Tag: disciples

Published November 6, 2017

Discipled By God

Six weeks ago, we began looking at a fairly straight-forward question: What does it look like to make disciples?

Does it look like Sunday morning at a mega-church? Does it look like coffee with a friend at Tim Hortons? Does it look serving the homeless at a soup kitchen? Does it look like a neighbourhood block-party? Does it look like a ladies Bible study or youth group or Sunday school or kids club or any of these things?

Well, to find the answer to these questions, we started by defining discipleship. And of course, the key passage we looked at was Matthew 28:18-20 – which by now, I imagine most of you have memorized – since we’ve looked at it for each of the last six weeks! But it says this:

18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

Now this isn’t the only place where the Bible talks about making disciples – its actually quite a re-occuring theme – but based on that passage, we defined discipleship as: helping people trust and follow Jesus.

Discipleship: Helping people trust and follow Jesus.

It’s really as simple as that. If you are helping people trust and follow Jesus – then you are making disciples. And we came to realize that we can help people trust and follow Jesus in a lot of different ways – and in a lot of different contexts.

In fact, we identified 5 different contexts in the life and ministry of Jesus that we could learn from as we try to model our discipleship on what He did.

At a glance, those five context’s were: The Public Context, The Social Context, The Personal Context, The Transparent Context, and the Divine Context.

And so the first context that we looked at was the public context.

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Published October 23, 2017

Discipleship in a Family

16 One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. 17 Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” 18 And they left their nets at once and followed him. Mark 1:16-18

Over the past several weeks, we’ve defined discipleship as the process of helping people trust and follow Jesus. We drew that definition out of the great commission in Matthew 28, where Jesus instructed his disciples to go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching to obey all that Jesus had taught. So as we looked at that passage, we came to the conclusion that discipleship is all about helping people trust and follow Jesus.

But now this morning, I want to give you another definition. We’ve defined: what is discipleship? But now I want to define: what is a disciple? And I realize there is certainly going to be come overlap in these two definitions – but I think this will help us gain a clearer picture of what a disciple actually is. And based on this passage that we just read, this is the definition I would give you.

“A disciple is following Jesus, is being changed by Jesus, and is committed to the mission of Jesus.”

I think those three elements are key aspects of true discipleship.

A disciple follows Jesus – we talked about that when we defined discipleship. It starts with trust – because only when we trust Him, that will we follow Him. That’s why discipleship is helping people trust and follow Jesus.
A disciple is being changed by Jesus. In the NLT translation, Jesus says “I will show you how to fish for people” – but the more literal translations of that passage make it a bit clearer that Jesus is inviting them to be changed. The ESV says “I will make you fishers of men.” And the NET says “I will turn you into fishers of people.” So there’s clearly a process of change here. That’s important for us to remember as we think about out own discipleship today. We can’t stay the same as we follow Jesus. If we’re not changing, we’re probably not following.
A disciple is committed to the mission of Jesus. Jesus is inviting us to do exactly what he is doing. Our mission is his mission – and that is to make fishers of men. To make disciples who will make disciple who will make disciples.

And so if we are a disciple of Jesus – those three things are happening. We are following Jesus, we are being changed by Jesus, and we are committed to the mission of Jesus.

Now I realize that I’ve pretty much just given you an entire sermon super condensed into one minute – I probably should have taken a whole message to work through all that – but I wanted to give you that definition as we begin to look at the next context of discipleship.

If you’re just joining us today, are a mid-way through a series of messages called “Discipleship that Fits”. We recognize that Jesus has called us to be disciples and to make disciples, but we’re not always sure exactly how to do that. And because our world and our culture and our circumstances are different from Jesus’ – we can’t mimic Jesus exactly in how he made disciples. We sure can’t walk on water or raise people from the dead or have 12 men follow us around everywhere. But we can certainly learn the patterns and and principles that Jesus used in the discipleship process and apply to them to our own unique situations today.

And so we’ve been looking at the five contexts where Jesus made disciples. These are the five kinds of relationships that Jesus had where discipleship happened.

So far we’ve looked a the public context and the social context. And now today, we’re going to look at the personal context.

So just to give you a quick recap – the public context is typically when we are gathered in groups of 100 or more. Examples of Jesus making disciples in this context would be when he preached to the crowds, or did miracles in the marketplaces or on the mountainside – or all the parables that Jesus told. Certainly that played a part in helping many people trust and follow Jesus. A good example of our modern equivalent would be the Sunday morning worship service where we gather to hear preaching and teaching as well as to share stories with one another of how God is at work in our lives. That too, helps people in a significant way to trust and follow Jesus.

Then last week we looked the social context – that’s more like a group of 20-70. We were reminded of all the dinner parties that Jesus attended and how he used that social context to live out the lessons that he wanted people to learn. If the public context is where Christianity is taught – the social context is where Christianity is caught. We’re not just hearing how to be a disciple – we’re seeing an example right in front of us – we might even be participating in that example. And so for a church, the social context includes everything from kids clubs to potlucks to helping at the Fall Festival to Survivor Parties – And in all these gatherings, we (and everyone else there) gets the opportunity to see how Christians live. We get to live out all those one another commandments – like “serve one another”, “have compassion on one another”, “forgive one another” – “encourage one another.” All of this helps us learn to do by doing. We get to participate in the lesson.

And now today, we’re going to take that one step further – one level deeper – as we look at the personal context.

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Published October 16, 2017

Discipleship in Community

For the past two weeks we’ve been looking at our mission as followers of Jesus Christ to be and to make disciples. And I know this isn’t the first time most of us have looked at this issue of discipleship. I think most of us understand that one of our main goals as his followers, is to help people trust and follow Jesus. I mean, Jesus’ command to his original followers makes our objective pretty clear. Matthew 28:18 says…

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

So the objective is pretty clear, but what’s not as clear, is exactly how we are supposed to do that. The end goal is pretty obvious – the “how to get there” is not so specific.

