What about the Church?

In the early 1930s, Dawon Trotman,

a young lumberyard worker, became inspired by 2 Timothy 2:2

2 Timothy 2:2 ESV

2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

Four generations of discipleship in one verse.

Paul to Timothy.

Timothy to faithful men.

Faithful men to others.

Trotman believed Paul meant it.

So He began teaching high school students to disciple one another,

and then, in 1933,

he extended this work to the United States Navy,

founding a group called The Navigators.

He mentored one sailor he discipled,

Who then went on to mentored many more on board the USS West Virginia.

Before the ship sank at Pearl Harbor,

125 men were growing in Christ and sharing their faith.

One man.

One verse.

One sailor at a time.

During World War II,

The Navigators ministry spread to thousands of sailors in the United States Navy on ships and bases around the world.

The Navigators continued working in the growing military population until 1951

when it also began to work with college students on the campus of the University of Nebraska.

Trotman died in 1956 while rescuing a young girl from drowning in upstate New York.

But the work went on.

Today, hundreds of college campuses around the world have a Navigators group evangelizing and discipling students.

The Navigators website describes the organization as:

“a Christian ministry that helps people grow in Jesus Christ as they navigate through life.”

They also say:

“We spread the Good News of Jesus Christ by establishing life-on-life mentoring—or discipling—relationships with people, equipping them to make an impact on those around them for God’s glory.”

It is a remarkable story.

But here’s a question we need to ask.

“What about the church?”

Can someone tell me what a parachurch organization is?

Para means alongside.

So para-church means alongside the church.

So the honest question we have to ask about every parachurch ministry is this:

are they actually working beside the church?

Or are they working apart from her?

There are some situations where discipleship apart from the local church is unavoidable.

A sailor on a battleship in the middle of the Pacific.

A missionary surrounded by Hindu villagers and no other believer for two hundred miles.

In those situations, the parachurch is doing what the church cannot do at the moment.

That is not the problem.

The problem is when we treat life in our hometown like life on a battleship.

When we have a faithful local church in our zip code

and we still outsource our discipleship a Bible study or a podcast that’s a real problem.

As Dever puts it:

“If it's unwise to do discipleship without a church, it's worse to do church without discipleship.”

And sadly, that is the case in many local churches across this country.

Christians join.

Nobody comes alongside them.

Nobody has them over for dinner.

Nobody asks how their marriage is doing.

Nobody invites the single college student into a family's life.

Nobody disciples the younger men and women.

Nobody walks through Scripture with the new believer.

And then we scratch our heads when people aren’t growing,

or they look outside the church to be fed.

Question:

Where has the most significant discipleship in your life actually happened? Was in the church, or somewhere else?

You’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll say it again.

I learned more from pastor Craig Muri in a local church than I did from seminary.

Parachurch organizations aren’t bad in and of themselves.

They are bad when one of two things happens.

1. They replace the local church.

2. They are not under the authority of the local church.

The Bible teaches that the local church is the natural and intended environment for discipleship.

In fact, the Bible teaches something stronger.

The Bible teaches that the local church is itself the basic discipler of Christians.

Not the elders alone.

Not the small group alone.

Not the one-on-one mentor alone.

The church as a whole.

The gathered body.

And the church does it in two ways.

Skeleton

and flesh.

The skeleton is the basic structure.

Bones do not move on their own, but without them, the body collapses.

And the church's bones are simple.

She preaches the whole counsel of God through men gifted for that work.

She baptizes those who credibly profess faith.

She declares the Lord's death and forms the many into one through the Lord's Supper.

And when a member's life unrepentantly contradicts the profession of their faith in Christ,

she removes them through the loving work of church discipline.

That’s the skeleton.

Preaching.

Baptism.

The Lord’s Supper.

Church discipline.

And if you take any of those bones away and the body starts to limp.

The Bible shows us these are not traditions we picked up over the centuries.

Jesus Himself put this structure in place.

In Matthew 16, Peter has just confessed that Jesus is the Christ.

Jesus affirms his confession and then hands Peter the keys.

He gives him authority to bind and loose.

Authority to recognize on earth what heaven has already recognized.

Then in Matthew 18, Jesus does it again,

but this time He does not hand the keys to one man.

He hands them to the gathered local church.

Matthew 18:15–20 ESV

15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Here Jesus says when you have a brother whose life unrepentantly contradicts his profession,

the church has the authority to bind and loose.

And if we are being biblical when we do that,

we have heaven’s authority.

That’s a remarkable thought.

We have heaven’s authority...

And then in Matthew 28, after rising from the dead, He gives the disciples their final charge.

Go.

Make disciples.

Baptize them.

Teach them.

Do you see what He is doing?

He is not telling them to gather souls and let them float through life by themselves alone.

He is telling them to go form churches.

Because baptism is a church ordinance.

Teaching is a church practice.

