Discipleship Vision Meeting

Discipleship Grounded in Jesus’s Authority and the Great Commission

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.

Garrett does exactly the same thing.

That's hilarious.

Verse 19, Jesus says that we are to go therefore, and by the way, that's not getting too technical. That's kind of a harsh tip. 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.

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 of 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' 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, which 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. 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 as 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 in 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 there. 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.

What a Disciple Is and What Disciple-Making Means

First of all, this idea of a disciple, the word that'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.

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?

I'm not my least favorite subject.

I'm not my favorite one 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, 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. 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, 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, if 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 looks back at 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 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 way, or 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, I'm 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, right? 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.

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Yeah, 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.

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Sorry, folks at home. We're working on it. They are in Washington. Perfect. Okay, they should be able to see that at home.

Now. There you go.

So let's start off thinking about this on the individual. 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? Because there's like catechists or something.

So the assessment doesn't use that word as much. But it's essentially, that's more talking about the process by which we do that. So that's one. I would say that the whole idea that you'll bring up of catechesis, as the ancient churches use that term, that's more a process of how we do this versus mathetes being, okay, what a disciple is, if that makes.

Sense. Yeah.

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.

Individual Discipleship and the Role of Spiritual Disciplines

So as we think about individual disciples, 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.

The primary way we express that is a commitment to those core spiritual disciplines. Now, let me think about reading the scripture, prayer, service, like these basic spiritual disciplines that the New Testament gives to us.

Now, when we talk about disciples 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.

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 4 verses 10 and 11 is each one has received the 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 assigned. In other words, all of us has been given an assignment. We will be 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 the Bible today?

Did you pray today?

What ministry did you serve?

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, 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 example, for us it looks like, okay, we have a 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. 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 here.

You know, 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, as a church, just simply coming alongside, not an incandescent tree. You should know how to pray by now. Yeah, that really helps everyone. 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 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 detail.

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.

Church-Wide Discipleship Through Worship, Fellowship, and the Means of Grace

Yeah, so let's talk about church-wide 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 hope to worship, scripture reading, 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 seeing the Word.

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 the 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 a sentence 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, but 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 it's 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 them.

By engaging the means of grace, especially the public ministry of God's Word, we're already beginning to foster a culture of growth and 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.

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 as 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, a quick peek. Tell me if 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 church.

That churches are run by, what's the phrase, 80 of the work being done by 20 of the people. 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, 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.

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 Ship, Dr. English uses three words to describe the equipping ministry of a church, which I think were wrong. And so I just said, you know, 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 and 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, 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 replaced them with cell groups, small groups.

And oftentimes you would hear people say, well, those weren't good for creating community. Now, 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 the sponsors 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 had to remember that I'm at a sponsors 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 equipping. It shouldn't be either or.

It's both.

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 collide.

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, 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 it, a comprehensive scheme of material designed to be a 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 the church in us. And actually, we'll talk about small groups a little bit. I think they do have a place in the life of the 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 the church's equipping ministry as part of their making of disciples. So Bible, regular classes, working through books of the Bible.

Anyone here ever been to a Bible study fellowship before?

Okay, a couple of folks.

Heard 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. I've been to 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 coven? Or any number of theological issues.

Need a space for that too. And then finally, behavior.

Just matters of the Christian life.

So stuff like prayer. So, okay, how to minister to one another. Evangelism. How many Christians talk about evangelism, but have never been taught how to evangelize? Well, 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 are wonderful.

But it'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 terrible.

But actually in a well-thought-out, I wouldn't try to go back on.

This because I can't.

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 of scripture teachers, and then based training 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 for doing the same. Actually, this benefits individuals and it benefits the church as a whole.

So we 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 first hand. As you start to do this, you're going to have some people who, you know, being able to attend a class going through a book of 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 and 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, 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 was, okay, fine. They've got a bookstore. The bookstore is actually very helpful in labels. I worked in it for a while. So I just started getting one book.

Okay.

I need to just understand the basic content 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 look, find some folks and share that with them. Same thing with basic doctrine. Buy a book like, you know, Summary of Christian Doctrine by Berkoff.

Small little thing, very reasonable, but 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 can go about that, but we should go find something.

Go find a resource.

And with time, what happens is you go from just, okay, the general sort of discipline ministry in 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.