Title: “God’s Vision for the Local Church”

January 4, 2026
Text: Matthew 28:19-20; 2 Timothy 2:1-2
Speaker: Phillip Santillan
Clarity Church gathers every Sunday at 10:00am at Edinbrook Elementary School in Brooklyn Park, MN One year from now, what do you want to be different in you?

In this New Year message from Clarity Church (Brooklyn Park, MN), we open to Matthew 28 and 2 Timothy 2 to talk about what Jesus actually calls his church to do, and how disciples are actually made. Paul’s pattern is simple and it is deeply practical. Before you give, receive. When we try to follow Jesus and disciple others in our own strength, it usually leads to one of two outcomes: burnout or pride, and both are spiritually dangerous. The better way is what we call the Dependence Triangle: receiving grace, practicing dependence, and discipling others. In other words: receive, rely, disciple. This sermon is for the person whose faith feels strong but you’re tired, and for the person who is still deciding what you believe about Jesus. It’s also a clear vision for our church: everyone discipling one, with prayer and dependence on Jesus, not vague and busy Christianity. #ClarityChurch #Discipleship #PrayerAndFasting #greatcommission

Sermon Transcript:

If you have your Bibles,
go ahead and grab whatever copy you have
to two different places this morning
as we start the new year.
Matthew chapter 28 and second Timothy chapter two.
And while you turn there, let me ask you a question.
I know it’s the new year,
but how many of you feel like it should still be 2025?
Like at the end, I mean, like it feels like it’s still 2025.
Like you look at the date and you’re like,
2026, that can’t be right, can it?
And I think this happens in part
because we all know what it’s like
to have a year that’s so full
that we don’t even take the time to figure out
whether it was well spent or not.
I don’t know what your last year looked like,
but my year has been full.
And speaking of busy, here’s what we all know.
Busy does not always mean meaningful, right?
Just because you’re busy doesn’t mean
that you’re doing something meaningful.
Now I’m not saying that to shame anybody who is busy
or feels busy, right?
Life is life.
Some of you are caring a lot.
You’re juggling work, you’re juggling kids,
you’re juggling stress, health stuff, relationship,
work stuff, all of it, right?
Those are real things.
I’m just saying that if we don’t choose what matters,
what ends up happening is that we tend to drift
into whatever is demanding our attention the most
at any given moment.
Stephen Covey calls it the fight between urgent
versus most important, if you’ve ever read that book.
It’s this reality that has had me wrestling
with the question over the last couple of weeks,
and it’s this simple question.
If I could fast forward one year
and I could watch a highlight reel of my life
from this next year, what would I hope it would look like?
That’s the question that at least I’ve been wrestling with.
I don’t know if you take the new year
to think about those kind of things I do.
And maybe more importantly,
because sometimes negativity sometimes motivates me.
I don’t know if that, for you, I mean, positivity works,
but sometimes I need something to motivate me.
And more importantly, the question that I ask
is what would break my heart if it wasn’t accomplished
in this next year?
Now, I know most of you in this room pretty well, okay?
I know most of you pretty well,
and none of us will wish that we had spent more time
in this year more distracted, right?
None of us will wish that we had spent more time
being pulled towards things that feel urgent
instead of investing in things that are actually essential.
And so I want you to picture it, if you can, with me here.
It’s one year from now, January 4th, 2027.
Even just saying that feels weird.
And you’re looking back on 2026.
Here’s the question.
What do you wanna be able to thank God for?
Not what did you get to buy,
or what did you enjoy so much
that you posted it on social media, right?
Or not even, like, what is it that you survived
this past year?
What do you want to be able to thank God for?
One of the scripture’s most sobering verses, I think,
is Psalm 90, verse 12, which says this.
Teach us to number our days carefully
so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.
This is the verse that basically says,
Lord, help me live like time is real, right?
Help me to live as if though the number of my days
have been already counted, and it’s real.
lass=”yoast-text-mark” />>And so for the next few minutes,
what I wanna do as we kind of kick off this new year
is I just want us to, I want us to live
and talk in terms as if though time was real.
>And I wanna put a phrase out there
>on what we’re doing today, and it’s really simple.
>And it’s just simply this, it’s the title
of today’s message, one year from now.
One year from now.
And if you’d allow me to take you somewhere personal,
I wanna ask you the question I’ve been asking myself
as we start this new year.
