A few things have been going through my mind today. It isn't because the 28th of February has any particular meaning, but since I decided not to rewrite an entry in the reading notes, I went into a kind of withdrawal. It was a good day off, and Laura and I went out to a low calorie lunch and did some running around. Yet fourteen months of writing, nearly every day, makes a deep impression. I had to tell myself it was OK not to sit down at the computer and write something.
But actually I've had the entire disciple-making strategy rolling though my mind for the past month. I think the Lord has been encouraging me to think through and re-express what this all means to me. One of these days the Lord will show us where He wants us to serve Him in a church. The view of the church the Lord has given me isn't like a "wish" I have. It is more like a journey to a specific place, an irresistible destination. My internal GPS is always pointing there and saying "recalculating" if I go in any other direction. It is important that any church that hires me knows that the Lord is leading me in a specific direction, so we can go there together, working in the harvest, making disciples who make disciples.
The Lord left us here for mission, to follow Him as disciples in the harvest, making disciples who make disciples. This is the irreducible minimum for every believer in very country on earth. It is the only thing that gives full meaning to our lives here. Our following is what gives fulfillment to the Word and the Spirit and everything said about the church. To minimize mission, that is, the mandate to live as disciples in the harvest, is to turn the Word into a book of ethereal sayings and mottoes for the Christian life. Believers become confused about the truth and reality of the "sayings" in the Bible, because they don't seem to connect with life. What does "love one another" mean? To understand that as Jesus meant it, you have to follow Him and get dirty in the harvest. That's where everything makes sense and finds its context.
So, the local church is a group of harvesters, working together in a location in the harvest. We meet together to strengthen each other. Things need sharpening. People need encouragement. We unite together and remember who our Lord is and why He left us here. We are bound together by His love and life. We work together; we follow together to bear much fruit, thus glorifying the Father and so proving that we are His disciples.
All of our worship of our Lord and our service to one another revolves around our salvation and His commission. We love Him and follow Him. This is what makes our unity and work together of another caliber.
What is communicated to the congregation is the life of Christ and the Word. The challenge to abide in Christ and to follow Him is held high. The Word is our source and the most basic food for every disciple of Christ. Those who follow are visible by their lives in the Word and their desire to reach their neighbors.
Home groups, in my thinking, are groups always working to the end of the church. They work together on an outreach task of the church. They encourage one another to be disciples in the harvest, reading the Word, living for Christ in the world. They support one another, pray for one another, and they work together.
The core of the church is its servants, its disciples, who serve the group. This is the ever expanding core of disciples meeting in groups of 3-4 who are in the Word, reading the One Year Bible daily, encouraging one another to reach out to their neighbors and who are looking for others to invite into these groups.
This begins with the pastors, elders and deacons who meet weekly, reading the Word, reaching out to their neighbors and making disciples in the congregation. As they take on their own groups of disciples, they support those serving in ministries in the church, making them disciples who will make disciples. In this process those who they disciple will find others and invite them into groups where they too become disciples making disciples.
The reading notes are for all, but particularly for the leaders of these groups of 3 and 4. My hope is that by reading them, the leaders become excited and are able to show the disciples in their groups that the Word is amazing, Christ's love is beyond measure, and that we are to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples. It is our life and our fulfillment in Christ.
This morning I was memorizing a portion of Scripture that has always gripped my heart. Luke 17:5-10 says,
The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" And the Lord said, "If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, `Be rooted up, and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.
"Will any one of you, who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep, say to him when he has come in from the field, `Come at once and recline at table'? Will he not rather say to him, `Prepare supper for me, and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink; and afterward you will eat and drink'? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, `We are unworthy servants; and have only done what was our duty.'"
This section actually begins with the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. This is the focus of all Jesus is saying. Basically for the disciple it means two things. First, faith is so alarmingly simple that it could perform miracles if we were not so retarded by sin and the complexity we allow into our lives and thinking. Second, our labor here is for following, not for reward. He is our reward. On this earth we realize that we are here to work. We have a duty. We have been so anointed in love that we have no need to "do" to receive. We simply do. We follow. We are so filled by the love of Christ and engaged in the harvest that nothing else can interest us. Our eyes are open to Him. We serve others because that is what we do in Christ. We are not doing this to receive a reward. In this following, our lives become so simple that that little mustard seed becomes great.
This is why I'm writing these reading notes and why I'm dedicated in our Lord to see His church reach the lost in this dark harvest, making disciples who make disciples. What wonderful love and what an amazing Savior.
Romans 16:25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages 26 but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith -- 27 to the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.
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