Disinfecting Christians vs. Discipling Believers

In a good new book entitled Radical, pastor and author David Platt draws a helpful distinction between disinfecting Christians versus discipling believers. He describes the process of disinfecting Christians like this:

Disinfecting Christians from the world involves isolating followers of Christ in a spiritual safe-deposit box called the church building and teaching them to be good. In this strategy, success in the church is defined by how big a building you have to house all the Christians, and the goal is to gather as many people as possible for a couple of hours each week in that place where we are isolated and insulated from the realities of the world around us. When someone asks, "Where is your church?" we point them to a building or give them an address, and everything centers around what happens at that location (104).

Sadly I believe that this is not only the mentality of many church, but it is also the stated goal. Thus many believers are willing to invite people to church but hesitant to invite the same people to Christ. This is not only different from the biblical picture, but it also works against it. Platt describes the biblical alternative by saying:

Whereas disinfecting Christians involves isolating them and teaching them to be good, discipling Christians involves propelling Christians into the world to risk their lives for the sake of others. Now the world is the focus, and we gauge success in the church not on the hundreds or thousands whom we can get into our buildings but on the hundreds or thousands who are leaving our buildings to take on the world with the disciples they are making. In this case, we would never think that the disciple-making plan of Jesus could take place in one service a week at one location led by one or two teachers (105).

Hardly a day goes by when some one does not ask me how many people go to our church. I understand what is behind the question. It is a veiled way of asking how "successful" we are. Oh for the day when people begin to ask, "How many people are you sending from your church?" Then we will be getting close to the pattern of Jesus. On this account, John Piper has it right when he says that we should measure the effectiveness of a church be sending capacity not seating capacity.