Unedited notes from an AMAZING evening session – good stuff in here
Disciple making is in every movement. We’re being discipled every day through media. The task of advertising is to create desire. Consumerism is being defined by what we consume. Consumerism is the alternative religion of our day. Without doubt it is the secular religion of our day. Jesus advice can be taken quite literally… DIE.
George Patterson
The best kept secret among evangelicals – far easier to win people to Christ, plant churches, multiply cell groups – do evangelism and make disciples like the apostles did. Stop describing Jesus through facts – they need to experience the living risen Jesus. The main point, the punch line is his resurrection. They must experience the risen Christ.
They mobilized everyone to witness. Ordinary Christians doing 95% of the evangelism while being mentored by the gifted evangelists. Who did they go to? Stop trying to shove the camel through the eye of the needle. Average American church spends almost all of its time on camels. Almost all Americans are camels (the rich people) in comparison to the world. Jesus came to preach the Gospel to the poor. He didn’t start His public ministry among the rich and the powerful. He started with fisherman, people with callouses on their hands, or people who were despised like tax collectors.
They used every method. Don’t get hung up on method. Use a method that works. Only one approach that’s been consistent – do it the way the apostles did. It doesn’t need a lot of money. It doesn’t require a Phd.
American Evangelism tends to see people as isolated individuals, how does God see him? Part of a community.
Bring the seekers into a group of their own peers and work in the circle – don’t pull them out of the circle.
Neil Cole
Matt 5:39
The busier you get, the less compassionate you become. Compassion from the bowels – deep compassion. We don’t see the lost the way Jesus did. We need to see them through the eyes of Jesus. It will change the way we behave. Jesus created sheep to be cared for by a shepherd. Don’t even call it multiplying until you get to the fourth generation. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Look for the drowning victim.
David Garrison
God is doing something among the nations… meaning ethnic groups. Church planting movements.
Communists – God loves to show what He can do. Cuba. He brought the Gospel up within Cuba. “We went to seminary on our knees in prison. When we left, we were no longer afraid.” They’re on track by the year 2010 to see 100,000 churches in Cuba and over 1,000,000 baptized believers.
Muslims. We went to Libya. I’ve learned more ways not to win a Muslim. In 2002, we moved to Bangalore, India. They can cut my body into 1,000 pieces and every piece will cry out, “Jesus is Lord.”
Pray for the people of Iran – the Christians will be the fodder for any attack. We believe 25,000 are being baptized every day. Chinese official says – that’s a lie – we’ve been monitoring you – it’s been 30,000 every day.
Ed Stetzer
We want to see a disciple making movement that changes everything. We might have to change the way we do mission so that we can empower people to use their gifts. Disciples don’t just know – they do. That people might live how Jesus really intended us to live – it should be the norm, not the surprise.
Obedience based discipleship will lead to mission shaped disciples.
All have gifts. We tend to teach people to be passive spectators. If we disciple through knowledge and not action, we’ve trained people to be puffed up gnostics – people believing they have special knowledge but no power of transformation. Knowledgeable people who don’t live on mission and criticize those who are. They need to get off their blessed assurance and do something to server Jesus. God has placed people in your church and gifted them to produce something for the common good. Anything that disempowers and demotivates the people of God is unhelpful and perhaps sinful. Why? It destroys the common good. Scarcity brings clarity. When we do for people what God has called them to do, everybody gets hurt and the mission of God gets hindered.
God intends all to use. We’ve made it acceptable to sit Sunday after Sunday in church and do nothing and still call ourselves a follower of Jesus.
All people are called and empowered by the Holy Spirit. We have to stop letting God’s people off the hook. We have to trust the Holy Spirit within them. We have to stop enabling. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things for God should be normal in the Kingdom.
To Bring God Glory. I don’t care about the label – I care about the lifestyle.
Disciples see what Jesus is doing and they join Him in it. Is your church doing this? What am I going to make different about my message so they’ll join Jesus on His mission?
Hopefully, you see in these writings a man who is staying The Course and pursuing The Path amidst the pitfalls and selfish ways of being a son of Adam. I pray earnestly that my writing would encourage some of you by showing you that this journey - though arduous and sometimes tragic - is a journey of great satisfaction. A satisfaction greater than our greatest imaginings. The trials and refining fire of tribulation are to be recognized as a small shadow of the suffering of our Savior so that we can rejoice, as Peter and the disciples did, to be counted worthy to suffer for the sake of the Name.