Episode 177: How Do We Make Disciples? | Tim Henderson+

Thank you Brian. Still me Quig. Snow day bumped us—boom, there we go, you get it next week. Alright, how you guys doing?

Alright, I have a pop quiz for you. You ready? What is the mission of the church?

We make disciples. Excellent. We make disciples.

Alright, this one's a little harder. What's a disciple? Last week I gave you this kind of three-part thing. A mature disciple is one who walks by faith. God loves faith. Very good.

Number two? Communicates through faith. The gospel came to you on the way to somebody else. If reconciled, you're necessarily a reconciler.

A mature disciple is one who walks by faith, who communicates through faith. And number three, multiplies through faith. Boom, boom, right? It means it doesn't just go one to one, but we ought to think to spread and spread and spread and fill the earth, right? That the knowledge of the Lord, that the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas, alright?

So this morning, today, I wanna talk about how do we do that, right? If our job—our job is to make disciples—how do we do that? What do we do, alright? How do you make a disciple? And I want you to think about this question in reference to yourself chiefly, right? How do you participate in the act of becoming a disciple, being the one who walks by faith and communicates through faith, multiplies through faith, but also how do you help other people on that journey? What do you need to do? If this is the mission, what do you need to do about it, okay?

Now, by way of an illustration before we jump into discipleship, I want you to imagine for a second that you go to seminary, okay? You go to study theology, alright? You're gonna get a master's in theology, okay? That word theology is writ large—this broad topic, generic thing of everything pertaining to God. But while you're studying theology, you're gonna take classes on Jesus, you're gonna take classes on sin, you're gonna take classes on salvation, and you will have a class that's on theology proper, which is a specific version of theology—namely the study of the first person of the Trinity, the study of God the Father. Okay?

So theology in a broad sense is generically like all this stuff, includes the study of sin and the end times, right? But also theology proper is the study of the first person of God. Right, makes sense? We use the one term in two different ways—general and specific.

In a similar way, we use the word discipleship broadly to concern everything about walking with Jesus. So coming to church is discipleship. Listening to Christian music is discipleship. Having conversations, being a counselor, your prayer life—that's all broadly discipleship. But there's also this kind of specific version of discipleship. Kind of like there's theology proper, there's discipleship proper.

Which I would define as this: discipleship proper is the intentional creation of a relationship or a series of relationships for the purpose of helping you and the others in that relationship grow in Christ. Discipleship concerns everything that we do, but discipleship proper is the specific act of entering into relationships with other believers for the purpose of growing in Christ. And that more specific version is what we wanna talk about. Because we're not only to be disciples, but our job is to make disciples. Okay?

How Discipleship Multiplies

Now our key text for this morning is 2 Timothy 2:2. And so turn there. I'm gonna have it on screen for you in a slightly different format. Here's what 2 Timothy 2:2 says:

The things that you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. — 2 Timothy 2:2

What I want you to notice is that there's four generations here. Paul says, "Hey, the things you heard me say"—that's generation one. "I want you, you're hearing them, by the way, and you heard them not just alone but with others"—that's the second generation. "I want you to entrust to reliable men"—that's the third generation. "Who will be qualified to teach others"—that's the fourth.

This is the nature of discipleship—it is meant to be multiplicative, alright? It comes to you on the way to somebody else, and it came to them on the way to somebody else still. Right? This is the biblical vision of discipleship. It's necessarily passing on through lots and lots of different people. Four generations there: Paul, Timothy, the reliable men and women, and then the others.

What I want you to do is place yourself in the yellow circle right here. Right? That's you. Alright? We're gonna put you in that place of this second generation. You're like the recipient of this letter. You're Timothy. You're the one who's hearing the letter. Right? You're the disciple.

I want you to notice this: if that's you, then there's necessarily gonna be somebody a generation ahead of you.

Somebody that is older, somebody that's wiser, somebody that's maybe a little bit more expert. There's some older believer, there's somebody that's ahead of you in the game, they maybe been walking with Jesus longer, maybe they're more knowledgeable and they've got something to impart. And notice that next to you, there are peers. There are others. There are friends. There are co-journeyers. You're not alone. Timothy learned in the presence of others and so do we.