One year from now, what do you want to be different
in you?
Like, what do you hope to be different in you?
Maybe a more specific way would be to ask it like this.
What do you wanna be different
in your relationship with God?
Or maybe what do you wanna be different
about your home life?
Or maybe what do you wanna be different
about the people God has placed around you?
You know, as I look out here, I know that some of you,
when you think about your faith,
when you think about where it’s at,
you feel like your faith is strong, right?
You feel like you’re in a good place.
You’re starting this new year in a good place.
And some of you are here,
and even though your faith isn’t weak,
you wouldn’t say like, my faith is weak.
You’d be the first to admit that maybe,
that you feel tired.
Faith is strong, but boy, am I tired.
Some of you are here or listening, maybe via our podcast,
and you may not entirely be sure
that you believe everything you’ve heard about Jesus
in the Bible.
Maybe you’re still trying to figure out
what it is that you do believe
and why you struggle to believe in other things.
But listen, no matter where you are,
I believe the scripture has something to speak
into our hearts and into our minds today.
With that said, I do wanna ask a question,
specifically though, for all of us who consider ourselves
a part of this local expression of God’s church
called clarity.
And it’s this simple question.
What do we hope will be different about us
one year from now?
Like when we think about clarity,
when we think about this local fellowship,
like what do we hope to be different about us
one year from now?
Now, you don’t have to have lived life very long
to know that the default setting of our lives
isn’t wisdom, right?
Actually, the default setting of our lives,
unfortunately, is urgency.
We’re not asking, what’s the wise thing to do?
We’re asking, what’s the fire that I need to put out?
What’s the thing that’s causing me the most pain right now?
What’s the thing that if I don’t take care of,
I’m gonna feel like I’m gonna regret it?
And by default, our lives shift focus towards what’s loud,
what’s demanding, what seems to be right in front of us.
And if we wanna live a life of wisdom,
we need something stronger than our default setting.
That is why at the start of a new year,
churches tend to do what people tend to do, right?
I was looking at just even over my email,
because I’m part of several different churches’ newsletters.
I don’t know if you are too, right?
But just about every church I know is saying,
join us this Sunday for what?
Our Vision Sunday, or here’s what we’re looking forward to,
or recasting the vision, or recapturing, right?
Or is there something about this idea
of looking forward, starting the new year,
we try to develop a vision for the future
that sounds fresh, clever, or impressive?
I know, because I look at some of these churches,
and I’m like, oh, that’s really cool.
We should do that.
That’s our vision, right?
I look at some of these and I’m like,
man, I wish I thought of that.
And why do I know this?
Well, because, mostly because I’ve actually participated
in this kind of rhetoric over the years.
And while that’s incredibly humbling,
or maybe even humiliating for me to admit,
I’ve come to a place where
22 years of pastoral ministry has given me
more of a grounded sense of what it means
to have a God-given vision.
And here’s, if I could look back 22 years now,
and answer the question,
what am I convinced about regarding
what it means to have vision for a local church?
Here’s what I’m more convinced of more than ever.
That the church does not need a new vision.
That the church, what we really need
is actually just to take Jesus seriously.
This past year, our staff read a book
written by a pastor named Carl Vaders.
I actually, if you’re the kind of person that enjoys this,
I don’t think anybody here really is, but you might be.
He’s a respected author and speaker
on the subject of church health,
and specifically churches that fall under the category
of what we would call small churches.
That would be us.
And in this book, he said something
that has really been encouraging to me.
In a chapter, he references this current temptation
and this reoccurring temptation for church leaders,
you know, like times like this at the New Year
to have some type of fresh,
some type of extraordinary vision
that would compel and maybe captivate people into action
and lead a church towards some kind of preferred future.
And he talks about that ever-nagging type of pressure.
And I don’t know if you feel that.
Maybe you don’t get that, but I’m just being honest with you.
Like as a pastor, I feel it every single year.
As we talk about New Year, I’m like,
what am I gonna do to motivate us this year?
How am I gonna cause there to be some kind of vision
and for us to get excited about this year?
And I feel it, I feel it.
But then I read this,
and my whole perspective sort of shifted.
Here’s what he wrote.
He says this.
We’ve already been given the biggest,
most audacious God-inspired vision of all,
and it wasn’t devised by a charismatic pastor,
focused, grouped by a marketing team,
or sold like a trendy new idea
to people who need to be convinced that they want it.
