Category Archives: Children

Generational Love

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Lois Synder died this year, she was 96.  Mrs. Synder taught my 2nd grade Sunday school class and directed our Christmas pageant each year at the Christian Fellowship Church. I attended her memorial service with my mom and dad in the same auditorium where in 1952 Lois had decided to follow Jesus.  When the Synder family walked into the service that afternoon I was moved.  Before us stood 3 generations who follow Jesus nearly 60 years after Lois’ conversion.

In the service family and friends shared their memories of Lois.  It was in these stories that we discovered the reason why her family still follows Jesus today: Lois loved well.  She so loved her children and grandchildren in their formative years that this love overflowed to her great grandchildren.  Not only did Lois love her family, but each week she would load her car with teaching materials and go share the gospel with children living in the inner-city.

Lois’ seemingly endless ability to love others flowed from her understanding of God’s love for her grounded in the cross of Jesus.  God’s love for me will not be found in my circumstances, my heritage, my abilities, or my position, rather it is anchored in the truth that Jesus died for me.   “. . . God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

God shows me how to love others in Jesus’ death for me.  John writes: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 1 John 3:16-17” Once I begin to grasp the depth of God’s love for me, I am then able to love others in sacrificing my life for them.  It will cost me to love my mate, my children, my friends, and my disciples.

How silly a question it would seem if we could ask Lois today, “Was it worth it?”  I can only imagine the joy in her heart in seeing 3 generations loving God and loving one another. 

Measuring Results by Generations

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“Begin with the end in mind”[1], so says Stephen Covey.  The end objective determines not only how I do something but also how long I will do it.   To make a disciple of Jesus requires a loving relationship over an extended period of time.  Disciple making thinks in terms of the impact that my life will have on the generations to come rather than just on immediate results.

A generational perspective comes from God. He instructed the Israelites to not only train their own children but also their grandchildren (Deuteronomy 4:9).  In other words, an Israelite was expected to train children throughout his entire life.  The Lord also warns the Israelites that their sin would cast a long family shadow darkening generations to come.  Their behavior today would affect their children, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren, and even their great great grandchildren (Exodus 34:7).

In contrast, much of Christianity today values rapid multiplication and instantaneous movements.    We view a rapid growing church as being blest by God.  The faster the growth, the larger the numbers, the more blest by God, or so the reasoning goes.  The 3000 converts after Peter’s message in Acts chapter 2 is a favorite proof text.  This is why most church staff positions focus on the worship service as they seek to replicate a Pentecost type movement through what has been called “high impact services”.  I visited a church this week that had four staff members whose jobs revolved around the Sunday morning service and yet their small group coordinator was a part-time volunteer.  We revere the pastor or evangelist who is able to produce a Pentecost type stirring, notwithstanding the fact that not even Paul achieved comparable results.

Though spectacular, movements can lack the depth of relationship and character necessary to be sustained from one generation to the next.    Generational sustainability necessitates a deep love and a sacrificial longevity that a rapid multiplication does not require.    Only a sacrificial love is strong enough to bridge the generations.

[1] Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), p. 97.

Sin and Your Disciple

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Sin is the principal issue in your disciple’s life.  Man was designed to love and to be loved, sin prevents both.  It has estranged him from God and alienated him from others.  It has opened his life to the dark force of shame; a shame that prevents him from drawing near to God and prohibits him from building authentic relationships.  When man lives a detached existence his behavior becomes unstable, erratic, and often self-destructive as he explores ways to attach to others and to belong.

As a discipler, one of your first concerns should be to gain an understanding of your disciple’s perspective of his sin, the cross of Jesus, and his relationship to it.  There are even those who grew up in Christian homes and gospel centered churches that have not been able to apply the gospel to their lives.  Pride and disbelief will cause your disciple to make himself the exception to the rule by believing that he has sinned beyond the patience of God. He must humble himself and acknowledge that he can do nothing to pay for his sin.  His forgiveness is a gift from God because of his mercy and love.

