Tag: Discipleship

Do Your Job

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As we wrap up our series, Nuts and Bolts, today, we are zooming back out from the little nuts and bolts of making the church work to reflect one more time on the big thing that it is we are doing together. What is the church’s mission. Sometimes we confuse that with our mission as individual followers of Jesus. That’s an understandable error, but one that can set us off the track of what we should be doing as a group. Let’s talk about that today through the lens of Jesus’ great commissioning of the disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel.

Do Your Job

Do you remember getting a syllabus when you were in school? In college and seminary, that document was like the Bible in all my various classes. A really well-written syllabus told you not only what to expect to learn throughout the semester, but also what the assignments were going to be. A really industrious student could technically go ahead and get all the work done for the semester in the first few weeks with that help. But there’s even more. A really, really good syllabus told you not only what the various assignments were going to be, but also what the big projects were for the semester along with the grading rubrics by which they were going to be evaluated. In other words, they laid out all the parameters for success for you right at the beginning. You had the ability to know at any given point during the year just what you were supposed to be doing along with how to do it in such a way as to meet with the teacher’s expectations for success. You knew out of the gate that if you did this much work, you’d get this many points, but if you did this much more work, you’d get this many more points. A good syllabus like this serves as a kind of set of mission parameters for the course. If you pay attention to it, you’ll always know where you stand when it comes to the line between success and failure. 

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 13:8-10

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“On that day explain to your son, ‘This is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ Let it serve as a sign for you on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead, so that the Lord’s instruction may be in your mouth; for the Lord brought you out of Egypt with a strong hand. Keep this statute at its appointed time from year to year.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Ronald Reagan is famous for making the observation that freedom is never more than a generation away from dying out. His point was that unless we actively inculcate the next generation with a love of American freedom (which is unique in the world), it will not last. It is not a state of affairs that arises naturally, and it will not be maintained without constant and abiding attention. Given recent surveys on the opinions of young people today about various foundational American ideals, I’d say his warning was prescient. Here in Exodus 13, God was in the process of giving the people of Israel their freedom. They were going on a journey to a new homeland where they would be able to live out their freedom to its fullest if they so chose. But He knew that freedom was a tenuous thing and not a natural one. So, one of the things He made clear they needed to do was to pass it on. Let’s talk about this third and most important emphasis of the first part of Exodus 13.

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Growing Together

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This week we are talking about another of the fundamental nuts and bolts of getting the church right. Like we did a couple of weeks ago, though, this week we talked less and showed more. Today we’re talking about the importance of discipleship in the church. From there – which you can watch in the embedded YouTube video of our service – we experienced together what discipleship in action can look like as we heard and celebrated the stories of our Guatemala mission trip team. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Growing Together

I am not generally well-known for my physique. Unless you happen to be going for scrawny, in which case I am your man. It may not come as much of a surprise to you to learn that over the course of my nearly 41 years of life, I haven’t spent all that much time in a gym. Or it may surprise you…but then we probably need to have a conversation about what muscle looks like, but we can do that another time. Yes, because I haven’t spent more than a few hours in a gym exercising and lifting weights…ever…big, bulging muscles aren’t really my thing. Indeed, if you want to build muscle, you have to work out. Simply wishing yourself strong isn’t going to work. If you want to enjoy the payoff, you have to put in the effort. Well, kind of like we talked about last week, what’s true of the human body is also true of the church. 

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A Simple Matter

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This week we are wrapping up our series, The Story of Us. This final part won’t take us to the end of Luke’s narrative of the early church in Acts, but rather to the halfway point. From here his focus shifts from the church itself to Paul and his missionary journeys. This halfway point marks what is perhaps the most significant moment in the story. The question on the table was frightfully important: just how complex a thing was following Jesus going to be? The debate was fierce, but in the end, they decided to follow Jesus in making it a very simple matter. Let’s see together how this all unfolded and what exactly it means for us. Thanks for reading and sharing.

A Simple Matter

Have you noticed that things tend to get more complicated over time? If you haven’t, perhaps some examples would help. Let’s start with the tax code. The original 1913 income tax law was 23 pages long and took about 400 pages to explain. Today, the tax code comes in at about 70,000 pages of text. No wonder politicians from both sides of the aisle regularly promise to reform and simplify things! Or consider a business. Apple started with two computer nerds in a garage. Today it is the most valuable company in the world, employing thousands of people, and is vastly more complex than it was in 1976. Or perhaps consider…churches. Most churches begin very simply. They have a vision and a message. Then over time they add programs and committees and policies and by-laws and buildings and furniture pieces and ministries all of which become enshrined both in structure and in placement such that the message and vision become a mere sideshow to the main event of tradition. And tradition is a complex thing. 

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Not Merely Converts

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After a couple of weeks off, this week we are picking back up in the incredible story of the church in Acts. My Minister of Students walked the congregation through Acts 12 last week (click here and tune to the 35:30 mark to catch his excellent treatment of it), so this week we are on to the next part of the story in Acts 13-14. This is where we find the travelogue of Paul’s first missionary journey. Travelogues like this can make for tough point-seeking, but as the story unfolds on Paul’s disciple making efforts, we discover a series of principles worth considering in our own similar efforts. Let’s explore these together as we see that merely making converts to the Christian faith is not our goal.

Not Merely Converts

For nine weeks now we have been working our way through the story of us; the story of the church as told by Dr. Luke in the incredible narrative of Acts found in the Scriptures. And we’ve learned all kinds of things along the way about how we should be doing church if we are going to rightly stand in the long history of tradition that stretches out behind us. We’ve learned that people best connect to Jesus through the three-fold ministry of powerful words, loving actions, and an attractive community. We’ve learned that the way we survive the myriad of challenges all churches face is by being boldly committed to advancing the message and mission of Jesus and by taking the church as seriously as it deserves. We’ve learned that sometimes this kind of boldness sparks persecution, but also that the only response that will get us through these challenges is to double down on Gospel boldness. We’ve learned that when we do our part, pairing our efforts with those of our Father who always does His part, the church grows, and that having as many people as is possible in the church is the point of the whole endeavor. Indeed, if we’re not reaching people with the Gospel message then what on earth are we doing wasting our time and money on all of this for? We’ve been impressed by the fact that our whole identity as Jesus followers is built on the idea of including everybody. “Christian” is an inclusive identity. Just last week, after taking a week off to hear about all the work God did among our students this summer at camp, Nate walked you through the remarkable story of Peter’s miraculous escape from prison, and helped us see that when we pray big, bold prayers, God just may answer them and we need to be ready for that.   

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