Discipleship Vision Meeting

There we go. So discipleship is grounded in Jesus's authority.

It's the mission of the church. For a moment, I want us to consider that discipleship, according to Jesus, is a three -pronged mission.

So look at verses 19 and 20. Gary does exactly the same thing.

That's hilarious. Verse 19,

Jesus says that we are to go therefore, and by the way, that's getting too technical.

That's kind of a farcical, so in other words, as you are going, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember,

I am with you always to the end of the age. Three -pronged mission. First of all, there is the making of disciples.

We are to go and make disciples of all the nations. That implies that there are people who are not disciples who will be made disciples.

Now, we often in our evangelical nomenclature will split this in half and say, oh, so you're talking about evangelism, not discipleship.

In recent years, I've come to believe that that's not the most biblical way to communicate that.

That in actuality, what we often think of as evangelism is really just phase one of discipleship.

So rather than making this bifurcation between, well, I'm all about evangelism, not discipleship.

No, actually, what we often call evangelism is really just step one, it's phase one, discipleship.

So we are called to be making, but then we're also going to be baptizing. What does baptism have to do with this?

Well, once people become disciples, they become part of the body of Christ.

Baptism is about our identification with the work of Christ. And it's also a visible picture of a spiritual reality, which is that 1

Corinthians 12 verse 13, we have all been baptized by one spirit into one body. And so when we talk about discipleship, we can't disconnect it from the church, because as disciples are made, disciples are made in the context of churches.

Implicit in Jesus's words is that you're going to have people who become disciples, and then they identify publicly with collectives of other believers that we call local churches.

That's why some have often said there is no such thing as a Christian who has no connection to a local church.

The New Testament norm is people hear the gospel, believe they are baptized and they're added to the church.

So there is making, there's baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But then verse 20 gives us the third part of the mission, which is teaching.

So verse 20, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. So not only are we to make disciples, not only are we to baptize them, thus bringing them into visible connection with local bodies.

Once that has taken place, now there is an ongoing, this word here in the original language carries the idea of an ongoing action.

There is an ongoing work of teaching, of communicating truth to those who become part of this body.

And notice what Jesus says, it's training them to observe everything I have commanded you.

So yes, there was a theoretical element to it, but there was also a practical element to it.

There is a replication element to this, that as Jesus had commanded the disciples, such apostles to do certain things, they went out to take the things that they had heard and to teach others to observe those same things.

And so when we think about discipleship and disciple making, we're really thinking about a three -pronged mission, making disciples, baptizing them and teaching them.

Now, if discipleship is a matter of obedience to King Jesus, and we saw that in the text, so we know it is, and if it is the mission of the church, which it is, then the question becomes, what does it look like to pursue that mission at Redeemer?

What does it look like for our church to play its role in this great commission?

Well, as for all local churches, I think it looks like developing an intentional culture of discipleship and disciple making.

Really, if you don't remember anything else I say tonight, remember this one sentence, the way in which we play our role and the way in which all healthy local churches ought to play their role in this mission is by developing an intentional culture of discipleship and disciple making.

Well, that being the case, for a moment, I need to define some terms then. For a moment, I need to kind of take a step back and not just assume we all mean the same thing when we use these terms.

Three terms in particular, real quickly, I want to define. First of all, this idea of a disciple, the word that's used, it's used exclusively in the

New Testament, and you don't see it much beyond the early chapters of the

Book of Acts, and there's all kinds of speculations as to why that's the case. But this word, oh, it is perfect.

In the original language, sorry, folks, I hope you can't see me writing on screen, but methetus in the

Greek, do you see a word in there that we use all the time?

My least favorite subject, but my favorite when I was at school. English was my favorite. But it's the same, it's that idea of being someone who studies, somebody who learns.

This word is literally the word for a student. In fact, this term is used for disciples over and over and over and over again.

And it was a word that they would have been familiar with. Because when a rabbi called on students to follow him, this was the word in Greek that was used for that process.

I've given the definition that it's a person who is in, it should be in, sorry, folks.

A person who is in the lifelong process of becoming a student of Christ in thought, word, or deed.

That as we look at Christ and we see what he models and what his example is for us as his people, a disciple is one who simply says, oh,

I'm going to study and follow after that in terms of how I think, in terms of what

I say, and in terms of what I do. Well, that's the case.

Well, discipleship is simply just the state of being a student of Christ in thought, in word, and in deed.

I kind of need to answer the final term we need to define, which they're not quite the same, discipleship and disciple making.

Disciple making refers to the disciplines and processes by which individuals and churches replicate disciples who make the disciples.

The mission given to the disciples was never intended to be, okay, apostles, you do this, you have one generation, and then it's done.

The idea is that this is supposed to be ongoing, that generation one teaches generation two.

Generation two goes back to what they were taught by generation one teaches generation three. And so this idea of discipleship and disciple making, this idea of being a student of Christ in terms of thought, word, and deed, and this being a lifelong process, and then the church coming along and saying, okay, we're going to help to replicate, multiply disciples.

That mission is what we want to think about this evening. Now, for the purposes of our time, what

I've done is I've kind of broken this up into three facets. There's an individual component to this.

There's a, what I would call a church -wide component to this. And then there is a ministry training component to this.

All three of these, I've kind of drawn it in such a form, made this graphing in such a way as you saw, there's an integral relationship between all three of these.

It's not that these are all siloed off from each other, but actually if these are functioning the way they should, the individual then is able to help the church.

The church is able to then contribute to training. The people who are trained are able to help churches and individuals.

