Who's making Disciples?!

I've heard pastors and other leaders say that America is full of people who've been Christians for years, but are still infants in their Biblical knowledge and relationship with God.  How can this be?  Lately I've been thinking a lot about the lack of purposeful discipleship in the Church.  And that we think people will just grow in their spiritual journey with God just by hearing sermons Sunday mornings.  

Never in my life can I recall a church I've been a part of being purposeful about discipleship. This spring, a good friend and ministry leader "randomly" gave me a copy of a book called Multiply that's basically a discipleship playbook, and it's really got me going on the idea that every time someone at church becomes a new believer they must immediately be connected to a more mature Christian who can walk them through a discipleship program.  Then I was talking to another friend the other day and the topic of discipleship came up.  So the next  morning I was walking to work telling God about how discipleship seems to keep coming up lately and that it seems to be something He's reminding us about right now (in Winona, and maybe others nationwide, since He tends to do that).  Then I realized that this isn't new!  This is what He told me 9 years ago when He brought me to Winona.  "Track & Field may be what brought you to Winona, but it's not WHY you're here."  I've always known that my mandate here was for discipleship.  It's time to take it up a notch.  Praise God for a greater plan!

"I'm not getting fed"

The Christian life-cycle is like the human life-cycle.  When we are infants we need to have our food fed to us, we need our diapers changed and we can't do much of anything for ourselves; except fill our diapers and cry.  We are continually learning.  In the Christian life, baby Christians don't know much, other than that they're seeking to follow Christ.  They need to be "fed" and be learning continually.

As we move through childhood we can handle more types of food, feed ourselves the food that is prepared for us, and we continue to learn and do more and more things for ourselves.  In Christian adolescence we begin to learn to do things as we follow Christ.  We can serve people and evangelize, but have much to learn of God's Word, how to study it and hear His voice.

As we move through life we learn to do more and more for ourselves as we continue to be taught.  At some point in our lives (though we never stop learning) we reach a tipping point where we cease being professional learners and we start doing what we've learned.  We no longer need to be taken care of.  We get a job and move out of our parents' house.  We start to fend for ourselves and take care of others.  We eventually become the teacher, then leader and eventually an elder statesman.  The Christian life is the same.  We should become self-sufficient in our faith; able to feed and fend for ourselves.  Know the Word and how to study it for ourselves.  Know how to hear Him speaking to us and rely on Him to do so.  We continue to learn and live life with others, always helping one another, but we become able to provide for others like a father provides for his wife and family; teaching his children and guiding his household.

You may be a 55 year old man getting to know Jesus for the first time, and if that's you,  you NEED to be fed.  Be discipled.  Learn to study the Word for yourself.  However, if you've been a "follower of Christ" for many years or decades, I hope you are not relying on your pastor and local church to feed you.

It bothers me that we, as "mature Christians" will leave our church or complain about our pastors because we're "not being fed."  FEED YOURSELF!  Serve the church, don't drain it!  The church is not a restaurant, it's a fitness center.  You don't go there to get fed, you go there to PARTICIPATE!  Disciple others.  Serve.  Study and apply the scripture!  Follow Jesus!  I'll admit to you right now that I need to get better at studying (not just reading) the Word and I want to do a better job of hearing His voice.  I commit to you today to seek Him and follow through on this so I can be a better disciple-maker and be transformed daily into the likeness of Christ.  Will you?

Crawl through the mud like a...butterfly?

