Go And Make Disciples

This past Sunday was a wonderful experience! We celebrated Christ through a time of worship, worked through Romans 6:20-23 and witnessed 4 baptisms! I was exhausted at the end of the day, but it was a good exhaustion. As I have reflected over those events I am reminded that as a church we are in the business of making disciples.

Churches frequently count the number of “salvations” as an indicator of whether they are successful. It is not a bad thing to measure how many salvations are happening, but that measurement in limited. We keep count of baptisms and professions of faith and celebrate God’s grace upon our church. That is part of our story and one that we should share with gratitude. As I consider the direction of our church I realize a more helpful measurement of the health and vitality within our church centers around the question “how many people are we actively discipling?” Over the past 12 months, how many of the people who came forward to “invite Jesus into their heart” are now living as committed disciples? Do we have an intentional plan to help move people through that process?

Dallas Willard has suggested that there are two questions that all churches should answer: first, “Do we have a plan for making disciples?” and, “Is it working?” Now, you may be reading this and thinking, “that’s the job of the pastors, right?” It’s a fair comment… but that question reveals a false dichotomy between professional clergy and members of the congregation. I’d like to propose that it is the job of every believer to be a disciple of Jesus, and therefore the task of a disciple is to make disciples. We will look a bit more at what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in the next few weeks. For now, I simply want to leave you with this question: How are you helping advance the Kingdom through the process of discipleship?

Pastor Billy