On personal reading of the Bible
For part II of our series on personal disciplines, we must start with reading the Bible. The plain and simple reason is this; there must be objective truth in order for us to find stability and direction in our lives. If we must have objective truth to meet us where we are, then we ought to have the greatest source of objective truth there is: God’s holy and inspired Word. There are many resources that effectively show how the Bible is in fact inspired by God and is perfect in its meaning, so I will leave those arguments up to much wiser men. In short, feel free to reference 2 Timothy 3:16, as it applies directly to our current conversation. So how do you actually go about applying the Bible to your life in a meaningful way? Really the answer is twofold, only one of which we will deal with directly: corporately and individually. When the local church gathers together for the preaching and teaching of the Word, this must include real and personal applications of scripture to its hearers. This kind of Bible intake is deeply important, you must be participating in it to effectively grow safely. There are countless stories of people that have studied the Bible without the church and have strayed into false doctrine which leads to condemnation (see 2 Peter 3.) I do not mean that it is a requirement for salvation, but for sanctification. It is study as an individual here that most concerns us today. Unfortunately, many believers have poor or absent Bible study practices. Do you at least read your Bible by yourself several times a week? If not, let me encourage you here to do so. We have no problem eating several meals a day but we are willing to go days without spiritual nourishment, this leaves us vulnerable to sin and too weak to do what we are called to do spiritually. In reading the scriptures, there are two methods that we need to be aware of, as they both have their purpose. David Mathis details this greatly in his book “Habits of Grace.” Sometimes we need to read over a great distance of the Bible without going too deep, like raking leaves in a yard. Not very deep, but covers a lot. This method of scripture reading helps us to grasp the story of the Bible and to see the redemptive work of God in history. This requires reading chapters and sometime books in one sitting, not just a few verses. The second is just a few verses or even a few words and going to great depth to understand it. This is like digging a well, very deep but not very wide. By practicing both models, we gain a much deeper, richer, and more comprehensive understanding of the Bible. Here are several good practices you can begin to explore in your own study of the scriptures.
The Christmas season is one that has become somewhat muddled in our society. It is widely celebrated without regard to religion and unfortunately has become a talking point of political pundits and office holders. On a more personal level, it becomes an incredibly trying time for many because it simply reminds them of loved ones that have gone on before. While this paints a weary picture of what should be a joyful time of the year, I do want to propose something that ought to shed some light.
For believers, the Christmas holiday is one that should give us great hope. In the first coming of Jesus, we actually see a great signpost for the second coming of Jesus. If you are not savvy to these ideas, the short explanation is that God promised to send a savior to redeem his people from sin. His son Jesus came, taught, lived a real life as a real man, and died a death that has eternal implications. However, is atoning death was only half of the work. Jesus (and by extension Paul and John in the New Testament) taught that Jesus’ death and resurrection from the dead points to our resurrection. Jesus promised numerous times that he will come back for his people, and that teaching alludes to the last days of the Earth. What does Jesus coming back mean? For the believer, it means eternity with God through the resurrection of the Son. For the unbeliever, it means eternal condemnation in Hell. How does one become a believer? Repent and believe in Jesus as the Son of God who has atoned for your sins as the Apostles exhorted people asking that very question. So, with that on the table what does this have to do with personal disciplines or sadness around the holidays? Simply this: we are able to go through seasons of sadness and lament because there is a greater hope for us in the future. How do we hold fast to this hope in a long term, sustaining way? Personal disciplines! By practicing daily praying what you’ve got and digging into the Word of God, we are then sustained on the hope of Jesus and the relationship between God and his people. Think of it in this way; this hope is the sun in the sky. When it is daylight out, we find it easier to see clearly by the light. But when the sun sets and it is dark, we find it quite difficult to see without some kind of aid, such as a flashlight. Imagine if we perpetually had the sun overhead, we would always be able to see! However, we need smaller sources of light for those seasons in our lives when things get dark. Personal disciplines are our flashlight in the darkness, by them we can see through the sin and sadness around us to know where we are going. Reading the Bible and prayer, while are not the fullness of God themselves, they are small portions of God in the darkness. We use them in the hope to enter into the daylight, the same way we read and pray