So there's Timothy there. There's you in the middle. There's an older believer. There's the peers. But then there's also the people to whom you or Timothy are gonna pass things on. People that are younger than you or newer than you. That you're taking what you're learning, something you just learned that you're lit up about, this is exciting, you didn't know this and you wanna go tell somebody else. Well who's the somebody? Who do you have a chance to impart to? Maybe it's your children, maybe it's a neighbor, a coworker, a friend from church.

As this thing is happening, the faithful younger newbies, they themselves end up becoming a yellow dot too. And there's people below them and below them and below them. And through the centuries, you could trace your genealogy back probably—very likely actually—to the apostle Paul. You're the great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchild descended from this chain because somebody along the way, a lot of somebodies along the way, were faithful to be disciples and to make disciples. It's beautiful. It's amazing.

Now, look at the arrows. What's traveling through those arrows? If you got the people, you got the older believer, you got you, the younger—what's coming down those lines? I'll tell you, it's a number of different things. Some of this learning is gonna be head knowledge. It's textbook stuff. It's lecture stuff. It's reading. It's understanding. And that's all valuable. You need information. The Bible is a book. It's got information in it. There's things that you don't know today that you might know tomorrow and we need that head knowledge. That matters. But it's not all that there is. It's not the whole game.

A lot of it is experiential, embodied, doing stuff. You're not just a brain on a stick. You do things. You have habits, you have ways of being. Titus chapter 2 has this great passage to women. It tells older women to teach the younger women to love their husbands. That's not just information. That's what you do. Our older women have the opportunity to teach the younger women. Say, "Yeah, we walked through that years ago and here's how we addressed it. Here's how we improved. Here's how we learned to love each other better." The things that we're actually gonna do is gonna change your behavior. It's not just information in your head and it's not just what you're gonna do, but it really is your whole heart. Discipleship is a whole body thing and what you love is being changed.

Reordering Our Loves

We all love a whole bunch of stuff. If you sat down and made a list of the things that you love, it'd probably be a long list. But I can almost guarantee you that some of the things that you love that you rank very highly are passing interest. They're trivialities, they're not significant. They're not of enduring value. We love a whole bunch of unworthy stuff far more than we should. And if we turned in our list, there'd be a whole lot of very worthy things that if they were on the list at all, they were way at the bottom.

A huge part of what we're doing—this is what the great Augustine talked about—reordering our loves. That we might become people who love worthy things more and unworthy things less. If you had a deck of cards with everything that you loved, that ordering of the stack probably needs to get reordered. Some of the things need to get shuffled down and there's maybe some things that need to get shuffled up. Our loves need to be reordered.

So we're gonna pass through this: there's gonna be information, there's knowledge, things you wanna understand. There's gonna be things that we do, ways that we change our behavior, and our loves need to be changed.

And what we wanna see, what I hope we'll see throughout our lives as we become older and wiser and more godly, as our discipleship grows and impacts more and more—not just of me, but more people through me—is that my loves will be reordered. That maybe I will come to have, that you would come to have a deeper sense of the beauty of Christ, that you would treasure him more highly, that you would be downstream from your own self. And you'd be more aware than you ever used to be of how great he is.

There's this great little moment. I'm a huge fan of Chronicles of Narnia and pretty much everything that C.S. Lewis ever wrote—except The Pilgrim's Regress, which is the most horrific book I've ever read. Don't read that one. The rest of it's awesome. But that is a terrible book.

In the Chronicles of Narnia there's this scene where Lucy sees Aslan, and Aslan is kind of the Christ figure. Lucy has met Aslan, she loves Aslan, but when she sees him one time she's surprised that he's bigger. She says, "Aslan, you're bigger." And he says, "Yes, little one, that's because you're older." She says, "I'm older, not because you are." And he says, "No, as you get older you will find me bigger still."

And isn't that right? Doesn't he become sweeter with time and you understand him more thoroughly? He's not changing, friends. We are. I hope we are. That's what we wanna have happen. That fewer trivialities will occupy our heart. Fewer foolish thoughts will block us from knowing what he wants us to know. That's what we're trying to do as we're growing in discipleship.