And so there is this, trying to find the word for it. There's this relationship, synergy, yes, there's probably a good word for it, that exists between all three of these.

And so for our time this evening, I want to just look at each of these and think about specific ways in which

Lord willing, let me get, remember this is long -term 30 ,000 foot. This is not, we're doing all of this tomorrow.

But I do want to kind of start thinking about these so that it can start to inform some of the decisions and priorities that we have as a church.

Going forward, this is not the only thing churches do or even our church will do, but I'll put it to you that this is a pretty important one and one that we will come back to time and again.

Okay, I think it stopped sharing for some reason. Oh, hold on. Yep, I agree, man.

That's really what's at stake, ultimately. Oh, PowerPoint just closed on you, that's why. Let's see if I can get it back here.

That is refusing to open, okay. All right, let's try this again.

All right, let's see here. Sorry, folks at home, we're working on it.

They are in Washington. Perfect.

Okay, they should be able to see that whole now. There you go.

Let's start off thinking about this on the individual level. By the way, if anytime you want to stop, ask questions, make comments, please do.

I want this to be not just me kind of talking for a bunch of the time, though, that may end up being what happens.

But as things kind of hit you, if you hit questions, say, okay, you kind of just said that, come back and explain that, please do.

I want everyone to kind of leave here with clarity. That's my goal anyway. I have a question. Okay, real quick.

So use that word, you said mathetes. What's the difference between that one and that other word we use to catechize someone?

Um, because there's like catechists or something, and so that doesn't use that word as much.

But it's essentially that's more talking about the process by which we do that. Okay. Um, so that's one as I would say that the whole idea that you're bringing up of catechesis as the issue churches use that term, that's more a process of how we versus mathetes being, okay, what a disciple is.

Oh, if that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. So I'm looking at this properly. We should all be pupils.

Yes. I think that's a good way to put it. Now, it's not quite the same as when we were all at school, but there are some similarities, which we'll get to as we kind of make our way through this.

Cool. Thanks, Kofi. No problem. So as we think about individual discipleship, really what we're thinking about is simply encouraging believers to grow in their faith in Jesus.

There's a degree to which if you're a Christian, you're already doing some of this.

You know, the primary way we express that is a commitment to those core spiritual disciplines.

Now, when we think about reading the scripture, prayer, service, like these basic spiritual disciplines that the

New Testament gives to us. Now, when we talk about discipleship on an individual level, really that's just the stuff of the

Christian life. And as we're doing that, the hope is that, okay, more and more, we are growing in likeness to and service to Jesus.

And so that's why we obviously encourage people to need to be in your Bible because that's how you know who he is.

That's why you need to pray. Prayer is the people of God speaking to God.

Okay. That's a vital part of our growth in Jesus. And then as we spend time in prayer in the

Word, we don't become insular. You know, we don't become just a reservoir just taking in all the time. We're commanded to serve one another.

First Peter chapter four verses 10 and 11 is each one has received a gift. And those of you who were here for the

Holy Spirit in the series, you know that I take a slightly different view of that than most people. I don't believe gifts are abilities.

I believe that they're assignments. In other words, each one of us has been given an assignment. We've all been given a ministry.

And Peter says each one has received a gift. We're to use it to serve one another.

And so on a basic level, this is the stuff of just the regular Christian life that we're all doing.

And so where the church specifically comes in is that the church's job is to provide regular encouragement, to be in the

Word, to be in prayer, to find avenues to serve. So it's not that we, you know, start going from house to house and start checking on people, so did you read your

Bible today? Did you pray today? What ministry are you serving?

We're not talking like going around with a clipboard trying to enforce this. There have been some people in the church history who tried to do that.

I think that's a very neurotic and unhealthy way to approach gospel ministry. But the church should regularly provide encouragement to people that, hey, if you don't have a great

Bible reading habit, let's come alongside you and help with that. Or struggling in your prayer life, okay, let's come alongside and help in that.

You're looking for somewhere to serve, come and see us. Or if you see there's a particular need in the church and you want to serve in that area, hey, come see us and we can start working on that.

The church should be the place that provides that regular encouragement. On top of that, we should provide tools in helping in these disciplines.

So for us, it looks like, okay, we have the literature table that has good

Bible -based literature encouraging people to not just read that, but read in their Bibles. We finally have been able to buy some

Bibles to give away. And I know some of you have taken those and given those away to people, and I'm glad to see that that's what we got them for.

So if you don't have a Bible, that's not a problem, we can supply you with one. You know, if you're struggling with stuff to pray about, well, beginning this

Sunday, we want to start having our prayer meeting again. And once a month, on a Wednesday, we have a prayer meeting here.

So that way, okay, even if you're struggling with, okay, I don't know how to pray, I don't know what to pray for. Okay, there's a church that's simply coming alongside, not in a condemnatory, you should know how to pray by now.

Yeah, that really helps everyone. No, actually, we're coming alongside and saying, hey, how can we help you to grow in this?

And so on an individual level, that's how the church helps. And that's, like I said, we're not going to spend much time there, because that's kind of the easiest of all of these.

It's the other two where things start to get a little more specific and a little more detailed. So again, look at our little graphic, we've got so far, we've looked at the individual.

Well, now let's talk about where the church fits in with this. Because again, we go back to Matthew 28, discipleship making is the mission of the church.

Yeah, so let's talk about churchwide discipleship. Now, the wonderful thing is that our worship services, if they're done biblically, have a discipleship element already built into them.

So we organize everything in our worship services around the word of God. We read the word, our call to worship, scripture reading, we preach the word, and our benediction.

