Sunday message · Love Your Neighbor series
Listen to the message
Message Summary
In the final message of the Love Your Neighbor series, Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to 2 Timothy 2:1–2 and the one thing every follower of Jesus is called to do: make disciples. God does not call everyone to make disciples the same way; he ordains our ordinary rhythms so that each of us can reach people no one else can. If that sounds like a job for outgoing people, gifted evangelists or those with open schedules, Phil points to Timothy, who likely had the same excuses.
First Paul tells Timothy where strength comes from: be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Disciple-making, Phil says, “ultimately runs on grace,” not pressure. Guilt makes us quit or treat people like projects, while grace keeps us steady and our motives clean. Writing from prison, abandoned and unlikely to be released, Paul tells Timothy to entrust what he has heard to faithful people who will teach others, a chain of ordinary people passing on something real. Faithful means trustworthy, reliable and consistent. We are not responsible for the harvest, only for faithfulness.
Wanting to lead a church that saw everyday life as a mission field, Phil prayed for open doors and began coaching soccer at a local high school, expecting quick spiritual results. For about seven years nothing visible happened. He kept showing up, cared about people, and neither hid nor forced his faith, though he sometimes felt he was wasting his time and eventually resigned. Weeks later he was asked to coach again. A little over three years ago a door opened, and he now leads a weekly breakfast gathering where students read the Bible together. When a complaint came, the administration defended him because of the trust he had built. Now he has spiritual conversations every week with people far from God.
A handout frames the goal: helping people far from Jesus take real steps toward him, and helping those who are open submit all of life to Jesus so they can help others do the same. It lists six postures (present, prayerful, curious, humble, clear and patient) and core practices that begin with naming actual people to move toward, then sharing life, asking good questions, connecting Jesus to real struggles, inviting people into community, modeling obedience and reproducing. Drawing on Hugh Halter’s book Flesh and on Jeff Vanderstelt, Phil reminds listeners that they are not the Holy Spirit, who is already at work before they arrive. Disciple-making can be messy and uncomfortable, especially for Minnesotans, but it is worth it.
Most people, Phil has found, are not failing at disciple-making because they do not care, but because no one has shown them the ordinary version. So he leads the congregation through a short self-assessment and asks each person to name three to five people, or at least one, and to choose next steps for thirty days. No special gifting, cleared schedule or confidence is required, only faithfulness. He closes by telling the church that he trusts them and sending them out to make disciples.
