On Mission Together - Discipleship is a Journey

On Mission Together: Discipleship is a Journey

Pastor Allen Snapp

Eph. 4:11-16

Last month when we were at Youth Camp, I needed to find a Starbucks to get some work done so on the first day I typed Starbucks into my iPhone maps and Siri began to lead me to it. At one point Siri had me get on a turnpike and then she said something like… “in 3.2 miles you will need to park your car and walk to your destination.” OK, I figured maybe Starbucks was right off the turnpike and there’d be a parking lot right there. But when I went the 3.2 miles, I’m on a turnpike with no turn-off, no parking lot, no nothing, and Siri again instructed me to park my car and walk to my destination. 

I didn’t feel comfortable pulling over onto the shoulder, putting my flashers on, and just walking off in search of a Starbucks so I pulled off the next exit and tried Siri again…and this time she told me Starbucks was a mere 1.1 miles away, but when I got there, it was a country road with nothing but fields and hedges. I never did find a SB in that area. But I did learn an important lesson: it’s not enough to just be going somewhere; we need to know that where we’re going is where we actually want to go! 

Discipleship is a journey

Discipleship is a journey. When Jesus calls us to follow him, it’s a call to go somewhere. The question is, where? Where does the Lord want to take us? The church is meant to be a place where believers help one another in that journey – that’s what it means to “make disciples” - but for us to help one another in that journey we need to have an idea of where we’re going and a clear path for how to get there. It’s not enough to be going somewhere, we need to know that we’re going where the Lord wants us to go.

So, where are we going? Paul tells us in Eph. 4:13 that the destination that we are meant to be moving towards is spiritual maturity. All the ministry that Paul talks about in verses 11-12 are to build up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children…

Maturity is the destination, spiritual maturity is where God wants to take us. As disciples of Christ we are meant to be growing up, so that we are no longer children. The church is meant to be a place where we help one another grow in maturity. We’ve been in a series entitled On Mission Together and the mission that we are on together – the work that the Lord has given us to do, could be boiled down to helping one another and others move towards spiritual maturity. That’s what discipleship is. Discipleship is a journey towards spiritual maturity. 

Vision in a church is more than saying, “this is where we’re going.” Vision is saying, “this is where we want to go – where the Lord wants us to go – and by God’s grace, we can get there together.” And then laying out a path to get there. And that’s what I want to do this morning: share an overview, a visual path, of where I believe God has us going and some thoughts about how we as a church will get there. None of it is new to us, but I think the clearer we see the destination and the path towards that destination the more effectively we can encourage one another and others to move towards it. 

Movement is a part of life. When our blood stops moving, we die. If we stop moving, our muscles beginto die, and blood clots form, and all kinds of bad things happen. Movement is also an important part of spiritual health. God never meant for us to stay in one place. If we aren’t growing in Christ than bad things will happen. We won’t stay in the same place – life is always moving in one direction or another – we will lose spiritual ground.  Growing older isn’t the same as growing more mature. We need to make spiritual maturity our goal and then work towards it. And we need each other. We’re on mission together.

To help visualize a simple and clear path towards maturity I am borrowing the concept of a baseball diamond from Rick Warren. I think it illustrates both the progressive nature of maturing, and also the cyclical nature – we never arrive. So the first step – or first base – in the disciple’s journey is what I’ll call…

1. Growing in membership

By membership I don’t necessarily mean people becoming official members of GCC or some other church, although I do believe that’s a good step to take.  But when I say membership, I’m talking about the biblical truth that says when a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ, they are joined to his church and become members of his church. 

4For as in one body we have many members,^e and the members do not all have the same function, 5so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Rom. 12:4-5

[12] For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:12

In other words, at GCC we want to be about people getting saved and the body of Christ growing as new members are added to the church! This is what we see in the book of Acts – as people came to saving faith in Jesus, it says they were “added” or joined to the church. This isn’t talking about a religious formality, it’s talking about a spiritual reality as they came to a living faith in Christ.

