No matter who you, are or what your calling is, it’s the same for all of us as followers of Christ. It doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor or a lawyer, a secretary, a landscaper, a cashier, or a student. It doesn’t matter if you flip burgers, crunch numbers, pump gas, fix pipes, wait on customers, paint walls, teach, lead worship, lay carpet, or even if you’re unemployed. If you’re a follower of Christ it’s the one and ONLY task that we’ve been given until Jesus returns:
GO and MAKE disciples of all nations, BAPTIZE them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, TEACH them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even until the end of the age.
Matthew 28:19-20
Go. Make. Baptize. Teach. That’s what we’re all suppose to be doing. Not just “the pastors” or “people at the church” either. No matter what our vocation is, if we’re followers of Christ, it’s our responsibility. Actually, as a follower of Christ, that’s our one and only responsibility and our sole mission. Making disciples, period.
But it’s so easy to lose sight of that. Even for those of us who are pastors, church planters, missionaries, evangelists, etc. Even we can get sidetracked. We can focus more on the programming, the technical side of our services, the amount of people in attendance, the music... all of which are important, but are we making disciples in the process of going through “the process?” Is there anyone that we’re producing who’s reproducing someone else that reproducing someone else, that’s... you get the idea. Is there? Can you look at your ministry (or vocation) and see the process and that it’s working? A process where you’re actually making disciples? Or are you just having church services, or meetings or rally’s or just working at your job or whatever else it is that your doing? Only you can answer the question.
And the thing about making disciples is that it’s always about the individual rather than the masses and I'll tell you why I believe that.
If we look at the life of Jesus (who was the greatest teacher, disciple-maker, leader, pastor ever) we can see that even He didn’t disciple the masses. Sure, He spoke and ministered to large numbers of people (the masses), but He only discipled a small handful of people. So as we’re in the process of making disciples, why do we always focus on the masses rather than the small group of people God’s placed in our lives or even the individual? Why do we measure our success by how many people we’re reaching each week rather than how effectively we’re discipling the small group of people that God’s placed in our daily lives? It’s definitely something to think about.
Anyway, here in Brazil, we’re constantly checking ourselves and making sure that we’re staying “on mission” and making disciples. Because even here in the jungles of Brazil we’re tempted to lose focus. We’re tempted to focus more on the programming of our services rather than how effectively we’re discipling. So we’re constantly analyzing and re-adjusting what we do.
One if the things we’ve changed is our Thursday Night Meetings. At the beginning of the year we totally re-vamped the services so that we made sure that we were discipling and not just entertaining. And the response has been great. We also (a few weeks ago) added small groups to the Thursday night mix. This is so that we can create dialogue between the students and the leaders on a deeper level and in a way that’s more age/gender specific and the kids love it.
How’s your disciple making process going? Are you constantly looking for ways to improve? Or are you just doing the same old thing or worse yet... are you doing nothing?
Thank’s to everyone who makes it possible for us to be here in Brazil, doing what we do... making disciples: )
Passionately Following Jesus,
Jim
PS- The pics up top are of some of our new small groups, some shots of our Thursday night services and some of the people we're discipling on a weekly basis.
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