Tag: Discipleship

A Vital Ministry

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Every authentic church is built on Christ and Christ alone. Nothing else will do. But that’s not the only thing that makes a church a real church. If we are founded on Jesus, then it would make sense that we would be committed to the kinds of things to which He was committed. Well, there was one thing He was committed to above just about everything else: Getting people into a right relationship with God. Churches who are authentic churches share this passionate commitment. In this second part of our series, Authentic Church, we are talking about this commitment, why it’s there, and what it might look like.

A Vital Ministry

The U.S. Presidency is an incredibly powerful position. For starters, the President is the commander and chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen, and it’s not close. Then there’s the power to veto or sign legislation. That means the President gives the final thumbs up or thumbs down on the laws that govern our nation. And because I know there are constitutional scholars somewhere whose ears are tingling, yes, Congress can override a Presidential veto, and the Supreme Court can declare a particular law unconstitutional, but historically speaking that hasn’t happened very often when a President has signed or refused to sign a particular bill, turning it into a law. A bill is just a bill until it is signed by the President. That’s a lot of power. 

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Is Jesus Really the Only Way?

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Over the last three weeks we’ve tackled some big, tough questions. These questions have brought us face to face with the nature of reality, the identity of Jesus, and the gut-wrenching pain of suffering in this life. This week, we are wrestling with one that lies right at the heart of the journey all people have been on for the entirety of human history: How do we get into a relationship with God? The answer we find affirmed and even insisted upon in the Scriptures is Jesus. That answer has never really rung reasonable in the hearts and minds of a sinful world. So then, is it really true? Let’s talk about it.

Is Jesus Really the Only Way?

I used to love choose-your-own-adventure books. Do you remember those? You read to a certain point and then were given a choice between two different options. If you went with option A, you turned to page 47, but if you wanted option B, you turned to page 63. Then, when you got through that next part of the story, you were able to choose again. How the story went in any given read through was entirely up to you. Now, because I’m a little bit OCD, I would always make sure I read the book enough times that I experienced every possible option for how the story could have gone, but the point was that it was my choice. I had the power. 

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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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