The church in America is in decline. Only about 20% of our population attends church and at the present rate by 2050 only 11% of the population will attend a church. These aren’t just statistics, these represent real people that have written off the church as having nothing to do with their lives. It is the opposite of the book of Acts where the church was increasing, not through formal programs or by some PR campaign, but because God was moving powerfully to draw people to Jesus Christ. Numbers are important in the book of Acts and they should be important to us as well, because numbers represent people and people are important to God. For that reason, numbers are something we as a church pray for, and work for.

• Let’s be even more fervent in praying unsaved people come to Christ. Someone may say, “yeah, but we’ve been praying for that for ten years and haven’t seen large numbers of salvations.” I would say, you’re right, but we also prayed for a building for all those years, and I’m glad we didn’t give up on that prayer. Our faith that God answers prayer should be greatly encouraged by His provision of this building!!
• Also something we should work for: work by witnessing to the unbelievers that God brings into our lives. Work by building bridges of relationship with the people around us, and being ready in season and out of season to share the gospel. 
• Work by regularly presenting the gospel in a clear and relatable way in our services. For the next couple months we are going to be in a series entitled At the Corner of Life and God. The reason so many have no interest in church is because they don’t think that God is relevant to their real lives. So my hope is that we can connect the issues people deal with in life with God and Jesus and make the case that Jesus is very relevant to their lives. 
• But the most important thing is to pray because only God’s power can bring someone who is dead in his or her sins to life. Our next prayer meeting will be Thursday, Sept 25^th, and we will be praying for God’s power to be poured out to save many souls. Put that date on your calendar, let’s be a church that prays together for God’s power and grace. 

           2.  Growing in maturity

When someone comes to Christ, they are a spiritual babe and need to grow in maturity. That’s the process that Paul describes going on in the church – so that we are no longer spiritual children vulnerable to get tossed to and fro by waves and every new wind of doctrine and human cleverness and deceitful schemes. 

Young children are vulnerable to evil people enticing them to get into their car by offering them candy. Wicked people are taking advantage of a child’s naiveté and innocence, as well as their appetite for candy, for their own evil ends. It only works on children. If a car pulled up to me and some guy told me he’d give me a chocolate bar if I got in the car, I’d be tempted to punch the guy but I would not be tempted to get in the car. Young believers are vulnerable to being attracted to sweet looking but deceitful doctrines that tickle their fancy. It’s new! It’s mysterious! It’s deep! No one else is seeing this in the Bible! Sadly some get in the car of error and deceit and their faith is highjacked away from the gospel. 

With maturity comes spiritual stability. We don’t get tossed around. We don’t get blown around. The more mature we are, the more anchored we are in Christ. Spiritual maturity also leads us not to be passive about the sin in our lives. We’re after growth, we’re after holiness. Paul writes to his son Timothy:

[22] So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. 2 Timothy 2:22 ESV

Do you hear the movement? Flee – run from that direction – and pursue – run in that direction. One of the ways we do that is to encourage each other, just as Paul is encouraging Timothy. We need each other to mature. We need accountability. Encouragement. We need venues where the light of truth can expose us so that we can repent and grow. Learn and grow. Stagnancy grows in the dark, maturity grows in the light.

• Community groups is one context for us to help each other grow spiritually.
• Personal relationships and friendships are a great venue for encouraging spiritual growth.
• The Lord calls us to grow as disciples and a part of that is that we disciple others. One of the things I want to see us pursue in our church is what Jonathan Dodson calls fighter groups – small groups of men or women who get together to pursue growing in Christ and accountability together. We will be looking for ways to encourage and facilitate more of this kind of small groups getting together regularly, not to make it a program or institutionalize it, because I believe for it to work and be effective it has to come from the heart, it has to be initiated organically by people who see the need for it. If that resonates with you, here’s my recommendation: ask 3 or 4 other men or women if they’d want to meet once a week, or twice a month, or once a month, whatever, and I recommend you go through a book called Gospel Centered Discipleship together to begin with. Share life, and encourage and provoke one another in your walk with the Lord. 
• There’s no one context, and there’s certainly no one program that can encourage and provoke us to take our own spiritual maturity seriously – the important thing is that we’re pursuing it in our lives.

