Cultivating Culture of Discipleship

The speaker discusses the importance of creating a culture of discipling in local churches. He emphasizes the need to make the Word of God central, clarify the gospel and its implications, and make the distinction between members and non-members clear. He also highlights the responsibility of members to love and build up the church through discipling and correction. The speaker emphasizes the role of pastors in understanding and promoting this culture. I would like to speak to you this evening on creating a culture of discipling, creating a culture of discipling in your local church. Raise your hand if you have ever heard me give my talk on raising up godly elders or raising up godly leaders. If you've heard that talk, raise your hand. All right, that's maybe 10 or 20. You'll find it, a copy of that, in that blue little discipling book I came out with this year. It's called Discipling. This talk is a little bit like that one but the vantage point is changed. In that message, I'm talking about merely what I individually do to try to disciple other guys and raise up elders or leaders. Here, I'm trying to think together with you about what we can do in our churches to help our churches be churches that are permeated with a culture of discipling, where what we are doing naturally and normally in our churches is trying to help each other grow in Christ. So the way I would define discipling is that part of discipleship in which I deliberately try to help someone else grow in Christ. That part of discipleship in which I deliberately try to help someone else grow in Christ. That's what I would call discipling. And I think that that's the culture that I know I want to permeate my church. Some of the things that Bobby was helping us think about, about congregationalism, are very much this kind of thing. What will cause all the members of the church to feel that we all have a responsibility for the spiritual health of the church as a whole and of each other? How do we do this in a church? And I have for you at the end, I realize, a long day, just 16 brief points. Number one, make the word central in your church. You don't want people thinking this is just what you are about, or this is just your agenda. You want your people to see what God's agenda is for his church, and so therefore, to line it up as it should be, you've got to begin way back in the beginning and make the word central in your church. There will be a couple more panels tomorrow. We can talk about some of this tomorrow if you want. Number two, make the gospel clear. And one of the reasons I put it like that, make the gospel clear. What does that have to do with creating a culture of discipling? Well, because when you clearly understand the gospel, you'll know that the gospel does not have simply to do with a prayer that you pray at the end of somebody telling you four propositions. The gospel being clear means the implications of the gospel in your life beginning to be made clear as you peel back layers of your actions, your motivations, your heart and things. And so when the gospel is made clear, you realize there is no such thing as true saving faith apart from repentance. And therefore, you begin to realize how involved this whole thing is to be a Christian. I can't rest happily at night realizing I am greedy and I mean to be greedy and I'm a Christian. I may realize I struggle with greed. I can't lay my head down and say I'm a racist and I mean to be a racist and just feel completely good about it because I'm saved by grace. Now, if there's something that I see as sinful, self-knowledge will tell me, yes, that's present in me. I see this as the Holy Spirit takes the word and examines my heart. My friends talk to me. I can see this, but I am not content with that. I want to contend against that. I want to see that kind of transforming power we referred to earlier this day in my life. And so that's all part of you in your preaching ministry, making the gospel clear, the breadth and depth of the gospel. Number three, this is me just clarifying that point, make the corporate implications of repentance and faith clear. Make the corporate implications of repentance and faith clear. So when you're defining response, make sure that people see that the response to the gospel is personal, yes, but it's never merely private. There's no such thing as being a Christian just down deep in your heart and nowhere else. That's not what's presented in the Bible as Christianity. So I have to be willing to be in other people's lives. What I say to people sometimes is that, you know, if you tell me you're a Christian, but you're not regularly evangelizing and discipling, I just don't know what you mean. You know, I'm not saying I know you're not a Christian, but I'm not sure what a Christian who doesn't regularly try to help other people spiritually by evangelizing and discipling. I'm just not sure what that means. If they're not showing that kind of love, I don't have a definition for that in the Bible. I mean, God can do what he wants, but I'm saying, according to the Bible, a Christian is marked by love, and that love will express itself in