And as we do it, we're not alone because discipleship is this act of jumping into relationships. We're not alone. We're connected to others beside us and above us and below us, ahead of us and behind us. As you connect to older believers, more mature believers—and maybe they're younger than you in years, but they're older than you in the Lord—great. I can learn from younger people. Can you? Do you have the humility that you can learn from somebody that's not as old as you are? Of course. There's truth and knowledge and habits and loves all over the place.

And it's not just the master and his grasshopper. There's community. There's peers. There's those alongside us. There's those with whom we're walking through life and sharing things. I've learned so much from my peers.

This act—this is so crucial. This act of being in discipleship: it's not just older believers that are gonna impart to you, and it's not just your peers that are beside you, but you need to have younger believers in your life. Not only because this is how the gospel spreads, this is how the kingdom grows and we all need to be about the work, but because in the very act of teaching to the younger people you're gonna learn stuff yourself.

Have you done this? Do you know this? You learn more by teaching than you do by the pure act of learning. If you will take it upon yourself to say, "I'm going to put myself in a situation where somebody else is dependent on me. I'm going to show up prepared to teach. I'm going to walk through and help counsel. I'm going to be the one who is imparting life to others, spreading the gospel because it came to me on the way to them"—it's gonna benefit you. You're gonna grow way more because you are a discipler than if you merely take yourself as a receiver.

You need inputs in your life. You need somebody that knows something you don't know. You need somebody that has figured out, that has learned a way, a manner of being that you haven't quite figured out yet. But you also need outputs. You need to be a learner and a teacher. It needs to come into you. It needs to go out from you. You need to be both. This little map needs to be a map of your life and your relationships.

Four Key Venues for Discipleship

Now, at Church of the Holy Spirit, there's a billion different things we wanna do, but we wanna narrow it down. There are really four key places—four venues, if you will—in which this process can work out. Your little picture, you're still endlessly gonna be that little yellow circle there. Four key areas that we think are gonna be helpful to you in this:

Your new members class, Alpha, Sunday school, and life groups.

This is not comprehensive. I didn't even include coming to church on there. We're just kind of assuming that you're coming to church, that you're not gonna forsake the gathering with believers. But a lot of people are pew sitters. A lot of people in the world just show up and check a box. Don't check boxes. Boxes are lame.

Come to church. Let's worship together. Let's gather. But if you're gonna take seriously this call, this opportunity for you to be a disciple and make disciples, these are the four primary ways in which we see it happening.

Our new members class I mentioned it just started last week so we're two weeks in and it's not too late for you to jump in. It will be soon but that's okay because it'll come around again. What do you do like three times a year or something? It'll come back around and this is kind of the foundational thing. If this is gonna be your community, if this is where you're gonna grow, this is the context in which you'll be a disciple, man it's so much more fun to do that with others.

You could think of it like this is the freshman class of Church of the Holy Spirit for the year 2022, right? Do you remember your freshman year? Everybody's a newbie and we're building relationships and life goes on. That's what we wanna do. We kinda put you all in a group. That's just like 40 people I think in the class right now. And you could jump in, it's not too late. You could jump in and be part of this new members class and learn what do we believe and what do we do and how does it all work. It's baseline. This is what we do. This is who the community is. And you can do it with your friends. You can do it with some peers. That group, that new members class will very likely turn into a couple of life groups and those relationships will continue. And man, we would love that to be the case.

Alpha

Number two is Alpha. We've been talking incessantly about it because we believe in Alpha. We believe that people need a space, a safe space where they can learn about Jesus. Alpha is fantastic for believers, it's fantastic for people that aren't yet believers, it would be fantastic for you. And I would love it.

Our dream is that everybody, everybody, everybody at this church will go through Alpha. Go through it the first time as a receiver, as a learner. Just as a humble, I got questions, I wanna be in a context, I just wanna be able to process. I wanna learn from this content, I wanna jump in the dialogue, I wanna enjoy the food. Come through as a learner. You need inputs in your life and I think you would learn a ton of stuff. It'd be so beneficial to go through Alpha.

