Our Mission: Making Disciples Who Make Disciples
Most everyone will agree that a healthy church practices evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, gift-oriented ministry and worship. Balancing these functions with proper alignment is not always easy. For instance, evangelism becomes counterproductive in a church that isn’t practicing discipleship. In many curriculums, conferences, books and articles, church leaders have embraced an ill-defined discipleship process. Though sincerely motivated, most miss the target and produce inferior results.
Too many people start at the wrong point, which guarantees a wrong result. In theological terms, they’re rooted in anthropology (the nature of man) instead of pneumatology (the nature of the Spirit). These models call on the disciple to know rational knowledge (learning, memorization, course work) and do behavioral activity (how to act, what to do).
Knowledge and behavior are essential, but they do not transform!
Knowledge stops short of the Holy Spirit’s destination of loving God and loving others. Behavioral effort (doing more or behaving better) cancels grace and creates Pharisees.
In too many churches, life in the Spirit is the missing imperative. We must experience the presence and the power of the living God. We need to deconstruct discipleship as it exists today, exchanging rational/behavioral models for relational/experiential models. However, these bold, nearly radical statements are counter intuitive to everything many of us were taught about discipleship.
Certainly, Scripture has an objective meaning, but it also has a relational significance. Jesus said that Scripture (“the law and the prophets”) hangs, or depends, upon two commandments: Love God and love others (Matt. 22:35-40).
Scripture has a relational purpose: to lead us into maturity through deepened love relationships with the God who breathed it and with those He loves. As the Holy Spirit brings revelation concerning this relational purpose, it seems to “come alive,” spurring us to love others, to realize that we are loved, and, above all, to love the One who has given the Word to us.
The core issue of preaching is not getting something said; it is not even getting something heard; it is getting something experienced that can transform your life for God and the gospel.
This Spirit-empowered, relational framework proposes a transforming journey for all ages and stages of spiritual development where the Holy Spirit leads us in a relational journey with God’s Son, God’s Word, and God’s people.
A healthy vibrant church dedicated to making disciples should help people:
Encounter Jesus
Experience Scripture
Fellowship with others
