Tag: discipleship

Categories
Missions

Being a Missionary Right Where You Live, Work, and Play

Missionary. The word makes us think of someone who is living their lives overseas in a foreign country. But God said we were also to be His witnesses in Jerusalem (meaning within our own city). Too often we only think about missionaries as those who are sharing the gospel with the “ends of the earth.” But according to God, there is also a missionary task to undertake right here at home – where you live, work, and play. That is why our Church family at FBC Newton continues to hold to the idea of:

“I Am a Disciple.
I Am a Disciple-Maker.
And I Am a Missionary.
So as I am going,
I will change my conversations, and
I will excel still more.”

a map of the world to symbolize the role of missionary

Missionaries. We are to be on mission for Jesus. According to the Acts 1:8 passage I mentioned above, along with the Great Commission from Matthew 28:18-20, we are to be His witnesses as we are going. So I encourage you toward the following missionary tasks:

As I am going out and about each day, I will find intentional ways to take the gospel message to my neighbors – both to those who live next door to me and also to those who live far from me. This includes those who live very differently from me.

As I am going, I will pray for those I know who do not know Jesus. (I’ll keep a top 5 list of those who I know need to come to know Christ).

As I am going, I will also send others to places I can’t go. (I’ll give financially to send missionaries to farther locations.)

As I am going, I will be on mission. (I will personally get involved in missionary opportunities right around me – with people in community, with people who work beside me, and with the people I’m involved in recreational activities with.)

In regard to: “I Will Keep a Top 5 List” – Every follower of Christ is a missionary, and therefore every follower of Christ needs to keep a list of people they are praying for to receive Christ or come back to a right relationship with Him. Write down 5 blank lines somewhere in your Bible, or on a card that you put in your Bible. And begin asking God who to write into those 5 blanks as your top 5. Once you write them down, begin praying for them – strive to pray for them every day, and also pray that He will give you a chance to talk to them about Him someday.

In regard to sending others, be sure you are a good sender. Finances are important, but there is more to it. Will you commit to being a good sender? Will you bless those who have gone farther with your prayers, with your care, and with your support? Do you have a missionary you correspond with regularly? Why not?

In regard to the statement “I will go” – You are already going each day, so as you are going, be on mission. But also, God has a desire for more of us to leave the comfort of our homes and go farther. Where does God want you to go? Are you willing to ask Him?

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Categories
Christian Living

The Christian Life is not a Private Matter. It is Life Lived Together.

Many people think that their spiritual beliefs and the way they live out the Christian life is a private matter that no one else has a right to speak into.
photo of a chain with the word "private" to keep people off the property, symbolizing our Christian life is not a private matter
I’ve heard people say things such as, “I go to church, but in regard to how I run my business, the church has no right to say anything.” I’ve also heard, “Well, what he does in his private time is between him and God. That’s not a matter for the church.”

Completely false. Church is a family. And what you do matters to your family. Being a Christian gives you a new name and a new Father. And your actions either glorify His Name or dishonor Him. And the Church family that you have committed to has a responsibility to hold you accountable to glorify His Name. When you join a church family, you are indicating to them that you are willing to be held accountable for your behavior.

I’ve been encouraging you to be in a Discipleship Group. And maybe you were even thinking: “But isn’t my faith a private matter?” And as I just said – Actually it is not.

But don’t take my word for it. Instead, take God’s Word. The Bible gives us many verses about how the Christian life is life lived for Christ together. Look at the list that Robbie Gallaty points out:

    • Love one another. (John 13:34)
    • Be in agreement with one another. (Rom.12:16)
    • Accept one another. (Rom. 15:7)
    • Instruct one another. (Rom. 15:14)
    • Greet one another. (Rom. 16:16)
    • Serve one another. (Gal. 5:13)
    • Be kind and compassionate to one another. (Eph. 4:32)
    • Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Eph. 5:21)
    • Admonish one another with all wisdom. (Col. 3:16)
    • Encourage one another and build each other up. (1 Thess. 5:11)
    • Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. (James 5:16)
    • Be hospitable to one another. (1 Pet. 4-:9)

