Today we’re starting a series on disciplemaking. It starts with our own discipleship and moves towards making disciples ourselves. It’s always a journey that we’re on for the rest of our life. How do we learn to follow Jesus? How do we help others learn and grow and become more like Jesus?
Making a disciple is a privilege and a mission. A privilege, because it’s an honor that God would even use us. A privilege, because we get to see people’s lives, change. We watch them walk with Jesus and encourage them in new faith steps.
But it’s also a mission, because it is what Jesus commanded. He wanted his church to accomplish this. For many that’s a daunting task. We think, well, “How could I do it. Can I do it? I don’t want to mess this thing up.”
This series we’ll talk about the challenges, the joys and the steps that others have taken. How do they take a closer look at Christ and move towards him. Also how do they pull others along, too, and we would call that disciplemaking.
Today I’m with Tom Hammon, a long time, friend, my Young Life leader. We’ve known each other for a while, and Tom has served in a variety of places with Young Life. Tom, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Tom Hammon: I grew up in Pittsburgh. My family, my dad never went to church, my mother would very occasionally go, so I had no church background to speak of. Although I believed in God, had no idea who he was and how you figure out those things. Although it was also normal for people to go to church, I wasn’t in that group. That was the way it was in the fifties.
In High School, I stumbled into a Young Life meeting and heard about Jesus. That first meeting changed everything for me. I wanted more. I was hungry for what I didn’t know and who I didn’t know. That began my relationship with Christ. I have been involved in Young Life ever since, because this style of bringing people to Christ was a good fit for who I was and I felt God’s call.
I’ve been on the on staff since graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971. I have lived and led ministry in a lot of places in Ohio and West Virginia, and now back in western Pennsylvania, and served for a period of time with Young Life in the United Kingdom and Ireland and Scandinavia. I have grown children and a bunch of grandkids.
Dane Allphin: Who was who was instrumental in your first few years of knowing Christ?
Tom Hammon: Well, after I met Christ I got into a Bible study, a place to connect with others about Jesus. In Young Life it’s called Campaigners. The leader of my Young Life Club was a man named Neil Shorthouse.
Neil was very kind and caring, full of fun and life. I wanted to be like him. At that young age couldn’t have put words on it then, but I would have followed him anywhere.
When I graduated from high school he had moved so he was no longer immediately part of my life. The area director for Young Life in Pittsburgh was Reid Carpenter. He took me under his wing, and I followed him around everywhere. He was always talking about Jesus, always pointing us to the Scriptures and living for Christ. He painted the picture of following Jesus as the great adventure of life. It was a great, great adventure, being a part of his world and under his leadership.
So, in those early years it was those men.
Dane Allphin: Reid was the Area Director for YL when you were volunteering.
Tom Hammon: I was at Pitt, volunteering with Young Life for four years. That time in Young Life became a laboratory of both outreach and discipleship. You attempted to be used by the Lord. When Kids came to Christ, and then you are in the position of being their spiritual parent.
There was no long-delay to think through the theory of ministry. We were immediately emersed into ministry. The only thing I’ve ever known is that you lead people to Christ, and then you get them into a group. You’re meeting with them in a Bible study and sharing life. That’s all I knew.
I began my work as a volunteer leader in the Fall of 1967, my freshman year at Pitt. I was under the leadership of two college seniors (a guy and a gal) who were the senior leaders. They married over Christmas and moved to Iowa, to everyone’s surprise. Reid moved two other college freshmen on to the team in January. There were three of us, all 18 years old, leading the club by ourselves. We got thrown into the deep end. Sink or swim! We actually had a few kids who were older than us. I grew a moustache and never told them!!
Dane Allphin: What did Reid Carpenter and Neil Shorthouse build into you?
Tom Hammon: There were two things in particular. First, they built a focus on Jesus. It was all about Jesus. The tool to do that was reading God’s Word. I remember both of them using the phrase that the Bible is God’s love letter to us. I wasn’t just picking up some book or the newspaper or the sports page. There was an anticipation that was picking up God’s very Words.
I was encouraged to carve out that time every day. I’m so grateful for this is a discipline. I didn’t have to wait for the next Christian meeting. I could be with Jesus every day. I am so glad I got that foundation.
What Reid and Neil encouraged was loving the Bible, loving Jesus, praying and then being part of a group of others. All of us very ordinary human beings, who also love Jesus, and we’re trying to have an impact for him.