I just started reading Francis Chan's book Forgotten God, about the Holy Spirit.  At the end of chapter one he talks about how crazy it must be for a caterpillar.  "For all its caterpillar life, it crawls around a small patch of dirt and up and down a few plants.  Then one day it takes a nap.  A long nap.  And then, what in the world must go through its head when it wakes up to discover it can fly?"  What he does is relates that extraordinary change to the change a person goes through when they are born-again of the Holy Spirit.  That before we begin to follow Christ we are just crawling around in the mud (our sin), but then after our rebirth we can FLY (live empowered by the Spirit of God)!  What occurred to me next I may have heard Chan or someone else say before, or maybe it's my own little gem of an idea that God downloaded to me, but what if the caterpillar just continued to crawl through the mud and never flew?  What if all his other caterpillar friends still didn't have wings and so he just kept doing what he knew and what he saw his friends do instead of what he was made to do?  Do you see where I'm going with this?  Do we, Christians, continue to crawl through the mud because it's what we know or because it's what we see other people doing instead of accepting what the Holy Spirit has transformed us into?  Do we fail to do what the Holy Spirit enables us to do with our new life?  What if we look to the Holy Spirit and to God's Word and began to fly!?  What then Church!?  What then!?

Too Blessed

After reading Genesis 36:7 I thought it was interesting that Jacob and Esau were so blessed that they weren't able to live near each other because they had accumulated too many possessions and the land could not sustain both Jacob's and Esau's livestock in the same location.  They we so blessed that they couldn't receive another blessing; living near family.  If they were poor they would have been able to live near each other and may have even been forced to share a home, but would have had the blessing of living the end of their lives together.

I think that sounds a lot like the United States and other wealthy nations; we're so blessed that we miss out on other blessings.  We're so wealthy that we can buy or borrow anything and everything we need instead of waking up each day wondering if there will be food on the table or a place to sleep.

Consider a Stick

Consider a stick.  A stick, by itself, is not very useful.  However, a stick on fire (a torch) is something else.  It becomes light when you can't see through the darkness.  It's heat is comfort when you're cold.  It can cook food to nourish you.  It can purify the water you drink.  It can also be used to set other sticks on fire.

I am a stick.  

God's Word is fire.

Unity

Unity, with God or with people, comes through shared struggle. You don't get close to someone by saying "I need to get close to you." It takes action; shared struggle. Hanging out is good, but no amount of hanging out brings the closeness that comes from working together.

When I say struggle, I don't mean that it has to be painful. I think we all know that when we have pain or hurt or difficulty in life it causes us to get closer to God. But, it's not just those negative things that I mean. I'm defining struggle like labor. I think of the people with whom I'm the closest and it's those with whom I've labored/struggled; those I've served alongside in ministry; worship teams, missions teams, leadership teams, sports teams.

1 John 2:6 says, "Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did." Jesus walked with the Father. Jesus labored and struggled for the Kingdom with His friends and disciples.

Dreaming

I just read my last post and it occurred to me that maybe the phrase "American Dream" doesn't mean a hope of great things and a great life that we have, but we'll awaken someday to realize it was indeed just a dream.

On the American Dream

I think that the hardest part about living in the "American Dream" and being a Christian is being willing to give it all up. I think of the apostle Paul and the life he must have lived before he met Christ. It would seem that he was living a sort of American Dream. He must have had wealth to go along with his power and he gave it all up to be a traveling missionary who was routinely beaten and jailed for the way he lived his life.

Now that God has so richly blessed my life, my prayer is that I (and my family) would be willing to give it all up at the drop of a hat to follow Jesus into any circumstance he would lead us.

Get back

I feel like I need to get back to something that's been missing. I'm done with books about God, I just want the Word. And I'm tired of playing quietly on Sunday mornings to three songs that have been precisely prepared, I just want to bang on the drums really loud and worship with my friends to lots of songs that might not go the way we planned with people that might jump up and down, raise their hands in the air, shed some tears, and sing louder than I'm drumming!

"I just can't get past the judgmentalism"

I had a friend email me this:

I've been thinking about starting to go to church again :). And throughout the thought process, I've been thinking a lot about the reasons I stopped. One of the biggest reasons/things that turned me off to it was that I feel like a lot of Christians that I know are very, and openly, judgemental about things people do, even though they may do some things that would not be right in the eyes of God themselves.

And that provoked a though...I was raised to believe that no one has the right to pass judgement except for God. And if God is so quick to forgive those who are truly sorry for their sins, how can people (I guess Christians in this case) be so quick to pass judgement?

