Back to the Future: The Disciple-Making Church

For the last two weeks, we’ve examined the “back” part of our back to the future vision casting message series. We’ve looked at God’s intention and purpose for the church, and the intentionality it takes from us to be selfless as God directs us to serve our city and each other as carry out the Great Commission.

Today, we will begin the first of two weeks looking at the “future” part of our Back to the Future series. We are going to discover what it means to be a disciple-making church as we look to Scripture to see the hallmarks of a disciple (so we can know what we are making), and we are going to look very practically at how that will be worked out here at Valley Bristol.

So, I don’t want to waste any time in getting to God’s Word, so let’s pray together as we open God’s Scriptures.

The first thing we need to understand is just what is a disciple.

There are

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 ESV

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Matthew 22:34–40 ESV

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Right away, the first thing that we need to do is determine from Scripture, just what is a disciple.

The American church has reduced discipleship in large part to a mere academic pursuit. Which is why, in most churches, discipleship is a class, or series of classes. Yet, when we look at the examples of Christ-followers in the Bible, we are not met with such a small definition. Instead, we see a people who are asked to give all of themselves to God for His purpose.

And in the two Scriptures we just read, we find what I suggest to you is God’s definition of a disciple, and it is the definition that we will adopt here at Valley Bristol.

A disciple of Jesus is someone who loves God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The work of discipleship is helping one another to grow in those 4 areas.

When we read the words, “heart, soul, mind and strength,” we need to understand that those words relate to what a person is, and/or how a person relates to others.

These words indicate the totality of a person’s commitment of self to God.

This is called the Greatest Commandment by Jesus Himself, and it is a kind of covenant-treaty of sorts between God and his people, tying love tightly together with the sense of obedience and loyalty.

So, our discipleship responsibilities as a church are to help each other grow in our love for God in all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?

But if discipleship is so plainly simple, why do so many churches struggle or even fail to adequately make disciples? Because, if we are honest, we misunderstand what discipleship and being a disciple of Jesus really is.

1) Discipleship has been reduced in its effective scope

Much like how worship has been reduced to music, discipleship has been reduced to an academic class, or series of classes. It has often been pitted against evangelism, with churches arguing with each other about what kind of church is more biblical. It has had an over-focus on “mind,” and a neglect of “heart, soul, and strength.”

The reducing of discipleship to a strictly academic pursuit has, in part, made for a Christianity that is satisfied with mere intellectual assent instead of surrender to the eternal life giving, spiritually transforming, and mind-renewing work of Jesus.

To be clear, intellectual assent is agreeing with certain facts, but what Jesus calls us to is not simply agreeing with Him, but also trusting those facts. When we trust facts, we act on them, we depend on them, and we live our lives by them. Whereas when we just agree with facts, we take them or leave them at whatever we assume to be their face value.

For example: Niagara Falls Tightrope Bicyclist with Basket

You see, discipleship is more than just learning facts about Jesus, and being a disciple is more than just agreeing with those facts. Being a disciple is trusting the truth of Christ so fully that His truth determines your actions and decisions every day. And discipleship is the vessel that takes us from evangelism, to worship, to service, to growth, and so on and so on.

Discipleship, then, is like the DeLorean. Its what takes us in and through our journey with Jesus. Discipleship encompasses our entire life, not just a part of it. And a disciple is expected to faithfully drive the DeLorean wherever God asks them to go. And the DeLorean is powered by the Flux Capacitor, just as the disciple is empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Actually trusting in the facts and truth of Jesus is what turns mere agreement into living faith.

2) Too many Christians think that being a disciple is just for full-time church leaders/employees.

When I read these passages, I don’t see God making a distinction between believers based on how they earn their living. Furthermore, I don’t see God making a distinction between believers based on their level or type of education. I don’t see God making distinctions between believers of any kind that would give certain believers exemptions from one aspect of discipleship or another.

Yet somehow, we have come to accept the fallacy of full-time ministry.

There is no such thing as full-time ministry.

When you are saved, you are then entrusted by God with the ministry of reconciliation. As a believer, this is true for you no matter what professional job you hold.

There is no such thing as full-time ministry because Jesus doesn’t want 40-50 hours a week from us, He wants our whole lives; heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Its not full-time ministry, its lifetime ministry.

3) Too many church leaders have not been honest about the cost of discipleship before Christians.

I know that’s a bold statement, and I only say it because I’ve been guilty of it myself, and there are many examples across our country of this.

Whenever a teaching is particularly hard, few are the pastors who let the hard teaching be hard.

Why? Because it might upset people. People will complain. Accuse. They’ll be offended. They’ll leave the church.

And so, when the Bible has a hard teaching, we do one of two things when we are uncomfortable in teaching said truth:

Ignore it - never preach that section, or preach around it.

Sugar coat it. Couch the hardness in comfort and personal satisfaction.

And the way we sugar coat hard truths as church leaders, is we minimize the cost, while trying to maximize the personal benefits.

Its theological and doctrinal spin, and its wrong, and I think its sin.

And that sin, has stunted the growth of many believers in our society.

