Re-Thinking Discipleship

• What, exactly, is discipleship?• Is discipleship about structure or values?• Is discipleship about information or skills?• Who are you discipling; what are their names?• What are you imparting to them? Why?

Matthew 28:18-20

• And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Question # 1: Who?

• Who Are The People God Has Placed You In Relationship With To Disciple?

• Jesus knew His disciples, by name. Do you know yours?

Matthew 10:1-4

• Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax-gatherer; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Him.

Who Are You Discipling?(Because This Is Your House Church!)

Question # 1: Who?

• Who Are The People God Has Placed You In Relationship With To Disciple?

• Where is your “Think, Pray and Disciple” list. The people you are discipling are the people who will eventually become part of the church that meets in your house.

Question # 2: “What?”

• What Discipleship values are you imparting to those you are discipling?

Value: Small Groups Vs Organic House Church

• “The problem is 90 percent of small groups never produce one single disciple. Ever. They help Christians make shallow friendships, for sure. They’re great at helping Christians feel a tenuous connection to their local church, and they do a bang-up job of teaching Christians how to act like other Christians in the Evangelical Christian subculture. But when it comes to creating the kind of holistic disciples Jesus envisioned, the jury’s decision came back a long time ago—small groups just aren’t working.”

Value: Organic House Church Vs Traditional

Question # 3: “Why?”

• People who do not know or understand why they do what they do will not be able to pass it on convincingly to the next generation (and they probably won’t be doing it for very long).

• Unexamined values are the weakest values of all.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Unintended Consequence # 1: Traditional institutional “Churchianity” as described by Michael Spencer in his book, “Mere Churchianity,” will continue on unchanged in its failing ways.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Unintended Consequence # 2: Organic house church will fail due to our inability to communicate values over structure.

We will become known for “Honey, I shrunk the church” rather than for “Honey, I changed the church”.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

• Unintended Consequence # 3: We will lose this generation for the Kingdom of God - and that would be nothing less than catastrophic for everyone concerned.

How Jesus “Did It”

• He nearly always told people what they didn’t want to hear (but needed)

• He gave them overwhelmingly impossible tasks to perform.

• He NEVER sought to gather a big following, although He could easily have done so on more than one occasion.

How Jesus “Did It”

• He wanted to build a kingdom, and for that He needed a handful of disciples willing to sacrifice anything and go anywhere for the sake of that Kingdom.

• Are YOU one of them?