Here was my response...for what it's worth.

I think you are right. Many (even most) Christians do tend to see the faults in others instead of graciously finding the good in them. I'm sure I'm guilty of this more often than I'd like to admit. That's a big problem in the American Church. I saw a study that 9 out of 10 young people view Christians as judgmental.

I think it's important to separate out what Chrisitans do and who Christ is. Christianity is a religion full of sinful people in need of God's grace and mercy. Just becuase Chrisitans sin (and are judmental) does not make what they believe wrong. It just means they (we) are in need of forgiveness.

I think that a lot of American Christians base their faith off of what they were taught growing up instead of on their own experience hearing from God through reading His Word and prayer. I'd encourage you, as you think through this for yourself, to take a week or two and thoughtfully read through the book of Matthew. Pay specific attention to what Jesus says and does.

On the other side of the coin, I will say, though, that as much as Jesus talks about not judging others, He does say that we are to hold other Christians accountable for their sake (not for our own). If a "brother" sins against you, the bible says in Matthew 18, that you are to go to him and show him his fault. Also, James 5:20 specifically talks about turning a sinner from the error of his way.

I read in a book about how people view Christians that "If Christians won't point out God's standard; who will?" It may not be popular to talk about God's standards, but if someone doesn't know they're sinning, how are they to ask forgiveness? The key is to "speak the truth in love."

Walking

I have a dog named Rigley. When I take him for walks he pulls so hard at his leash it's like he's trying to pull a car out of a ditch or win the Iditarod all by himself. It's hardly a case of a man and his dog going for a walk. It's more like the dog trying to drag his master where he wants to go, when a walk around the block alongside his master would be fun and healthy for both of them.

When I say that I'm "walking with God" I think that my relationship with God might be like my dog's relationship with me. God's trying to go for a walk with me and I like to claim that I am walking with him, but in reality I'm tugging as hard as I can in whatever direction I want to go; not walking alongside God in the direction He's going. All God wants is for me to walk with Him through life. Not go wherever I want to go with Him in-tow claiming to be walking with Him.

Eventually Rigley and I make it around the block, but it sure isn't enjoyable. In the end, God is sovereign, and He accomplishes his purpose, but how much better would it be if I walked alongside Him instead of trying to take him where I want to go?

It's so good

I don't really have anything profound to say. I'm just posting to say that I've been reading the Old Testament lately and it's so good. I don't just mean that it's interesting; I mean that it's so good to be reading it. Normally when I try to read through the OT I'll start at the beginning and really enjoy Genesis and Exodus, but I get bogged down in Leviticus (and/or Numbers) and just quit reading. So this time I just skipped over them and started in Deuteronomy. Then I kept going and have since finished Joshua and Judges and it is really good.

It's just really neat learning more about who God is and what He's done. I'm amazed at how often His people turned away from Him...and He kept giving them another chance. I'm amazed at how much war and killing went on. I'm surprised I've never heard anyone talk about the military power-house Israel was under Joshua's leadership, and how many nations and kings they completely eliminated.

Anyway, just some thoughts. But I have to end with one of my favorite lines in the whole bible that gives me chills/goose bumps everytime I think about it:

Joshua 5:13-15 - "Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?" "Neither," he replied, "but as comander of the army of the LORD i have now come."

If you want to know why I think that's so cool you can read my earlier post from April 11, 2007.

Death

It's an odd sensation when a Christian friend dies...First there's disbelief and shock. Then sadness for the surviving family, but then an odd excitement knowing that she's with Jesus right now...

How big?

I was thinking about the universe and how big it is. I'm told there are over 350,000,000,000 galaxies...if there are that many galaxies I can't imagine how many stars there are or how much space there is between them. So the thought occurs to me that there are only two possibilities when it comes to how big the universe is and both are beyond my comprehension. Either it goes on forever, or it ends somewhere. How can there be no end to something? But if it ends somewhere, what's on the other side of the end of the universe? Something else, I guess. But what would that be, and how far does that go!

