Category Archives: Community

Family and Making Disciples 5 – Belonging

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Chicago Tribune writer Marla Paul took a risk when she wrote a self-revealing column confessing her sadness and frustration over her own inability to build and sustain friendships. She wrote this column expecting little, if any, response. However, she was inundated with letters from others experiencing the same kind of isolation.

One person wrote, “I’ve often felt that I’m standing outside looking through the window of a party to which I was not invited.”

Marla Paul ended her column about loneliness with these words: “Sometimes it seems easier to just give up and accept disconnectedness as a dark and unshakable companion; but, that’s not the companion I want.” She writes, “She is going to keep longing, searching, trying, and hoping that someday she will be able to discover and develop community.” [1]

People need to belong. The television show “Friends” is popular because people long to be part of a tribe of friends as seen on the show. This desire in man to belong comes from the nature of God. For all eternity the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have had each other and belonged to one another. Since man is created in the image of God, we too were made to belong to others.

Part of the discipling process is helping your disciple understand that they belong to God as a son and also to God’s family. A disciple of Jesus belongs to the family of God because he was wanted and adopted by the heavenly Father. Trevor Burke writes: “Adoption is about being wanted. It is about belonging” [2]. Along with discussions around the word of God about what it means to be a child of God, the discipler must continually include the disciple in his own life as well and draw his disciple into a loving group of the children of God.

Some closing thoughts on belonging:

  1. Include your disciple in your life. By allowing your disciple into the routine of your life, he will see how you relate to your spouse, children, and friends. It illustrates to him what it means to belong to God’s family. (Paul wrote of this approach in 1 Thessalonians: “You know how we lived among you for your sake…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.”)
  2. Teach each member of your discipling community to consistently communicate to one another that they belong to the group and that they are an important part of the family. (We cannot be reminded too often that we belong.)
  3. Serve your disciple. One way to say “you belong” is by serving your disciple when they have a need. Even better is when a whole community can serve a need of one of its members.

[1] Paul, Marla, The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making, and Keeping Friends When You’re Not a Kid Anymore, (Emmaus: Rodale Publishing, 2004)

[2] Burke, Trevor J., Adopted Into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.197.

Family and Making Disciples 2 – The Church: God’s Family

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How I view God and His church (ekklesia) affects how I see myself, how I relate to others and how I relate to God. For all eternity, God is a Father, and Jesus is a Son. Therefore, family is an eternal concept based on the nature of God. The idea of family is not confined to man’s time on earth. As long as there has been God, there has been family and as long as there will be God, there will be family.

God the Father behaves like a father because he is a father. God’s father-heart moved Him to adopt us into His family even at the cost of the sacrifice of His own Son. Because of this adoption Jesus relates to us as our brother. The author of Hebrews tells us that: “Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says, ‘I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.’ For this reason he (Jesus) had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:11-17). My relationship to God is both as a child with his father and as a brother with a brother.

The apostle Paul views ekklesia as God’s family. In 1 Timothy 3:14-15 he writes: “…so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church (ekklesia) of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” In Paul’s writings, his language of choice for what we would call “Christian(s)” is familiar language. He uses the word “brother(s)” 129 times – in contrast to his use of the word “saints” 29 times, and the word “believer(s)” 11 times. Paul never uses the term “Christian” or “disciple.”

Paul’s understanding of the Father nature of God and that the ekklesia is the family of God directed the way he ministered to others. In the city of Thessalonica Paul was like a mother and father to the disciples. He writes: “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…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” (1 Thessalonians 2:7-12).

Making followers of Jesus cannot be separated from the family nature of God. As God the Father loved Jesus, and Jesus loved us, so in the same familiar manner we are to love one another. A parental sacrificial love for others is the catalytic force that will produce disciples of Jesus and advance the kingdom of God.

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.

Cultivating a Community Who Love One Another

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Group leaders become frustrated when they are unable to cultivate a community that truly loves one another. Often the reason for this frustration is that the leader has put the cart before the horse. He/she has placed their energies on creating a community through the weekly meeting time rather than individually discipling the group members.

Christian small group leaders have been trained to build their community through the couple hours of “group time” that the members are together each week. I argue that the community’s environment is a result of the leader’s discipling of the members outside of the group time. As the orchestra’s concert is the consummation of lessons, private practice and rehearsals so the group dynamic is the expression of the discipler’s individual investment in his/her disciples. One cannot expect people who have not been discipled to behave like disciples in community.

Making Disciples Should Be Done In Community

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Love is the mark of a follower of Jesus. Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35) In my first 20 years of making disciples I followed the “one-on-one” discipling model. But after studying the discipling methods of Jesus, I decided to pull my disciples together one night a week at my apartment to form a community. I was in for a shock. Not only did these guys not love one another, but some of them did not even get along with one another.

I realized that sitting in a Starbucks a guy could snow me by giving the impression that all his relationships were healthy, but in a community with other believers his relational fault lines are exposed and his true character is revealed. Finding oneself in authentic community can stir up old fears and insecurities. Over the next several months I was coaching the guys individually on how to love the others and how to receive love. I would have to teach Tim specifically on how to love John. Some of the men did not believe they could ever be loved. I remember Grant working hard to learn how to receive friendship from the other men in the group.

Jesus took 30 months with his disciples to shape their community and to exhibit his love for them. Jesus then instructed the disciples to love one another with the same love that He had for them, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34) For eternity God’s love has been revealed in the community of the Father, Son, and Spirit, so then, our love for one another as disciples is an illustration of God’s love to the world.