The Re-DOING Church: Discipleship

What is a disciple?

Simply put, in my own words, a disciple is someone who studies under a wise person, or someone who is an apprentice to a master who is passing on their knowledge to trusted individuals who will carry on the mission or ideology. That wasn’t very simple was it? Okay, let’s just talk about being a follower of Christ.

Pray and Read Luke 14:25-33

Jesus, again, is very blunt with His expectations on who qualifies as a disciple of His. This passage begins with Jesus saying that a true disciple will hate their family. Hate is a strong word, but He is really wanting to make sure to get our attention. A nicer way to put it is that a disciple would not live for their family, but would only live for Him. That is very hard, especially if you have kids because you want to do everything for them. Yet, Christ must come first.

The passage ends with Jesus saying that in order to follow Him, who would have to give up all your possessions. Again, who wants to give up not only their family, but their house, vehicle, food and many things that are precious to us? If your cell phone is more important that doing what you can to grow in your discipleship then you need to put it down more often.

This is the “COST” of discipleship. When it is said that we have to give up the world for God, that is exactly what it means. Yet discipleship does not mean that we are to never go home or do anything but read the Bible all day, although that would be wonderful to do, we are to ensure that Jesus is top priority in our life.

Yet, like a builder who is building a house, or a king plotting the art of war, discipleship with all its cost is a process or journey. The process of becoming a disciple of Jesus is life-long and filled with studying about Jesus through prayer or communication with God, reading about The Word by reading scripture, and having a relationship with others who are on this journey towards Christ. However, remember that not everyone’s journey to Christ looks the same, we have different lives and different gifts that makes our journey through discipleship special. Yet it is our differences that makes this church’es journey through discipleship so beautiful. Remember, iron sharpens iron.

The Late Dr. Rev. Junis B. Dotson defined personal discipleship as “Equipping and empowering disciples for their own growth.”

Then he told this story of a teenager riding on a train with his shoe untied:

A passenger on the train, in a kind gesture, pointed it out to the teenager, and the teenager nodded but did nothing. After a few minutes passed, the passenger said again, ‘Your shoe is untied and I don’t want you to trip.’ The teenager said thank you, but did nothing in response. As they both got ready to depart at their stop the passenger noticed that the teenagers shoelaces where still untied. As the teenager steeped from the train he stepped on his shoelace and fell flat on his face. The passenger quickly helped him up and asked, ‘Why didn’t you tie your shoe?’ To which the teenager replied, ‘No one ever taught me how.”

Most churches will tell you that their discipleship consists of Bible Studies, mission work, hospitality, caring for others and gathering together in fellowship. This is all good things that every church needs to be doing. But how are we doing, really, on making new disciples of Jesus Christ? Seriously, isn’t all the things we do, we do as a way of growing in our faith and hopefully helping others grow in their faith? Do we consider every event, every fellowship, every class as an opportunity to be and to make disciples of Jesus?

When we help those in the community with our outreach, do we try to do so with the example of Christ? When we invite someone to church, do we also involve them in our small group or class and help them be involved in the life of the church? When we see, or even think about one of our own members who may be struggling with grief, health issues, or just because we miss seeing them, do we reach out to them in the love of Christ?

Junis B Dotson defined Corporate Discipleship as: “Doing everything that we can as a church to provide opportunities for disciples to grow and mature in faith.”

Discipleship is like one bookend to the identity of a church and is the beginning or the foundation for everything that a church does, in seeking to do the will of God.

Discipleship is the first thing we as the Church should be doing. Bringing people in without any further contact or invitation to involvement is the same as a builder who just built a foundation without any plan on what the function of the building was supposed to be. Is everything that we schedule and do together really passing this litmus test of making and growing disciples of Christ?

Mike Breen in “Building a Discipleship Culture” stated, “If you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples. But if you make disciples, you will always get the church.”

Some people go to church because their friends are there or because their family has always gone. But disciples of Christ come to church because a deep need in their soul is being met. Often times, we may not know that we even have this need, but when that need is being met, we desire more of God and more discipleship. So if our focus is not on us, and what we want or think certain details should be, but instead do everything to help others and ourselves grow closer to Jesus, we will see a revival. We will see that Great Awakening that you always hear me talk about.

I want us to do a new thing at the beginning of every service. We are going to recall our Mission Statement

When you hear: “What are doing church?”

You respond: “Sowing for a Great Awakening”

Then you will hear: “How are we doing this?”

You then say: “By our Discipleship, our Outreach, our Inviting, our Nurturing, and our Gathering.”

For the next few weeks we are going to go over what each of these words mean and why they are so important for our church to be who God wants us to be.