hoping for the last days when we will be resurrected with the Son and made whole in his good works. So grab your Bible, get a notebook, and start studying the word and journaling your prayers. You will be amazed and what the light will show you. This begins a series on personal disciplines, each article following will focus on an individual practice to help us see by the Light of God as we go through dark times. In our church, some of our Sunday school classes (particularly the teens and young adults) have used catechisms in recent years for lesson structure and format, guiding both teachers and students in knowing and learning important theology and how to implement meaningful knowledge of Christ and the scriptures into our daily lives. Unfortunately, many in the church (universal) today either have not heard of the word, think its some kind of catholic thingamajig, or can’t be bothered with it because of preconceived ideas about it. My purpose in this brief article is to help more people understand what it is and how to use it effectively in their own lives. I won’t bore you with too much etymology of the word, but know that it comes from Latin and Greek and generally means to teach orally. Catechisms have been used for hundreds of years by the Church in some form or other, although the commonly used format today was widely popularized by Martin Luther during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. What is that format? It is using a series of questions and answers that are structured systematically in order to teach students through memorization of these questions and answers. The Shorter Westminster Catechism (used by the Church of England) begins with this example. Question: What is the chief end of man? Answer: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever! Use of catechisms have been widespread including Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox. It’s central usage has normally been to train new converts to the faith so that they will know truly what they believe and why. In using a catechism, teachers and parents can instruct students and children on important doctrines and beliefs. To use our example above, a teacher may begin a conversation on the purpose of humanity, the fulfilling joy of knowing God, finding meaning in life, and exploring the relationship between God and man in meaningful ways. Many pastors within the protestant faith have used and written catechisms for parents and heads of households to instruct their children in the faith. This is where a catechism really begins to shine as a tool for discipleship: it enables parents to effectively teach about their faith to their children without needing a seminary degree. Children most desperately need to be discipled in their own homes, as a few hours a week at church is not enough. In fact, those few hours a week with the congregation is not enough for adults either! Discipleship and growth in the Lord must also take place in the home! Whether that be through reading of scriptures together, praying, or even doing a catechism together, discipleship was always intended to be a family activity. Maybe you question your ability to teach on faith in the home, but I will wager that you teach your children effectively how to clean up after themselves, how to be respectful of others, and many other basic human functions. If you are a professing Christian, why is discipleship left so low on the priority list? This is where catechisms become so immensely helpful. In more recent years, the New City Catechism was written by the Gospel Coalitian and Redeemer Presbyterian Church in 2017. It was purposefully written in way to be accessible and functional for modern Christians as a tool for discipleship. Because of this, our church has begun to implement it in meaningful ways as curriculum in order to better understand Scripture and engage collectively with important doctrines. It contains 52 questions and answers for each week of the year, and is broken down into three sections so that the Gospel is on full display. While a catechism mind sound archaic and out of touch, the reality is that New City Catechism has effectively brought an old tool into modern use by faithfully examining scriptures and applying these fundamental teachings of the Christian Faith in a way that even very young children can understand and work with. Better yet, they have even produced a free smart phone app that allows users to go into greater depth with commentary and supporting scripture as we go about our lives. With all that being said, why haven’t we taken advantage of catechism in modern years? I haven't the faintest idea... Has the thought ever occurred to you as to why pastors spend so much time preparing to preach, and why so much of their visible work to the public and church is preaching? I think this is an important question to ask, as it does tend to consume large quantities of time for those in the pastorate. I heard recently at a conference in which a story about Martin Lloyd Jones was told (it may not have been him specifically). The story went that when he was in his 90’s preaching, he came off the stage and a young man who was a fan of Jone’s came up to him and began asking many questions of the preacher. Jones, being exhausted largely ignored the young man until he eventually asked for a moment to rest claiming that, preaching the Word of God is as close a man will ever get to experiencing childbirth. Granted, there is a deal of hyperbole there, but you get the point.