We have the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.
It’s okay if the only vision your church has
is to fulfill the Great Commandment
and the Great Commission.
They’ve been working fine for 2,000 years
and counting, or 1,990, right?
It’s been working just fine.
As I look back over the history of the church,
is it not true that Jesus has kept this promise?
What, that I will build my church
and the gates of hell will not prevail against it?
In fact, in a side note, I was talking with someone
and we were just talking about like,
it’s just sometimes when you turn the news,
it just feels like the world’s falling apart
and we’re becoming more godless,
and like how in the world are we going to be able to,
like how is faith gonna survive
and how is it gonna thrive?
But it’s so funny, like if you just take
like a short little trip back in history,
you’ll know that the gospel has thrived
in more godless, in more like paganistic,
more amoral cultures than we’ve ever seen today.
Now I’m not saying that it’s not bad,
where it’s going and where we feel like it’s going,
but let’s not kid ourselves
that it is the worst now than it has ever been.
And so we can be encouraged
that the Lord is building his church
and he’s been doing it with this God-sized vision
of what?
His great commandments and the great commission.
This pastor goes on, Carl Bader goes on to talk about,
in this book he goes on to talk about the being,
about the joy of being a pastor.
Instead of investing time and energy
and trying to fabricate a sense of fresh vision,
instead he gives all of his time
to being an equipping pastor.
And then he points to Ephesians chapter four,
some of you are familiar with that passage of scripture
that talks about what is the role of a pastor?
And I read that, which is this idea of equipping
and empowering people for the work of ministry,
>and I said to myself, that’s what I want.<br class=”yoast-text-mark” />>I wanna be that kind of pastor.
>I wanna be part of that kind of church.
>I don’t wanna carry the burden
of inventing something unique
and then trying to sell it to you.
>I don’t wanna do that.
Really what I wanna do is I wanna equip you
to live out Jesus’ call on your life
and the everyday stuff of life.
But that said, allow me to suggest this.
Let’s let Jesus tell us what matters.
Let’s let him do that.
So go with me to Matthew chapter 28,
and here’s what Jesus has to say.
In verse 19, he says this to his disciples,
go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.
And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.
Some of you are familiar with these last words of Jesus
before he delivers his final instructions, right?
In Acts chapter one, before he tells them to say,
wait, you know, don’t go anywhere,
wait until the Holy Spirit’s come upon you.
These are his last words before he does that.
And for those who’ve been the students of the Bible
for a while, you’ll know that this is Jesus’ what?
Great what?
Commission, right?
Great commission.
This is his great commission.
And what I want us to do is just to sit in this for a second
in what Jesus has to say.
Jesus is about to leave, right?
And he wants his people to remember one thing.
He wants them to remember one thing.
This is what he says, make disciples.
Not just attend church, not just learn religious information,
not just be nice to people, make disciples, make disciples.
These are people who increasingly learn to trust Jesus.
Disciples are people who increasingly submit all of life
and all of themselves to Jesus as master and savior.
A disciple are people who are increasingly learning
to obey what Jesus has to say about what it means
to live real, everyday life.
And notice Jesus doesn’t give just a command.
>He provides an I am with you always.
>He doesn’t just say, go make disciples, good luck.
>He says, by the way, I know this is going to hit you heavily
and you’re gonna need some type of encouragement.
So let me just tell you, what I’m sending you to,
I’m going with you.
Jesus never meant for his mission to be powered.
Listen, Jesus never meant for his mission to be powered
by your personality or willpower.
This is very important.
In fact, he meant it to be carried out in his presence.
That’s what he meant it to be.
Jesus never meant for his mission to be powered
by your personality or willpower.
That’s this, he meant it to be carried out
in his presence, in his presence.
So here’s the question I want us to all wrestle with.
If this is what Jesus told his church to do,
then what would it look like
if we actually took him serious this year?
Not as a slogan or as a vague idea,
but in real life, like with real people.
Now, I admit, as I’ve actually preached this message
many times, I already know what some of you are saying.
Because I know how it hits people in different ways.
Some of you hear this, you hear this idea of make disciples,
and then immediately the doubts begin to settle in.
The insecurities begin to settle in.
You begin to feel disqualified.
You think, I don’t know enough.
I don’t have what it takes.<br class=”yoast-text-mark” />>I’m not that kind of person.<br class=”yoast-text-mark” />&gt;I’m not that guy.
