Leadership | Discipleship | Whole-life
Tracy Cotterell
location, location,
location
‘Where do most of the people in your church spend
most of their time in an ordinary week?’ asks Tracy
Cotterell. Most, she says, will be out ‘on the frontline’.
How, then, to nurture and encourage them?
I
n 2009 the London Institute for
Contemporary Christianity contacted
3000 Christians who had been to
Spring Harvest. We asked: ‘Where do you
find it most challenging to be a disciple
of Christ?’ The response was: work,
home, the neighbourhood.
Where we are really matters to God.
A little while back I met a man called
Albert. Albert drives buses. He’s
6 CL73 ©TRACY COTTERELL, Photo: © Konstantin Sutyagin – Fotolia.com
passionate about serving people,
extending those courtesies that make life
easier – waiting for the person who’s still
running to the stop; exercising patience
with those who’ve lost theirs. He’s also
bothered about the other drivers in the
depot. When I met him he was about to
return to work following a short strike
during which only five drivers had crossed
the picket line. ‘My job tomorrow,’ he
said, ‘is to be a peacemaker.’
Albert has a vision to make a difference
in his place of work. Quietly spoken,
with a sense of humour, a diplomat and
a good listener, he deploys his gifts by
actively engaging with the relational
tensions of his workplace. Along the
way he hopes to drive lots of people
safely from A to B, enable as many as
possible to experience grace through his
attention to their needs, and to speak
about Jesus, the one after whom he’s
chosen to pattern his own life, the one
whom he seeks to know more deeply as
he lives life with God on the ‘frontline’.
Home, work, neighbourhood are where
most Christians cross paths with non-
believers. They’re the places of ‘frontline’
engagement with ‘the world’.

Whole-life
The capacity of the church to nurture whole-
life disciples is key to evangelism in the UK.
Increasing numbers of leaders certainly seem
to think so. Bishop Graham Cray, leader of
the Fresh Expressions team, says: ‘Churches
have to realise that the core of their calling is
to be disciple-making communities, whatever
else they do.’ It’s a biblical mandate, a
pastoral need and a mission imperative.
Church attendance is indeed in decline
overall. Yet 3.2 million (the 6.3% of the adult
population who attend church once a month
or more) is still an awful lot of people.
What might happen if we took seriously
the challenge of envisioning, equipping,
encouraging, commissioning and celebrating
the people of God for the places where
they spend most of their time as disciples of
Christ?
10:110
Unless we’re paid by the church, or in
a certain season in life, 10 hours is the
maximum most people have available per
week for ‘gathered’ church life: Sunday
worship, small groups, meetings, youth
work and so on. The remaining 110 hours
of their waking week they’re dispersed ‘on
the frontline’, maybe at home, in college,
at work, or in the gym – and so on. Who
knows? Who prays? Who challenges? Who
offers wisdom and biblical perspectives for
the issues they face? Who believes that they
can make a difference because God is at
work in them, with them, through them?
Kitchen connection
One older woman struggled to believe she
had a ‘frontline’ that mattered to anyone.
As far as she was concerned, her 110 hours
were largely spent cleaning the house,
going to the shops and looking after her
grandchildren. It turned out, however,
that ‘looking after grandchildren’ included
providing Sunday lunch for her eldest
grandchild; a 22-year-old who was actually
interested in her grandmother’s account of
what had happened at church that morning.
She paid attention when her grandmother
rehearsed the morning’s sermon.
Podcasts Hear Tracy’s trenchant views on whole-life
discipleship via our leadership podcasts.
Whole Life, whole Bible Check www.licc.org.uk for a link
to this 50-week series.
Something changed in the church group
that heard this story. Something changed
in the minister who heard it. Up till that
point he had thought he’d been preaching
to a congregation most of whom were
over the age of 60. Suddenly he discovered
that at least one of his congregation
was passing on his sermon to a twenty-
something woman. He began to think
about what might be most relevant to her.
The others in the group had never heard
this lady talk about her grandchildren.
So no one prayed for them, nor for the
ministry that the grandmother had in the
family. The group stopped, prayed and
re-commissioned the lady back to her
family.
A few months later, at the next
group meeting, she reported: ‘Well
I don’t know what’s happening,
but my granddaughter’s asking
questions about faith and church.
I’m on a bit of a roll. I know what
I’m supposed to be doing now.’
Challenge
A church leadership team that sets its face
to the challenge of nurturing whole-life
disciples must engage with the dynamic
relationship between the gathered and
dispersed community, the relationship
between the ’10’ and the ‘110’. This
should profoundly reframe our approaches
to disciple-making.
Great discipleship courses, programmes
and so on are crucially important.
However, the contemporary challenge to
leadership is how to develop a church
‘culture’ that is effective in nurturing
‘whole-life’ disciples for the sake of the
world.
You can tell a culture by its heroes and by
the stories it tells. So who are the church’s
heroes today? Billy Graham, J John, Jackie
Pullinger, Matt Redman, Rob Bell, Adam
Smallbone of Rev? Mainly white, mainly
male, mainly preachers, teachers and
missionaries, mainly church-paid.
Think about your church. Who are the
heroes? The pastor? The people who lead
Imagine More about LICC’s Imagine Project and the
resources available for church leaders can be found at
www.licc.org.uk/imagine/disciple-making-churches/
Tracy Cotterell is chief operating officer at the
London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.
Prior to that she was director of LICC’s Imagine
Project which seeks to serve churches and leaders
in developing whole-life disciple-making churches.
the Alpha course? The mission partner in
Uganda?
All of these are heroes. But there are
more. There’s Albert the bus driver; there’s
our lunch-providing grandmother – and
thousands besides. Have you heard their
stories? Do you know the issues they face?
Are their stories shaping the whole life of
your church – the preaching, the praying,
the worship, the conversations, the ministry
of the people of God to one another?
Sometimes all it takes is a one-degree
shift to start changing a culture: the
Home, work, neighbourhood
are where most Christians
cross paths with non-believers.
They’re the places of ‘frontline’
engagement with ‘the world’.
mirror on the mission board that reminds
the whole church of their calling; the
minister’s musing as he or she prepares the
sermon... where will this body be ‘this time
tomorrow’ – 11am on Monday morning?
Or the church praying for the woman who
goes back to paid employment after 20
years, who struggles with the transition and
with the culture of her male-dominated
workplace; who is encouraged by her
church to believe that God wants to use
her in that place; which provokes her to
pray for wisdom; and leads to significant
conversations with a young man at work
who, noticing her care for colleagues and
her response to their behaviour, asks, are
you a Christian, and who eventually finds
his way into church and to faith in Christ.
You can tell a church by its heroes and by
the stories it tells. You can tell a church
that’s committed to nurturing whole-life
disciples by the stories it tells about how a
glorious relationship with the crucified and
risen Christ is transforming their everyday
places into extraordinary opportunities to
live and share a ‘whole-life’ gospel.
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