sharing the gospel with non-Christians and in helping Christians to grow in Christ. So I have to be willing to be in other people's lives, but also the other side of that, I have to be willing to involve other people in my life. And that's not just me passively saying, all right, all right, you asked me a question, I won't lie to you. But it's me saying, no, I'm going to actively make sure there are guys around me who know the truth about what's going on in my life. I'm just going to make that the normal way I live. And in fact, I'm not going to think I'm a special Christian because I act like that. I'm going to think I'm a real Christian because I act like that. That's just what a Christian is. So brothers and sisters, all of this is from that number three, make the corporate implications of repentance and faith clear. I'm just trying to make those implications clear. Number four, make the line between non-members and members in your church very clear. Make the line between non-member and members in your church very clear. When you do that, you can teach clearly the rights and responsibilities of each member of the congregation. Kind of back to what Bobby was saying this afternoon. We're all called to be a holy people. Be holy for I am holy, the Lord says to Israel in Leviticus 1144. Peter quotes that in 1 Peter 1, 15 and 16, when he's exhorting the Christians in the first century to be holy. I think when we make this distinction between members and non-members, it helps us to lay out the particular expressions of love as part of the shared expectations of your congregation. So I don't expect all the Christians in the world to turn up at my church at 1030 on Sunday morning. I don't expect all the Christians in Washington, DC to turn up at my church at 1030 on Sunday morning. I don't expect all the Christians on Capitol Hill to turn up at my church at 1030 Sunday morning, but all the Baptists on Capitol Hill at 1030 on Sunday morning, I expect most of them to be present. Certainly the ones who are members of our church, they should be present there normally and regularly. That's part of the way we express our love to the Lord and to each other. We expect that regular attendance at services. We expect to have our members of our church praying regularly, not just for all the Christians in the world and not just for their friends, but for the members of their particular local church, our particular local church. So we have a membership directory and oh, where is mine? It's right here in my Bible. Why is it in my Bible? Because next to my Bible, this is the most important book I have. This tells me the people that Almighty God is going to hold me eternally accountable for at the last day. In a way, he's not going to hold me accountable for you all. These are the people, according to Hebrews 13, I'm going to give an account for. So what do I do? I regularly pray for them. Do I regularly pray for you? I do not. Do I wish you ill? I do not. I wish you well. I wish you to be in a good church where you guys are praying for each other like I'm praying for these brothers and sisters in here, and I trust they're praying for me. So I think membership, making that line between church member and non-church member clear, helps us to know how we can specifically love each other. So as we teach, whether it's on congregationalism or building from the individual Christian, on what it means to be a priest for other believers, the priesthood of all believers, priests for each other before the Lord, we're helping to understand more of what it means to be a Christian. We're giving definition for whom it is we love. We're commanded to love the Lord? Yes. We're commanded to love everybody? Yes. We're commanded to love members of our families? Certainly. We're commanded to love our neighbors ourselves? Yes. Any other particular love commands? Yeah, we're commanded to love one another, and the shape and the New Testament of that one another most practically is the local church. It's those Christians that you have covenanted to meet together with regularly. Each one has responsibility to work for the upbuilding of all the others. That's what 1 Corinthians 11-14 is all about. You know, 1426, all things should be done for the building up, the edifying of the church. So what do we do when we go to church? We work to build up the church. That's what we're about. And this goes so far as to include correcting and even excommunicating when it's needed, as we thought about briefly from Matthew 18, or from 1 Corinthians 5, and two of the eight passages that Bobby cited in his message. Anyway, friends, all of this is this making this clear distinction between member and non-member is helping to build a culture in which discipling, that is working to help each other spiritually, is normal. It may seem very removed. Talk about something as abstract or old or dusty or legal as membership, when what I want is a pulsating heart of relational things, discipling, but I'm telling you the two are connected. And if the pastor doesn't understand this, no one is going to understand this. So friend, you need to see what this connection is, meditate on it, think about