Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Road of Discipleship

The last few months have been a whirlwind. Since my last post we have quit our jobs and moved to La Porte City, IA to be the Pastor of Heartland Community Church. We took a two week vacation to Indiana and Maine to introduce Tedy to family and have a breather before we started our ministry. I started officially on July 1st and it has been an amazing road. In the month of July we had a series on what I saw was the important elements of discipleship in any church. you might have seen #knowgrowshow. It was adapted a few years ago when I read Simple Church by Thom Rainer when I was writing my project for my MA at Wesley Seminary. I enjoyed the simple element of Worship +2, which explaining in short, every disciple should have a time of Worship in a local body accompanied by a time of growth with a small group, and a place of service in the church and/or community. However was not really adapted by the church that I was working at during the time. The church wanted a more structured discipleship plan that you could almost graduate from and have different degrees for all the "post-grad" work. I went along but still could not get Simple Church and know, grow, show out of my head. Now that I am in a different ministry I decided to go back to this know, grow, show model. I started it as a series but it really has in a way developed into more of a vision of discipleship that has taken on a life of it's own. So I wanted to explain this discipleship process to you. 1. Know- There is a stage where each one of us meets God. The start of any relationship can be an amazing time of wonder and exploration. You start to understand that Jesus died for you as savior. You worship him because of who he is and what he has done in your life. The know stage is a great stage of development and curiosity. Just like when I met Jenny at IWU, I wanted to spend a lot of time with her to know who she was. But just like any relationship you do not stay in the know stage forever. It starts to become uncomfortable because this in a way is a very surface level relationship. You must go deeper in order for the relationship to continue to move further and deeper. 85% of Christians never leave this stage of Christianity therefore never become disciples. 2. Grow- This stage is a place where we are growing and taking root in the faith. We become involved in small groups, youth group, Bible Studies because we enjoy taking our faith to another level. We learn about who we are and God's purpose for our life. When Jenny and I started dating we went out in groups, but we also went out on dates together. It was fun and our relationship grew in ways that would not happen if we did not intentionally take these opportunities to grow with each other. Growing is a great place to be but if we always pour into ourselves then we start to become focused on ourselves and become selfish. If I were to always eat but never exercise I would get fat and be very unhealthy. This is not a good place for an individual but also a horrible place for the church. The church needs to learn to be focused on the people outside of the church as much if not more than those inside the church. So we must learn to be selfless and sacrificial. This is when we start to recognize Jesus as more than Savior but also Lord. So this leads us to show. 3. Show- We learn to think of others before ourselves. In order to do this we must be willing to serve. Teaching a growth class for others, praying for needs in the church. This is where the rubber hits the road and our faith becomes action. Leading youth group, serving a neighbor, taking part in the meals to wheel, serving the homeless, helping a widow. But also sharing Christ as the reason behind your love for people. When Jenny and I started to become more serious in our relationship I took her home to meet the family and she reluctantly introduced me to hers. Eventually we stood in front of about 200 friends and family members and committed to this love and each other for a lifetime. I showed my love for Jenny. It is vital in our relationship with God that we show him to the world as the reason. This might be sharing your God story with a co-worker, or sharing it in the worship experience. This might involve becoming baptized or becoming a member of the church. There are a number of ways that God can use your passion and purpose in revealing him in the world we live. We are not meant to graduate from any of these group. And we never arrive at a destination. We more or less add them to each other as we continue to become disciples. We need to continue to come back to worship and get to know him in fresh ways. We must never stop growing as we will never arrive at the "perfect disciple" And we must continue to show him to our world so our world can also know, grow and show.

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