We're very intentional about that for a reason. We want the word of God to be saturating the service. We sing the word in the songs that we sing, and it's if we do a wonderful job in selecting those songs.

We obviously pray the word, we oftentimes our prayers, particularly after our scripture readings are responses to what we have read.

That's intentional. We see the word as we practice baptism.

We've not baptized anyone in our churches yet. But if we did, that would be one example of we do practice the

Lord's table. And that's, again, another visible demonstration of the things that we see in the word of God.

So we read the word, we sing the word, we pray the word, we see the word. And so we're already doing that to a degree in our worship services.

An additional component to that is the idea of mutual encouragement. So as we gather in our worship, hopefully, we're engaging in fellowship afterwards, where we're able to talk to one another about what we've heard, or something else of a spiritual nature, where we're able to pour into one another.

So already, when we gather corporately on a Sunday, those components are there.

For those of you who are theologically savvy, you'll be familiar with this phrase.

I've used it a few times already. And I'm going to use it a bunch more in January. It comes with some of the zines on it. The idea of the means of grace.

Means of grace is a term that comes out of the Westminster, shorter and larger catechisms, where it talks about how is it that Christ's benefits are communicated to us?

Well, they're communicated to us in the means of grace. And it defines the means of grace as prayer, the reading, and especially the hearing of God's word, baptism, and the

Lord's supper. These are means by which the benefits of what Christ has done for us as his people are communicated to us.

And so in our worship services, we give primary emphasis, if not exclusive emphasis to these things.

I think I've joked about it a number of times. And we've had people in the past visit and say this, that church services are kind of simple.

Yeah. We do things the Bible tells us to do. The Bible doesn't tell us to do it.

We don't do it. No, we're not here trying to reinvent the wheel. We're not here trying to find, well, this got boring.

We want to do something else now. Well, there isn't anything else because go back to Matthew 28, Jesus is

Lord of the church. And through his apostles, he tells us, okay, how the church is to be ordered, how to be structured and what our priorities should be.

And so our worship services in line with the Lord of the church and the mission he gave it already have a discipleship element built into it.

By engaging with means of grace, especially the public ministry of God's word, we're already beginning to foster a culture of growth in godliness.

That's why public worship is so important. That's why, if I can get my soapbox for 10 seconds, what we all had to endure for a number of months last year was horrible.

Hmm. Because basically, and my own view on this changed as the longer this went on.

Yes, it was a necessity. It wasn't much we could really do. We were all just figuring out what to do with this new normal and what have you.

But the reality was the mutual bodybuilding, the mutual discipleship aspects of our worship got lost a little bit because we weren't physically together.

It's as we publicly engage in these things together with God's people, that we foster a culture of growth and godliness.

So already there's a degree to which our churches do this. But I want to say that there was another component to this that some churches do and some churches don't.

And that's this whole thing that I've given one word, equipping. Tell me it's

Ephesians 4. Ephesians chapter 4. Some of you have heard me speak on this before and probably know what

I'm about to say, but if not, Ephesians chapter 4 and beginning in verse 11.

Ephesians in the fourth chapter, beginning in verse 11. Paul says, after again talking about our ascended

Lord Jesus Christ, he says, and he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.

We won't get into the discussion of which ones continue, which ones don't because verse 12 is what I want to get to. All four, some say five, but grammatically in the original language it's four.

Five doesn't work here. All four of these, verse 12, he gives for the purpose of equipping the saints for the work of ministry to build up the body of Christ.

Verse 13, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's son growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ's fullness.

Paul says that God gives gifted people to the church. He gives people with specific ministry assignments to the church for the purpose of equipping the people of God, the saints,

God's holy ones, for the work of ministry. It should never be the thing that often is said about churches, that churches are run by what?

What's the phrase? 80 % of the work being done by 20 % of the people. Hmm. That's not biblical.

That might be how things are, but that's not biblical. In a healthy

New Testament church, those who have, and I would argue that what Paul is essentially talking about here is those who have the role of the public ministry of God's word.

And this is one thing that they talk about in this book, chapter seven, why Sunday sermons are good, but not sufficient.

What our role is as leaders in the church is we're not the

CEO. Neither are we just a public speaker or a talking head. Rightly understood, if we can use one analogy, the elders of a church, because we do believe in a priority of elders, the elders of the church are supposed to be the coaches.

Their job is to equip the body, which is everyone, for the work of ministry.

Because everybody has a ministry. Everybody has a specific ministry assignment that God has given them. We often call them spiritual gifts.

God has a role for you to play in the body, but you can't play that role until you are equipped.

And so the church has a vital role in equipping God's people for the work of ministry.

Here's how I describe equipping. That equipping is a systematic effort to teach the full counsel of God for the purpose of preparing

God's people to proclaim the gospel and serve others.

A systematic effort to teach the full counsel of God for the purpose of preparing God's people to proclaim the gospel and to serve others.

In this book, Deep Cycle Chip, Dr. English uses three words to describe the equipping ministry of a church, which

I think will evolve. And so I just said, you know what, I'm just going to borrow these and make it clear. I got them from him because they were so helpful.

He talks about space, scope, and sequence.

Space, scope, and sequence. First of all, when we talk about spaces or spaces for discipleship, we mean by that well thought out opportunities of varying size and function for the purpose of teaching and equipping.

One of the things that Dr. English says in this book that resonated with me, just as a history buff who's kind of done some of the study on this, was that something got lost in the church.

So where are we, 2020? So about 40 to 50 years ago, obviously

I was not around. But we're reliably told that if you went into most churches, of varying theological traditions, they had something they called a ministry of Christian education.