Discipleship in the Great Commission is local church discipleship.

It belongs to the church.

And the church belongs to Christ.

That is exactly what we see in the book of Acts.

Peter preaches at Pentecost.

Three thousand repent.

They are baptized.

They gather.

They break bread.

They sit under the apostles' teaching.

A church forms.

And then more churches.

But notice that the apostles do not roam the empire as freelance evangelists.

They plant churches.

They oversee the appointing of elders.

They write letters to churches.

The whole New Testament from Acts to Revelation is the story of churches.

Some people call the book “The Acts of the Apostles”

But a better title is “The Acts of the Church.”

Question:

In light of Matthew 18, what authority does Jesus give to the local church and how does it support the work of discipleship?

Question:

What would it look like for Eagles Nest to take that authority seriously, not in a heavy-handed way, but in a loving and protective way?

Alright, so that is the skeleton.

Bones.

Structure.

Because a body without bones is a puddle.

But bones without flesh are cold and lifeless.

So now let's talk about the flesh.

The flesh and muscle of the church is what happens between her members.

It is the relationships.

It is what Jesus called the new commandment in John 13.

John 13:34–35 ESV

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Notice what Jesus says.

The world does not recognize the church by her programs.

The world does not recognize the church by her buildings.

The world does not recognize the church by her music or her budget or her reputation.

The world recognizes the church by her love.

And not just any love.

Not Hollywood love.

Not greeting card love.

Not sentimental love.

It’s the love of Jesus - which is a love that died for us on a cross.

It’s love that points other believers to the words of the Father.

Which is a love that obeys the Father.

And here is the point:

The local church is the place where you can love and be loved like that.

Even if you come from a terrible and loveless family,

The church is a place where you can experience the family love of a God of love.

Where else can you be in covenanted relationship with people who are nothing like you?

Where else are you going to share a table with someone who voted differently than you?

Where else are you going to forgive someone who has actually sinned against you and still want their good a year later?

Where else are you going to point another believer to the Father's words and ask, "Brother, are you walking with Him?"

The answer is: “The local church.”

That’s the place.

And that is why discipleship cannot be outsourced to:

a podcast.

a ministry.

or an outside Bible study.

Look, I love para-church organizations.

But can I tell you what I don’t love.

I don’t love when people start their own parachurch bible studies and aren’t a part of the church’s Bibel studies or small groups.

BSF - go for it.

But only if it’s supplemental to your discipleship within a local church.

When we are in Florida a little over a year ago,

We visited a church we’ve been to 5 times or so now.

And I was talking to the pastor who mentioned how parachurch ministries in Marco were sucking the life out his church’s ministries.

A lot of his people went to BSF and skipped out on the church’s Bible studies.

That’s not right.

Because the church is where God designed discipleship to happen first and foremost.

Johnathan Edwards once described heaven as “a world of love.”

He believed the local church was meant to be a small foretaste of that coming world.

And I think that’s right.

I was talking to a guy recently on the phone, someone not from our church,

Who called me because he was confused about there being no marriage in heaven.

And I told him,

that our relationship on earth with our spouse is going to be pale in comparison to the love and closeness we have with all of God’s people in heaven.

That’s what Edwards was speaking of.

Heaven is “a world of love,” centered around our God of love.

Question:

If a non-Christian visitor came to Eagles Nest and quietly watched us for six months, would they see a foretaste of heaven here?

Where would they clearly see the love of Christ between members?

Where would they see places we still need to grow?

If you have been here for more than five minutes, you know we aren’t perfect.

No church is.

But let’s not let that become an excuse for not chasing perfection.

Afterall, didn’t Jesus say:

Matthew 5:48 ESV

48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

So let’s chase that together.

Yes imperfectly.

But let’s chase the perfect for God’s glory and our joy.

Come faithfully to the Sunday morning gathering,

and do what you’re doing right now:

Stay for the Sunday School Hour.

If you’re not in a small group, get in one.

Come to prayer meeting.

And if you don’t - don’t ever ask why your prayers aren’t being answered.

And look for someone to disciple you and someone who can you disciple as well.

and don’t miss any of these unless there’s a fire.

It’s really pretty simple isn’t it?

It is...

But we overcomplicate it.

Question:

What lies and excuses do we believe that push discipleship to the back burner?

A passive church and a casual member produce a Christian who never grows up.

So don't be that Christian.

Don't be the Christian who shows up on Sunday and disappears on Monday.

Don't be the Christian who gets fed every week but never feeds anyone else.

Don't be the Christian who says, "I'll be discipled when somebody disciples me," and never once asks who you might disciple.

The Lord did not save you to keep you in a little spiritual pocket of solitude.

He saved you and put you in a body.

He gave you a church.

He gave you Eagles Nest.

So use the gift He gave you.

Question:

How can we better encourage others to be disciplers for Jesus?