>I’m not that lady.
Other people here make disciples
and you immediately start picturing an idealized version
of what a church that makes disciples looks like.
>Everybody’s crushing on it spiritually.
>Everybody’s consistent.
>Everybody’s passionate.
>Everybody’s inviting people.
The rows are filled.
Phil gives a message.
People are being baptized.
We create this vision of what it looks like then.
Everything is neat.
Everything’s organized.
Everything always works
so that we’re not going right up
to the minute that service starts
because we were waiting on Phil to set up
the new way things are set up.
Not like this morning, right?
Like everything just goes just as planned.
And Phil is inspiring every single time he preaches.
Oh, we can only hope.
And if we’re not careful, here’s the thing.
If we’re not careful, that dream turns into demands.
How do I know that?
Because I felt that.
And then here’s what happens.
Demands end up turning into judgment.
We start measuring everybody, judging everybody.
And then eventually, if we’re not careful,
we begin to judge God.
God, why aren’t you?
You should be doing.
Why aren’t you doing it?
Maybe you don’t really, maybe you’re not with,
maybe you don’t really want this.
Maybe you don’t care at all.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I don’t know if you’re familiar with him,
he’s a very influential theologian
who lived in Germany at the time during the World War II
and actually ended up dying in a concentration camp
because of not only his commitment to the faith,
but because some people would say
that he was like a secret spy.
Just a very interesting character.
You should take a look at him.
He’s a very interesting character.
But he wrote something in a book,
in a memoir called Life Together
that ended up being published.
And he called out this with language
that is really not soft to say the least,
but I think it’s interesting
that this was written actually in 1938.
It’s like a long time ago, long time ago.
I believe 1938.
But listen to what he says.
Listen to what he says.
Those who love their dream of a Christian community
more than Christian community itself
become destroyers of that Christian community.
And even though their personal intentions
may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial.
Listen to this.
It’s not 2026.
Like some people are like, oh, you know,
consumeristic, we’re the most consumeristic ever.
Sounds like he’s talking about us now, right?
No, no, just want to let you know
the problems that existed today
that have existed, they’ve always existed,
just so you know.
But he goes on to say this,
and here’s where he gets really strong.
God hates this wishful dreaming
because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.
Those who dream of this idealized community
demand that it be fulfilled by God,
by others and by themselves.
They enter the community of Christians
with their demands, set up their own law,
and judge one another and even God accordingly.
To say that God hates your wishful dreaming
of what Christian communities should be like is strong.
I admit that.
And I’m okay with strong language
as long as it’s true, right?
Because listen, it is possible to talk about discipleship
when what we really mean is we just want control.
It’s possible to talk about the mission of Jesus
when really what we mean is I want my version of church,
my expectations, I want to see my scoreboard
become the scoreboard for everybody.
And so let me say it clearly.
This is not about building an ideal church.
This is about obeying Jesus in reality
by loving a real person towards him
with the scripture open, with grace as the source,
and dependence as our posture.
So the question is this, how do everyday Christians
live out the mission of Jesus without pride,
without burnout, and without turning
into some type of program?
Well, I think Paul alludes to maybe a method
I don’t know, what do you want to call it?
But he gives answer, at least I think at a minimum.
And in the two verses in the section of the Bible
we call Second Timothy.
In Second Timothy chapter two,
in this passage the apostle Paul is writing
to a young protege, one he’s been mentoring,
a young pastor by the name of Timothy.
And he’s writing to him about
what faithful ministry looks like.
And here’s what he says to him
in Second Timothy chapter two, verses one through two.
He said, you therefore, my son,
be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
What you have heard from me
in the presence of many witnesses,
commit to faithful men, and by the way,
that’s a Greek word that literally means like,
it’s the same word that says in forgiving men
one another of their sins, right?
It’s the word, it’s like people, okay?
So it’s a generic word.
And so commit to faithful people, so to say,
who will be able to teach others also.
Now, notice that order.
Paul doesn’t start with strategy.
He doesn’t say, Timothy, therefore,
here’s what you need to do.
He starts with strength.
And what kind of strength?
He says this, be strong in the grace that is in what?
Christ Jesus.
>That’s not some kind of motivational catchphrase.
>That’s not try harder.
>That’s this, hey, Timothy, before you give, receive.
