October 2017
Upcoming 2017 Mission and Ministry Schedule
October 11-21: Mission trip to Peru [Lima, IBI, Los Pinos; Cusco, Encuentro IberoAmericano]
October 29: Mission Report and Preaching, Northside church, Mena, AR
October 31 - November 14: Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Ohio Valley University
November 30 - December 3: Baxter board meeting and graduation, Tegucigalpa, Honduras
My 2017 Calendar that includes all scheduled ministry and mission activities is available on-line. I hope you can attend an event when I am in your area. Contact me for details or to schedule a future visit or event.
Also available is my 2018 Calendar, reflecting activities that are currently scheduled. With several personal obligations and plans, the 2018 calendar is for all practical purposes already filled. To see about the possibility of adding an activity of short duration in 2018, contact me as soon as possible.
I am currently scheduling for 2019, with several events already on the calendar.
Make Disciples
In Matthew 28:19-20, disciple-making involves two things: (1) sharing the story (evangelizing) so that people are baptized; (2) teaching and maturing (discipling).
Jesus was a disciple maker. He spent his ministry making twelve disciples. The church must return to making disciples--in local ministry and in mission work. A lot of good things are being done today in the name of the Lord. One can point to great prison works, significant benevolent works, great crowds of people served and helped--but for the most part the church continues to decline in number. Why? Without committed disciple-making that makes committed disciples, nothing else works. Everything comes up short. We have forgotten that telling the story (evangelizing) is primary. When we do not tell the Good News, we should not be surprised that people are not baptized. In other cases, we have thought that disciple-making was successfully completed at baptism and we have overlooked or forgotten the necessity of continued teaching (often called discipling!). Disciple-making includes evangelizing and will result in baptisms, but that is not the end; that is only the beginning. Disciple-making is conversions and baptisms; disciple-making is teaching and discipling.
Discipleship is the main thing. Disciple-making is the future of the church. Discipleship is the mission, it is our only hope, it is the only way to develop mature Christians. Focus on discipleship--not on baptisms. We are measuring the wrong thing. How many disciples? That is a better question than, how many baptisms? We have missed Jesus' focus, we have missed the last words of Jesus' earthly ministry. Discipleship is what every ministry, church service, sermon, activity is about. Discipleship is God's plan.
In the Great Commission, Jesus gave his followers their mission. The Great Commission is your mission. Making disciples is your purpose, it is your goal in life, it is what you should do, it is your mission. One definition of mission is this: "a precise job to specific people to accomplish specific objective." To understand mission (and mission work), one must ask, "What is the specific objective?" That objective was given by Jesus: Make Disciples!
Mission refers to a specific task. What is the mission of the church? What is the mission God that gave the church? We can do lots of things--good things, but are they the mission? Our mission is the specific task we were given by Christ. What is that task? Jesus said, "As you go into the world…." Make a list of all of the ways the Bible completes that sentence. Only making disciples can be considered our mission. Mission work is about making disciples. Nothing else justifies sending a missionary.
Churches and missionaries want to make other things the mission. Some more conservative churches identify the mission as guarding the doctrine. Others see the mission as helping people. Still others see the mission as solving various problems in the world. Some churches and some Christians misidentify the mission--and soon the focus is on great programs, or good church services, or great sermons, or pastoral care, or counseling, or benevolence, or.... These and many other things are important, but they are not the mission. The mission is making disciples. Read the Great Commission again. Read Luke 19:10; this is why Jesus came--to seek and to save the lost!
More....
__________________
The complete article can be accessed and downloaded at: Make Disciples
