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Mega-city Churches 2: making disciples

May13, 2007

Asking how the church can grow may not be the best way to express the question because it leads us to think about particular congregations getting larger. While this is generally a good thing, the main question is not primarily about the church.

A better way to approach the question may be to ask how the disciples of Jesus can multiply in a mega-city, and if they did multiply, what would be the best way for them to meet as the church.  

Once we talk about multiplying disciples we are taken back to the mandate Jesus gave his followers (Matt 28). And we are faced with a personal decision about whether we want to do what he said. In some ways talking about church and especially about church services is much easier because it allows us to talk about structures and methods. But making disciples involves talking about the message and people.

Well not talking about it, but doing it. How can disciples multiply in a mega-city? Some would read this as a methodological question also. And it is in a way. But it is not really our question. Because the multiplying of disciples is in the first place the responsibility of the Master. He is the one who has to decide on the method. The disciples should follow the method the Master taught them. And the method the Master modelled and taught was to make disciples by teaching and practising the message, and to use disciples to do it.

Disciples are the method. And the tools they have are just the message of repentance and forgiveness that Jesus taught them (Luke 24), and the power from the Holy Spirit which he gave them for the task.

In fact the evidence suggests that it is the Holy Spirit who directs the disciple-making process. The spread of the message in Acts is obviously directed by God. Paul seems to have thought of a tactic in that he visited the synagogue first when he went to a new town. But the big strategy was not planned by the disciples. Church history, I think, suggests the same.

No doubt the Holy Spirit calls disciples together to work in teams, to engage in cooperative ventures to take the gospel to all the nations. No doubt church fellowships are stirred up to act together to bring the message to their community, and to send some to the outside to make disciples of alien groups. But the cooperative ventures are not the heart of disciple-making.  There are three central parts: disciples, the message, and power from the Holy Spirit.

But how does it happen? That is a question for next time.

Dale

Comments

I absolutely agree what Dale has written here. He ended the blog with question "How does it happen?"
The answer is it will never happen as long as we keep being introvert, egoism, feel better than the other people and... refuse to be in the Christian Fellowship.
Dale ever said in his sermon that the Christian Fellowship means that Father conveys Himself to us through Christ Jesus, then we share the love of Christ one another in the fellowship, so the Christian Fellowship can share it to people around them, so they can be the new disciples.

Posted by Lidia on Friday, May 11, 2007 at 03:32:02

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