The truth of the good news of Jesus is best learned and experienced in the context of a loving relationship with a parent or a discipler.  The parent/discipler provides an environment of love and forgiveness which illustrates the gospel for the disciple as he explores the gospel and applies its truth to his sin.

A couple of closing thoughts:

  • Most people (including believers) will never have anyone talk with them about their sin and the application of the gospel to their lives.  If you do not discuss it with your child or disciple probably no one will.
  • Just because someone has “made a profession of faith” at some point in his life does not mean he believes he is forgiven by God today.
  • Your disciple’s behavior, rather than his words, is an indicator of his understanding of the gospel.  (Is your disciple comfortable with God? Does your disciple love others well? Does your disciple receive love well? Is his life style contradictory?)
  • Our God is love.  Our message of the gospel is love.  Our love for one another is an expression of the gospel.  Love is a reliable test of a person’s understanding of the gospel.

How To View Your Disciple

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The lens through which I view others communicates louder than my words or actions.  This is why the lens through which I view my disciple must be correct in order for him to experience the love that brings life change.  As a wrong prescription for glasses effects how a patient sees everything, so a wrong or incomplete perspective effects how I view others.  People can sense how another views them, so I must rigorously evaluate the lens through which I see each of my disciples.   I can say the right words and do the right things, but if my lens is incorrect, my words and actions will ring hollow.

My lens must correspond with God’s view of my disciple, which is a perspective of family love.  The heavenly Father has adopted my disciple into the family of God. He is now a son of God; she is a daughter of God.  He is my brother; she is my sister.  The Father has engrafted him into his family at great cost demonstrating his value to God.

Paul and John’s perspective of the brothers and sisters enthusiastically comes through their letters.  Paul writes:

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his comparable great power for us who believe.  (Ephesians 1:18)

John writes:

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!  (1 John 3:1)

The apostles’ perspective reminds the disciples of the great love, kindness and grace that the Father has given to them. 

Unity and Making Disciples 2

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The best defense against hypocrisy is to make disciples in a small community, as Jesus demonstrated. How your disciples relate to one another in a group is an indicator of how each relates to God as an individual. The reason I disciple in community is because the only real way to know a person is based on how he interacts with others. A person can say that they love God with all their heart and that they worship him with a total abandon, but if he does not relate well with others, he is a liar (1 John 4:20).

The test to see if a person is a child of God and if he knows God is that he lovingly relates with others. “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). My relationship with God cannot be separated from my relationship with people; it is a direct indicator of my relationship with God.

Disciple making is not just an equipping course on how to do ministry, at its core disciple making is learning how to relate lovingly with God and with others. For this reason conflict and disunity among a group of disciples should not be looked upon despairingly by the discipler; but rather it is an opportunity to instruct his disciples on how to love one another.

(This is also why the family is an optimal place to make disciples. Within the home the parents have the opportunity to observe how their children relate with one another and then are able to teach the children how to love one another from a young age.)

Here’s what I do:

  1. I talk privately with each disciple about their relationship with each member of our group. We then discuss how he can affectively love each individual of the group. (We have found “The Five Love Languages” has been helpful in teaching our disciples on how to love one another.)
  2. I make sure that the group members spend one-on-one time with one another.
  3. Generally, when there is a conflict I do not address the entire group, but rather only those individuals involved.

Family and Making Disciples 4 – Leadership

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The types of leaders that are necessary to begin and sustain a multiplication of the kingdom of God are Godly moms and dads. The instruction, encouragement, kindness, time and sacrificial love that go into raising Godly children are the same necessary ingredients to make followers of Jesus. Paul reveals his own parental approach to disciple making in 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 where he writes: “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”

Yet, sadly, the same parents who have raised Godly children feel inadequate to make disciples of Jesus because Christianity has made discipling an educational method through curriculum, classrooms, and certification rather than a family relationship. I believe that the church has passed over kingdom leaders because they were not perceived as qualified, even though they have raised Godly children. I am now challenging parents to help advance the kingdom of God by making followers of Jesus in the same way that they raised their children.

