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Making Disciples |
| The mission of the United
Methodist Church is “Making Disciples of Jesus Christ.”
It’s a powerful mission, but one often confused: Do we really
know what a disciple is? And how do we go about making disciples.
I offer to you my thoughts below: |
| Definition of a disciple
of Jesus Christ: one who loves the Lord God with all the heart,
mind, soul, and body and loves the neighbor as the self. This is a
life-long process and no one can honestly say he/she has “arrived”—the
journey continues until we pass from glory to glory—and probably
after that as well. |
| How does one make a disciple? |
| First, by being one.
That is first and foremost. As disciple-makers, we engage in the frequent
observance of the Sacraments of the church, consistent prayer, humble
service, rigorous self-examination, frequent confession, generous
giving, radical hospitality and healthy living. Furthermore, as disciple-makers
our own lives must be integrated as those who operate fully out of
love for God and love for neighbor. Hypocrisy, lying, asking others
to live faithfully when we privately cut ourselves huge amounts of
slack simply must end. |
| Second, we recognize
that we ourselves are incapable of “making” disciples
in the sense that we can control the outcome. We throw ourselves and
our ministries onto the grace of God and seek to live with faithfulness.
That may mean being huge risk-takers at times which could launch us
into the public spotlight and bring about ministries with unusual
growth. It may mean quiet and unnoticed ministry with the voiceless
of society, living in poverty and finding contentment in obscurity.
We trust that the Spirit of God is working in the lives of those around
us and recognize that ultimately, each of us must work out our own
salvation with fear and trembling. We cannot decide for others specifically
how his/her own journey to full love for God and neighbor will look.
We can only model our own faithfulness and invite others into a similar
commitment. |
| Third, we invite those
who do seek to love God and neighbor most fully into the spiritual
disciplines that we ourselves seek to master. We teach them to observe
the Sacraments, to pray, to serve, to examine the self, to confess,
to give, to offer hospitality and to live healthily by inviting them
to work alongside us in transparency and vulnerability. We discover
the power of the necessary committees of organizational life to be
means of disciple-making. We learn that in raising money and setting
budgets and repairing broken toilets and deciding on the color of
the carpet in the Narthex and changing dirty diapers in the nursery
that we are being the hands and feet and mind of Christ in all we
do. We eliminate the sacred/secular division and bring all things
into obedience to Christ. |
| Fourth, we lay down our
lives for our enemies. We go to the cross for them and offer forgiveness
to them at the moments of our most extreme agony. Here, we model for
all what the love of God is all about. |
| And that is how we make disciples. May
God have mercy on us all. |
| The Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas, Pastor, Krum
UMC |
| christy@krumumc.org |
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| Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas, Pastor, Krum
United Methodist Church, www.krumumc.org |
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