this. Number five, have a shared burden among the elders to model this. Make sure your elders are themselves discipling others. In fact, make sure part of what the elders are regularly doing is checking up on individuals in the congregation, how they're doing and particularly how their discipling relationships are going on their members. And one of the things I hope you're going to hear about some tomorrow in Shai's message is going to be the great ministry of visitation that they are experiencing in their church and the way their elders are really blessing their congregation by shepherding them through particular pastoral visitation. Members will often do what the pastors do. Members will often do what the pastors are excited about. So if you want to see this ministry of this culture of discipling grow in your church, pray the Lord, excite your leaders about it. So by teaching and by example, elders can help members to realize that most of their discipling responsibilities and relationships should normally be inside the membership of their local church. It is not wrong for you to work to build up another Christian in your neighborhood or in your family, but you have a particular responsibility for the members of your local church. And that's where you want to put your energies directly. This is how we fulfill our obligations to love one another. Cultivating this, I think, is the most basic work of the elders. Now friends, if you are here tonight as an elder, this is what you need to be doing. You need to be helping other people grow in Christ in one of the most basic ways you want to help them grow is help them make sure that they are investing their lives in others. That they are themselves being an example for others to follow. Very much like Paul to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2, you know, invest your lives in those who are going to turn and teach others also. That's who you want to teach. So encourage members of the church to expect to be disciples. When we have a membership interview, we ask them, would you like to meet up one-on-one regularly with somebody else in the church to study God's word together and pray together? We do that in a membership interview, just to sort of set that expectation that they will be discipled and they will disciple and help them to understand that it should be viewed as weird if that is not their experience in your church. If they join and they after two or three months, they haven't been able to develop at least one friendship relationship like that. They should tell you that they should come back and have a chat with you about that. You should pray together and see it together. You can find someone who could begin to help them study God's word and pray together. Number six, have regular congregational times where examples of God's work through each other are shared and thereby spread. Now for us, this is Sunday evenings. I got to the church where I'm currently pastoring back before Sunday evening services died. I think they had died at a lot of churches, but our congregation was elderly. Most of the people who were sitting there had joined my church in the 1940s and some of them in the 19 teens and twenties, seriously. And so they still had a Sunday evening service. It was not well attended, but I grabbed it and turned it into the prayer meeting. And part of what I wanted to do with that prayer meeting is have testimony shared. So we, these days, the way we're doing it, we'll sing from five to five 15 at five 15, we'll have some announcements and then somewhere around about five, 25, 25, I'll have a member of the church stand up for about five minutes and share a story. Just a testimony of grace. People will email me examples of what the Lord's done. Maybe some prayers that have been answered and they'll share these things specifically to encourage the other members of the church. So, um, last Sunday, our week of Sunday night, uh, Deb Smith, who was at our church, but now as an ARC, uh, to meet his church plant, Anacostia river church, uh, a brother of hers is a Muslim that she'd been praying for, for a long time came to Christ. So it was very exciting. So, uh, we consider her like a granddaughter of our congregation. So we wanted her back. She already shared it with her current church. We want her back to share it with us. So she shared that great news with us and we got to rejoice with her. She told us her story for five or 10 minutes. Well, friends, when we have things like that shared every Sunday evening, um, and along with that, we also have, well, transparent confessions of sin the Sunday before that one, dear brother shared about a struggle. He has a particularly hard struggle with sin that he had shared about when he came into the membership of the church. Now he was sharing about a few years later. He's really still struggling with it. I think by sharing transparently, both confession of sin and celebrations of answered prayer, it helps the congregation to get to know each other, to get to know every member of the congregation. It gives them powerful examples of how to relate to each other. It may challenge or encourage them. It kind of builds a