So, I developed friendships with peers of mine, to this day who did the same thing. There was the human element to growing in Christ. I’d always been part of a team in high school. Well, now, I was part of a team that was really important. What we did mattered eternity.
In that group of young guys who new cities for Young Life were opened. Dave Chilcoat who went to Columbus, Pete Weaver who went to Cleveland a few months before I did, Andre Weisbrod who went to Cincinnati, Chuck Osburn who went to Columbus, Harry George who went to Wheeling, Danny Aderholt who went to Wheeling, Chuck Rosemeier who went to Canton.
Being teammates with these guys was huge, still is.
Dane Allphin: In those early days what were some of the challenges that you kind of went through?
Tom, Tony, Jeff & Dan playing at club at Saranac Village in the 70s.
Tom Hammon: Well, in the early days, you know, my parents didn’t understand. I was young. I was still a teenager. They didn’t not understand why I was so enthused and committed to this. Faith and religion were oddities for them. Their word to describe my experience would be religion. I don’t tend to use that word. Religion was something you kept very privately and didn’t talk about. It was to be kept it in its proper place, which is a very small place, with little impact.
That was not what I was observing by the people that were leading me. Nor was it what I saw in the Scriptures. There was tension in my family. I actually had a better relationship with my parents before I met Christ than after. It was an immediate flip. I remember them saying, “Well, this is going to be like Little League, when you were so enthusiastic. But you’ll grow out of it.” That presented a challenge.
Then, of course, when I went to college juggling grades, part-time job and serving as a volunteer with Young Life. That was a big challenge. But was worth it.
Dane Allphin: What was your major in college, Tommy?
Tom Hammon: Well, I majored in English and speech, which prepares you for no jobs whatsoever. I would have been a whole lot better student had I not been involved in ministry. I actually, majored in ministry and somehow got out of college. I look back upon that with some humor, because I had been a good student in high school. I was not that in college.
I have a bit of regret that I was not more invested in my education. I gave, all of my waking hours to: praying about, thinking about ministry, about kids who had met Christ and trying to take them deeper.
Dane Allphin: Young Life took over Pittsburgh by storm in those years.
We had work in about 30 communities in those years. Most were entirely led by unpaid volunteers who felt the call of God and did it with no pay. There were probably 75 unpaid volunteers in the area.
Those years were the late sixties. The whole culture was unraveling. When I looked at my Senior yearbook, and every boy had short hair and look kind of semi preppy. Within two years every boy was growing out their hair. As a YL leader I was dealing with kids who were into drugs. I didn’t know anything about that. It wasn’t there when I was in school. It just changed very quickly.
In those years Vietnam, drugs and the racial tensions were exploding in our world. You couldn’t keep up with all the changes. Then the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Everything in the culture was changing all around us, really quick. It was a hard time to grow up. It was a hard time for adults to figure their kids out.
Tom and me together in Scotland
Dane Allphin: Disciple… Disciplemaker we’ve touched on these. These are words that used a lot. There are important distinctions. As you think about them, and over your time of serving Christ how would on define them?
Tom Hammon: A disciple is one who follows. All of us are disciples to a degree. For some of us, it’s an occasional thing, or it’s at a distance. But Jesus wants us to follow him, which means we go where he went, and we do what he did. It is a very intentional thing. A disciple is one who does that.
If you look at all of the teachers in Biblical times, had disciples who followed them around. What Jesus did with the Apostles was not an unusual thing. Other leaders were doing that kind of thing.
What was different about Jesus, was the power of his message, and the power of who he was. He was the Son of God, …God who became a human being. So those guys hit the jackpot. They were following the right person.
For us it breaks down to not much different than what I learned when I was a teenager and young adult. I need to be in my Bible every day, reading it and letting God speak to me. I need to be praying and unloading my heart and my mind on him. All this encompasses being a disciple.
Dane: What would you say a disciplemaker is?
Tom Hammon: It has been a fun thing, as a disciple, to believe that there are no accidents, no coincidences. God leads people into our lives, so that there are divine appointments. As a disciple while I’m checking out of Giant Eagle there is a divine appointment with this lady who’s bagging my groceries. I’m pray for her and show kindness.
God has me in these people’s lives. The relationship is the game changer. As a disciplemaker I take the step to equip others. I’m not just doing my spiritual growth on my own. There are people who need to see what following Christ looks like in a real person.
