Tag: Discipleship

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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Digging in Deeper: 2 Timothy 3:13

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“Evil people and imposters will become worse, deceiving and being deceived.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What if the people around you weren’t who you thought they were? Maybe you’ve had that experience. You thought you knew someone really well, and then seemingly out of nowhere they did something so profoundly out of character as far as you had understood it that you were struck with a powerful sense that maybe you didn’t actually know them at all. Depending on how close you are to the person with whom you had this experience, this could be a pretty painful discovery. I know of a woman who discovered after more than two decades of marriage that her husband had a completely separate family including a woman he called his wife and kids. Learning people aren’t who we thought they were can be intensely disorienting for us. But what if we learned they weren’t simply not who we thought they were, but were in fact aliens who could assume the identity of anyone around them. Then we’d be living in a comic book world. It is this very comic book world that was the focus of Marvel’s latest streaming release, Secret Invasion. Let’s talk about what worked, what didn’t, and the Gospel implications of a series with enormous potential, but which couldn’t quite stick the landing. By the way, if you haven’t watched the series yet, proceed at your own risk. This is going to be full of spoilers.

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A Significant Invitation

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This past Sunday we got to celebrate new journeys after Jesus by baptizing some of His followers. It was a pretty exciting day. Below is the challenge I gave to the church once we were finished. It is one for you to consider as well. May this point you – and your church – in the direction of becoming more fully who Jesus made you to be.

A Significant Invitation

Days like this are why we do what we do. 

Days like this one get right to the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. That applies both for folks in and out of the tank this morning. For the folks I had the privilege of baptizing a little while ago, they were being directly obedient to Jesus’ command that those who follow Him be baptized. For this church, we were commanded as Jesus’ followers to make disciples and baptize them. Here we are. What’s more, we’re doing all of this right out in front of God and everybody. If you are a follower of Jesus, this is what you should be all about: seeing people profess in about as public a way as they possibly can that they are a follower of Jesus. 

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