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Our apartment takes up the second story of the building we live in. The photo below is of an object we found earlier today hanging up in a corner underneath our balcony. Can you figure out what it is? Leave a comment and give us your best guess! This time we’re giving three points to whoever figures it out.
Oh, and if you live in Oaxaca, you’re not allowed to guess…sorry guys.
(Read Part 2 here)
Is making a new disciple something you feel you’re able to do? If so, how would you go about it? What does it take?
I ask that question because I get the sense not a lot of us in the Church feel very capable of making disciples. It seems we believe discipleship is something better left to professional clergy. After all, the clergy have been to Bible schools and seminaries, and they get paid for doing that sort of thing.
But did Jesus intend for disciple making to be left to an elite few? I’ll share some thoughts our church planting team is developing on this subject.
First, let me point out that I’m talking about the ‘simple way’ to make disciples, NOT the ‘easy way.’ There’s a big difference. Making a good disciple takes time and energy. There are no shortcuts.
Let’s look at Jesus’ command to make disciples – the Great Commission:
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20
Here are a few things I would like to point out about that passage:
“…Jesus came to them and said…go and make disciples of all nations”
Jesus gave this command to his disciples. We who follow Him today are his disciples; therefore, He has commanded us to make disciples of all nations. (If you check out the Greek for all nations, by the way, it translates to all ethnic groups, not just political countries. There are 200 some odd political nations in the world – 238, if I remember – but there are around 16,000 ethnic groups.) Okay, so we know that each of us, the rank-and-file disciples, have been commanded to make other disciples. So what do we do?
Jesus commanded us to do two things:
1) “…baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”
Baptism is an outward act whereby someone commits his/her life to Jesus Christ, demonstrating belief in Jesus and repentance of sins. This cannot happen until our disciple has come to some knowledge of the Truth. Of the two parts to Jesus’ command, I think we’re a little better at this one than the second one in the North American church. We have done a decent job of getting people to understand their responsibility to evangelize others and lead them to Christ. The second command is the one that gets a bit more problematic…
2) “…and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
This is where those of us who don’t feel like worthy disciple-makers start shirking our duty quickly. We’re usually quite content to tell the new believer they need to get plugged into a local church. Better yet, we invite them to our local church where they join a discipleship class for new believers. In this discipleship class, the well-educated teacher [sigh of relief] may proceed to spend a number of weeks or months expounding all the important and not-so-important doctrines of Christianity to our new disciple.
I see a couple of problems with that model:
(Note: I am certainly not trying to make a blanket statement about all discipleship in all North American churches, because there are many good things happening. The above problems do seem common, though.)
So discipleship, in its simplest form (and I do think the pattern in Matthew 28 is simple), means baptizing people and then teaching them to obey. Why is this difficult for many Christians to do? I would say because we make discipleship more complicated that it’s supposed to be.
One of the ways we overcomplicate discipleship is by emphasizing teaching vast amounts of doctrine in the early stages of discipleship. If you look at Jesus’ command, you see that He told us to teach them all that He commanded us. No more, no less. We need to figure out what things Jesus commanded His disciples, and then stick to that as our curriculum for discipleship. We often major in the Epistles and in doctrines supported by various Old Testament texts when teaching new believers, but all of Jesus’ commands are found in the Gospels. (Remember, when Jesus gave the Great Commission to his disciples, they didn’t have the New Testament available. In the first generation of the church, Jesus’ commands had to be passed along orally.) I’m certainly not saying it’s wrong to teach parts of the Bible other than the Gospels, but Jesus seemed to indicate that all the essential teachings were things that had come from His mouth.
In Part Two, I will discuss the specific commands Jesus gave us that we should be teaching our disciples to obey. Stay tuned…
(Read Part 2 here)
“Juan” was just baptized this morning by two members of our church planting team, Tino and Chino. He is a guy who has been coming to the English classes taught by a couple of our church planters. In the context of the class, Tino began having opportunities to share with him. When it became evident that Juan was open spiritually, Tino started meeting with him outside of class and sharing more. Now Juan has made the decision to give his life to Christ.
I’m excited about the way things worked out, because Tino got to know Juan while teaching English classes, which is Tino’s “job”. We want to minister in a way that is easily reproduced by our Mexican disciples. It is not likely that many, if any, of them will ever have full-time clergy positions. They will have to find ways to make disciples while working their normal jobs. When a guy like Juan sees that Tino was able to reach him at work, then it will help him have the confidence to reach people at work, also.
Praise God! Please pray for Juan’s spiritual growth and protection in these infant stages of his new life in Christ.
There are so many things I could write about for which I’m thankful, but I will share just one. It came to my attention a few weeks ago through a question a friend asked me in an e-mail:
Do you wake up most days with a strong sense of your purpose and excitement about how God is going to use you that day? Most days, do you feel strongly that you’re right where God wants you to be? Or do you mostly feel that way sporadically when you take a step back?
