The Discipleship Experiment

Jesus’ lifestyle on earth exemplified the reality of the Kingdom of God. Because of his intimate relationship with the Father Jesus lived in freedom and set others free. He was confident in his identity and calling. He was moved with compassion for the afflicted and connected them to God’s healing touch. Under the leading and power of the Holy Spirit Jesus released the Kingdom of God on this earth. Jesus is the picture of humanity living in right relationship to God.

Jesus was recognized as a rabbi (master or teacher). Back in the day, a rabbi chose followers (disciples) who would sit under his teaching and learn from his ways with the expectation that one day his followers would do the same. Jesus chose twelve young ordinary men and spent three years teaching and demonstrating the Kingdom of God. In Matthew 28 Jesus instructed these first disciples to go and make more disciples. This was their mission and continues to be the mission of the Church today. When it comes to developing disciples, however, the American church is failing.

· The majority of evangelical churches report negative growth of 3%, meaning that we are losing more disciples than we are making.

· Sixty six percent of Christians after the age of 18 drop out of church because it no longer has an impact in their lives.

· According to the Rainer Institute, 90% of Christians die without leading one person to Jesus.

· Statistically speaking, it takes a church of 100 believers 365 days and $100,000 in resources to lead 1 person to the Lord.

· The divorce rate among church members is 2% higher than the rest of the population.

· According to Barna, 8 out of 10 Christians are biblically illiterate.

· Twenty percent of the church does eighty percent of the work.

Something is wrong. Something needs to change. We can do better.

If you are a devoted follower of Jesus, then you want to become more like him and you want to see our church succeed in developing mature disciples. We all desire to see people: living in freedom, experiencing intimacy with God, cultivating healthy relationships, impacting the lives of people around them, etc. The truth is, however, we are falling short. This is not to say that we aren’t seeing people touched. It’s just to say that we can do better in developing mature disciples.

What if we could provide a way for maturing disciples to grow in their understanding and experience of the Kingdom God… a place where there is a deeper level of teaching and a safe environment to learn how to “do the stuff” like hearing from God and praying for others… a place where we can be challenged and stretched and do it “together”?

The Discipleship Experiment:

Here’s something we are working on. How about a large group – small group experience? We would begin with a potluck meal (bring your favorite dish). Then we would move into a time of singing worship songs to the Lord. Who knows? Some nights we may just minister to the Lord or to one another if that is what he wants. We would normally then have a teaching moment to challenge and inspires us toward the kingdom lifestyle. Then we would break out into small groups for the rest of the evening dialing down to listen and respond to God.

Just a note about the small group dynamic… we will ask people to commit to a particular small group for a period of time so that closer relationships can be developed and people can receive care from one another within that group. Also, our hope is to identify people within our church community who have a “pastoral/shepherd’s” heart who will touch base with group members during the week.

One of the benefits of this process is that it can make things a little easier. Hopefully, this will help those new to our church community to enter a small group while giving others more time to hang out with friends as well as get to know more people. This will also build a sense of unity within our church family. We will be experiencing the same thing at the same time.

Below is some of the content that we will be exposed to:

Growing in an Intimate relationship with God -

- Grounded in his love

- Filled with His Spirit

- Learning how to hear and obey his voice

- Worshipping God

- Spending time with God in prayer and Bible reading

- Turning to God when tempted or having sinned

- Free from sins and unhealthy habits and mindsets

Developing Healthy Relationships with others –

- Loving other people

- Helping to foster a culture of honor

- Practice confrontation in a healthy manner

- Becoming self-controlled rather than controlling others

- Drawing the good out of others

- Reconciliation through confession and forgiveness

- Submission

Living with a sense of mission and purpose-

- Discovering role and gifts and ministry

- Inviting others into a relationship with Jesus

- Equipped and empowered to pray for the sick and oppressed and hurting

- Taking risks for the sake of the kingdom

- Helping the poor and disenfranchised

Living in Financial Freedom-

- Tithe 10%

- Save 10%

- Get out of debt

- Live on and give away what’s left

Someone Else's Blog Entry

Here's a blog entry by Jason Chatraw, a pretty good Vineyard dude, that I found helpful and believe that many others can relate. 

Confessions of a Recovering Hypocrite

Appearances are difficult to keep up. Day after day, wearing a mask becomes a burden too much to bear for even the most determined of hypocrites. I know all this because I was one.

Though I resisted exposure, freedom came when I quit pretending. I wish I could say that I came up with the idea to quit faking it until I made it, but the truth is I got exposed. Despite my best efforts to keep things hidden, my sinful nature consistently removed my mask like a villain masquerading in a horror film. My flaws were openly displayed for my wife. The pretending was over.

Instead of going into denial, I decided to embrace my flaws. That is not to say I ignored them, but being honest about the state of affairs in my heart gave me the freedom to address them in the context of loving relationships.

Brokenness keeps us from experiencing the fullness of life God intended for us to have. And coming to terms with our brokenness through our relationship with Christ is what brings us to wholeness.

Jesus was quite clear about the dangers of allowing sin to fester in our lives, especially to the point where it causes others to stumble:

If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. – Matthew 18:8-9

But do we really live like we believe those words?

Far too often, we allow those broken parts of our lives to envelope the whole. What is good becomes diminished by the darkness in our hearts. Instead of giving permission to the Holy Spirit to extricate these things, we allow them to live beneath the surface, hoping no one will discover them. Slowly but surely, life begins to get drained from us. The life we could experience in the here and now is sucked dry by the sin in our lives that remains. Instead of dealing with it, we foolishly hope it will disappear.