And then do it again. But invite somebody to come with you. And go through it not just as the recipient but as the giver. Think about how you could maybe dedicate one evening a week for ten weeks. What is that? That's nothing. One evening a week for ten weeks to bring somebody along with you that they too might find a safe environment where they can make discoveries and grow and be disciples. You could be making a disciple as you help someone discover how great Jesus is in an environment that is safe and warm and welcoming for them.

Sunday School

Number three, this one's a little bit weird because I teach this thing and I lead this thing, but the third thing is Sunday school and it's awesome. And you should absolutely come to it. We have so much fun at this thing. We do it the hour before this hour. So some of you were there, of course, and then you come that's like your first experience on a Sunday morning and you come in here. Others of you just showed up at eleven and that's great.

But the thing about that class, it's just a very strange class. Number one, it's huge. There's just a ton of people in there. There's a big, big crowd. But what makes it so fun is that the crowd participates. It's an unusually interactive, engaging, participating time.

And here's the thing, the sweet spot, the thing that I love about this thing is it's so easy, alright? You're already here. We already have childcare. And if you're gonna go through all the rigmarole to drive here and get here, just know this is a double feature. And as long as you're here, just get out of bed like forty five minutes earlier. It's fine. It'll be great. No problem. Just come a little bit early and then we'll double your money. Twice as good and we have so much fun.

And here's the thing, if you come, you're not only gonna have the benefit to listen to things that are being said, to hear your peers as they're sharing insights and making discoveries, but you can speak into it, right? Because you're both a learner and a teacher. You're both a receiver and a giver. And that class will be better if you are there because you're gonna see something that the rest of us might not see. And that class is a chance for you to receive, for you to give, for you to be part of the whole thing.

We are roughly at capacity in that room right now. So we're gonna have to figure out a way to deal with the onslaught of new people that are gonna come next week. But come. It is so incredibly fun. Like I said, you're already here. You don't have to drive anywhere. Just get up a little early. Lazy? Come on.

Life Groups

And then fourth, and I saved the best for last. Life groups. You guys, life groups are the best things that we do.

They are the best thing that we do. I would love you to do all of them. If I could snap my fingers though and just give you one of these—okay, have two hands, I will snap my fingers twice. I would say alpha and life groups. Alpha for all the reasons we've already said, but life groups, if I really could only do one, I would do life groups.

You guys, it's the key place where everything's gonna change in your life. In life groups our leaders deliver biblical content through self-discovered learning that promotes life change. It's fantastic. In our life groups, these groups build relationships of love and welcome, of mutual care. In our life groups, lifelong friendships are built. It's where the laughter flows richest, it's where insights are shared, it's where you're gonna find the people that are gonna cook you a meal when you have a baby or lose your job or recover from an injury. Life groups are discipleship in its happiest state.

And if you're not in a life group, you really need to open up your schedule. I'm in a life group, meet with a bunch of guys Tuesday mornings at 7AM and we have so much fun week after week after week. Is that not a sweet time? It's just such a blast. And nothing special about ours compared to anybody else's. There's just life groups all over the place that are so rich and that are so fun. We learn a ton, we share our lives and it's just so good.

Disciples are both receivers and they're givers. They are learners and they're teachers. Some of you need to come to a life group. You need to learn, you need to receive, and you need to do that in the company of your peers. Some of you need to strap it on, step it up, and lead. Not everybody's ready to lead and that's fine. We're all on a timeline, right? We have a process to help figure out: is this the next best step for you? It might be, it might not be, but let's develop it, right?

Take a risk. Develop a new skill to teach a group or to facilitate a life group, to host, to lead. The next step in your discipleship just might be discipling others through a life group. And we always need more leaders, right? Because we've always got more people that wanna jump in.

Brad Thompson's Life Group Testimony

In fact, I want to get somebody up here. Brad, you mind coming up, bro? This is Brad Thompson. Brad, you're in a life group, correct? You lead a life group, correct? Do you love your life group? Why? Tell us about it.