Here is the response I sent back to him:
I would be lying if I said that every day I wake up with a strong sense of purpose and excitement about how God is going to use me. Some days I wake up and wonder why on earth I’m so tired still, or how I’m going to get done everything that I need to that day, or if the Broncos will win…I think that would be my fault for not always keeping my eyes on God and His purposes, and instead getting caught up with all the day-to-day tasks. I can say overall, though, that I absolutely have a strong sense of purpose and excitement about what God is doing. Because I and the rest of us have such a heart for the unreached and for God’s purposes among all nations, I just can’t think of anything more important that I could be doing with my life or anything that I’d rather be doing, so that continually excites me. And yes, I haven’t had a doubt in several years that I wasn’t right where God wanted me. That’s a testimony to God, because by nature I’m more the type who would probably question that a lot. But I haven’t had a doubt about that in several years, praise God.
I’m so grateful that God has allowed us to be a part of His kingdom work here in Oaxaca. His calling gives me a sense of purpose and fulfillment each day that I can hardly even describe. I often take that for granted, but I think there are a lot of people who don’t feel the same way about their lives. There’s nothing like knowing your life counts for something. I hope to help many others live with the same sense of purpose I have. After all, where I am, the purpose I feel, and the burden for the nations I have is largely owed to other people God worked through, such as the founders of GFM, Grant and Jenn Haynes (to name just two). And for that, I’m thankful.
Yesterday, the 20th of November, was the Day of the Revolution (Día de la Revolución) here in Mexico. The holiday is celebrated with parades and programs where kids dress up as Mexican revolutionary heroes. Lauryn was picked to participate in a dance as part of her school’s celebration. She did a great job. It was kind of funny seeing a fair-skinned, blond kid dressed up in traditional Mexican garb, but it was really cute. Here are some pictures:
Every couple of weeks, a missionary friend named Rob comes and coaches our church planting team. He has provided a lot of great wisdom, insight, and ideas. Today, we were talking with him about how to effectively disciple a few new believers and pre-believers we’re working with. Here is what came out of that discussion:
Rob talked with us about what he calls the triangle of discipleship. This triangle involves three elements that need to be present in roughly equal proportions: a relationship between the discipler and the one being discipled, the Word of God, and a focus on task/obedience. These elements correspond with the three persons of the Trinity: relationship to the Father, the Word to the Son, and task/obedience to the Holy Spirit. Any time the balance between these three gets out of whack, discipleship suffers.
Our relationship with people we’re discipling needs to be cultivated somewhat independently of how things are going with the discipleship. In other words, we hang out with people because we value their friendship, not simply because we’re discipling them and things are going well. When discipling, we always have to be aware of how the relationship is doing. We have to continue to do things to build the friendship; we can’t just rest on the fact that the relationship has been good in the past.
When the relationship is strong, we can put a little more emphasis on the Word and obedience, without having to invest quite as much time in developing the friendship. We’re always keeping track of where the friendship stands, though.
Bringing the Word into discipleship can never be divorced from obedience. We must train our disciples to be doers of the Word, and not hearers only. Every time we study the Word with those we are discipling, we agree on what specific step(s) of obedience they will take in the coming week.
In the beginning, we should always assume we’re at fault if those we’re discipling aren’t following through with obedience. We may have asked them to do too much, or we may have suggested a step of obedience that doesn’t fit well in their culture. We have to figure out where people are with relationship to obeying Christ and suggest steps of obedience appropriate for them. Even if they are very baby steps in the beginning, that’s okay. Small obedience is something we can build on.
Rob challenged us with the idea that obedience happens best in community. If we can take some baby steps alongside our disciples, this can really help them. For example, if one of them wants to share their testimony with a friend, one of us could go along and gently encourage them.
After balancing the three elements of the triangle of discipleship and assuming we’re at fault and making changes if things aren’t progressing, we may still reach a point where the discipleship isn’t going anywhere. In that case, we would back the relationship off to a friendship. Friendships we have with people are always genuine; the amount of time we commit to different people is what varies. Rob suggested we limit the time invested in most friendships to one or two visits a week of 1-3 hours each. If we have a relationship with someone who is taking steps of obedience in response to the Word, we will invest more time in them.
Here’s why…
Some of you have heard the ins and outs of this one before, but many have not. Last spring, we made a significant change to our mission strategy here in Mexico.
So you have a little background, here is our situation:
We work in an area of southern Mexico that is filled with indigenous people groups unreached with the gospel. A group is considered unreached until it has a self-sufficient, indigenous church capable of evangelizing the rest of the group. Our region has hundreds of villages that have no such church, many without any Christians. The goal of our work is to see strong, indigenous churches raised up in each of the unreached villages. We live in a centrally-located market town of about 20,000. One day a week, people from all the surrounding villages come here to buy and sell. Many from the villages have come here to live.