Some churches still have them. Sunday school was the primary manifestation of that, but there were other ways in which that ministry functioned.

Opportunities, in addition to our regular worship, where people could actually go a little deeper in being taught and equipped from God's word.

Some of them were more effective than others, of course, because that's just the nature of any human beings running anything.

Some people are really good at what they do. Some people need a little more help and guidance. But churches had that, but slowly that started to get lost.

Funny enough, you know what that started to get replaced with in the 1980s, late 80s, early 90s?

Well, that's one aspect to it in terms of worship, but something happened on a more fundamental level.

We all take it for granted, like every church does this. Small groups.

Churches started to get rid of their Sunday school programs and their educational programs and replace them with cell groups, small groups.

And oftentimes you would hear people say, well, those weren't good for creating community.

Now, I'll tell you, I have a beef with Christians using that word community. I really do.

And I thought I was on my own. And so I went to this pastor's conference last week and heard a professor from West Mornia who spoke to us,

Craig Troxell, talk about this and say exactly the same thing. I literally sat there with my mouth open.

I have to remember that I'm at a pastor's conference, not my house. I was like, he's saying exactly the same thing

I've said for years, which is, it's not wrong for churches to want to pursue fellowship, but we don't do so at the expense of training and equipment.

It shouldn't be either or, it's well planned. But unfortunately, so many churches got rid of their

Christian education ministries, replaced them all with small groups. And let's face it, there are some small groups that are really good and are really wonderful.

And then there are some small groups where we've all heard the joke. You go, you read a Bible passage and everyone just asks, what does that mean to me?

As a Bible teacher, I would much rather you pull, I've had four teeth pulled recently, I would have much rather you did that without any anesthetic while I was wide awake.

Churches need to have particular spaces where we're here because we want to be taught.

We want to be taught and equipped. Now, here's the thing, you pursue that and actually you do start to form relationships.

You do start to pull while you're all in the trenches, earning together, growing together. So I don't have to give up pursuing, if you want to use that term, community with other believers in order to pursue this.

But churches need to create intentional spaces of varying size and varying function where this happens.

Not only do we need to think about the spaces for discipleship, there's also the idea of scope.

We can't just say, okay, Kofi, you're right. We need to have educational spaces where people can learn and be equipped.

Okay, cool. We're just going to randomly just pick this and do it.

Well, no, you need to have some kind of structure in place. It needs to be even loosely a sense of, okay, we're actually thinking intentionally about what the aim of this is.

As I put here, a comprehensive scheme of material designed to facilitate discipleship and disciple making.

So there's specific things that you want to communicate in this particular space. Again, we're not saying this is all a church in us.

And actually we'll talk about small groups in a little bit. I think they do have a place in the life of a church by all means.

Yes, done properly. And part of that is having a specific, okay, we want people to learn particular things.

The way I've summarized it is Bible beliefs and behavior.

That's the scope of a church's equipping ministry as part of their making of disciples.

So Bible record classes to the Bible. Anyone here ever been to a Bible study fellowship before?

Okay, a couple of folks. Part of community Bible study, similar thing. Or precepts, they're kind of known for their inductive

Bible study thing. Classes like that, what they do is you've never been to one of those, two of the three.

They literally just have people, you'll do kind of your own study in your own time. There's a short time of teaching and then there's a time of discussion.

But the focus is, okay, we're working our way through books of the Bible. And it's for the purpose of, okay, not just understanding the book of the

Bible, but now being able to minister to people with what we are learning from this particular book of the

Bible. Not only is there a need for training in just basic Bible, but then there's beliefs. We're spending time thinking about Christian doctrine and theology.

So we're talking about stuff like the Trinity or biblical theology, or what does Bible say about carbon, or any number of theological issues.

You need a space for that too. And then finally behavior, just matters of the

Christian life. So stuff like prayer, so how to minister to one another.

Evangelism, how many Christians talk about evangelism but never been to a house of evangelism? Churches should be, that's not to bag on ministries like living waters or where the martyrs are.

I love those guys. I have friends who work in those ministries. They're great and wonderful. But there's a tragedy that those exist in that local churches should be teaching those things.

That we've had to ship that out to other people is quite telling. But actually in a well thought out,

I wouldn't try to go back on this because I could get off on it. But in a well thought out sort of structure, we're thinking about all three of these.

Basic understanding of scripture, basic understanding of the doctrines that scripture teaches, and then based training in just the simple matters of being a

Christian. And again, think back to our little diagram. You can see how doing that on a church level helps the individual.

So it's not just okay, we're doing this, we're doing the same. Actually, this benefits individuals and it benefits the church as a whole.

So we've talked about scope, we've talked about the spaces for it, but there's also a reality of what

JT English refers to as a sequence. Because the reality is as you start to do this, and I've seen this firsthand, as you start to do this, you're going to have some people who, you know what, being able to attend a class going to book the

Bible once a week, that works, you know, we do that for however many weeks, we're done. Okay, cool, that works.

But you're going to have some people who hear that, you know what, I want to take it to the next level. In the

Vine Project, Pastor Marshall refers to it as taking one more step to the right.

Okay, you know what, I want to take the next step. Well, a church needs to kind of have something in place for that.

No, it's not that everything is just one level, but you realize, okay, for some people, maybe they want to go deeper. And for others, they may want to go deeper.

Still, a good way to think about it is you have to think about this churchwide discipleship.

You've got discipleship for the whole church. But then you have people who want to take it to the next level.

