‘The Great Opportunity’ by Dave Buehring: Reviewed by Chad Harrington

“When followers of Jesus view their vocations through the lens of the Great Commission, the result is the transformation of people and societies,” says the back cover. In The Great Opportunity, author Dave Buehring of Lionshare provides a vision for disciple-making throughout all vocations in society, not just in the church. This book helps readers learn why and how to make disciples who share their vocation.

My Three Biggest Takeaways from The Great Opportunity

1. We have vastly neglected “vocational disciple-making.”

The church has come a long way in discipleship over the last thirty years. My dad’s generation of church leaders remembers the days when there were no discipleship conferences. I was born in 1986, for reference. In those days for my dad’s generation, pastoral and ministry leaders who made disciples felt alone without anyone to lock arms with or learn from. Disciple makers had to figure it out on their own or learn from reading books—and there weren’t many books on the subject at the time.

But even those efforts were mainly about discipleship in the church context.

What needs to be awakened now is the impetus for disciple making in the vocations. This is the primary message and, in my opinion, value of Dave’s book.

The Barna Group surveyed people who are actively trying to integrate faith and work, and one statistic shocked Dave: when asked “what a Christian’s responsibility was in the workplace, the deliberate expression of disciple making did not even make the list!” (85). Items like these made the top of list:

• Act ethically
• Speak the truth
• Demonstrate morality
• Do excellent work to glorify God
• Practice humility

But disciple making didn’t. While the North American evangelical movement has grown in recent decades, we’ve neglected helping people follow Jesus in their vocation. Vocational disciple making is a blue-ocean opportunity for disciple makers today.

2. We need to make disciples in every “field of service.”

Dave defines “vocational disciple making” as:

Developing disciples of Jesus who reflect His character, walk in His ways, and participate in His mission, in and through their vocation. (13)

The primary vocations, or “fields of service,” he lists are outlined in Chapter 4:

• The family
• The church
• Government, law, and national security
• Education
• Media
• Arts, entertainment, and sports
• Business and commerce
• Science and technology
• Health, medicine, and wholeness
• Environment, agriculture, and zoology
• Nonprofits and service organizations
• Peoples

That is, we need mothers to teach other mothers how to follow Jesus in the family context. We need those in sports and entertainment to disciple other athletes and artists. And we need content creators to help younger-in-the-faith creatives to make media like only a disciple of Jesus would. As a publisher and content producer, this would mean teaching people to be supremely creative, deeply grounded, and non-manipulative at every level of the content creation process.

That’s just getting started. The vocations fall into the major buckets listed above, but the situations are many and sundry that a disciple must discern. We need disciple makers in our field to show us the ropes specifically as disciples. We not only need to learn our trade but to learn it as a disciple.

Vocational disciple-making requires double duty.

Dave talks about how vital it is to discern that in Scripture that there’s no separation between sacred and secular (38):

• Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”
• John 1:3: “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

We’ve neglected vocational disciple making, but we need to make disciples in the vocations. So what does this look like? The aim of disciple making in the vocations is, according to Dave, “reproducing the character, ways, and mission of Jesus in those around you, expecting them to multiply the same in others” (87).

See my favorite quotes below for more details on what it looks like in general terms!

3. Vocational disciple making is just one of the four “disciple-making cornerstones.”

In Chapter 8, Dave brings up an important point of rebuttal people often make:

I find that most people think [disciple making] means helping others grow in one’s walk with God. And that would be correct! However, most folks often don’t realize that there are various expressions of and purposes for being spiritually developed. (131)

This is why the organization he leads, Lionshare, uses the disciple making cornerstones to place their work:

• Foundation disciple making
• Formational disciple making
• Vocational disciple making
• Leadership disciple making

We tend to get people in the foundational and leadership areas, I would add, and perhaps the formational, but we’ve often neglected the vocational disciple making.