spiritual honesty in the congregation. Number seven, pray openly and regularly for God to create and bless a culture of discipling in the church. So the operative word there is pray, but because you're pastors, I'm just saying, Hey guys, pray openly. That means things like, Oh God, please create a culture of discipling in our church. I don't know how to be simpler in this. Um, and you want to do things like that for two reasons. One, because you're asking God to do something and he loves to do the things that he loves to do. And so you're bringing him honor and glory by asking him, you're showing your dependence on him for it. And number two, you're catechizing the congregation by the public prayers. You teach your congregation, you teach them what is good and right and valuable. And therefore you want to pray about this, not only openly, but regularly. So there should be a list of things that you are regularly bringing before your congregation in prayer, uh, both to beseech the Lord and also to be encouraging. So even the way you lead in prayer about this will help the congregation to understand it as you define it and you explain it, even in the way you pray, they can be very simple. Oh God, help us to inconvenience ourselves to love each other. Even as you have given so dearly to love us, help us to love as we've been loved. You are how we know what love is. Doesn't take long for simple sentences. You've conveyed truth from first John. You conveyed truth about discipling. You conveyed that inconvenience. That's right. Love is inconvenient by its very nature. So you're, you're contradicting the whole secret sensitive. We will make you happy and serve you here. Idea of church, which is from hell. Uh, and you know, you're seeing instead that following Jesus is going to involve a glorious self-denial in which you will ironically find your life, uh, as you give your life away and loving others. And is there loved by number eight, make applications in your sermon about caring for each other biblically. So you give shape and definition to love by doing this when you're and friends, there are so many places you could go to do this. Uh, it's, it's in most every bit of scripture, but I mean, if you just want some very, very obvious ones for this kind of stuff, uh, you can go to Romans 14, uh, verse 19. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual up building or Romans 15 verse 14. I myself am satisfied about you. My brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another, uh, or Hebrews 10, uh, the lettuce patch of the new Testament. Hebrews 10, uh, verses 24 and 25, uh, let us hold fast for the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promises faithful and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day approaching, there are so many passages in the new Testament that you can teach on this and make direct application about discipline. Number nine, realize the importance of the regular gathering together of the congregation, both for the members and especially for you. So very practically what that means for me is I want to hang around the Sunday morning and Sunday evening and Wednesday night services. I do not just want to walk in when the service starts and walk out when the service ends. I want to be there beforehand. I want to talk to the folks. I want to be there afterwards. So if it's Sunday morning, uh, and I've been up there preaching, or I'm just, you know, they're at church. I will be at that door over there at the back. And I'll be there for 30 minutes, an hour after the service ends just to talk to everyone. So walk up and talk to me. And that's what I'm going to do Sunday night. And that's when we do Wednesday night. And we encourage our other pastors to do that. And we encourage other members to do that. And it begins to create a culture in the church of people hanging around and talking to each other, which is a great culture. I think you want to work to create a favorable environment for friendship and disciplining relationships to develop them. And that's going to mean in part, just a relationship church, a church where relationships are exampled and valued. Number 10, pray for humility. You want to have a culture of disciplining your church. I want, I think you want to regularly humble yourself, publicly mentioned how other people have helped you grow spiritually. Obviously sit and learn from others. So this past Sunday morning, I did not preach. Charles had been preached on Psalm 38. Very difficult song to preach. He did an extraordinarily good job. I sat on the front row. Now there's a danger in sitting in the front row. I will fall asleep several times in every hour long sermon. It will just happen. You know, I won't fall asleep for long. I mean, I really need to sleep. Maybe I'll just be concentrating deeply for a moment. But when, but the way our congregation sits, everybody will see, Hey, look, Mark's sleeping during Charles's sermon, but you know what? I'm going to be awake during almost all of it. And I'm going to take good notes. I'm going to take good notes. And I would rather risk the humiliation to me and or Charles by me having a little shut eye in order for