As older men now in the body of Christ, we have an opportunity to say, “Copy me as I copy Christ” 1 Corinthians 11:1
We have people in our lives for whom we intentionally are trying to model Jesus, so they keep growing. Up to now, that’s how I’ve lived. …for Better or for worse. Sometimes it’s a good thing when people don’t copy us, particularly when we do something stupid. Other times, through God working in us, we model what He wants.
Dane Allphin: As you think back, what were some of the key steps in disciplemaking?
Tom Hammon: Oh, that’s a good question. I believe that it is asking God to bring up people in my mind that he wants me to pray for people by name. I’ve made a habit of praying for significant relationships of those in my life every day.
There is a quote that says, “Prayer is the slender nerve that quickens the muscles of omnipotence.” I don’t believe that we, you know, manipulate the will of God, or whatever.
We believe that God is moving and that there is something powerful when you pray for people. I became convicted of that when I got thrown into ministry. I wasn’t even aware of it. It’s just what I did. It was what everybody else did. I pray that the Holy Spirit would move in their life and ministry. I pray that they would take it up a notch.
Prayer is a big part of disciplemaking.
I heard from Neil and Reid to never go on your own. If you’ve got to do an errand or make a trip someplace, don’t do it alone. Have somebody in the car with you. Take people along with you to do ministry. They’ll see it, and catch a vision for what they could do.
That’s really all that Reid and Neil did with me. I watched them and wanted to live that way too. I want to have people in my house, and I want to have meals with people. I want to laugh a lot and enjoy our relationship, focusing on Jesus. That’s the great adventure.
Dane Allphin: What you are saying is prayer and deep relationships are building blocks for our disciplemaking. Let me shift the conversation. There are moments when we say, “Oh my, can I do this?” Life has big steps, like riding a bike, or, going to college. What were some of those moments in your life as you were starting to make disciples?
Tom Hammon: There are hurdles you must get over. The first on is what the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 2.
We have that picture in the Bible of Paul, with Timothy. Paul says to Timothy, entrust a reliable man, everything you heard from me say in public, who will pass it along to others. Everything that Paul said was going to Timothy. Timothy entrusts it to reliable people who give to others. We’ve got four generations.
As I began to do that, I began wonder how I was going to that as well.
Tom and Ninie at Scotland’s YL camp.
I had received much from my mentors. I was given helpful training wheels. Now as I was becoming a disciplemaker the training wheels were taken off.
How were my disciples going to do it? Were they going to fall flat on their faces? Were they going to quit? Hopefully they’d go further and better than I ever did. That’s what you hope for when you begin.
Another challenge one is you’re giving them some of your job. And began to think I don’t want to give anybody my job. I want to keep my role.
That’s not what we see in the Scriptures. That’s when I realized my ego got in the way. I had to make room for others to take their part. You’re casting a bigger vision for them.
Another dynamic when working with people is will this work? Can they do it?
One of my favorite statistics is that Pete Rose has the most hits of anybody in baseball. He also made the most outs. So the key is, swings. You must take a lot of swings. It also means your people will fail a lot.
And that’s okay.
I remember when I was coaching my boys in baseball. There were some kids that stood out that’s like the first time they held a bat. If they swung and missed, they cried and wanted to quit. No, you encourage them to just keep swinging. You tell them, “We’re gonna work on this. We’re gonna make this better.”
Dane Allphin: Yeah, who was like was there a moment where you kind of said like, “Oh, my, I think I can do this.” The stuff that you read in the Scriptures, and what Neil was telling you was now seeing happen.
Tom Hammon: There were various moments, but there’s one that sticks out. When I became the area director for Young Life in Cleveland a couple of years before you and I met. The weight of leading that group was on me.
I’d been training to do this. I’d been leading YL clubs. But this is a bigger picture. There was now a group of leaders on the westside and eastside of Cleveland. The weight was on me then. Well, Lord! Is this going to work? So that was a big moment for me.
I had to make some hard calls that that. Remember this was the 70s. I had discovered shortly after I took over that I had some volunteers who were smoking dope and growing marijuana. I had to let him go. They could not be in positions of leadership.
I was thinking, “Okay, gulp, is this going to work?” God took care of it.
It also took a while for the work in Cleveland to grow. Talk about having to take a lot of swings until things turned around. There was a lot of failure, but it turned around and it became wonderful.