If preaching is so physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting, which I can attest to personally, why do we do it? There is a short answer, but it requires much explanation. Pastors devote so much to preaching because the benefits far outweigh the costs. If you question that, ask why pastors in communist China and Islamic countries where faith is punishable by death why they devote themselves to preaching the word of God. Because the benefits far outweigh the costs. What are those benefits, that are greater than exhaustion, long period of intense study, dedication to a large systematic and intentional framework that reveals itself in scripture, and even death for some? The greatest benefit is that God would be known to his people. Nothing else on this list is necessary at this point, God being known to his people and by his people is enough for preachers and pastors to do the hard work of preaching. Is there anything else as good and joyful as knowing our creator? The one who made us, knows every last detail of us and every thought we have ever had reveals himself to us in his word and pastors get to present and exalt that to his people! This cannot be overstated, that the central purpose and goal of preaching is to reveal God himself through God’s word to God’s people. What a joyful task set before us! Because preaching is about showing God to his people, it also shows us God’s will for his people. How are we to talk, think, act, deal with strife and difficulty? How are God’s people to worship him and represent him in the world? What is our purpose in life? Preaching, when rightly exalting God and revealing God through his word answers all of these questions. That is its secondary purpose, to instruct and build up the people of God by the word of God. It would be foolish on my part to write an article on preaching without a proper working definition. Preaching specifically is carefully drawing out the meaning of God’s word and presenting it to others so that, the preacher can faithfully and honestly say “Thus says the Lord.” If at the end of a sermon, the preacher cannot rightly say “Thus says the Lord” then a sermon was not given. How does one preach this kind of sermon? By handling the text of scripture humbly, faithfully, carefully, and by allowing the text to drive every element of the sermon. It is drawing out the text and presenting the text as it was intended, not imposing our desire or message on the text or using the text as evidence to support our argument. This is called expositional preaching, because exposition is the process of drawing out and exposing the text for its purpose and means, not ours. Now, many people are sitting in churches and hearing preaching on the TV and radio that hardly qualifies as preaching. Many people will see and hear preachers that will open a Bible, read one verse, close the book, and ramble for 45 minutes in a near incoherent manner. While emotionally stirring and exciting, it is not a faithful exposition of the scriptures. There are many who call themselves preachers that do not even open their Bibles to preach and do little to work with scripture. This is hardly revealing God to his people, and is closer to a motivational speech than a sermon. Even still, there are some who call themselves pastors and preachers who butcher and abuse the Bible in their sermons. This is the worst kind of all, those who do not know how to rightly handle and explain the word of God to others and twist it towards their own end. The Bible was inspired and written with specific meaning and purpose, and pastors must submit to that meaning and purpose. Allow me one brief paragraph to recap this. Preaching is faithfully handling the word of God in order to reveal God so that God’s people would know God’s will. Many abuse this, and are worthy of condemnation for their abuse of the scriptures. What should we do with this understanding? Only listen to preachers who exalt God and his scripture in practical and faithful ways! Do not give your attention, time, and money to abusers of the text! If you go to a church that does not cherish the word of God and handles preaching lightly, find one that does. Because a church that takes scripture lazily and carelessly, takes God lightly and his word warns us against such things. Why do pastors preach? Because revealing God to his people in his word is always worth it. What initially drew you to the faith?