We try to mask the cost of tithing faithfully in flowery language of how great you’ll feel when you trust God with your money. Some Bible teachers attach the giving of money to doctrine and tell you that God is an ATM just waiting for you to make a deposit, and that the ATM Jesus will give you a withdrawal many times over if you’ll just make a faithful deposit with Him.

And of course, when we give our money and God doesn’t write us a check, or when we give our money to the church and we don’t feel good about it because we didn’t pay one bill so we could tithe and now our checking account is overdrawn and we are going to collections, we get frustrated and many times give up.

And when it comes to discipleship, we almost NEVER start with the fine print. But Jesus did. And here it is:

Luke 9:57–62 ESV

57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Jesus is brutally honest about what it means to be a disciple of His.

Hard Truth:

If you have something better to do than follow Jesus, you will not last very long if you try to follow Him.

Now, to be clear, we’re not talking about salvation here, salvation is not earned, nor is it conditional upon behavior, salvation is given by God to us and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit’s indwelling of all those who believe on Christ.

But being saved and being a maturing disciple of Jesus are two different things. Being saved is when we are transformed from dead to alive. Being a disciple is learning to walk, talk, and live the new life we’ve been given obediently before Jesus.

In , the Apostle Paul says that there will be those who are saved, but who did not do anything of eternal praise-worthiness with their lives. And that before God, their works will be burned up, though they themselves will be saved.

So what Jesus is saying in , is that you cannot turn left if you are actually turning right. Just like how we cannot be in this room, and in the parking lot at the same time.

If there is something that we want to do other than follow Jesus with our lives, we may start off following Jesus, but eventually we will fade out and quit.

If following Jesus is your plan A, there can be no plan B. Otherwise, you will eventually switch to plan B.

Luke 14:25–33 ESV

25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Here is Jesus again, continuing His “brutally honest” tour.

Hard Truth:

If you love anyone more than Jesus, you will not last long if you try to follow Him.

V. 26. “Hate” is the English translation of the Greek word, miseo, which means to regard with less love.

Family duties were a big deal in the social customs of the day, and so Jesus was making a very big and intrusive demand.

V.27. To carry one’s cross meant that you were carrying the instrument of your death on your back, and that instrument also proclaimed to an unbelieving world that you were a Christ-follower, which necessarily put hostility between you and the world.

Again, not a small ask of people.

VV. 28-32, Jesus illustrates the importance of not quitting or giving up, and the need for believers to make a conscious commitment in advance to follow Him, or again, they will quit.

V.33, Ultimately, Jesus says that we are to give up our rights of ownership to all that we hold dear, from our plans and possessions, to our most cherished relationships, and we are to trust Him with those things, as we follow Him obediently.

If you can think of anything else other than church planting story...

A disciple of Jesus is someone who loves God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And if you want to be a maturing disciple of Christ, that’s fantastic! It is my charge to make sure that you know the cost ahead of time. And for those of us who agree to commit to a lifestyle of discipleship, lifetime ministry (not full or part time), then it becomes my role to equip you in that pursuit.

So,

What does it mean to be a disciple-making church?

It means that we are a church that is made up of true, biblical, and committed disciples, because only true disciples actually make disciples.

Now, how will we as Valley Bristol make disciples?

First things first. Let’s look back at .

Deuteronomy 6:4–7 ESV

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

If we are going to be effective at making disciples, we’ve got to identify and faithfully equip those who God chose to be the primary disciple-makers.

And here in Deuteronomy, we see it.

The first people that God commands to be disciple-makers are parents. ().

Best parenting advice I ever received.

A parent does not have to be biological. There are people that God may ask us to parent, to a degree, who are not our children. Sometimes God will ask people who do not have kids to be surrogate parents for other kids. And sometimes the kids who need parents aren’t kids at all, they’re grown adults.

This demands two questions:

For the church, how are we equipping parents to be disciple-makers?

For the parent, how are you demonstrating to those in your care that you love Jesus more than anyone else, and that you are committed to following Him over everything else?

Best parenting advice I ever received.

A parent does not have to be biological. There are people that God may ask us to parent, to a degree, who are not our children. Sometimes God will ask people who do not have kids to be surrogate parents for other kids. And sometimes the kids who need parents aren’t kids at all, they’re grown adults.

To answer these questions, for the parent, you need to be aware of how you are demonstrating your love for Christ in non verbal ways. (examples)

And as a church, we want to be very intentional in equipping you as parent to disciple your kids. That doesn’t mean that the church is responsible for your life of faith and your own relationship with God, but we do have a hand in equipping you to do the work of ministry in your home, and in your broader community.

So, in our Children’s Ministry, we are going to begin incorporating specific practices to help our kids better navigate through the Bible, and to better recognize God’s working in their lives.

Each elementary grade (1-5) will have one of the Five Solas as its annual theme.

The Five Solas are five Latin phrases that originated during the Protestant Reformation to summarize the essential beliefs of Christianity.

Sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone")

Sola fide ("by faith alone")

Sola gratia ("by grace alone")

Solus Christus or Solo Christo ("Christ alone" or "through Christ alone")

Soli Deo gloria ("glory to God alone")

Each week, you’ll get a take home series of questions that will help you, and your child be able to recognize these truths in the Bible, and how they demonstrated in each other.

