Discipleship Letters 39-40

Discipleship Letter 39                                                April 26, 2009

This is my third time to go to MetroYouth, Lake Champion. I am not too excited about going to this conference; however, I am looking forward to helping them grow after the conference. Evangelism is a necessary step toward the beginning of a Christian life; discipleship is an indispensable strategy toward the maturity of faith.

I don’t limit different ways of how God is going to change the lives of these young people. God is always beyond my religious system: his ways are higher than my ways. All I need to do is to find the most suitable way to help others grow. God will take care of the rest. Someone said, “When we take care of God’s business, God will take care of our business.” I find this saying insightful. God is always active among us. He is always looking for his servants.

What if we had twenty new people today, what if the twenty of them needed to be nurtured, would you be able to nurture them? Would you be willing to disciple them? You need to grow, and you need to help others to grow. You can’t focus on one thing and ignore the other. If you don’t grow, you can’t help others to grow. If you only help others to grow and neglect your personal growth, you will mess up the growth of others. “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18a).

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Discipleship Letter 40                                                May 3, 2009

The church usually says that each believer has a responsibility to share the good news with others. There is no doubt that it’s one of our greatest responsibilities. Yet, in the gospel story, we see that not only did Jesus go to different places to preach the kingdom message, but also discipled the twelve followers while they were following Him around. The Twelve followed by invitation only. Jesus invited them and said to each of them, “Come, follow me.”

The church rarely says that we have a responsibility to nurture other believers. It seems that this noble task only belongs to pastors and a small circle of church lay leaders. This is absolutely wrong. Each believer has to nurture others. Each believer should say, “You should follow my example, just as I follow Christ’s” (1 Cor. 11:1). This is not arrogant. This is discipleship. Christian growth is about following. We imitate Christ, and we invite others to imitate Christ through us. It’s a noble, yet dangerous task.

“The modeling we experience has a lasting effect upon us, for good or for ill…We have to see the wrong modeling we are following in order to renounce it. The goal is to replace the poor modeling with the modeling of people who ‘imitate Christ,’ the ones in his Body who show us how he would do it; then we can do it the same way…We imitate those who imitate him.” [Henry Cloud and John Townsend, How People Grow: What the Bible Reveals about Personal Growth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), pp. 140-141.]

Follow me, just as I follow Christ. We should emphasize the second “follow” first, then the first.