Okay, I now want to start being one of those people who's helping to replicate disciples. Okay, so then you need training, not just for the whole church, but for disciple makers, the folks who kind of want to make this, okay, this is specifically the area of ministry where I want to function.

But then even in that group, you're going to have people like, okay, and this was my experience, by the way, going to a really solid church, hearing the

Bible taught regularly. I was like, okay, I want to take this a step further. Now, I was in two churches.

The first church I was in didn't really value any of this. So I had to kind of cobble it together myself.

One thing they did have was a really good bookshop. So I just started thinking, okay,

I'm really excited about this stuff. I don't want to see other people get excited about this stuff. That has not changed in almost a decade.

I'm still very much trying to get people excited about the same things. But for what that looked like for me, it was okay, fine.

They've got a bookstore. The bookstore's actually very helpful to me. I worked in it for a while. So I just started getting one book.

Okay, I need to just understand the basic contents of Scripture. Oh, they had a book for that. Okay. It was

Surveys of the Bible by William Hendricks. Read it in my own time. And I would find some folks and share that with them.

Same thing with basic doctrine. Buy a book like, you know,

Summary of Christian Doctrine by Bercow. Small little thing, very reasonable. But it kind of gave me some basic categories.

And what I found was people started coming to me, asking me questions about stuff. Oh, okay, well,

I haven't thought about that. But we should go find something. Go find a resource. And what happens is you go from just, okay, the general sort of discipleship ministry in the church to, okay, now you're being internally involved in helping other people.

And after a while, then I started thinking, I started thinking as a teenager, with lots of people telling me this was going to be the case of me fighting it for a while.

I wanted to devote my life to this. I'm in college, I want to be a but I'm really enjoying this.

I like teaching the Bible. I like sitting down with people and just opening our Bibles and talking about this stuff.

What if I wanted to do this for the rest of my life? Okay, well, I guess I'm going to need more training than that.

Take it up a level. And so as we think about this idea of a sequence, you start off kind of big and you get more focused.

And at every stage, the church should be able to supply that. Now, can every church do this? This is going to be important to say.

Not every individual church can do this. But at the very least, groups of churches should be able to get together and do this to benefit people.

You may have some churches that the Lord gives a lot of resources and they can, and for others, it may be a group of us have to get together and supply this.

But every church should be able to do this to some degree. So for us, let's get specific now talking about redeem.

What does that look like for us? Well, for again, 30 ,000 foot and in the future.

What I would love to see first and foremost is what

I've called an equivalent. Now we kind of this is what we've turned Wednesday into essentially, since we don't have our own facility or facility where we can have a typical

Sunday school class. And I have a ton of ideas about that if you want to talk to me about that later. But at the very least, we've been kind of working our way through this catechism, you know, sort of question by question slowly, at this point we're doing the doctrine of God.

And the aim of that is okay, we're kind of doing that at a 30 ,000 foot level, kind of a little different to what we do on a

Sunday. The hope is that in addition to that, we can kind of have two or three core classes where we do like an overview of the

Bible in like 10 weeks, an overview of Christian doctrine in 10 weeks, an overview of basic spiritual discipline in 10 weeks, where if somebody's like, okay,

I don't have the foggiest clue about the basics of the Christian life. Oh, we have a class for that.

And again, a class can't fix everything, but it can give you some basic tools to get it started. Everyone tracking with me so far?

In addition to that, one thing we have started doing, and I'm really thankful for is our men's and women's Bible studies.

That's going to be vital because there also needs to be spaces where in the ministry, the spirit of Titus 2, men can minister to men, women can minister to women.

I've never understood personally those who say that, well, there's no need for that. They have the church or they have their husband, especially women.

Women don't need that. They have their husbands. It's like, okay, do you not read

Titus 2? Paul seems to think that there's something valuable about women ministering to women, men ministering to men.

In addition to that, I've kind of called these growth groups. These would be your traditional small groups.

You know, I have views about how the largest small group should be before you kind of cut and multiply.

I think any more than a dozen personally, more than 12 and it gets a little big and unhelpful.

Identify somebody who can lead it, cut it in half and start over again. Multiply. That's a good thing.

But I call those growth groups, small groups all the same way. I think there's value in discipleship groups.

Smaller groups of two or three guys who get together, we're reading the Bible together, and we're just checking in with one another.

As we're reading the Bible together, okay, how is that going? Or as you're studying spiritual, what have you seen this week that's impacted you personally?

Robbie Gallaty, who's a pastor in Tennessee, has been really helpful to me in thinking about this.

He wrote a book called Growing Up, and it's a book about discipleship. One of the things he talks about are these small groups.

His church is Long Hollow. Long Hollow is 4 ,000 people.

Huge church. But he still has two to three guys that he's personally involved with in the discipleship group.

I remember listening to one of the podcasts that sometimes I'm leading the group because he tries to ...

Part of what they have in the culture of their church is they switch it out every six months or so.

They start over with a new group. He says, sometimes I'm leading the group, and sometimes I'm just there to be there because I need that.

Again, 30 ,000 foot in the future, I would love to see where we're able to start facilitating the ministry of two to three people of the same gender getting together once a week, once every other week, whatever is most good for them, and just engaging one another in, okay, how is our pursuit of growth and likeness to Jesus going?

I think that's a valuable part of that whole church equipment. On a disciple maker's level, one thing

I'd like us to see is to start to have a series of more comprehensive classes covering that scope of Bible belief and behavior in a bit more detail, where we can take it a step further.

With that, doing so with a focus on using this material to minister to others, so that, okay, now it's not just, okay, here's the material.