My friend the future Catholic Priest

I had lunch today with a buddy that I've had the privilege of knowing and ministering with over the past handful of years. It was a very encouraging conversation. He is a solid, solid Christian brother who, despite leading worship and being heavily involved with us at an Evangelical Free Church, continued to attend a Catholic Mass throughout the time I've known him. He had previously been planning on pursuing a post graduate degree and would have done very well for himself had he done so, but felt an obvious call on his life elsewhere. He knew that God was leading him into ministry. Seminary, more specifically. And Catholic Seminary in particular. I have to admit, my encounters with Catholicism have left me less than impressed and have left a sour taste on my tongue. But I know my friend's heart and we had some great discussion on his calling and what that will look like going forward along with some good discussion that helped me dispel some of the bad perceptions I have of Catholic Theology and the Catholic Church in general. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but I guess what I want to say is that I feel very, very good knowing that a man of such solid faith in Christ is going to be moving towards a position of ministry within the Catholic Church and I look forward to seeing how God uses him!

Time

It occurs to me now and then the significance of small incriments of time. In my job (a track and field coach) the smallest increment of time can make the difference between taking a trip to Houston, TX for a week, or spending the week at home in your normal routine. Literally one hundreth of a second (probably less than the length of time it takes to snap your fingers) is what kept my freshman sprinter home from nationals. Had she been that much faster on one given day she would have been in the national meet and had that great experience as a memory. Instead she stayed in Winona and life went on. We agonize over that next hundreth of a second.

On the flip side of that, how many hundreths of a second (let alone minutes or hours) go by without any consiquence? My cursor just blinked 10 or 15 times while I decided what to type next and that didn't change the course of anything in my life other than missing 10 extra seconds of sleep tonight. Those same ten seconds would be the difference between a halfmiler getting a full scholarship to almost any big time school she wanted and getting no money at all...and again, those same ten seconds could be the difference between a disasterous car accident and missing the accident altogether. The ten minutes it's taking me to type this is ten more minutes I could have spent on the phone with my wife tonight...It's amazing how one blink of an eye can change the course of your life while a full minute (or hour) can pass without any consiquence...

Much to say?

I've noticed that when I'm not really living life I don't have much to say here, but when I'm actively pursuing Christ He gives me so much more life to live and to talk about. I'm realizing that I've learned to have a relationship with Him (and just me), but need to learn how to foster a family relationship with me, Ashley, Skyler, and God all together...Married men and fathers, what are some ways you walk with Christ and pursue Him with your family?

Just Wondering...

I was reading 2 Corinthians this morning and wondering what Paul means when he says, "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven" (v12:2)? This is an issue that is not central to my faith, but I wonder what the third heaven is.

Also, on other occassions Paul talks about boasting as something he will only do regarding Christ. I've never heard a sermon on the reason for his boasting in this passage. He gives his reasoning, and it makes sense to me, but I've never heard anyone speak about this. I'd be interested to hear someone smarter than me speak on this passage (2 Cor 11 and 12).

Just some thoughts...

Obedience and Blessings

So I'm married now, and I have a five year-old step son. Last night we bought him a toy without telling him and since it was late when we got home we decided to give it to him the next morning. I decided to put it in the cupboard next to the cereal. I thought it would be fun for him to see it when he opens the door to have breakfast and he'd be all excited. Instead we woke up to him bringing us breakfast in bed...one waffle each. Very cute. So anyways, we decided we'd tell him to go see if we had any Cheerios left. Now at this point he could have decided to have an attitude and ask why he had to go, or be crabby and just disobey altogether. Had he done that he would have went about his day just fine, never knowing that something special had awaited him had he obeyed. I bet you see where this is going...I think we are all like that. If we choose to obey God he may have a blessing in store for us that we never would have guessed would be the consequence of obedience. If we choose to disobey, however, (best case senario) we'll go on our way, maybe just fine, without ever knowing the blessing we missed out on.

Never guessed what this ad was for..

This is just a great commercial that I had to share...