Receive.
Before you give, receive.
Receive before you give.
Paul starts with this because he knows
what every person who has tried to be
a fully engaged follower over a lifetime knows,
that trying to make disciples in your own strength
will eventually lead to one of two things.
One, you’ll either burn out.
Or two, you’ll get proud.
And both are spiritually dangerous.
So Paul starts with grace, and then he says this, right?
Commit to faithful people who will be able
to teach others also.
If you pay attention, you’ll recognize
that this is four generations in one sentence.
What do you mean by that?
There’s Paul, who tells Timothy, first to second.
He says, Timothy, find what?
Faithful people.
That’s second to third generation.
Find faithful people to what?
To find what?
Others.
In other words, disciple making is not meant
to be this kind of rare moment in time.
Multiplication is intended to be the normal rhythm
of life in the local church.
Now, with the rest of the time I have left,
here’s where I kinda wanna slow down
and maybe cast some vision for us.
I know I said, great commission, great commandments enough,
but sometimes you just need a little like,
okay, Phil, I get that, you did the teaching stuff.
Just tell us what you wanna do.
So this is that part of people, some people,
some people, you already know what you need to do.
The Lord has spoken to you and you can just continue
to pray and then you can go on your very way.
But if you needed something a little more,
let me just speak to your heart for just a second.
Sometimes when we hear the word faithful,
we picture the most polished person we know, right?
The Bible geek, the never misses a Sunday person,
the person who has their whole life together.
But in real life, faithful often simply
just means someone who’s available,
someone who’s teachable, someone who’s reliable,
someone who shows up, someone who is willing,
someone who says, I’m all in,
I just don’t only wanna learn, I know, I know,
I need to learn.
Now, if the mission Jesus gave us was to make disciples
and Paul was onto something describing a pattern
by which disciples are made,
then we’re discovering something
that’s actually very simple.
It’s not flashy, it may not raise your heartbeat
or make you feel some type of warmth in your soul
as you walk away from here.
But what it is is just this, it’s just clear.
If you were to ask me, Phil, what do you hope to see
for Clarity Church one year from now,
this is what I would tell you.
I’ll put it on the screen so you can see it.
Here’s what I would hope, that Clarity is a community
where it’s become normal for each person
to invest in another person’s discipleship intentionally.
This is what I would hope.
This is what I hope is normal for us,
like in our conversations,
like we would just be able to go like,
hey, how’s the discipleship thing going?
Like, who is it you’re discipling?
Hey, what are you doing?
I need some advice, like I’m discipling this person.
What are you doing that’s working?
Hey, how’s it going?
Hey, I’ve been praying about that person you’re discipling.
How’s it going?
Hey, how’s that going?
And I don’t mean this, like we’re a church
that’s like really hooked on projects,
but we’re motivated by love of God and obedience to God
and the desire to gain, listen, to gain permission
to walk alongside someone as they walk toward Jesus.
Because simplicity cultivates clarity.
Here’s a simple way to say it.
Here’s what I hope for us.
Everyone, discipling one.
There you go, if you need something like catchy.
Everyone, discipling one.
Everyone, discipling one.
Now, before you hear that as pressure,
I really want you to hear that as an attempt to clarity,
right, because clarity is kind, as the saying goes.
I want to make sure that I’m not leaving room
for vague Christianity,
because here’s what I know about vague Christianity.
It usually turns into aimless, busy Christianity.
Why do I know that?
Because I’ve done that.
What does it take for this to actually happen in real life?
Well, here’s my two cents.
Here’s my two cents.
I’ve been working on this in my own life,
and I feel like I’m starting to get a handle on this.
And here’s what I’ve learned.
It’s really what Paul is teaching.
First, we need to be strategic,
but we also need to be dependent.
We need to be strategic, but we need to be dependent.
Not strategic without prayer,
and definitely not prayerful without any kind of plan.
We need both.
Proverbs 24, three to four says this.
A house is built by wisdom,
and it is established by understanding.
By knowledge, the rooms are filled
with every precious and beautiful treasure.
That’s building language,
for those of you who are in the trades, right?
That’s intentional language.
You don’t build something without making a plan.
Well, I mean, you could try.
How many of you have tried?
That usually doesn’t go very well.
Some of you are like, well, anytime I just make it work.
Yeah, but we could probably see the flaws in it, right?
