Because I want to post my discipleship letters on my blog, I need to reread them. I even rewrite them a little bit, if necessary. The idea of discipleship was foreign to me a few years ago. Now, it dominates my pastoral works. It determines my pastoral direction. It becomes a question I must answer in my Christian life. Discipleship becomes my lens to view church. It helps me set my pastoral priority. It helps me focus. According to the four gospels, we see that Jesus never hurried, and He was never out of focus and balance. Before He gave the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) to the disciples before His ascension, He demonstrated how to make disciples and embodied the idea of discipleship (Matt. 3-27). Matthew put the Great Commission at the end of his gospel because he wanted us to read his gospel through the lens of Jesus' final command: make disciples of all nations.
In The Disciple-Making Pastor: Leading Others on the Journey of Faith. Revised and Expanded Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), p. 13, Bill Hull lays out three dimensions in the process of making disciples:
1. Deliverance: This stage is accomplished via evangelism. A person is reborn by hearing the gospel shared and preached.
2. Development: The person is nurtured, taught, and established in faith. It's an ongoing process.
3. Deployment: The person is commissioned to fulfill the Great Commission in the harvest field.
It's a simple concept. But anything about 3D sounds good.
Discipleship Letter 3 March 9, 2008
To the congregation,
From conversion…
Disciples are made, not born. However, disciples are first born by the Spirit of God, then they are made, built, trained, and led to make a commitment to Christ Jesus. In order to be born again, repentance and trust are the basic requirements. Strictly speaking, before we repent and trust in Him, God chose us, and the Holy Spirit enlightened and renewed the hearts of sinners so that we can understand the gospel and embrace it with heart-felt repentance and inexpressible joy. Not only does God renovate the hearts of sinners, but also implant in us a new desire to love and serve Him as Lord, Savior, and King.
To make a mature disciple...
After God renovated our hearts and implanted a new desire in us, we must nurture the desire so that it can become a positive, dynamic response to the person and teaching of Christ Jesus. The nurturing process is usually overlooked by the church, for she tends to focus on mass production due to the influence of the “fast-food” culture. In order to make a mature disciple, we must have enough vision to think small and build slowly, investing one’s life in the life of others. There is no short-cut for Christian formation. Jesus understood it. Thus, He selected a few and associated with them. He made sure that he spent enough time to nurture their souls and to influence their minds.
Your pastor
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Discipleship Letter 4 March 30, 2008
To the congregation,
John 17:3—“Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Knowing God is every Christian’s greatest responsibility. As followers of Jesus, we must continuously know God till the day we die. As humans, it is no way to say that we have enough knowledge of God. J.I. Parker notes, “The more complex the object, the more complex is the knowing of it” [Knowing God. 20th Anni. Edition (IVP, 1993), p. 35].
You and I know that God is not an object, but a subject. He is a living thing. To know a living thing is more complicated than knowing an object, for it involves a relationship. In relationship, it is really up to another party to open up. If he is unwilling, there is not much we can do. That makes it complicated. In a God-man relationship, God and humans do not stand on the same platform. God is above; we are below. We can only know what He reveals to us, and He can know us all whenever He wants to.
God sent Christ to dwell among us. Christ is “the exact representation” of God (Heb. 1:3) so that we can know Him in the person of Christ Jesus. Any knowledge of God, thus, is the grace of God. And the God of Grace longs for being known by His people.
Your pastor
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