          3. Growing in ministry

For many churches it is thought that the pastor is the “minister” who does the “ministry” and the congregation pays in order to be ministered to. Ephesians describes a very different – and far more exciting and effective – model. The pastor and other fivefold gifts are called by God to equip the saints – the congregation – for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. Building up the body of Christ is too large a job for the pastor to do – it takes all of us working together!

What Paul describes here really is a cycle: as a disciple grows in maturity they will do works of ministry, which helps build up the body of Christ, helping other believers to mature, so that there is more works of ministry, which helps more believers to mature, so that more ministry gets done... 

 One of the things I am most excited about is seeing ministry multiplied here in GCC because I believe that the more of the church that is serving where God has called them to serve, the more fruit the church will see! I am particularly excited to see our younger members discover how God has shaped them to serve and then use their gifts and energy for the glory of God! That has been the whole thrust of the series On Mission Together – that there is a God-designed synergy in the church that allows the whole to be greater than the parts. We can accomplish more for God’s glory together than we ever could apart.

In the coming months we are going to be looking at our ministry teams to consider how we can see each team reach its potential for ministry and effectiveness. There is so much ministry potential in this church that we want to tap into and it really does excite me to think about how God is going to grow and mature that potential for His glory.

One of the things this will change is how we look at volunteers and plug them into service. The model we want to leave behind is what could be called the “desperate volunteer” model: we’re desperate for volunteers so would you please serve? Don’t get me wrong, there are times when there is a need and having a heart to serve will prompt us to try to help out with that need even if it’s not where we feel gifted or called. But I think those situations should be for limited times only – not long term. When someone is serving in an area where they don’t feel gifted and have no passion, their heart won’t be in it and eventually they will burn out.

I think a better model is for people to find out where their gifts and passions lie and serve in a ministry that utilizes their gifts and passions. It’s the difference between pushing a wheelbarrow with a flat tire up a hill and riding a go cart down a hill. When people find out where God has gifted and impassioned them to serve – they aren’t serving because they “have to”. They are serving because they love to! And thatmakes all the difference. 

On the welcome table is a “Gifts and Passions Test”. If you’re not already serving in some capacity in the church, or if you are but you’re wondering if where you’re serving is a good fit, I encourage you to take this test, fill it out, and get it back to me. These tests never can tell the whole story, but they can be a help to point us in the right direction and identify where our passions, gifts, and interests lie.

         4.  Growing in mission

Finally, the path of discipleship leads us to grow in mission. That is, to have a heart for the lost, for the world, for seeing the gospel go out there in some way. Paul can write to the believers in Ephesus because Paul and Silas went to Ephesus and preached the gospel which led to growth in membership – Jesus’ church got bigger because of their mission in Ephesus. As we grow in the mission God has given us (individually and corporately) it will mean others coming to Christ, which means a growth in membership. So this path isn’t a beginning and an end, it’s a continual cycle in our lives. Discipleship is a journey, not a destination (on this earth).

It’s not going to look the same for everyone. One might have a burden to reach out to their neighbors, another might have a burden to go overseas, another might have a burden to teach God’s word to children, and still another might have a burden to be a witness to their co-workers. But as we grow in spiritual maturity it will carry with it a growing sense of mission, of taking the gospel to the world.

Conclusion: are you moving? 

Ask you a simple question: are you moving? Maturing? Don’t assume because you’re getting older in the Lord that you’re getting more mature. Might just be getting older. Jesus doesn’t call us to loiter with him; he calls us to walk with him. Let’s make it our goal to move! And to encourage each other to move! To continue on the journey of discipleship. 

And if you find yourself realizing that you’re not moving, or not much, don’t be discouraged, be inspired to take a step. I find that often when I’m discouraged about how much I need to do, or how little I’ve done, that taking one step in the right direction is all it takes to fill me with a new sense of purpose and enthusiasm. Maybe you’re not connecting with other believers – find a context (or make a context) and reach out. Take initiative. Maybe you’re not serving in ministry – or you’re serving in a way that you’re really not gifted or passionate about. Ask God to reveal your unique gifting and passion and then move in that direction. 

I am excited to see what the Lord is going to do in and through us as together we grow in Christ and as ministry is multiplied [13] until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, [14] so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. [15] Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, [16] from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Ephesians 4:13-16. Let’s pray.