Isaiah, if that’s not good enough for you,
Isaiah 32, eight says this,
but he who is noble plans noble things.
And on noble things, he stands.
In other words, it’s not unspiritual to plan.
I grew up as a Pentecostal, right?
Grew up in a Pentecostal church,
and sometimes we almost idolize the idea of spontaneity,
ending up being a blessing.
And then so we, instead of seeing God working
in the spontaneous to be a blessing,
we say God must be a spontaneous God.
Therefore, anything that is a blessing must be spontaneous,
and nothing that is a blessing can be planned, right?
And so we gotta be spontaneous.
But listen, when followers of Jesus plan,
they often plan with open hands, though, right?
One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 69.
It says, a person’s heart plans his way,
but the Lord orders his steps.
We make some plans, but we go God.
Hey, I followed my advice sometimes, God,
and it isn’t good.
So I know what I want to accomplish,
but at the end of the day, Lord, would you order my steps?
If that wasn’t enough, the writer of Psalms 1 and 27
puts it into perspective that merely that should humble
any of us who wants to trust in God’s word
to guide their life.
It says this in Proverbs 1, 27, verse one,
unless the Lord builds a house,
it’s builders labor over the house.
It’s builders labor over it in vain.
So here’s the posture I want for this year.
We’re going to plan like it matters.
We’re going to plan like it matters.
And then we’re going to pray
like we can’t do it without Jesus.
We want to be a people that plan like it matters,
but we want to be the kind of people who pray.
Pray as if though nothing can be accomplished
without Jesus, because by the way, listen, it can’t.
That’s why next week we’re going to start a series
on prayer and fasting.
I don’t think I’ve done this with our church,
added this component of fasting.
And we’re going to talk about this in week one.
And so we’re going to start this 21 days of prayer
and fasting, because listen, if Jesus is calling us
to make disciples, Jesus is also calling us
to rely on him to do it.
He’s going to call us to rely on him to do it.
Now, if you’re a visual person, I know some of you are,
I have a simple framework that I think can help
maybe tie all this together.
I’ve tried to think of a clever way to define this,
but all I’ve come up with is the dependence triangle.
So that’s what we’re going to call it
until someone has a better name for it.
So here’s the dependence triangle.
It’s nothing groundbreaking,
but it’s this idea of receiving grace,
practicing dependence and discipling others.
Receiving grace.
That’s 2 Timothy 2 verse 1.
Hey, receive the grace that’s in Christ Jesus.
Receive before you give.
And then practice dependence or if you show the next slide,
it’s this idea of rely.
So if we need just one word,
I know sometimes too many words you can’t remember.
So receive, rely, disciple.
That’s prayer and fasting.
That’s the posture that says Jesus,
if you don’t move, nothing is going to move.
And then eventually we need to do something,
which is this, disciple.
We need to have a plan and that’s discipling others.
That’s a 2 Timothy 2, 2.
Now let’s get painfully practical
because if we leave here inspired, but not changed,
we’ve wasted our time.
I want to give you three lanes today.
You pick which lane you’re in.
One, first lane is this.
You are not discipling anyone right now.
You’re not.
And if this is you,
the first step is actually to resist embracing guilt.
Okay?
Because listen,
when being told that you need to make a disciple
and seeing it explained in the scripture is clear to you
and you realize that you haven’t been up to that,
the easy thing to do is feel guilty.
That’s easy.
It’s easy.
The hard work is choosing to do something about it.
The hard work is actually choosing a name.
One person, start with one person.
Someone God has already placed in your life.
And so this week is,
your first move is not to figure out
how you’re going to convince this one person
to be discipled by you.
Your first move is to pray.
And then,
then,
because I’m giving you a plan here,
you can make a simple ask.
It could be something like this.
Hey, I was wondering if you’d be open to meeting with me
for like eight weeks or so to maybe read the Bible
and talk about following Jesus
and the everyday stuff of life.
Some of you are thinking like eight weeks?
That sounds intense.
Let me,
allow me to reorient your paradigm
if you think like eight weeks feels like a stretch.
Committing to a strategy of making disciples isn’t intense.
It’s actually just the starting line.
Like if you want to be a disciple maker,
like figuring out and committing to at least a timeframe
is not,
listen,
it’s not asking a lot.
It’s actually just asking you to start.
So that’s you.
That’s my encouragement to you.
Lane two is this.