It's, okay, now how can you take what you're learning and minister to other people with that? It would require a little more investment than the usual sorts of classes.

There may be some reading you need to do. There may be some other ways of engaging with the material. Remember, you're doing that because it's now you receiving and then passing on to somebody else.

Finally, in terms of thinking about disciple making leaders, the ultimate goal is that we want to be able to start training people for vocational ministry in the church.

We'll talk about that more in a moment when we talk about ministry training, but we want to be able, with God's help, and again, this is not going to happen overnight.

It may take us years to get to this point, but hopefully to get to a point where but essentially, oh, here we go, we're doing all of this for everybody in the church, so that everybody in the church has a place where, in this grand scheme of things, kind of like an on -ramp.

They can have their own on -ramp where, okay, they're starting that process of growth and likeness to Jesus or, in the words of Peter Marshall, one more step to the right.

Now, for a moment, I want to talk to the men. I see some guys in the room, and I'm sure there's some guys watching this, and some guys who will watch this later because we are recording this so far.

In my experience, I grew up in church my entire life, have been involved in ministry since I was 18.

12 years, coming up on 13. Actually, no, it's October. 13.

Men are usually the most resistant to this.

I can get women to come to Bible study classes with ease. I don't have to try.

Some of you know me from a previous church that I was in. I taught a number of classes at that church.

If I were to look at it percentage -wise, the vast majority of those who attended were women, easy. For some reason,

I haven't quite got to the psychology of this. I'm no psychologist, so I just kind of watch things and ask questions.

For some reason, men struggle with this, and I have a special heart for men because, one,

I am one. But, two, the reality is, in most areas in the church, men are going to be the leaders.

They're definitely going to be your elders, because that's what we see in Scripture, first and between times, one. I do have no problem with female deacons.

That's a whole other conversation for another time. I think it's different from an elder, but again, the majority of the deacons in the church are going to be men.

Even if they never get involved in vocational ministry, most of the men in the church are going to be husbands and going to be fathers, which means that's a leadership role.

Chances are, in the world of work and in various other places where God may plant them, they're going to exercise leadership, and so they need training,

I would argue, as much, if not more, than anyone else. And unfortunately, they're the least likely to turn up to stuff.

If that sounds like it stings, I've been that guy too, so I'm not throwing stones at anyone, and I've been in really good churches where they were doing this, and they still couldn't get guys to turn up.

But I'm going to encourage, for those of you who are here and those of you who are listening, whether on Zoom right now or in the future,

I would encourage that once we start to develop some of these, make them a priority, guys. And I mean guys in the very literal sense, because I'm going to argue that actually the future of our churches depend on particularly men being trained, not just for vocational ministry,

I'm not just thinking about training men to be elders and preachers in the future, but just in being able to lead their homes.

I know guys who receive training and their whole ministry is in their workplace. Still need to be trained to do that, or just leading in the home.

That's a tremendous ministry all by itself. And so I want to say guys, we especially need in this area to kind of step it up when it comes to church -wide discipleship.

So we need more than just a few big men. Yes, we need way more than just a few, 100%.

We've talked about the individual, we've talked about the church.

Real quickly, I've got 12 minutes, I've actually done better timing wise than I thought I had. Let's talk about ministry training in the local church context.

Now this was something, when I've talked about this in the past, the one thing I get is, okay Kofi, do you do know we have these things called seminaries and Bible colleges, right?

Why do you need churches to do that? I've actually heard people, I've actually had people tell me, not just like the shallow people,

I mean people who theologically know their stuff say, I still don't think local churches should do that. A few thoughts on that.

First of all, yeah, you're 100 % right. Tell me in 2 Timothy 2 .2,

2 Timothy chapter 2, 1 Timothy verses 1 and 2, Paul says,

You therefore my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Please note that Paul does not say in verse 2, go start a tertiary institution for the purpose of doing this.

He says no, you Timothy heard and saw some things in me. You ought to take the things you heard and saw in me, teach them to others who will be able to teach others also.

Timothy as far as we know, it's interesting, Timothy, you often say Timothy was a pastor, kind of.

He's more, him and Titus both have this unique role of, I call them the spiritual special ops guys.

They went in, saw that elders were established in the churches, and then moved on to other churches and did the same thing.

Timothy says, listen, your job is to train up guys. I would argue the guys used to train on the elders because he'll talk about that in, well, but he talks about that in the first letter of chapter 3.

Train up men on the basis of what you've seen and heard. So that's incarnational.

It's not just, here are some books to have at it. There's a life on life component here.

You see some things, you hear some things, the things you see and hear, you ought to take and communicate to others who can communicate those to others also.

I don't see anything there about seminary. That's not to say seminaries are bad.

That would make me a hypocrite because I'm in seminary. But seminary,

I heard Al Mohler say this, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the largest Protestant seminary in the world. He said, my hope is that by the time

I'm dead, Southern would have trained men so well, we trained ourselves out of a job because local churches take up this lack of training there.

To the point where, okay, well, we don't need to send the guy hundreds of miles away, away from his home, get saddled with a bunch of debt.

I hear my cynicism about some seminary where I see this. We don't need to do all that.

No, we can train them in -house and he stands up and is able to open God's word and faith shepherd the flock and care for the souls of the people committed to him.

That's the domain of the local church. Okay, there we go. Our church ministries are designed to help the church not do its job.

So where seminaries come in is, okay, you've got churches that can't do that. They don't have all the means to train people in -house.

Okay, well, we partner with other organizations so that we have guys who can come back to the local church and do it.