Meanwhile the Lord was building patience into me, and humility. You’re feeling like a doofus. You’re thinking, “It doesn’t appear to be working” but you never know what God’s doing.
I have been able to meet with young ministry people now who are in that season. They are thinking, “Everything I’m doing isn’t working.” Because of where I’ve been I can help people in those situations.
It took Bay club three years to turn around. When you’re in your early 20s that is a long time. It felt like I was failing.
Dane Allphin: Just showing up is so much the equation. During those times Tom, were there passages that you remember really holding on to as you walked by faith? What key passages that really kind of nourished and strengthened you and helped you.
Tom Hammon: Proverbs 3:5-8. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. NIV
It is trusting the Lord with all your heart. It’s reminding yourself often, “Lord, I trust you.”
I remember the night that I showed up to run club at a student’s house, and nobody was there …including the kid whose house it was at. I was there by myself, with my guitar. The Kid came out of his house and said, “Well, I gotta go. Hope it goes well.”
At Fairview Park, I went to do contact work, for if you’re in Young Life, you know what that is. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s just hanging out in the world of kids. I would go into that world, and I couldn’t get a conversation for months.
Finally, a kid looked at me and said, Hi, Tom! And I was so excited. Then I realized the guy behind me was named Tom. Ouch. It’s funny now.
Ministry in the short run for most people is really hard, and it’s a lot of failure. God is doing things in you. He’s toughening you, making you more tender, more prayerful and making you trust in Him more.
You’re learning lessons like I cannot do this on my own, I am not good enough, I am not gifted enough, I’m not smart enough.
I’m none of those things. He’s got to make it happen. And boy those are tough life lessons.
Dane Allphin: Tom I remember another tough episode I watched you go through. You were a Divisional Director. Young Life was in the middle of some changes. Tom you were asked to step down from the Divisional role and given a much smaller role of a training staff. I know it must have been hard situation. What was going through your mind during this big challenge?
Tom Hammon: Well, I thank you for bringing that up. It was hard. I thought I was doing a really good job in the Division, but organizations are the way they are. I don’t harbor anything; I did at the moment. Certainly, I was angry at the organization. I understand that organizations are fickle, decisions have to be made, and sometimes they don’t make sense.
So, I was humbled. I was humiliated. I was surrounded by a lot of really good friends. As I look back, it was an incredible time in my development. Character is not built any other way. Character building happens when I’m flat on my keister, and I don’t know what make of it.
Personally, it was very hard, especially since I believed that I was doing well. I didn’t see it coming at all. I was in that training role for a year, then things shifted.
I ended up being asked to go take leadership for Young Life in the United Kingdom and Ireland and Scandinavia. We got to live over there outside of London and had that job for thirteen years.
It was such an unexpected shift, never on my radar role, where God redirected my life.
In the middle of all that, I had been in 29 year marriage that my wife left. That all happened at the same time that I went through all the job upheaval. I didn’t really see either one of them coming. I subsequently met a wonderful woman, and we now have been married for 21 years.
You think you have a plan and you’re working a plan for your life. But God has other plans. I’m glad those seasons are over. Yet, I would not be who I am. I wouldn’t have had the opportunities to trust God and to see him move had those things not happened.
I don’t quote this Scripture that anybody in Young Life was bad, but, “What man intended for evil God uses for good.” I don’t think that that the leadership was bad, although I certainly disagreed with our President Denny at the time. God used it for much good in my life. The irony is Dane that he had just given me a very good review. It was one of those painful seasons I had to walk through.
And yet, when I was going through the divorce, he was there for me like crazy. So it was a “both and” with Denny. I hold him in high regard because of that.
God was faithful. What can I say? God was faithful, and I am grateful for that. I’m grateful for the opportunities since then. I’ve been able to travel and speak and teach in 29 countries with Young Life. So it’s been a trill.
Dane Allphin: Tom what would be some last reminder you would say to anyone wanting be a disciple and disciplemaker?
Tom Hammon: First key is that you have some great brothers and sisters in your life who are following Jesus. You’re linked up with good people who you can be totally honest with, and they with you. Friends who love you enough to tell you the truth in love.
It is continuing the habits that I learned when I was young, staying in God’s word, staying in prayer.
Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ. Are they are looking to you saying, I want to be like you.” We always need some people like that in your life.
Finally, keep swinging. Don’t quit.