You’re discipling someone, but it’s kind of random.
It’s kind of random.
You love them, you talk with them,
you encourage them, good, right?
But now you add some simple structure
so it becomes intentional.
You make a repeatable rhythm.
Maybe you meet with them weekly for 45 to 60 minutes
and then you do something like this.
Start with 10 minutes of catching.
I’m literally gonna spell this out for you.
Catch up, read a passage of scripture
and then maybe ask the question,
how does this show us about,
what does this show us about go?
It should be God.
What does this show us about God?
>>>And then ask,
how would someone who believed this to be true
about God choose to live?
>>And then maybe ask,
what would obedience look like this week?
>>And then you pray to God.
Listen,
I’m not asking you to do anything
I am not currently doing.
From Bibles and Breakfast
to actually every Tuesday morning
at six 30 in the morning,
I go and meet this young man.
Some of you might know him.
He grew up in this church, hated church
then got radically saved in college.
Came back, moved into this area and said,
I wanna learn how to follow Jesus and I trust you.
Can you help me learn to follow Jesus?
And I said, here’s what we’re gonna do.
We’re gonna get together 45 to 60 minutes every week.
We’re gonna read the Bible together
and we’re gonna ask these three questions.
And listen, there’s nothing special about this
but I’m telling you,
those moments have become the highlight of my week
and I’m looking forward to two days from now
when we come back together again.
This can be for you.
Nothing that I do requires a Bible degree.
Discipling someone just means taking time
to share what God is teaching you in your,
you have a testimony, I know you do.
And if God hasn’t spoken to you in a long time in his word,
well, now this is the time for you
to not only make a disciple
but to also be a disciple in the progress.
That’s it.
You don’t have to be fancy, you just need to be faithful.
And lane three.
So one, two, three.
Maybe you’re discipling someone and it’s going well.
Good for you.
High five, five stars.
Your next step is multiplication.
Not because you’re trying to build a pyramid scheme
but because Jesus wants disciples who make disciples.
So practically you can add one question to your rhythm
of the people you’re discipling.
Hey, you’ve enjoyed this that we’ve been like,
hey, this relationship has been meaningful to you.
Awesome.
Hey, who’s your one?
Who is your one?
You do the fill.
You ask them, hey, who is your one?
And I want you to help them take a small step towards that.
Now I want to add something here for anyone
who has not decided what they believe
about Jesus in the Bible.
Maybe you’re still trying to sort things out.
Maybe you’re on the outside today.
Listen, you’re included in this challenge
because the invitation of Jesus is not fix yourself,
then come to him.
It’s come to him.
He is the savior, not you, by the way.
And if you’re curious or skeptical,
or maybe you just have a lot of church baggage,
one of the healthiest things you could do this year
is let someone walk with you through the words of Jesus,
through the scripture, and then see what it is
you actually learn about him in the process
and hear what other people are learning about Jesus
in the process, studying the scripture
in the context of community.
Now, one last thing, and I know I’m over.
James 4.14 says this.
How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow?
Your life is like the morning fog.
It’s here a little while, and then it’s gone.
I read this verse not to scare you.
I read this to hopefully wake us up.
One year from now is actually not guaranteed.
That’s not promised to any of us.
And so if God is putting someone on your heart,
the time to start is not some day.
It is today.
Hopefully that’s not too strong.
I have one last passage of scripture I’d like to read you.
Maybe there’s something encouraging.
That’d be helpful.
Acts 20, 24.
Paul is undoubtedly going to be put in prison
at a minimum and put to death at worst.
And he ends up saying this.<br />He says, my life is worth nothing to me
unless I use it for finishing the work
assigned me by the Lord Jesus.
The work of telling others the good news
about the wonderful grace of God.
I read those words and I see a life with direction.
Maybe not perfection, but absolutely faithfulness.
And so here’s what I’m praying for.
That one year from now we don’t look back
and say that we did some cool stuff.
We busied our lives.
>That we look back and we can actually name stories.
>That we could talk about how God is using our lives
to disciple others.
>That we can name faces.
>That we can say Jesus used ordinary people like me,
ordinary people like you,
to help other people learn to follow Jesus.
Not because we’re striving to be impressive,
but simply because we’re content on being dependent.
So next week as we begin prayer and fasting,
we’re gonna learn how to rely on Jesus
for what he’s calling us to do.
And that I hope is every one discipling one.