My Suffering Produces Followers of Jesus

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Our God is a suffering God. We see his suffering throughout the Bible. [1]  It begins with Adam and Eve, people he created for enjoyment and relationship, but who both rejected God choosing to follow a selfish path. Later God chose the nation of Israel to be his people. Again they not only rejected the Lord but held him in contempt and twisted his good intentions to look malicious. Then later in the New Testament at the death of Jesus we see the suffering heavenly Father as well as the suffering Son. It is in the cross we have the template for making disciples. Here God demonstrates his willingness to suffer in order to love another through the laying down of His life so that another can have life.

The suffering of God overflows into the life of his followers. Paul writes:

For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”  (2 Corinthians 1:5).

The overflow of the suffering of God produces offspring of “like heart.” It is said that “life begets life” but in God’s economy “death begets life.” Only as I die (willingly laying down my life for another) are disciples made. Jesus told his disciples:

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. Whoever serves me must follow me…  (John 12:24-26).

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends.  (John 15:12-13)

[1] See Terence E. Fretheim, “The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective” (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984)

Hospitality As A Means to Make Followers of Jesus

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There are only a few requirements listed in the Bible for leaders (elders) of the family of God but on that short list hospitality is named. If one would ask 100 Christians to list their top ten qualifications for Christian leadership I doubt many would list hospitality and yet it does make the Holy Spirit’s top ten list.

Hospitality is an expression of the heart and nature of God. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit extended to mankind an opportunity to be adopted into the family of God through Jesus coming to earth. Jesus’ ministry on earth was marked by hospitality. “Luke portrays Jesus not only as a guest at the table of others, but also as an indiscriminate host who welcomes those outside the boundaries of religious and social approval.” [1] Jesus used hospitality to connect to the poor, the wealthy, the working man and the disenfranchised in order for them to become his followers. Craig Blomberg observes:

As to the meaning of Jesus’ behavior, the unifying theme that emerges is one that may be called  ‘contagious holiness’. Jesus discloses not one instance of fearing contamination, whether moral or ritual, by associating with the wicked or impure. Rather, he believes that his purity can rub off on them, and he hopes that his magnanimity toward them will lead them to heed his calls to discipleship. [2]

I am not a cook. But after discovering hospitality in the life of Jesus I resolved (after great consternation) to learn how to cook. A group of men I was discipling were meeting in my home each week, so I decided to cook for them. After we started eating meals together the spiritual intensity of the group and our love for one another increased immediately. The simple act of preparing a meal exhibits one’s willingness to sacrifice and create for the benefit of another which reflects the power of the cross and the new created life found in Jesus.

[1] Delmar Paez, “The Missionary Dimension of Hospitality In The Third Gospel,” Maryhill School of Theology, p.2.
[2] Contagious Holiness: Jesus’ Meals With Sinners, p. 167

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.

First Things First

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My name is Lewie Clark, and I have been in ministry for 28 years. As a young man I was discipled to be a follower of Jesus by a man named Taylor Gardner. The process of being discipled was life changing. After pastoring for a number of years I moved to Chicago in 2005 to begin ministry from “scratch.”

I am neither a writer nor a blogger, but several friends have asked me to journal our experiences. There are fifteen of us here in Chicago learning together what it means to build a community of followers of Jesus. Together we will periodically share with you the story of our journey.

First Things First

The great commission is to make followers of Jesus, not to plant churches.

My objective in moving to Chicago was to make followers of Jesus rather than plant a church. My conviction is that the by-product of making followers of Jesus is an authentic kingdom community.

Many church planting methods place the cart before the horse. One plants a church (meaning, one recruits a pastor, chooses a target group, decides on a name, writes a mission statement, creates a constitution with by-laws, and files for tax exemption) in order to reach people with the good news of Jesus. The church planting process is cumbersome, expensive, and therefore prohibitive. Although I do not question the motives of church planting I simply ask the question, “Is there a better way?”

It was C. S. Lewis who said, “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in; put second things first and we lose both first and second things.” When one makes disciples first it will result in kingdom communities of faith and love. But when one plants churches first there is the danger of not only not making followers of Jesus but also of setting the church start up for failure.

We are only allowing our Chicago community to grow at the rate that we can effectively make disciples. Years ago Robert Coleman exhorted the church:

One can not transform a world except as individuals in the world are transformed, and individuals cannot be changed except as they are molded in the hands of the Master. The necessity is apparent not only to select a few laymen, but to keep the group small enough to be able to work effectively with them.  [1]

I believe that Chicago and the world can be changed through our one small band of followers of Jesus.

[1] Robert E. Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism, (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1963) p. 24.