It’s About Making Disciples

Passage for Reflection: Matthew 28:19-20

Why has discipleship become optional? I think it's because it has become too easy to be a "Christian" in USAmerica. When Christianity began, you had to really want it. I am mean you had to want it so bad that you were willing to lay your life on the line. Prospective church members were screened for fear of a spy who might lead them all to the arena for slaughter. Church services were hardly "seeker sensitive." In fact, the term Christian and disciple were synonymous. Point of fact: the word disciple occurs 269 times in the New Testament. The word Christian appears three times – and all three times it appears, it is was used to refer to the disciples of Christ. But that seems to have all changed now. I wonder how many disciples are really coming to my church. In our efforts to get bigger, so many churches fall into the trap of methodology that leads to quantity but not quality. Volunteers but not disciples. There is a BIG difference between a volunteer and a disciple. Jesus never commanded us to go and make volunteers, he told us to go and make disciples. In the book Reclaiming God's Original Intent for the Church, a disciple is defined in three ways:

1. One who lives in a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

2. One who obeys all that Jesus commanded.

3. One who seeks to imitate the life of Jesus.

Hardly sounds like a volunteer, huh? Dallas Willard reminds us in his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives, that, "The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ."

Would all the disciples of Jesus Christ please stand up?

"Lord, make me a disciple. Amen."

Blessings,

Jeff