Tag Archives: Belonging

Disciple Making and Children #2

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Recently I was with a Jewish couple that had converted from Judaism to Christianity.  One difficulty in the transition was the home life.   Judaism had provided for them a template for a Jewish home (e.g., keeping the Sabbath, Passover, and feasts, etc.), whereas Christianity gave them little help on what a Christian home should look like.  (Other than they were told to be sure and get their children into Sunday school and youth group.)  As Voddie Baucham points out, Christianity’s approach to ministry communicates to parents: “leave the spiritual training of your children to the professions.” [1]

God gave the Israelite parent the responsibility for the spiritual training of their child.  To be an Israelite meant to train children for a lifetime-not only were they expected to teach their own children but also their grandchildren.  “…teach them to your children and to their children after them.” (Deuteronomy 4:9-10)

Since God is familial (Father-Son-Holy Spirit) the best environment for a child to learn and experience the nature of God is in a family.  Are there benefits for a child in attending Sunday school, children’s ministry, vacation bible school, and youth group? Sure.  But the best context for him to experience sacrificial love, belonging, grace, and a servant’s heart is in a home.  Here, day after day, year after year, a child learns what it means to belong in a family just as the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are in perfect union.

[1] Voddie Baucham  http://media.sermonindex.net/15/SID15607.mp3

 

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.

Hospitality: A Starting Point For Making Disciples

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Hospitality is a good starting place for making disciples.  It provides for you an opportunity to serve your disciple and to carve out a safe place for him to belong. Serving and making followers of Jesus are inseparable.  Jesus told his disciples:

Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.  (Mark 10:43-45)

Hospitality not only allows your disciple to observe service to others, it also provides him an opportunity to become part of the serving process; whether it is cutting the bread, setting the table, or taking drink orders.  Teaching your disciple hospitality is an important component for the spreading of the gospel through serving others.

Henri Nouwen writes:

How does healing take place?  Many words, such as care and compassion, understanding and forgiveness, fellowship and community, have been used for the healing task of the Christian minister.  I like to use the word hospitality, not only because it has such deep roots in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but also, and primarily, because it gives us more insight into the nature of response to the human condition of loneliness.  Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler.  Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights.

Recommended Reading on Hospitality:

  • “Real Love for Real Life:  The Art and Work of Caring” by Andi Ashworth.  Colorado Springs: Shaw Books.  ISBN  0-87788-048-4
  • “Contagious Holiness:  Jesus’ Meal with Sinners” by Craig L. Blomberg.  Downers Grove:  InterVarsity Press.  ISBN  0-8308-2620-3
  • “Reaching Out:  The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life” by Henri J.M. Nouwen. Garden City: Doubleday. ISBN  0-385-03212-9
  • “A Gentleman Entertains: A Guide to Making Memorable Occasions Happen” by John Bridges and Bryan Curtis.  Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 2000.  ISBN 1-55853-812-7 (Great for beginners!)
  • “Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition” by Christine D. Pohl.
  • “L’Abri” by Edith Schaeffer.  Wheaton:  Crossway Books, 1969, 1992.  ISBN  0-89107-668-9

Why Hospitality?

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Making disciples of Jesus is best done in the context of your home, whether for your natural children or your spiritual children.  Disciples are the children of God; therefore the home is an ideal environment for a disciple to experience, (1) the parental nature of God, (2) what it means to belong to a family, (3) how to love and serve others, and (4) how to attach to brothers and sisters.  Children can witness what it means to follow Jesus by observing the daily lives of their parents in various circumstances.

In the West we tend to compartmentalize our lives, often separating our ministry from our home.  Even when ministry is conducted in the home, it tends to be done as a “study” or “meeting” rather than being a family gathering.  (In the many small group training conferences that I have attended, never did “family” or “a meal” enter the discussion.  A house was only a convenient place to hold a meeting.)

Some Benefits of Hospitality:

  • Hospitality provides you an opportunity to serve your disciple.  (Serving is another way to say “I love you”.)
  • Hospitality opens up your life to your disciple.  (A person’s home tells a lot about a person.  I have been in very few homes of pastors or church leaders.)
  • Hospitality provides your disciple an opportunity to observe how you relate to your wife and children.
  • Hospitality provides an opportunity for your children to serve others and to learn how to share.
  • Hospitality provides an opportunity for your children to love others and for others to love your children.   (A hug from a 4 year old will melt any heart.)
  • Hospitality provides an opportunity for your children to observe how you minister and interact with others.
  • Hospitality provides a place for your disciple to belong.
  • Hospitality provides a place for your disciple to serve.  (Help cook, help clean up, help with the children)
  • Hospitality provides you an opportunity for you to observe how your disciple relates to others.

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. 

What is God Like?

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While looking for ministry methods, Christianity has the tendency to skip over the Gospels and dive into the book of Acts and Paul’s letters.  Yet it is in the Gospels that we have four accounts of God coming to earth to show us what God is like.  “When Church Was a Family” by Joseph Hellerman is one of the more thought provoking books I have read in a while.  He writes:

“The earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth constitutes the one time in the history of humanity when heaven fully and finally came to earth.  In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have the opportunity to see the question What is God like? answered in the flesh-and-blood world in which we live.  During His incarnation Jesus not only procured our way to heaven.  He also shows us how to live on earth.  Now we can pattern our lives after Jesus.”[1]

The answer to What is God is like? as seen in the Gospels is love.  At the baptism of Jesus the heavenly Father breaks silence and declares his love for his Son.  “And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:17) Here we discover the family love bond between the heavenly Father and Jesus.  This familiar love becomes the basis for Jesus love for his disciples and the disciples love for one another.   “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” (John 15:9) “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

While reading the Gospels our Western eyes are drawn to ministry methods and we can easily miss the relational component of Jesus’ approach.   Imitating the methods of Jesus without the family love element will result in a sterile religion rather than a dynamic spiritual family.  It is essential for your disciples to understand that God relates to them as a Father and they are to relate to him as a son.  This understanding is the basis on which your disciples are to lovingly relate to one another as brothers.  The brotherly love your disciples have for one another is a window for the world to see into the heavenly Father’s love for Jesus and their perfect unity. “I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:22-23)

[1] Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family (Nashville: B & H Academic, 2009), p. 62.

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.