And in particular, when you think about training, training takes all kinds of forms. So we talked about discipleship groups, so we want to train people to lead those.

We'll just throw people in and say, well, figure it out. I don't think that's helpful in any ministry. People should be trained enough to do it so that they're comfortable.

Training small group leaders. How many of us have been in small groups where we can evidently say it would be great if the person leading the small group actually knew how to lead a small group.

Training parents, helping them in the basis.

Okay, how is it that, okay, we're called to raise, Ephesians 6, raise children in the nurture and admonition of the

Lord. How are we going to do that? And of course, training future elders and leaders.

We want to be training people to serve, to bear office in the church, so to speak.

Now, we can't just throw again. It never works. You just throw people in the deep end. They'll learn to swim.

No, they don't. There needs to be a very careful, very thought out approach to that.

Now, really quickly, I want to talk about models. Are there people doing this, what we're talking about?

Because one thing to kind of speak in the 30 ,000 foot we went off in for other people who are doing it?

Actually, there are. Those of you who were there, was it last Wednesday that we were on with Pastor John?

You may have heard him. I think you asked a question about discipleship.

And he mentioned that, okay, at the church, and I've seen their planning for this firsthand. At their church at the moment, what they have is they have what they call

Redeemer Equip, which is, again, that series of classes, and running that whole scope of Bible belief and behavior.

They are now developing what they're going to call the Men's Academy in particular.

Well, starting with men, they're going to start women's one down the line. Well, okay, now we're taking it that step further, like we talked about, going from just, okay, for everybody to people who are going to be your disciple makers.

That's with the ultimate goal, and they just hired a guy who's a former seminary professor of starting a full on training institution, providing seminary level training for men in their local church context.

Really, okay, Kofi, but they're working on it. Is there anybody actually doing it? Well, I mentioned

JTE English. You can actually look up online if you Google the TVC Institute. They've got it.

They have a series of classes, basic Bible classes, what they call their core classes.

They then have a next step, which they call the training program. It's a bit more rigorous than just the regular classes, and then they have a residency program where you're basically getting seminary level training in the local church context.

JTE English is now passing in Colorado and doing the same thing that Beck. This is, with God's help, being done.

I'll give you one more example, one that I know personally back in London. I used to go to a church called St. Helen Bishop's Gate for their

Thursday afternoon Bible study. They had a very influential ministry to businessmen in the city of London.

It's a tough crowd to work with. Some of those guys are very arrogant and self -sufficient. I know.

I used to work with them. They had a tremendous ministry in the city. Same thing.

They had their regular Tuesday, but then they had evangelism training, just basic how to share the gospel with your co -workers.

I took it and found it incredibly helpful. Then they had guys who then went on and did what they call worker's ministry training, basically for the city workers, giving them a

Bible college education on their lunch breaks two days a week. Very interesting way of doing it, but it worked.

Some of those guys left their jobs in the city where they're getting paid big money to go be pastors and missionaries.

I met one guy, I'll never forget it. His name was Kande. He's now in Kobe, Japan by vacation.

He began to fill the call to missions as a result of the training he received and then realized, wait a minute,

I work for a multinational company. They're always looking for people to relocate. My family and I had been praying about it.

Went to his manager and said, where do you need someone to go right now? Japan.

Okay. He's now pastoring a church in Japan while working as a businessman. This is being done.

We're not talking pie in the sky theoretical, this is actually happening. Wow. That sounds great, but for a moment, let's talk being realistic.

I'll wrap up with this. We've said a lot tonight.

It cost a really big issue, but the reality is there's some pain involved.

Let's talk cost for a second. First and foremost, it's just going to be a time investment. After being able to develop some of this, it's going to mean an investment of time, whether you're involved in just attending it or if the

Lord rules and we raise up guys to be involved in the ministry teaching side of it, to be involved in teaching it.

It's going to be an investment of time, which also means it's going to be an investment of effort. It's going to be an investment of resources.

We may discover that, okay, there are certain things we need to be physically, which will cost us as a church.

That might mean we can't do some other things, which might be great so that we can do this, which is best.

Kind of related to that, it may mean an investment of focus. It may mean that, okay, there's another ministry that someone thinks is really great and really important, but it's not this.

Yes, we will come back to that, but if we're in a phase where we can start to put something related to this in place, that might need to hit the back burner and people be okay with it.

The reality is, some people might not. In fact, we're going to have people who have objections.

Kofi, why don't we just make our church really insular? I remember someone telling me this flat out. I was talking about all this and I'm like, this sounds like making a church really inward focused.

No. Think back to what we read in Lecture 28. The purpose of making disciples is to go into all the nations and make disciples.

Far from making a church insular, I put it to you that this makes a church sharp and effective in being able to do this.

Practicing to the next objection I have here, where does outreach factor into this? Remember, phase one of disciple making is going out and just making disciples.

Also, if we're training people on how to be evangelism, you're training them in how to make disciples.

This doesn't actually kill outreach done well, it actually causes outreach to be effective.

Kofi, this sounds like a lot. Are we doing all of this right now or somewhat soon?

No. Again, 30 ,000 foot off into the future. Some of it we're already doing.

Wednesday night being much more of an equipping focus. The men's and women's

Bible studies. Small things that we're doing. Some other smaller things that we're doing.

For example, we started the Galatians series, being intentional in buying those scripture journals. By the way, if you don't have one, we still have a bunch of them.

Why did we decide to do that? Well, why did I decide to do that? There wasn't much in the way about it. I decided to do that because it's another way of getting people to engage more deeply with what we're studying in Galatians.

