not adopt his model are melodramatic. Take, for instance, the last quote that I provided above from page 250. Language like that is not hard to find in the book. It’s a particularly ungracious way to speak/write and betrays a lack of humility or openness to consider ministry approaches and models that are also attempting to fulfill the great commission. At various points throughout this book I penned the following words in the margin: “over-the-top,” “self-important,” “enough hyperbole,” and “chill out dude.”
This book was helpful, but I wish that I would have read something else. I hope that Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction is what I wanted this book to be.
5/10.