And so to find the “how”, we’ve been looking at the Biblical patterns and the models for discipleship. How did Jesus do it? How did the early church do it? How did Paul & Timothy and all those guys do it? How did they do it back in the Old Testament? And how can we do it today?

How do we help people trust and follow Jesus?

Well, we’ve found that discipleship happens in five different contexts. There are five types of relationships that all contribute to the disciple-making process.

We’ve identified these contexts as the public context, the social context, the personal context, the transparent context, and the divine context. And of course, we’re not going to find a verse that lists these five contexts for making disciple – but throughout the Bible we can see that God uses these 5 different contexts to help people trust and follow Him.

And so our goal for these next few weeks is to understand how God works in these contexts so that we can maximize our efforts in our own discipleship and in the discipleship of others.

Last week we looked at the public context. And the public context is defined as 100s of people gathering together around a shared resource – this could be thousands of fans at football game or a hundred people on a flight to Edmonton, or a youtube video seen by millions or what the church is most commonly known for – a bunch of people gathering for the Sunday morning worship service.

And we discovered that the public context really isn’t well suited for building personal relationships, but it is well suited to conveying information and sharing stories with large groups of people. Jesus certainly made use of this context as he preached to the crowds and did miracles and told parables. That was all done in groups of 100s or 1000s and it was certainly significant in helping people trust and follow Jesus.

And so following that pattern, we determined that the Sunday morning service can be a place where people experience inspiration to keep serving Jesus – We are motivated, persuaded, encouraged, influenced, moved, stirred, spurred on, energized, and awakened. We also get a sense of movementum (That’s movement and momentum jammed together) as we see that God is at work all around us. And then, through preaching and teaching, we are reminded that everything revolves around God – this is ultimately His story and we get to be a part of it.

And so certainly the public context can be very significant in helping people trust and follow Jesus. But of course, that can’t be the only context. We would miss out on so much if that was the only place where we were discipled. And as we are going to discover today, we would have a really hard time making new disciples if that was the only context where we contributed to the discipleship of others.

And so on that note, today we are going to look at the social context.

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Published October 9, 2017

Discipleship in a Crowd

“Helping People Trust & Follow Jesus”

That was one of our main lessons from last week and it was based on the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:18-20.

We summed up the main ideas in this passage and ended up with this easy-to-remember statement about what discipleship is all about: helping people trust and follow Jesus.

And we brought up this whole topic of discipleship, not because this is some crazy, new idea that we should make disciples. I think most of us are well aware that Jesus has commanded us to go and make disciples. That’s one of our main purposes in this life as Christians. To be a disciple of Jesus, and to make disciples of Jesus – or as we’ve defined discipleship here, to help people trust and follow Jesus.

And so we’re not bringing this up because we didn’t know that we’re supposed to make disciples. But rather, we’re bring this up because I think a lot of us don’t know how to make disciples. I think we want to make disciples – we want to help people trust and follow Jesus – but we’re just not sure how.

Obviously being a disciple of Jesus means doing what Jesus did – but we can’t replicate everything that Jesus did. We can’t walk on water, we can’t give sight to the blind or bring people back to life. And even if we leave out the miracles, I’m not sure we’re in a position where we can have 12 grown men following us around everywhere – living life with us. All that stuff seemed to work really well for Jesus as he made disciples, but I don’t think that’s what he expects of us today.

So somehow, we’ve got to learn the principles behind what Jesus did so that we can live out those principles in our current context. We’ve got to find a discipleship model that fits.

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Published February 22, 2013

Story – Telling Others What Christ Has Done For You

Today we finish up our BLESS series. We began in January talking about how greatly God has blessed us. We have an abundance of physical blessings, financial blessings, relational blessings, and of course, spiritual blessings. And the question that started this whole conversation is Why? Why has God blessed us so much?

The answer we found was that God has blessed us so that we can be a blessing to the people around us. It’s like we are simply the delivery people – delivering God’s blessings so that He can meet the needs of our community.

So to help us learn how to be an effective delivery person for those blessings, we’ve been using the acronym BLESS.

The B stands for… “Begin with pray.” And it’s a simple prayer – it goes like this… “Here I am send me. Please set up a divine appointment where my blessings can help meet someone else’s needs.”

The L reminds us to listen. We need to actually make the effort to listen to people to find out their needs – and we need to listen to the Holy Spirit as He prompts and nudges us along.

The E stands for Eat. We discovered that Jesus showed people that he loved and accepted them by eating with them. And we can do the same thing. Everybody eats – so what easier way is there to build relationships with the people around us than to eat with them?

Then last Sunday we talked about the first S – which stands for Serve. And this kind of serving isn’t the “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” kind of serving. This kind of serving is where you serve the people around you no matter who they are – no matter how inconvenient it is – no matter how unpleasant it is – no matter what the cost to you is – but you serve them out of love because that’s exactly what Christ did for you. That’s the kind of serving that truly blesses people.

And hopefully, when we begin to bless people in all these ways that we’ve talked about so far…
When we listen to them, when we eat with them, when we serve them… That will lead to opportunities for our final letter S – and that is we can tell them our story!

And I’m excited to talk to you today about telling our story. This is such a key part in being a blessing to the people around us. If we do all those other things, (the listening, the eating, the serving) but miss this one, our community will see us as ‘some very nice people’. But if we do all those other things AND get this one, I know that God will begin to radically change people’s lives through you and me.

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