The church (ekklesia) is made up of the children of God, and so it only seems consistent that we would function as a family on earth. Families cannot be run as an organization, and yet Christianity approaches the church as an organization as seen in the way it recruits and trains its leaders. The starting point for recruiting church leaders are with men with post-graduate degrees from religious education institutions The seminaries instruct their students in theology and church leadership, but how much preparation do these students have in how to be a good husband, wife, or parent?

I attended a pastor’s conference where business and military leaders challenged us to take the leadership principles from their organizations and apply them to our churches. One pastor said that the same leadership training he was giving us he also used to help businesses. This is not to say that there is no authority, structure, or accountability in the church; healthy families have all these things. I also am not suggesting that a leader of a business cannot be an effective leader in the church, or that pastors do not have helpful insights for the business world, but there is a marked difference between how a business and a family functions.

Here are a couple of action points I am working on:

  1. I am rereading the New Testament with the lens of viewing the church (ekklesia) as the “family of God.”
  2. I am recruiting Godly dads and moms, who could never imagine themselves making disciples or as kingdom leaders, to disciple others in the same way they raised their own children.
  3. I am interviewing Godly moms and dads for insights into how they raised their children and applying it to how I can disciple others.

Family and Making Disciples 3 – Multiplication

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The church (ekklesia) is a family and is to be led as a family. When the apostle Paul was looking for men to lead the church, he looked for men who were good husbands and dads. Paul understood the family essence of the church and that the same principles that build a healthy family are the same values that will multiply the kingdom of God. He writes: “He (the overseer) must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church (ekklesia)?)“ (1 Timothy 3:3-6)

Multiplication in a family is a natural and anticipated result. Good parents create an environment that is not only safe for the child but also one that moves the child onto maturity. Parents understand that the maturing process takes time but it is balanced with the expectation that someday this child is to leave their home to raise his own family. There is something unnatural about a 27 year old still living at home.

Jesus used the example of yeast and a seed to illustrate the multiplication nature of the kingdom of God. Jesus said: “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:23-25). The multiplication principle of “death brings life” was taught and demonstrated by both Jesus and Paul through the love sacrifice of their own lives for others. Paul writes to the disciples in Thessalonica: “…but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you” (1 Thess 2:7-9).

The marked difference between how parents approach their children and an organization their members is sacrificial love. Just as a child learns love through the daily sacrifices his parents make for him, so the love of God is taught by the believers laying down their lives for other believers. We demonstrate to the world the love of God when we, as the family of God, lay down our lives for one another. The disciple John wrote: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us“ (1 John 4:9-12). This is why the church is to function as a family and not an organization.

Family and Making Disciples

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In the movie “The Sound of Music” the widowed Captain von Trapp tries to run his family like he ran the Navy, with dire consequences. Although the Captain loved his children and the children loved their father, his organizational structures placed unnatural barriers between the Captain and his children. The nature of a family is unlike that of an organization and so the two function differently from one another.

The apostle Paul presents the church (ekklesia) as the “family” or “household” of God and yet our approach to church has been as if it is an organization (1 Timothy 3:14-15). We begin a church with a constitution, by laws, church government and then institute programs to run the church, which are both organizational in nature but foreign to any family. Ekklesia is based on the family essence of the Trinity; God the Father, His Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We have been adopted into the family of God as sons and daughters so it only makes sense that we should function as family on earth as we will in heaven for eternity (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6-7).

In Philippians 2:22 we get a glimpse into Paul’s approach to disciple making with his disciple Timothy. Here Paul writes of the father-son relationship which he had with Timothy – again a family relationship. Just as children were not meant to be raised by an organization so disciples are best made in the context of a spiritual family. One reason why Christianity has struggled to make disciples is because we have approached disciple making with programs rather than as a family. Can an organization empower and develop its people? Certainly. But, there is a marked difference between how an organization develops its people and how a parent loves his child.