people to see that I am happily learning from this dear brother that because I'm the senior pastor, I am not above learning God's word from other people. I don't know it all. And I am hungry to learn. I want to learn. And so I rejoice in sitting there and listening to somebody else teach God's word. I'm so old at this point, I am far happier at these brothers preaching good sermons and me preaching good sermon. You know, I, maybe my first couple of years of ministry, I cared, Oh, I hope I can preach a sermon, you know, but, but these days I think, okay, I know I can preach. I know there are better preachers, but I can preach, but I am just delighted when I listen to other brothers preach. I mean, that just gives me far more joy and I want to learn and I want to grow from the word. And I can do that when I sit and listen to people like Charles, preach, promote others, teaching both within and outside of your congregation. If you're the senior pastor, people assume that they can grow from being taught by you, but they may not expect you to learn and grow from listening to them. And they may not think they can listen to others. And if that's the case, that's not going to encourage discipling and a culture of discipling. So for example, one time I preached a sermon. It was of course, a good sermon. When I was done, I went to the back door and stood there and bill Barron's one of my best friends in the church walked up to me afterwards. And he said, Mark, thank you for eating. He knows I'm vain. So he first flattered me about the sermon. And then, you know, he said, Hey Mark, did, uh, did you, um, did you preach the gospel in that sermon? Did you share the gospel? I said, of course I did bill. He said, well, no, I don't think you, I don't think you, I don't think if somebody came as a non-Christian, they would really know how to become a Christian from listening to that sermon. I still, that's ridiculous. You know? Okay. Well, I just thought I'd say it. And then he goes on. Well, of course it bugs me. So, you know, I go home and look back through my notes, you know, did I share the gospel? And I couldn't find any place where I did. I thought, oh, he's right. You know? So I resolved from that point on, man, anytime I'm, I'm preaching the Bible, I'm going to share the gospel. You know, I'm just going to make it clear how there's a non-Christian there. So if it's you here tonight, you know, you know that by your unconscious, you've done things that are wrong. There is a God who will hold you accountable. And because it was amazing love, he sent his son, Jesus Christ to live a life of perfect trust in him. He died on the cross as a substitute in the place of all of us who would ever turn and trust in him. God raised him from the dead and he ascended to heaven where the father accepted the sacrifice. And he tells all of us now to turn and trust in him. And if we do, we're forgiven for all of our sins. We're given a new life. We're born again. That could be you tonight. If you're here and you're not a Christian, I want to make sure that is in every sermon. And that's because Bill Barron came up and said that to me one night. You know what? It's good. Not only that Bill did that, but it's also good that I'm telling you that because when I say things like that in my congregation, my congregation learns that I can grow. And what that means is other people can teach the word other than me. And what that means is they don't have to have the senior pastor at their hospital bed. They can have somebody else there who knows the word. They can have somebody else who teaches their Bible study, somebody else who instructs them in the ways of the Lord. They are responsible. Like we read in Hebrews, I mean, in Romans 14 and 15 to encourage and to instruct one another. So you, you help them as you, if you're the main pastor, the main preacher, if you listen to other folks, teach a Bible studies or preach in your church. Number 11, promote good books to help people. Disciple promote good books to help people. Disciple you do this through a church library. You can do this through selling books at your church. So we have a book stall in our church. You can do it through giving away every Sunday night and Wednesday night. I'll give away five to 10 free books. I'll just say, Hey, here's a copy of JC Ryle thoughts for young men. Who wants this? Who will read it? If you take it, you're promising before the Lord, you'll read it. Do not take this. You are in sin. If you take this book and do not read it within the next month, you know, so I lay on the people overlook the natural pastoral gifts of guilt, shame, and condemnation. I mean, when you combine them with a vigorous reformed gospel of grace, it's really useful. Now, if you put this with Armenian legalism, it's dangerous. Don't do that, but you got a lot of that good Galatians, gracing you, you can pull out that shame and guilt some, but anyway, if you share with them, good books, you're identifying authors. They can, they can trust you. You're giving them examples of it. You're teaching them to read. You're helping them to know what kind of thing they should read. You're instructing them on the