Inside Story

Whole-Life Discipleship

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Applying Prayer and Common Sense to Everyday Life
by Joe Frye

The Navigators has always had a passion for reaching those who have never heard the Good News of Jesus and helping them to live as disciples—followers of Christ. Even though the scope of our ministry has been diverse—both geographically and in terms of the different groups of people to whom we minister—in recent years, God made it clear to us that we need to become more intentional in discipling the world's poor.

One significant expression of that new vision was our 2007 merger with Mission: Moving Mountains (M:MM), an organization focused on ministry to communities in Africa. M:MM's approach, called Discipling for Development (D for D), takes a "whole-life" approach to discipleship. One of the goals of this approach is to impact not only the individual, but to transform entire communities. This goes far beyond the scope of a traditional relief ministry. We see meeting the needs of the community as much more than simply a way to gain a hearing for the Gospel. So often the spiritual and physical needs of a poor community are closely bound together. A whole-life approach to discipleship seeks to address both spiritual and physical needs.

"New Medicine" for an old problem
"We have been liberated!" This cry from a Ugandan father wasn't a shout of political or religious deliverance. This father's joyful expression was in response to having been freed from an interwoven set of spiritual and practical beliefs, related to a common illness.

A local pastor invited Sam Soita, director of D for D work in Uganda, to visit the home of a family in his church and to pray for them. As they entered the home, they noticed two of the couple's children were suffering from severe diarrhea. In the United States, we tend to regard diarrhea as an uncomfortable (and perhaps embarrassing) inconvenience. But in places like Uganda, it is a debilitating—and even lifethreatening— condition.

Before praying for the family, Sam took a look at the home environment. The children were eating unwashed mangoes and drinking water from dirty cups. Hordes of flies swarmed from the nearby rubbish pits and latrines. Sam saw a breeding ground for disease. So after praying, Sam gently explained how the conditions surrounding the family and some of their common habits might be contributing to the children's diarrhea. He also explained to the family that God is indeed concerned about even these things and encouraged them to ask God for help in removing the possible causes of their sickness.

Several weeks later, when Sam bumped into the pastor, he asked about the family that they had visited. "Oh, you won't believe it!" the pastor exclaimed. "That family is telling everyone about how God gave them new medicine through you."

New medicine? Sam wondered to himself. I didn't give them any medicine! The pastor explained that the children's father was referring to the "medicine" of boiling water before drinking it, washing fruit, cleaning dishes, clearing rubbish away from the home, and building a new latrine farther away from the house. But the "medicine" didn't stop with the family they'd visited. Their neighbors began to adopt some of the same new—and healthier—practices. Many have come to Christ because they see God's power at work in their midst.

God used the prayers of Sam and his pastor friend along with these simple acts of hygiene to sever the spiritual and physical roots of an illness that had plagued this family and their community for so long. The apostle James challenged early believers, saying, Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead (James 2:15–17). Discipleship means helping with physical needs as well as spiritual.

Lefthand photo courtesy of "chasing butterflies." Righthand photo courtesy of "treesftf."