Discover: Purpose

Purpose: What do I want to communicate in this session? What do we want each of our new persons taking with them out of the session?

What now?

If you’re reading this: you weren’t scared off by our staff videos, you read our statement of faith, learnt about our governance structure and have yet come back for the final week of our Discover course. If I had to draw a conclusion- you like it here. Whitehill appears to you like a faith community you can call home, become a part of and be committed to as part of your walk with Jesus. So, what now?

At the end of Jesus’ ministry with His disciples, Jesus ascended into Heaven. His disciples, having met with the risen Jesus and finally come to an understanding of the purpose of His life and death, were probably left wondering the same thing, what now? It wouldn’t be until the Helper Jesus had promised, the Holy Spirit, descended upon them, that a clarity of vision and purpose was apparent.

VISION & PURPOSE

What was the vision set for the disciples? Jesus’ famous last words, Matthew 28:19–20 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”” Jesus’ mission was to train and equip His disciples to be the founding fathers of His Church. The vision was to see them become, not just disciples, but disciple making disciples. Jesus didn’t call His diciples to have and know Jesus all to themselves and have a nice life trying to be good people, but rather teachers, preachers and evangelists who would pass on the teachings of Jesus and the Gospel of His resurrection- starting a global movement that would change the world forever.

And therein lies their purpose: to be disciple making disciples. To lead people to Christ but also to train them and equip them to do the same with others, some people call this ‘exponential multiplication’. Paul the Apostle writes it like this Eph 4:12-14

Ephesians 4:11–14 ESV

And he [Jesus] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.