Gallaty explains:

    While some of this can be practiced on a Sunday morning, in reality, a D-Group is an ideal setting for living out many of these commands. For example, consider confessing your sins. Larger contexts such as Sunday school or small groups aren’t well-suited for this. But it’s something we need to do regularly, since sin festers and grows in isolation. A d-Group is significantly less threatening for addressing sins, and believers may be more apt to open up about present struggles in this context.
    Dietrich Bonhoeffer emphasizes the dangers of isolation: “Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive the power of sin over him.” This is why participation in a group is essential.
    The concept of a “passive participant” doesn’t make sense either. Everyone comes prepared to contribute. Through community with like-minded brothers and sisters in a discipleship setting modeled by the Master, spiritual growth is made possible, but only insofar as it is based on the firm foundation of God’s Word.

Your Christian faith and your Christian growth and your Christian life is not a private matter. Your Christian life is about being together with others who will help you walk the narrow road well.
Get in a group!
Get growing!

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Categories
Christian Living

Discipleship takes the Long View: It’s a Marathon, not a Sprint.

The idea of being a growing disciple and a disciple-maker requires patience and a willingness for thinking long-term – like preparing to run a marathon. I like this illustration from Robbie Gallaty’s Rediscovering Discipleship:

    A student asked the president of his school whether he could not take a shorter course than the one prescribed. “Oh yes,” replied the President, “but then it depends on what you want to be. When God wants to make an oak, He takes a hundred years. But when He wants to make a squash, He takes six months.

Ha! Great point. Are you seeking to be a squash or a mighty oak?
photo of large tree symbolizing the idea of discipleship being a marathon
A mighty oak of course. So how will you get there? You need to be thinking of your Christian life as a marathon, which takes a very different type of preparation than a sprint.

For such a life-change, I keep encouraging you to consider joining a small discipleship group. Here’s why I’m sold on them… because they have been instrumental in changing my life.

First, through a one-on-one Paul/Timothy model with a Mr. R.G. who mentored & discipled me as a college freshman and sophomore. (As he is still doing this with others in various places around the world, we try to keep his name off the internet so as to not pose difficulty for him entering certain countries.)

Then at FBC Bay St. Louis, Al Green invited me to be part of a group of pastors including LaRue Stephens, Paul Crowley, and D. Broughton. This group had a huge impact on me! And from there, several men in my Sunday School class at BSL formed a group that provided great growth. And in Newton, I have been in several groups with men of all ages, and each has challenged me in unique ways.

God has changed me through D-groups and continues to do so through them. Wherever I am, I guarantee that I am going to find a small group of men to be in a d-group, so that they can encourage me, support me with prayer, and hold me accountable to walk more like Christ.

Robbie Gallaty:

    Are small groups indispensable for life change? Ed Stetzer and Eric Geiger think so. In their book Transformational Groups they provide evidence to support the indispensability of meeting in a smaller context. The findings revealed that people in a group read the Bible more attentively, pray more regularly, confess sins more frequently, share the gospel more freely, give more generously, and serve more faithfully than those by themselves.

Wow. The research shows that d-groups create mighty oaks for God. Isn’t that what you said you wanted to become?

I believe that the reason such groups are so impactful is due to the fact that the group members are holding each other accountable to reading God’s Word. God’s Word transforms lives. And yet too many of us are reading too little of it. We read a brief devotion that has 1 scripture verse, a ½ page of comments, and a prayer to recite. It is not that these don’t have some value, but the Bible is meant to be read in larger chunks. And a chapter of a day isn’t much. Make the commitment to read large chunks (at least a chapter a day) of God’s Word. It will transform your life.

“The Word of God contains all the practical, real world advice a man needs. When you get in the Word, you learn how to be a better father, a better parent, and a better follower of Christ.” (Robbie Gallaty)

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Categories
Christian Living

Discipleship Doesn’t Occur In a Vacuum. It Requires the Help of Others.