This is a question that, I find, is often left unasked when it comes to evangelism. This shortsightedness points to a deeper flaw in our efforts to make new disciples, as we tend to use either distant emotional tools or sweeping theological statements. While these are both useful tools in evangelism, they are not the end-all be-all of evangelistic outreach and they tend to forget that the people being evangelized have no care or relation to them. What initially drew you to the faith? This question should cause us to pause for a moment, and realize several things about our own evangelism. I can almost certainly guarantee you that it was not the presuppositional arguments of a believer, the diversity in unity of the trinity, or the glorious atonement and propitiation of sins that won you over for Christ, albeit not at face value. Statistically, nearly everybody that follows Christ does so because they saw the benefit of belonging to Christ and his community as a better way to live life than how they were already living it. That includes you. Even if you grew up hearing the fire and brimstone sermons and began following Jesus because you feared the punishment from God for sin, you saw that it was better. If you are younger and follow Christ, it is likely that you saw the close knit community of a local church and that attracted you, especially while living in the always connected-not really connected world of social media. It is the benefits of Christianity that almost always are what draw people into the fold initially. It is what drew me, having grown up in the church and living in this culture. In my early college years, as a professing Christian, I lived a life of terrible sin. Without great detail, it is safe to say that I turned down nothing put in front of me. I desired pleasure and satisfaction. Theologically I understand that I desired my own kingdom and not God’s kingdom as the underlying motive of my actions then. But what really drew me into the faith following those sinful times? What was it that caused me to pause and consider the weight of my decisions? It is easy, and right, to say that only those will come to the father that the son has called and the spirit works in. We cannot force salvation and we cannot save others (or even ourselves.) But we must also remember that we live in this material world with sinful people, and something draws us. What about you? What initially drew you to the faith? Was it the richness of friendships that you saw and craved? We as human beings crave and desire meaningful relationships. It drives me to have great depth relationally, despite my own sins that sabotage it. Was it the glory of the father, revealed in his people and his word? It was once said that the Local Church is a small taste of the glory of heaven that is to come. When you saw Christians, did you see something that you could not explain? That you could not understand? What was it that you had to know more about this Jesus and these people that drew you in? While these are hard questions to ask, and necessary questions, I want to caution us about two things. The first is relying to much on experience. Scripture and the Holy Spirit inform our experience, not the other way around. Our lives and experience are subject to the wisdom of God and must submit to Him. The second caution is for us to temper our evangelism by what means we choose. It is a foolish thing to rely on attractional means to draw people in. Jamie Dunlop wrote in great detail on this in his book “Compelling Community” which I highly recommend to you (link at the bottom of the page.) What do I mean by attractional means? These are things that the world can explain and things the world desires. Is your church community defined by the gospel “and”? Is you church explainable by adding something to the gospel? This is far to common in todays evangelical churches. We have millennial churches, cowboy churches, hip churches, bar churches, and many more, yet all of these stereotypical churches are adding to the gospel to draw people in. The problem with this is that the world can explain it. People join not primarily for the Gospel, they join because people there are like them. They get community that is not centered on the gospel alone, but on the gospel and whatever the thing there is. This is an exhortation to the local church; make the gospel alone so central to your community and your culture that nothing else can explain why you are one body of people. This is not an article about the theology of salvation. We can only be saved by Christ, and salvation is a work of the holy spirit, we cannot affect that level of change on somebody (1 Corinthians 3). This is an article about being intentional and purposeful in how we practice evangelism. Use the community of believers that God has planted you in, remember that you too were once drawn in by the compelling relationships and meaningful belonging to the family of God. Know that true evangelism is empowered and consummated by the work of the Spirit. What was it that initially drew you to the faith? Test it by the scriptures, work it out with your community, and use it for the sake of drawing others into the fold. Soli Deo Gloria. https://smile.amazon.com/Compelling-Community-Church-Attractive-9Marks/dp/1433543540/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=compelling+community&qid=1562860269&s=gateway&sr=8-1 Dear graduates,