I want to enter into life, that place where everything is in harmony, that place where our relationships with others and our relationship with God all seem to be singing the same tune of openness and transparency. When we experience life in this manner, our brokenness begins to heal. Instead of acting out in anger, we demonstrate compassion and kindness and patience. Instead of tearing others down, we become bastions of encouragement. Instead of acting selfish, we demonstrate the selfless nature of Christ.

Put down your masks and you’ll discover the fullness of what God intended. You’re not perfect—and we all know it. So, why keep pretending?

Act. Identify two areas in your life that you know need to be addressed and ask someone close to you to pray with you about them.

Pray. Father, help me to be more transparent and open in my relationships, unafraid to admit my flaws to others. Use my brokenness to continue the work of wholeness that you desire to do in me.

Doubting Thomas

This coming Sunday I am going to preach from John 20 and focus on Thomas' experience. Whether you are familiar with Scripture or not, most people have heard the expression, "Doubting Thomas". This term is used to describe someone who refuses to believe something without hard proof... a skeptic. Most of the time, this term has a negative connotation. 

I have been listening to sermons and doing a little study on my own and have concluded that Thomas has gotten a bum rap. I am still putting things together for my message so a I don't have a fully developed perspective, but I will say that as I continue to study the Scripture and even reflect on my own life experience I realize that I am very much like Thomas. 

And the thing that Thomas wanted and longed for is the very thing I want and long for... to encounter the Living Son of God.

Excerpt from Last Week's Sermon

The fact that women were the first to receive the announcement of the resurrection is significant when you think about the prevailing attitude toward women in that day. It was a male dominated society. Women really did not have a voice. As a matter of fact, in a court of law, the testimony of a woman was invalid. What they had to say did not matter. 

But, the angel (at the tomb of Jesus) tells Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome: “Go tell the others” what you have seen and what you have heard. You are the witnesses to what God has done. 

This is amazing to me. It reveals something about God’s character and nature. He gives the responsibility of communicating the most important and most shocking news in the world to those whom society overlooked. And it was their testimony that shocked the world in that day and ignited a movement that became an unstoppable force. This testimony, backed by the Holy Spirit, has spread from nation to nation and from generation to generation like ripples across the water… and it has reached us here in our day.

The content of their testimony is the very reason that we have gathered here.

Mark 16

 

Resurrection

The message of the resurrection is that this world matters! That the injustices and pains of this present world must no be addressed with the news that healing, justice and love have won...

If Easter means Jesus Christ is only raised in a spiritual sense - then it is only about me, and finding a new dimension in my personal spiritual life. But if Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead, Christianity becomes good news for the whole world - news which warms our hearts precisely because it isn't just about warming hearts. 

Easter means that in a world where injustice, violence and degradation are endemic, God is not prepared to tolerate such things-and that we will work and plan, with all the energy of God, to implement victory of Jesus over them all. 

Take away Easter and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring problems of the material world. Take it away and Freud was probably right to say Christianity is wish-fulfillment. Take it away and Nietzsche probably was right to say it was for wimps. 

N.T. Wright, Simply Christian (Harper 2006), p. 110.

God is Faithful

As I journey through this Holy Week, I think about the people who followed and believed in Jesus during his ministry and what they might have thought when they saw him nailed to the cross and dying right before their eyes. 

Besides feeling deep sorrow and grief at seeing a loved one dying a tortuous death, they must have been filled with profound confusion. They must have been asking, "How can this be happening? What about the promises about the kingdom? Where did we go wrong?" 

They were so certain that Jesus was the Messiah. They trusted him. They dedicated their lives to him. But in that moment, their Messiah had been defeated. It looked as if it was all over. 

When Jesus was on the cross, the crowds saw defeat. They saw weakness. They saw pain. They saw ugliness. It looked as if the oppressors won again. 

Do you ever feel defeated? Maybe there are circumstances that challenge your perception of God. Maybe you see only pain or weakness. You look in the mirror and see ugliness. Maybe "things" just don't seem to be working out. You ask questions like, "How can this be happening? What about God's promises? Where is God in all of this?" 

Through the cross, God personally entered into our personal experience. He was identifying with the pain and heartache that comes from living in this fallen world. He chose to identify with the weak and the oppressed. Through the cross, Jesus not only suffered for us but suffers with us. 

John Stott writes, "I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? 

Take heart. Even when things are at their darkest, remember, God has not changed. He is faithful. Even though it may look as if everything is falling apart and hope seems to be vanishing away. God has not changed. He is faithful. 

He never promised a life without of pain or disappointment. As a matter of fact, he told us to count on it. But he did promise that he would never leave us alone. He will give strength. He will continue to be faithful even when things get a little confusing.

Seeing the Real Jesus

From the Lenten Devotional, Sacred Space.

Jesus excited curiosity so that people like Zacchaeus and Greek visitors to the festival wanted to see him, to know what he looked like.

But Jesus had other ideas, confronting and revolutionary ideas. To "see" him was to enter totally into his way of thinking, to understand why he had to suffer and die and rise again. Like the grain of wheat, Jesus has to let go of everything, including his own life, in order to bring life. This is the "emptying", the kenosis, that the Letter to the Philippians speaks about. In the process, Jesus and we will be transformed, just as the grain of wheat, apparently annihilated, becomes something altogether greater and enriching for others.

Are we ready for that? Are we afraid to let everything go? Is Jesus asking too much? Lead us to see and accept this as the core of Jesus' life, so that we really see him.