Why do we have a literature table outside? We have a literature table outside of our meeting space because we want to encourage people to be reading stuff in addition to reading their

Bibles. It helps them to think more deeply about matters relating to the Christian life. We're not trying to do everything we described tonight immediately.

We're folding this in a little bit for those of you who like baking. We're not just doing this all at once.

No, we're adding the ingredients piece by piece as the Lord gives us opportunity. This may feel like it's in fits and starts at times.

We've done what we can for now, given the resource we have. We're content with that.

Trust in the Lord. He'll provide for the next step. Another objection, and this will probably be the final one.

Isn't this going to create tears in the church? You have some people who are more invested in than others.

If I can be somewhat blunt, all churches function like that already. The reality is you're going to have some people in the church who actually engage with everything the church offers, and some people who, by their own decision, choose to be on the outside in the periphery.

Now, the hope is, and this is where a good shepherding heart comes in, you want to see everybody come from outside the periphery and be more engaged in the

Lord. That's a heart level thing. We can put the seed out there.

We have to trust the Lord to give the harvest on that one. But the hope is that as we are investing in people, that it actually does help the church.

It doesn't just help our church. Before I even go there, let's talk potential benefit as I wrap up.

Well, the potential benefit, first of all, is you are every believer living with purpose.

Rather than just a vague, well, I'm a Christian, I go to church on Sundays. No, I'm part of God's bigger mission, which is, okay, the making and baptizing and teaching of disciples.

You've got a body that's equipped for mission. So that rather than just telling people, go share your faith and not giving them any tools or help and how to do it, you know, they're being taught how to do it.

You've got a body that's not bottlenecked. You know what I mean when I say bottlenecks? So you don't have what ends up happening in the church.

We've got a narrow set of people that everyone, everything passes through ministry. If so and so isn't involved, this thing can't get done.

That's a bottleneck. You don't need that. What you need is, well, everybody's involved in ministry.

And since everybody's involved, you're going to have, okay, there's this particular ministry. Oh, I don't need to go the way that's typically manifest in churches.

Well, I need to go see the pastor about that. No, you might want to go see so -and -so who that's their ministry focus.

And what you're doing, you're now widening the bottleneck as it was. So it's not just one or two people we have to go to for everything.

But now as the body is being equipped and trained, everybody is able to serve.

And so now it's not hard to find places to serve and ministry isn't suffering ultimately because you've got so many people who can help.

And this final one is one that excites me a bunch. You have a body that is potentially able to help other churches.

I got my start in preaching, being sent out to go pulpit supply in other churches. Maybe it's somebody for a

Sunday morning. Okay, we'll go do that. Or if you need someone to do morning and evening service.

Okay, I'll go. But that couldn't have happened without there being training happening in my local church that prepared me for that.

Wouldn't it be an amazing thing if the Lord will in future that we're able to help other churches that we're able to actually, again, the opposite of being insular and inward focused, we can now help other churches.

Whether it's okay, people from other churches wanting to be involved in some of the discipleship things we do. Or being able to send out people trained from our church to go serve in another church or to go help another church and do so with no strings attached, no sense of, well, it needs to benefit us.

No, we just want to be a blessing to you guys. Well, that happens as people are trained for ministry.

With that, now I'm six minutes over where I wanted to be. But I'm done. Like I said,

I know I've said a lot. I don't want to spend too much time longer than we've spent tonight.

But are there any questions, anything that's been said tonight? Want some more clarification or just initial thoughts on any of this as we've kind of laid it out?

Like I said, 30 ,000 foot off in the future. But any initial thoughts, questions, concerns, stuff that arises as we've talked about this?

Something I missed that maybe I should have addressed and addressing in the future at some point? I'll just add a comment.

I really appreciate the way you've opened up the church and the potential of any church where it can get and just how beautiful it is when we see that spiritual cycle of discipleship of people getting to know one another and growing in the

Lord. So you really opened up, for me at least, the glory of the church and what could happen.

So thanks for doing that. I appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions?

Going once, going twice. So have you heard of core discipleship?

I wouldn't say I have. It's a ministry that we were in the process of putting people in our church, but it's very interactive.

It's basically three levels. The way that I see it, they've talked about it as it's kind of a model of the way you use the ministry.

For me, that helped me see that was a direction

I wanted us to go. We didn't want to get there. But to me, this looks very familiar, very similar to that, which is exciting.

But it took a lot more clarity in how to make that happen.

It was kind of, it happened somewhere, but not this much. Well, like I said,

I've practiced some of my 10 years of thoughts into a bunch of slides and left a bunch out.

So yeah, I'm glad it was helpful. Like I said,

I'm sure we'll talk about this in future to some degree as we kind of build in elements as we go. I hope you get a sense of where I would love to see us get to in relation to some of this.

And obviously, that's all there is to me. I have other people who can help with some of that. Obviously, I think it will kind of grow over time.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Well, I'll pray because it's almost 9 o 'clock and I don't want to hold everyone too late.

So I will pray and then I'll continue talking. That's great. If you need to go, I'd appreciate that.

Glad to have you here. Let's pray. Thank you so much because you have given to us everything that we need for life and Godliness and the knowledge of your son.

You give us everything we need to replicate disciples and to see ultimately the nations brought to obedience to your son and our savior

Jesus. Help us as a church. We would find our place in that commission that we would engage individuals as a church and training others for ministry.

Help us to be patient. Help us not to run ahead of you as it were.

Help us to go when you say go and to stop when you say stop. Father, we pray that you would be glorified even in this as we pursue this vision.