I am glad you are here! It is a good thing to celebrate achievement in life, especially at such a time as yours. While I am not present with you, I am there with you in spirit. My prayers are always about the coming generation of Christians that God is raising up for the good of His kingdom and His glory. My sincere hope and prayer is that you would grow up in the Lord, that is to become mature in his grace and wisdom just as the Bible teaches us. There is no other way to live life that is as rewarding, joyful, or satisfying in the long term like knowing and loving our Creator. Our life does not end at death, it goes on for eternity. If such is the case, how can we live only for what is now? How can we live in a way that neglects the billions of years for fleeting pleasures now? You currently are at a point in your life many look back on favorably. While high school and those years following can be a great time of joy and growth, I believe we need to take off our rose-colored glasses about this. As people who are grounded in the Word of God, should we not know that the greatest time in our life is yet to come? Many consider the joys and pleasures of this world too highly and the infinite and inexhaustible joys of the next world too little. I remember a story about a sole descendant of a man who lived during the horse and carriage days. When this man passed away, his great fortunes were left to his one living son. This young man was riding along to inherit his new fortune when the wheel fell off his carriage a mile from the city. This young man began to wail and cry out “my carriage is broken, my carriage is broken! How will I ever get my fortunes now?” Would you not run the last mile for great wealth? I say this to exhort you, run the race of endurance by faith. There is great grace for those who trust in Christ for all things, and by it we can run the short mile to the infinite riches of our father! See, heaven is the great fortune our father has for us, Christ in his death makes it possible for us to run, and our remaining days on this earth are the final mile. Run with endurance, with joy that your father wants to be with you and pour out his great wealth upon you. Most of all, know that God loves you enough to pour out all of his wrath on his own son, that you could be with him and know him. The great treasure of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1-3) is that human beings could be in close relationship with our creator. If you do not know this joy I am talking about, please ask someone you can trust about the scriptures and the Gospel. It is a great joy to see more brothers and sisters come into the fellowship of Jesus! May the Lord bless you and keep you. Pastor Morgan A.C. McKinniss Throughout the New Testament in the Bible we see rather plainly that the primary means of growing the church is through individual members doing the work of evangelism and discipleship. This means that each person of the church in the New Testament was doing their part of the ministry in caring for others spiritually and physically, not just pastors and deacons. One of the great travesties of the American church in the 20th and 21st centuries is the failure of the individual mandate to make disciples. In Matthew chapter 28 Jesus plainly directed his followers to go, making disciples and teaching them to obey all that Jesus had taught them, and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This passage, normally referred to as the Great Commission gives all followers of Christ the personal responsibility and individual mandate the be going, making disciples. Consider, Jesus did not look to Peter and say “you make disciples and everyone else can just sort of meet a couple times a month with you.” Jesus plainly said to all of his followers “Go to the ends of the Earth, making disciples.” So this leaves us in the present church with a bit of a conundrum. Sitting where you are now, reading this article, are you able to boldly and confidently say you are making disciples? If I were to wager, I would guess more than half of the people reading this online are not doing the Great Commission as Jesus commanded, and that disheartens me greatly! We, as the blood-bought church of Christ have the greatest motivation to care for others and building each other up, and yet look at us! Many churches today are like the Church in Hebrews, constantly going back and laying the foundation again and again (Hebrews (5:11) when instead they should be moving on from the spiritual milk onto deeper more rewarding things (Hebrews 5:11-14). If then, many in the church today are not doing the work of discipleship, let us ask why that is. Pages could be written about the finer details concerning the why and how of the churches lacking in discipleship, but it is a plain and simple answer.
Mark Dever once said in his book Discipling “The motive for discipling others begins in the love of God and nothing less. He has loved us in Christ, and so we love him. And we do this in part by loving those he has placed around us.” Or, as the Apostle Paul once said, we love because he first loved us. Discipleship is simple. Dwell on the Love God has for you and the grace he has poured out for you and allow that to naturally spur you on towards loving others. Discipleship is often doing what you normally do (not including sin), taking someone along with you, and having meaningful conversations with them about Jesus. How do you make disciples?
