Are We Obeying Jesus’ Final Command?
Have you wondered why we plant churches when Jesus commanded us to make disciples? It’s a great question to ask. Several years ago, Tim Keller shared his thoughts on why churches should plant more churches in an article called Why Plant Churches. In it he says, “Virtually all the great evangelistic challenges of the New Testament are basically calls to plant churches.”
Why do we plant churches if Jesus called us to make disciples? It’s twofold: when the Gospel enters a new area and new disciples are made, they need community and mutual support – a new church; and churches are communities where more disciples are made.
Just like God created marriage and families to provide a safe, nurturing environment for children to grow and develop, so too he designed his Church to act as spiritual families. Churches provide a context in which believers help each other grow and reproduce. That’s why we see throughout the book of Acts Jesus’ first followers planting churches even as they obeyed Jesus’ command to make disciples.
And that’s why we’re so passionate about helping you start reproducing churches.
Unfortunately, the state of the Church in the West suggests that just because a new church is started, that doesn’t guarantee disciples are being made. That’s why we’ve filled this month’s newsletter full of content to help your church think strategically about how you’ll make mature disciples of Jesus. We hope you find the content encouraging and helpful for your mission. Enjoy!
-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations
September 2021 – Contents
- National Disciple Makers Forum
- Disciple Making Strategy Template
- Disciple Making Tool Belt
- Let’s Eat
National Disciple Makers Forum
Join 1,500+ leaders at this year’s National Disciple Making Forum in Nashville, TN. Come to learn, share insights, and connect in-person with like-minded disciple-making practitioners.
The forum will include 4 mainstage sessions and 20 disciple making workshop tracks consisting of hyper-focused teaching, panels and live Q&A sessions to help you multiply your disciple-making efforts. This year’s gathering will focus on the cost of discipleship in our personal lives, our families, our churches, and the world.
An unparalleled lineup of practitioners, including Myron Pierce, Alisa Childers, Dave Clayton, Shodankeh Johnson and many more, will share insights they’ve been learning as they make disciples. They will present actionable insights, data-driven knowledge, and innovative ideas to help you navigate the cost of discipleship in a rapidly changing environment.
Don’t miss this opportunity to grow in your disciple making efforts and consider who you can bring with you to help them grow as well. Register today!
Disciple Making Strategy Template
If someone were to ask you, “What’s your church’s strategy for making disciples?”, how would you respond? Can you answer that question with any bit of confidence? How your church goes about making disciples isn’t a question you should take lightly. Don’t just get busy doing church things and hope disciples are produced.
And don’t just try a bunch of different disjointed tactics and hope something works. Be intentional about making disciples that make disciples. With the help of our Disciple Making Strategy Template, you can begin to clarify your church’s disciple making strategy. The template will walk you through several important questions you’ll need to wrestle with as you develop a vision and plan for helping people at your church trust and follow Jesus.
Don’t leave disciple making to chance. Craft a strategy so that every leader at your church can support it and execute it together.
Disciple-Making Tool Belt
If you’ve ever attempted a home improvement project, you understand how important it is to have the right tools for the job. The same is true when attempting to cultivate a disciple-making culture at your church. You benefit from having the right tools for the job. That’s why we want to make you aware of Movements.net. Steve Addison, author of The Rise and Fall of Movements, plus several other books about disciple making, has developed this site to bolster every believer’s disciple-making toolbelt. It’s filled with practical tips and tools to help Jesus followers make disciple who make disciples.
If you’re looking for encouragement, visit the Video Channel and hear about how God is at work all over the world multiplying disciples. If you’re looking for skills to train your disciples in, visit their Skills Training page. Be challenged and equipped to be a multiplying disciple of Jesus with the help of Movements.net.
Let’s Eat
When you hear about church planting movements, you usually hear how they were preceded by a significant investment in prayer and fasting. The spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting deepen our dependance on God and help us hear his voice more clearly. That’s why it’s important for us to encourage and train every believer to fast and pray. However, at the same time, believers should also learn how to eat food with a purpose. What do we mean by that, you may be wondering? We mean hosting meals for the purpose of evangelism and discipleship like Jesus did.
If you like food and want to use your eating to grow in your imitation of Jesus, read Eating Together, a blog post from Saturate. Don’t feel guilty about eating good food. Share it with others and turn those mealtimes into opportunities for spiritual conversation and nourishment.