Who's job is it anyway?
After all the events surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus, the disciples fully expected that He would restore the national kingdom of Israel and free the Jews from Roman domination. Instead, according to the end of the gospel accounts and the early part of the book of Acts, he gave them a simple command...and left to go back to Heaven.
For the time being, let's skip the details surrounding his departure and their amazement at the whole thing and focus on His command to them. It's worded in several ways, but basically Jesus said: "You will being going locally, regionally, nationally and worldwide to be witnesses about me. As you do; make disciples."
A simple command. It can really be synthesized to those 2 words...make disciples. I talked last time about what a disciple is. You can go back and read that post here if you want to. The question I want you to ask yourself about discipleship is the title of this post. Who's job is it anyway? Who is responsible to make disciples?
The church has, over the past several decades, fallen into the trap of acting as though discipleship happens when people come to the church campus. The leaders help the rest of us become disciples by teaching us more about the Bible. The more we listen to lessons taught and sermons preached, the more we will become like Jesus. Of course, the problem with that is that we all know plenty of people who don't witness to anyone, who are not diligent employees, who are critical and uncooperative and who don't appear to have any sense of compassion on people who are outside of Christ and without God. Yet Jesus cared about all of these things. I emphasized last time that disciples would be like Jesus. Ultimately, if we do not end up looking more and more like Jesus, we are not disciples.
So the idea that leaders create disciples by teaching information at the church is at least inadequate. So...who's job is it? Clearly Jesus had in mind the idea that all of his followers would be involved in helping others to become followers of Jesus.
Let me point out one thing in the Great Commission as recorded by Matthew. He quoted Jesus as saying "Go...and make disciples of all nations...teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." Notice he didn't say teaching them to inform...
We are all responsible to teach others to observe (in the sense of emulate) what Jesus said. It doesn't matter whether you feel "called" to it. It doesn't matter whether you feel like you'd be good at it. It doesn't matter if you feel like you have enough Bible knowledge. You are responsible to reach others with the truth about Jesus and to teach them how to follow Him.
This involves a lot of things like building relationships, studying the Bible together, holding each other accountable, serving together in the task of collecting followers of Jesus. But you have to get started because it is your job to do it. Find another person or two (or a small group of people) who have a similar sense that they are to help other people follow Jesus and join together to do these things. But don't just sit there reading and say "yeah...I should probably do that."
Make a list of the people in your life that you have the opportunity to influence. Make another list of people you can band together with to reach the people in your circle of influence and in theirs. Watch God work as you obey together.
For the time being, let's skip the details surrounding his departure and their amazement at the whole thing and focus on His command to them. It's worded in several ways, but basically Jesus said: "You will being going locally, regionally, nationally and worldwide to be witnesses about me. As you do; make disciples."
A simple command. It can really be synthesized to those 2 words...make disciples. I talked last time about what a disciple is. You can go back and read that post here if you want to. The question I want you to ask yourself about discipleship is the title of this post. Who's job is it anyway? Who is responsible to make disciples?
The church has, over the past several decades, fallen into the trap of acting as though discipleship happens when people come to the church campus. The leaders help the rest of us become disciples by teaching us more about the Bible. The more we listen to lessons taught and sermons preached, the more we will become like Jesus. Of course, the problem with that is that we all know plenty of people who don't witness to anyone, who are not diligent employees, who are critical and uncooperative and who don't appear to have any sense of compassion on people who are outside of Christ and without God. Yet Jesus cared about all of these things. I emphasized last time that disciples would be like Jesus. Ultimately, if we do not end up looking more and more like Jesus, we are not disciples.
So the idea that leaders create disciples by teaching information at the church is at least inadequate. So...who's job is it? Clearly Jesus had in mind the idea that all of his followers would be involved in helping others to become followers of Jesus.
Let me point out one thing in the Great Commission as recorded by Matthew. He quoted Jesus as saying "Go...and make disciples of all nations...teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." Notice he didn't say teaching them to inform...
We are all responsible to teach others to observe (in the sense of emulate) what Jesus said. It doesn't matter whether you feel "called" to it. It doesn't matter whether you feel like you'd be good at it. It doesn't matter if you feel like you have enough Bible knowledge. You are responsible to reach others with the truth about Jesus and to teach them how to follow Him.
This involves a lot of things like building relationships, studying the Bible together, holding each other accountable, serving together in the task of collecting followers of Jesus. But you have to get started because it is your job to do it. Find another person or two (or a small group of people) who have a similar sense that they are to help other people follow Jesus and join together to do these things. But don't just sit there reading and say "yeah...I should probably do that."
Make a list of the people in your life that you have the opportunity to influence. Make another list of people you can band together with to reach the people in your circle of influence and in theirs. Watch God work as you obey together.
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