This is a question that seems to be at the forefront of my mind and those in small churches all across America. How do we make disciples? The scripture that has continued to come up in response to this question is the agricultural parables Jesus regularly spoke of. I think particularly of Matthew 13 and the parable of the sower and the parable of the weeds. There is a great reason Jesus used the metaphor of farming. Yes, it was a great way to communicate to his listeners with something relevant to them. Imagine if he tried to explain something using automobiles or airplanes! On a deeper level, I think there is a greater theological truth in these farming parables of Jesus’. While the parable of the sower illustrates that not all seeds will grow to maturity and bear fruit, the greater implication is that the sower is not the one bringing the growth. He plants the seeds, cares for the field and weeds the crops as a good farmer does, but the very one thing he cannot do is forcibly cause the plants to grow and bear fruit. Someone else must do that. Remember what Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit said in 1 Corinthians 3. In dealing with divisions in the church and some following different pastors, he gives us the key to proper growth in discipleship. “What then is Apollos? What then is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” This gives such great hope for the work of evangelism and discipleship! It takes the burden of results and puts it squarely in God’s hands and frees us to joyfully sow seeds and water the garden! In keeping with the farming metaphor, sowing seeds as Paul did and we do; we share the good news of salvation through Christ. We spread the message of hope to a dying world that we may be faithful laborers in God’s kingdom. In watering, we help other disciples grow to maturity that they will bear fruit and multiply! Is this not the goal of the church, that we would sow seeds, care for plants that are growing, and help bring in the harvest? In some of his final words before his ascension to heaven, Jesus gave his followers a single task: go making disciples. In doing that, we share the Gospel (sowing seeds) and we foster young believers into spiritual maturity (water the plants). I will finish with one final thought. As people who are in union with Christ Jesus, who are saved by grace through faith, it is our obligation and responsibility to go sharing the Gospel and helping each other grow. Evidence of this is throughout the entire New Testament, in fact there are entire letters about it! But it is not our responsibility to bring the growth. Christ came and shed his own blood to redeem sinful people to himself, and he will not fail in saving a people for himself for eternity. Therefore, let us go joyfully knowing that God will save and we will share in this great treasure set before us. What does a shepherd do? At the most basic, fundamental level a shepherd's job is to protect the flock; to look after the various sheep under his care, to provide proper food and water, shelter during bad weather, and to defend against predators that would kill the sheep.
What do the sheep do? At the most basic, fundamental level the sheep are supposed to obey the shepherd, stay together, eat the green grass the shepherd provides and drink the good water that he leads them to, and trust him for protection. Throughout the Bible Jesus and others use this metaphor to describe God's chosen people: both Israel in the Old Testament and the Church in the New. However, because of sin in the world and in our hearts and the inherent problems with metaphors we often misunderstand what this actually looks like for the local church today. Here is where metaphors always break down; they are intended to communicate a specific aspect or characteristic of something, but cannot and do not perfectly portray the object that it is representing. We see this most clearly with the trinity, that God is three persons and yet one being. There is no metaphor that rightly captures this and represents such a unique concept without leading to some kind of wrong belief. Our shepherd metaphor is meant to communicate the total dependency we as sheep have on the shepherd. You don't eat grass and drink from wild streams, but as a Christian you are utterly and totally dependent on God for protection, provision, and the nurturing relationship that he offers. The other major aspect of this that we often lose sight of is the nature of the New Testament Church. At the very head of our faith is Jesus: the true shepherd. We are all dependent on him for everything we need: both material and spiritual. Within the universal church there are also many local churches that, while still completely and utterly dependent on Jesus, have been given an undershepherd. It is this undershepherd that is often given too much or too little responsibility by their congregations. This is how the metaphor breaks down. Our local pastors (undershepherds) are both sheep and shepherd. Pastors are called to emulate the work of Christ as shepherd in the local congregation but are also sheep to the true shepherd. They are both called to shepherd others and point them to Christ, but are also deeply in need of being shepherded. What is the big deal here? Some local churches pour the responsibility of the local church onto their pastor, often because "that's what he is paid for." Other local churches treat the pastor like he is just an employee and should only preach once or twice a week and keep his thoughts to himself. Both extremes are bad, and unfortunately all too common. This total dependency is often neglected in a serious way. Imagine if a sheep only spent time with the shepherd once or twice a week. They would be killed in the wild or starve to death! Yet many believers neglect this and spend only a few hours a week (if that) with Christ. As a young pastor myself, the struggles of emulating Christ are hard enough as a believer. But to do so and lead others in that as well? It is impossible for me to do. I must, and often find great evidences of this, rely utterly