Dave offers clarity in what to actually disciple people for any vocation with his five vocational focal points. I’ve added my understanding of each one:

1. Calling: discerning with great clarity our calling to a certain vocation
2. Character: learning how to reveal God through our character in ways particular to our vocation
3. Competency: learning how to serve Jesus well by excelling in competency in our vocational field of service
4. Connecting: learning how to relate well to everyone in the work context (staff, employers, employees, etc.)
5. Commitment: learning how to remain appropriately committed to a project, a company, a ministry, or mission—whatever commitment is required—in order to be a faithful disciple of Jesus in a certain vocation

How to use The Great Opportunity with your group?

I recommend three different use-cases:

1. Your church staff goes through this book as a paradigm-shifting exercise so you can better equip your lay leaders to make disciples in their vocations.

2. Your church staff, elders, and lay leaders go through this book to be equipped and make disciples in the various vocations represented in your group or church.

3. Your whole church goes through the book with a sermon series. This would include buying a copy of the book for the whole church to read (or at least for the group leaders) and making available to groups discussion questions that go with the sermon series.

For each use-case, I recommend dedicating ten to twelve weeks. Go through a chapter a week and use the discussion questions in the book for your group discussion time, the people having read the chapter ahead of time.

Vital Information about The Great Opportunity for Groups

• Chapter Count? 10 chapters
• Weeks of Study? 10–12 weeks
• Recommended size of group? 3–12 people
• Age of target audience? Adult
• Gender specific? No
• Reader difficulty? 4 out of 10
• Appropriate for New Believers? No
• What level of maturity does The Great Opportunity assume? This book only assumes that readers want to engage in the Great Commission of Jesus to make disciples of all nations, so it’s primarily a book to help leaders think more broadly about disciple-making.
• Discussion questions in the book? Yes
• Homework required? No
• Video series available? No

Theology of The Great Opportunity

• Theological red flags? No
• Denominationally specific content? No
• Author’s preferred Bible translation? ESV
• Publisher? Nashville, TN: Morgan James, 2021

What can The Great Opportunity accomplish for your group?

The back cover says the benefits well. The Great Opportunity can:

• Help you discover your calling through your work
• Explain why it is important to connect your vocation with the Great “Co-Mission” of Jesus
• Encourage you to go beyond mentoring and coaching to making disciples in your vocational field

Recommended Purchase Link for The Great Opportunity

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Buy on Amazon here.

My Favorite Quotes from The Great Opportunity

Read below my favorite quotes from the book:

• “I also knew that in one’s twenties and thirties, it’s always more about what God is building within them than what He is pouring through them” (20).
• “Knowing the challenges ahead of you, your Heavenly Father loves you so much that He won’t send you into the full stride of your calling until He has first shaped you for it!” (28).
• “The broader the calling, the longer the preparation” (29).
• “It’s important to note here that not every ‘open door’ is a door you are to walk through, nor is every ‘closed door’ a door you are to walk away from” (32).
• “The idea that service to God should have only to do with the church altar, singing, reading, sacrifice, and the like is without doubt the worst trick of the devil. How could the devil have led us more effectively astray than by the narrow conception that service to God takes place only in church and by works done therein” (37-38, Martin Luther).
• “It’s important that we recognize that God is our source of both capacity and influence, and He is the author of how they flow through our lives” (73).

“The image of God that we carry around in our hearts and minds affects the way we live in our daily lives” (94).

• “Of utmost importance is that we pay attention to what the Holy Spirit is revealing in those we are discipling” (98).
• “A good question for both disciple maker and the one being discipled is, “Where is this tethered in Scripture?” (117).
• “A disciple maker is somebody who is a step or two ahead of another who needs to grow” (123).
• “Disciple making that involves the constant ‘chasing down’ of people will wear you down” (126).
• “I’ve always wondered, why doesn’t every godly leader serving within every vocation have a team of intercessors who are their ‘go-to’ pray-ers?” (147).
• “A kingdom perspective also doesn’t allow insecurities and comparisons to cloud what God is doing” (157).

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