Making Disciples

As a first item I must apologize for being absent so long. I am working on several posts regarding the Inner Healing ministry at First Baptist. I realize that this has been keeping me from continuing to upload and comment on issues of Our Life Together. Therefore I am going to try to keep up every day (or every other day) uploading my regular articles while continuing to work on the posts about the Inner Healing Ministry.



The article pictured on the blog today is taken from the issue of April 23, 1974. The article is entitled "Discipleship". In this article, Ken discusses the importance of making disciples. He quotes Matthew 28:19-20, called the Great Commission, Jesus saying to His disciples,
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."



Evangelism had been at the heart of the ministry of the House of Abba. We wanted to reach people, especially young people, for the Lord. It was out of this ministry that community really came about. In the early days of the Ministering Community, evangelism was at the heart of the ministry. This began to shift as the community seemed to become an end in itself. I think that the shift was inevitable and really all right. Yet, it was disappointing to see a loss in zeal in reaching out into the wider community of Chula Vista and San Diego County.



As important as evangelism was, it was a deeper form of evangelism than often seen. All too often evangelism ends with a person's prayer to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior -- followed by an I'll pray for you and "it would be good if you would join a Bible believing church." In the scripture quoted above, Jesus tells his disciples to make disciples -- in doing so that were to baptize and teach. We really took this seriously. In this article, Ken is discussing how we were "ramping up" our discipleship program in 1974. Here again, discipleship programs had often been merely taking a course of instruction. In the Ministering Community, things could be a lot deeper. Relationships were deeper and thus the discipling relationship was also deeper.



I think that this was at the heart of the success of building the community and the church. The Church Growth movement tells us that people won't be integrated into the life of a church unless they form relationships. Forming relationships is at the heart of our discipling. Learn about Jesus in the same way that the early disciples learned about him. The most common invitation of Jesus to prospective disciples was, "Come and follow me." Indeed this was one of the things that FBCCV was trying to do right.