In response to the need in our region, here is what we did:
Our strategy in the past was to form gringo church planting teams to work in the different villages. These teams would begin the slow process of building relationships, earning the trust of the villagers, and then gradually beginning to share the gospel and trying to start studying the Bible with those who were interested.
Here are some problems we found with that approach, though:
Last February, we spent a couple of weeks praying and discussing strategy changes we could make to help us reach the villages more effectively. The result of the deliberation was a new game plan that we believe is from God and that has us fired up!
The new plan:
We noted that, in Acts, one reason the gospel spread so fast was the Holy Spirit fell in Jerusalem, the crossroads of the world. The market town where we live is the “Jerusalem” of our region. People from every village within hours live here, and many more come once a week for market. Many people in the surrounding villages speak a tribal language other than Spanish, but those who live in our town almost always speak Spanish well. Those who come to this town are almost always more open-minded types who receive us and our message much more readily.
So we decided to focus our energies on planting simple, reproducing churches in our market town. We are able to reach the Spanish-speaking, open-minded people here much more quickly and effectively. We can better disciple them as we live in the same place, see them often, and share more of our lives with them. Many of those we reach have existing networks of friends and family back in a village somewhere. They can reach these people far more effectively than we can, since we have to start from scratch and overcome a significant barrier of trust. If we properly disciple new converts to spiritually reproduce, there should be no stopping a movement of reproducing churches affecting every village in the region.
We are now several months into this new strategy, and we are even more excited about it now that when we began.
Other benefits of the new strategy, besides those already mentioned:
I truly believe this change in strategy was a landmark event for GFM. It will affect everything we do in Mexico from here on out, as well as what we do in other countries. The impact will be far-reaching, as we train students who will later minister all over the world. I’m excited, because I believe we will be much more effective in the long run as we focus on starting reproducing churches in the “Jerusalems” of the world. Sometimes you have to learn by trial and error, and this was one of those cases for us. GFM will never be the same, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.
No! We are the Church.
So, my 28th birthday was yesterday. This is really wild for me. For the past few years, it has really bothered me how fast the time is going and how “old” I’m getting. I haven’t talked about it much, and I try not to think about it much. But I guess I can’t really get around it. I’m now 80% of the way through my twenties. Even crazier to me is that it was very nearly half my life ago that I was starting high school. It just doesn’t seem like that much time has passed since then.
I’ve been a little sad about the changing of my body, too. Something happened to me at about age 25, which is what I had always heard happens. It’s nothing terrible. I’m in great health, and I still get out a couple of times a week and play soccer, which I plan to do for a long time. I can’t and wouldn’t complain. Something definitely happened, though. My muscles are tighter, and I have to stretch longer every time I play sports. And I am more sore after playing and for longer.
I’m beginning to see some good things about growing older that I hadn’t appreciated before, though. For one, I’ve heard that, in general, the older you are the less sleep you need. I’ve been jealous ever since one of my 50-something professors in college told my class he only needs 5 hours of sleep a night to be well-rested. For those of us who are young, think of the things we could do with that kind of schedule! Anyway, the past few months I’ve felt like I’m starting to turn a corner on sleep. I think I’m in pretty good shape with 7 hours a sleep these days, instead of the 8 or more I used to need.
Another benefit to getting older fits nicely with a growing passion I’ve had for discipleship/mentoring (both giving it and receiving it). I’m realizing that I’ve reached a point in life experience now where I actually have a couple of words of advice to give people who are 5 or 10 years younger. A vast fountain of knowledge and wisdom I’m not, but I’m glad that I can give a few good words of counsel to younger people I care about.
I have commented to a few people close to me that I have noticed a difference each summer, as I lead a dozen or so interns ages 18 to 25. Leading the interns has been a challenge the past fews years, because I’ve practically been their peer. Each summer, though, I notice that they have a bit more respect for me, which helps me be a better leader for them and speak into their lives more effectively. This past summer, especially, I could see that. I was 27 years old, had been married 5.5 years, and our third child was born. I think it was the first time the interns saw me as more of a leader and mentor than a peer, and it marked the first time they have come to me of their own accord for advice.
One more benefit of growing older is that I really love family life. Being married and having kids is great. When we started having kids, it really bugged me for a while that young singles (and there are tons of them around our base) didn’t hang out with us nearly as much anymore. They immediately put us into a different category than themselves. Gone were the days of them choosing to sit with us at the lunch table in our base dining room. But now that I am coming to grips with the fact that I’m an adult, I don’t mind it so much. Raising kids is fun, maturing as a husband is rewarding, and I look forward to many great years of family life ahead.
So yes, aging has been something of a struggle for me, and I’m not even old yet! I’m glad its getting easier, though, because I’m only going notice it more and more. I want to embrace the years ahead, not dread them. I can now see that there are great benefits to older age coming in future years, and that has me excited.
What do you all think, readers? What benefits have you seen to growing older? What parts have made you scared or nervous or have you not looked forward to? Leave a comment and let us know!