Discipleship does not occur in a vacuum. If you want to see radical growth in your Christian life, you have to surround yourself with others who will disciple you to more maturity. Can growth occur without others? Perhaps. But that would be rare. Even the Gideon Bible in the hotel room that you pick up to read by yourself was placed there for you by someone else who cares about your walk with Christ. The plan of God is for us to teach Jesus’ commands to one another. One of the best ways to accomplish this is in a group that meets with transparency and accountability to sharpen one another’s Christian walk.

picture of a person potting a plant symbolizing the need to plant ourselves in a place for maximum growth. Discipleship doesn't occur in a vacuum.
Have You Planted Yourself In A Place For Maximum Growth?

Robby Gallaty:
By yourself, you are incapable of producing spiritual fruit, but you can plant yourself in a position to experience it. That’s the value of being in a group where you are intentionally pursuing Christ with other believers, what I’m calling a D-Group. Discipleship is more than a weekly group gathering, but never less.

And this isn’t a new concept:

Around 30 A.D., Jesus walked with the 12. They were disciples. Jesus was the disciple-maker.

About 60 A.D., we read in 2 Timothy 2:2 that Paul had discipled Timothy and challenged Timothy to do the same with others.

Robbie Gallaty points out that around 400 A.D., Augustine’s preaching indicated the need for groups and that such groups would be a means of unity, a method of spiritual growth, and would develop healthy Christian friendship.

In the 1600s, Phillip Jacob Spener established what he called “gatherings for piety.” Gallaty states, “Going against the Catholic practice of one-on-one confession to a priest, Spener insisted that truths learned from Scripture are meant to be lived out in a community. Spener despised individualism, claiming that ‘it acted like a medicine which was more dangerous than the disease it was supposed to cure.'”

And in the 1700s, we find John Wesley developing and encouraging discipleship groups as well.

All this simply to say that groups matter. Disciple groups were important in the past. And they are still important today. You need to find a group. If there isn’t one for you to jump into, then you need to pray that God would put some people in your mind to start a group with. And then get them together to start meeting and growing!

Gallaty provides encouragement regarding this:

Start a discipleship group. I know that seems obvious, but at some point you actually need to get started. You can begin investing today. If you are a man, find a group of men to disciple. If you are a woman, gather several women together. It’s challenging to take someone on a journey you have never been on yourself, but it’s not impossible. You don’t need another Bible study to get ready for this. Take the Bible you already know and study it with two or three other people weekly.

And if you need more help getting in a group or starting one, let me know. I would be happy to provide you with the tools that we use at FBC Newton to get a group off the ground!

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Categories
Christian Living

Elimination: The Skill of Eliminating Distractions is Important

The Skill of Elimination – removing the things from your life that are negatively affecting your spiritual growth.

(And again, Facebook automation now only provides an excerpt, and so those FBers who want the full article will have to follow the link to my website. The best alternative would be to sign up for the email which sends the full article directly to your inbox. You can do that by clicking here.

photo of erasers to remind us use the skill of elimination
What Do You Need To Erase From Your Life?

Now back to the skill of elimination.

Continuing with the idea of the last few posts on discipleship, I want to remind you that Discipleship & Disciple-Making are key commands of Jesus.

You know that the 2 Greatest Commandments are:
    1. Love God with all you have, and
    2. Love others as yourself.

The way we are to accomplish these 2 commands is through obedience to the Great Commission, which Jesus stated as: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.”

Therefore, if this is Jesus’ Commission to us, then we each need to have an answer for how we are obeying it. We should be able to answer these two questions:
    Who is discipling me? and
    Who am I discipling?

Who is intentionally helping you to grow in love and obedience to Jesus?
Who are you intentionally helping to do the same?

In Robby Gallaty’s book, Rediscovering Discipleship, he shares a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Gallaty goes on to say that this kind of evaluation is very difficult because it removes what you want and reveals what God wants. And we know that God wants us to be discipled and be discipling others. Therefore, this means that some of us may need to think seriously about eliminating some activities in our lives so that we can experience the very best that Jesus wants for us.

We need to develop the skill of elimination and continually ask ourselves:
What do I need to eliminate from my life to be obedient to Jesus in the area of being discipled and being a disciple-maker?

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