Its because we are in the midst of a discipleship crisis in the Western church. The people sitting in our pews are rarely becoming like the people we read about in Scripture. They may come to a worship service, join a small group or even tithe, but their lives just don't seem to look like Jesus life.
The truth of the matter is that we don't have a missional problem or leadership problem in the Western church. We have a discipleship problem. If we make disciples like Jesus made them, well never have a problem finding leaders or seeing new people coming to faith.
The central issue is that we have no idea how to make disciples who can do the things that Jesus did for the reasons Jesus did them. Building a Discipling Culture is the product of more than 25 years of hands-on discipleship practice in a post-Christian context that has turned into a worldwide discipling movement, dealing specifically with how to make the types of missional disciples Jesus spoke of. We all want to make disciples. Most of us are unsure how to do it.
Dallas Willard put it this way: Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. One, do we have a plan for making disciples? Two, does our plan work?
For most of our church communities, we have a plan, but the plan isn't working.
If you find yourself in this situation, this book is for you.