mgpcpastor's blog

At Solapanel Tony Payne has been stepping us through ten propositions that are being raised in a forthcoming book he is co-authoring.
I’d though about commenting on the whole ten at once, but that would get a bit unwieldy. The fourth was posted today.
So far we’ve been told that:
1. Our goal is to make disciples not church members.
As a church it will be satisfying when we stop looking at numbers that attend on Sunday (or at other times) or our income, but are focussed on the spiritual growth of our community.
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.
Of course the growth referred to in 1. above is also harder to quantify. As well as being more challenging to achieve. That is why institutionalism needs to be carefully guarded against. This is not the same thing as structures or authorities. Our structure can be an end in itself or it can be a means of promoting growth (and part of that growth as well).
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful speaking of God’s word.
In contrast to a general trend to normalise private ‘revelations’ as being God’s prophetic word for people, as an evangelical reformed church we must center our encouragement of each other grounded in the Scriptures. Either by explicit reference or by principles or truths that flow from the Bible we have to ensure that any encouragement we would give that we believe has God’s authority can be plainly referenced in the Bible by the one to whom we give it. Otherwise we’re not promoting Christian discipleship but a mystery religion.
4. All ministry has the goal of nurturing disciples, not just one-to-one discipling or mentoring.
I appreciated the part of this comment which referred to the pendulum swings that can be associated with these matters. A deficiency is observed, the deficiency is treated, other areas can be neglected and other deficiencies emerge.
Presently as a church we are trying to move from a program based emphasis towards the time when our people will disciple each other. Incorporating this emphasis wholistically into our existing ministries is challenging, but I believe necessary. Our structure must promote growth as its goal, and not fall into the trap of trying to promote growth so we can gain a bigger structure.
I’ll so few more of these later on.