topics of those specific books. Hopefully they'll begin having conversations with each other. It just, it cascades on and on. That's part of how you'll create this culture of discipling in the church. Number 12. I had a visitor coming to me. I was standing at the door of the church on Sunday after, after church. And this guy, Mike from California was visiting and Mike came up to me and he said, I just love the service today. I said, thank you, brother. That's great. Um, he said, and you know, one of my favorite things, he said, after the services I've had probably two or three spiritual conversations with your members. They've just talked to you about the things of the Lord. I'm a visitor here. He said, it's just been so refreshing for my soul. I love that about our church. I'm happy for them to talk about politics and Redskins football. That's fine. But I love it when they also will have spiritual conversation and when it is normal and natural for the people of God to talk about the things of God. So for instance, number 12 is make part of your normal conversation with others openly and directly spiritual. Make part of your normal conversation with others openly and directly spiritual. Part of the goal of loving each other should involve building each other up. And that will naturally entail more sustained, deliberate efforts with some than with others. And thus discipling is the natural fruit of the commitment and deliberateness of membership. It's all just kind of extension for some of the obligations in the congregation of caring for each other. Number 13. Do discourage rigidity. That is sometimes built on a discipling. They have a kind of pyramid thing in mind where it has to be very clear who is discipling whom it has to be very clear whose disciple I am. It has to be very clear that you must only have one person discipling you. Less lines of authority be crossed. That's just eerie on all kinds of levels. I think all those are bad ideas. You will discourage that. So I would love if let's say if Jeremy is a member of our church, I would love for two or three brothers at least to be pouring into Jeremy. I don't I don't want to be my disciple or Shai's disciple or Ed's disciple. You know, I would love him to have a close relationship with Andy and really for Jamie to be pouring into him and Jonathan to be close to him. I want multiple sources of entry into every soul, certainly to my soul and in preference in every soul in the congregation. So I don't want a kind of rigidity in the idea of discipling. Number 14 and similar to that, then is I just also want to beware of a wrong dependency developing. If I see in some people a kind of irresponsibility, like I can't really do anything, I'm just listening. So I'm doing what they say. That's that's not good. If I see somebody becoming overly dependent on me, that's not good. I'm going to try to make sure they've got other people in their life significantly as well instead of just me. Number 15, make sure and build discipling relationships with the same gender, but with other boundaries like age and race deliberately crossed. You don't want your culture discipling just to be natural friendships. Natural friendships are great. There's not a thing in the world wrong with them. Have all of those. But also, if everybody you're discipling was just like you and within 10 years of your age, something's wrong. You want to be discipling for the glory of God, and part of that will be stretching beyond what your natural friend said is. I love hearing Caleb the other day. So excited. He just been out with Sarah, who's an Ethiopian Eritrean grandmother, to hear Sarah's testimony, and he shared his with her, and they were both just in tears in this restaurant hearing the testimony of the Lord. I love hearing things like Caleb is 24 years old, and Sarah is just a wonderfully edifying sister. I love to hear story after story like that in our congregation. Last thing, number 16, be aware that instituting particular programs through which all of your discipling should be done. So hey, I just found ex-discipling program may have the unintended side effect of diminishing discipling to simply one of five or 10 categories of ministry in church. Hey, I'm into the choir, and I am into children's ministry, and I'm into the discipling ministry. Okay. I think instead what you really want is that the discipling culture would permeate everything your church does. So when you're like working at the crisis pregnancy center, you're thinking about taking somebody with you to do that. When you're working a central union mission, you're thinking about taking some guys down there when you preach. You know, if you're visiting the jail, or if you're evangelizing on a college campus, or whatever you're doing in ministry, you're thinking, what can I do to incorporate other people in this, so that that culture of discipling begins to permeate your whole church. Friends, those are 16 ideas. It's nine minutes till nine o'clock. You've been very patient today. I hope they stimulate you to some good thought about your own congregation. We will see you at nine in the morning. Let me lead you in prayer before we leave.