and totally on the Spirit of God to do the good work he has promised to do. Many times the sermons that I think are the worst, God used in a mighty and effective way in our church. Conversely, the sermons I felt were "home-runs" came back with little spiritual fruit. One of the great failures of the modern American church is a lack of multiple pastors in the local body of believers. This has contributed to many of the other problems we see in our churches for several reasons. With several pastors in a local body, they are able to pastor each other much more effectively; this in turn better enables them to do the work of ministry. With several pastors, there are more laborers to tend the flock. Remember what Jesus told the disciples in Matthew 9 "The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest to send more laborers." This is true both of the local and universal church, however I believe it applies particularly to the local church. Why? The metaphor is talking about one field. When you have many workers in one field, the harvest increases. Each local church is planted in a particular field and God has established laborers. You may be wondering where in the Bible we see evidence for multiple pastors, the problem is the evidence is too extensive to list here. It is a common theme throughout the entire book. From the Old Testament we see multiple leaders over God's chosen people. In the New we see many instances of Paul establishing multiple pastors in the churches he planted. Jesus himself taught for local churches to have many pastors to care for the flock. Why does any of this matter? In short: we all, as those who are in Christ Jesus, are completely and totally dependent on something outside of ourselves to make disciples (Matthew 28:16-20). We are dependent on the spirit for sanctification, for the knowledge of how to live as Christians, on how to love our neighbors rightly, and how to deal with sin personally and collectively. So what should you do? First, you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Right biblical living always follows a love for the Lord. Second, pray for your pastor. He bears a burden for you that you may not know. If he is a faithful pastor, he cares deeply for you, but he is still a sheep in many ways; struggling with sin and in desperate need of the true shepherd himself. Third, acknowledge your own personal responsibility to the local church and depend entirely and completely on the true Shepherd for all that you need and to continue sanctifying you. Last, come alongside your pastor in a spirit of holy cooperation for the sake of the Kingdom. When both pastor and congregation are working in step to see disciples made, God does amazing things and the church will be better for it. If you are a pastor, I implore you to have another pastor you can rely on for honest discipleship. Find someone local to pour into you and find another local pastor you can invest in as well. Whether you are a pastor or not, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send more laborers into the field. As a pastor, that very question has been on my heart and mind a lot lately. How do we grow as a church? Before we can answer that, and before I was able to come to something that resembled a conclusion, we must first define how we measure growth and what we deem acceptable growth. As a church that once was fairly large for our location and demographic and was more recently one of the smallest churches but with some signs of growth currently, the question has been asked many times: how do we grow as a church? In his book "The Kingdom Focused Church" Gene Mims identifies four faithful measures of church growth. Numerical growth: God's increase in the local church of attendance, membership, and baptisms. Spiritual transformation: God's work of changing unbelievers into believers, and continuing to change them so they are more like Christ. Ministry Expansion: This occurs when believers are transformed spiritually and pursue new ministry opportunities by the power of the Holy Spirit. Kingdom advance: God's constant work of expanding His kingdom through the local church as one person at a time around the world is reached for Christ. There are hundreds of churches in the modern age that are growing numerically, but exhibit no measurable growth in any other area. This begs the question, why are they growing in number but not in spiritual maturity? Why are there no new ministries taking place? Why do we not see the kingdom advancing in their community or globally? When it comes to church growth; true, deep, long lasting church growth, we must see all of these taking place. How does the Bible present this? In his great commission (Matthew 28:16-20) Jesus commands his disciples to go out to all of the nations making disciples. What does that look like? It means we go out with the message of hope and salvation in Jesus. As we do so, unbelievers come to know the truth and follow Christ. As that happens, they are sanctified by the Holy Spirit and grow into spiritual maturity, and in turn begin discipling others themselves. This process manifests itself in a growing number of believers, it manifests itself in believers growing closer to the Lord, it manifests itself in new ministries that strive to share the gospel through good works, it manifests itself in purposeful and intentional mission trips to take the Kingdom of God further. So when we ask ourselves, how can we grow our church? We must answer with the assurance of God to faithfully complete his work to center ourselves on making disciples and growing in spiritual maturity. If you have been at Good News lately, you have likely heard me use this phrase that so aptly applies. Maturation, then multiplication. |
Pastor MorganMorgan has been writing since middle school and worked for a year writing professionally as a news journalist for the Daily Tribune in Gallipolis. This blog is a chance for him to express his love for the Lord and all church related things through writing. Archives
December 2019
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