You and your kids will strengthen your biblical literacy, doctrinal fidelity, and familiarity with what God’s Truth looks like in and through people’s lives as they mature, i.e., as they are discipled.

Our Student Ministry (6th -12th) will be focused on how to be an on mission disciple-community,

and they will also begin to better assimilate with our main service and ministry efforts as volunteers and leaders. The more ministry that our students own themselves, the greater the odds that they won’t walk away from their faith when they reach adulthood.

I am working with Brad Barcusky to re-design and re-shape our student ministry to be able to establish it and grow it in Bristol, so that our evangelistic reach can be as generationally broad as God will allow.

For Valley Bristol as whole, we want to simplify the directives, so we can maximize the mission.

If a disciple is someone who loves God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, then we want to help you grow in those ways as well.

As parents are primary disciple-makers, the whole church is/are the ultimate disciple-makers

If a disciple is someone who loves God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, then we want to help you grow in those ways as well.

Heart - Our passion and will

Soul - Our true self created in the image of God

Mind - Renewed to understand God’s Truth

Strength - How we demonstrate the combined results of heart, soul, and mind by the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

So we are asking every person who calls Valley Bristol their home church to

Be an active part of two primary expressions:

Worship God and serve one another at weekend worship gatherings.

Worship God and serve one another at weekend worship gatherings.

Be a part of a Missional Community

Missional Communities are the combination of all the groups that Valley has ever had. One of the first unintentional barriers to discipleship that I noticed upon coming to Valley was that you all have like 17 different kinds of small groups. And if I want to initiate joining a group on my own, it was difficult to know where to begin.

So I met with our leadership team here at Bristol, and the discipleship leaders at Avon, and we agreed that simplifying that would be a great help.

Missional Community is not meant to be a trendy name. It is a name that is meant to have meaning.

Missional, meaning we have a mission to accomplish as a team/family.

Community, meaning that we are people who need to live in relationship with God and others.

Through your Missional Community, you will:

Study and discuss the Bible

Serve each other

Serve the people of Bristol

Meet each other’s needs as appropriate

Hold each other accountable and build each other up in faith (discipleship)

Encourage and exhort one another

Love God and each other together

It will be critical for you, if you are looking for those elements in your life, to be a part of a Missional Community through Valley Bristol because the reality is that your church leaders alone cannot do those things for all of you. And from the examples in and 4, yes it was the church, that is, believers who met each other’s needs, but they did so primarily in house churches that were basically small groups. We are employing the same approach here at Valley Bristol.

Now, the early Christian house churches would gather all together once a week, usually at whoever’s house was the largest, and they would have a large worship service together. That is the picture of our weekly worship gatherings.

We need to start seeing Sundays, not as the beginning of our faith week, but the culmination of our previous week.

Why?

So that when we come to worship Jesus together, we are not starved of spiritual meat all week, but we are overflowing from all that we have seen God do, and all that we have learned and demonstrated about God.

Our annual ministry calendar will look like this:

Show on screen and explain

We will adopt a semester system for our Missional Communities.

This will allow for a robust time of community together, and natural break period when we focus on larger all church ministry opportunities and leadership development, so that your M/C leaders stay healthy too.

First Missional Community Semester is the week of Sept.12th - the week of Nov. 16th.

4 Missional Communities will be available for you to join:

Spiritual Transformation, Wed nights @ The Bridge Community Church in Bristol, 6-8pm, light meal and childcare. Student ministry will also meet at this time.

Tim & Terri Dahlstrom M/C

Brad and Karen Andrews M/C

Sunday Morning M/C (Jeff Partridge)

After service today, and through Sunday, Sept. 9th, you are enthusiastically encouraged to register for one or more of our Missional Communities. Registrations are in person only for this first term, so please register today, and encourage your family or friends who aren’t here today to register as soon as they return.

Bring music team up at this time.

As the music teams comes, I want to remind us all of how critical discipleship is.

As you church leadership, we are doing our very best to equip you and serve you, but ultimately, we need to serve and equip each other. Your church leaders cannot do this by themselves, and neither can you.

We need to rely on God’s strength and wisdom, and we need to love each in humble obedience and submission to God.

Just before Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed for Himself, for the apostles, and for you and me.

As we close today, I thought it fitting to close our time in God’s Word with Jesus’ prayer for us as we strive to be His maturing disciples.

Jesus’ Prayer for Us

John 17:20–26 ESV

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Its time to get back into our discipleship DeLoreans

Its time rely on the empowering of the Holy Spirit, and not ourselves

Its time to be the disciple-making church that Jesus wants us to be, and I know that if we are faithful to obey the guidance and commands that God has given us, God will use us to leave a Jesus-sized footprint in the history of the city of Bristol the likes of which we have yet to even imagine.

If you have counted the cost and you believe that Jesus is more valuable than anyone or anything, then let’s commit to this work together, and through Jesus, we will be a disciple-making church

Let’s sing together.