Our life group meets Sunday evenings. We meet a lot of Georgia. I got a bunch of kids at home, so there is childcare Sunday evenings. Loving it. That's a big deal. So our life group, what, six to seven couples in our group. To break it up into thirds, we're there for an hour and a half. So the first third is fellowship—some music, we do some worship. DJ Swain and DJ Chad are the worship leaders in our group. The last third is the study. We pick a book, we study the book. That's always great. But the middle third is special because we break up into groups. The guys go off to a separate room and it's a good time for prayer, it's a good time for confession of sins, you know, just separating the guys and the girls.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. — 1 John 1:9

It's just a sweet time to break away and to confess and then the next week we follow up on that. I think that's the special part about our life group.

Brad, you're an attorney. You have your own law practice, correct? Your wife's an attorney. She's a partner or maybe the sole partner now in her own law practice, correct? You have how many children under what age? Eight, six, four, and a newborn. And you have time for a life group?

We make time.

Oh, did you hear that? We make time, right? That's what you do, right? You got a million things going on in your life, but that is a really valuable ninety minutes and is valuable, beneficial for you. And you said six, seven couples, right? For another dozen or so people. And there's room. I mean, there's always room for us to grow.

We've multiplied. We've done that twice now. We've got three life groups from what started as one.

So that—this idea that you've twice now led a group and then some people left and started a new group and then you did it again, left and started a group, right? Feels a little bit like dying each time that happens, right?

And yet, guess what friends, dying is a part of Christianity. We die to be reborn. This is how it worked. And so we give our lives away. When we give our lives away, life results from it and it's happening. So there's not just the 12 or 14 in your group, but maybe another dozen in a couple other groups that all were born out of that. That's the picture right there, right? It's passing on, it's spreading, it's growing, it's multiplying.

And we love it, we love you. So you can join our LifeGroup. If you're in a lousy LifeGroup, you're welcome to come over to our LifeGroup as well. We've got room.

Okay, very good. Except for the lousy life group part. Alright, awesome. Brad thanks brother. Alright. You guys they're so good. You wanna jump in? We love the Thompsons.

So listen, you're a learner and you're a teacher. You're among your peers. Look at the picture. What are you missing right now? What's the gap? Is there a gap? Are you imbalanced such that man you're constantly pouring out, giving, helping, teaching but nobody's feeding you? I mean that's good for a little while but it's gonna run dry, right? Your ministry needs to be fueled out of an overflow of your own love relationship with God. You need to be fed.

Or maybe you're the other side, maybe you just learn and learn and learn and just eat and eat and eat and eat and eat but you're too busy eating to ever offer somebody something else that they might be nourished by. Right?

Or maybe there's no peers. You're not in a set of relationships and maybe a life group might be a place where those relationships might form. Maybe your next best step is to come to Alpha. It starts on Tuesday. Jump in, holy cow it's so good. Maybe it's to invite somebody to come with you to Alpha.

Maybe you just value efficiency and you're like Sunday school, I don't have to do nothing. I can just show up. I'm already here. Right? Come. It's so fun. We're just having such a rich conversation every single time. Right?

Or maybe, maybe you're ready to take a deep breath, start a life group. Alright? Talk to us. Okay?

We make disciples. We do it like Jesus did. We do it like Paul did. We wanna do it all day until we're dead because the gospel matters. Okay?

Listen. If any of these things are appealing to you, this is what you can do. We just made a whole bunch of fake new emails. They all get redirected to Brian and I but they're easy to remember. Okay?

New members at chsroanoke.com, alphachsroanoke.com, sundayschoolchsroanoke.com, lifegroupschsroanoke.com. Send us a note and say, want this. We'll help you. We'll do whatever we can. I'd hate anybody to leave and be like, okay, great, I'd love to, but I don't know how. Just send me a note, alright? We'll help you.

We would love to see you be a disciple, make disciples, it's what the mission of the church is so let's do it. What do you say? Ready?

Prayer

Alright. Lord Jesus we love you. This whole thing is about you. It's not about some stupid club, it's you. You are the worthy one. You are the delightful one. We wanna be disciples of you. We're not disciples of each other. It's you are the great one. We wanna follow you. We want our lives to emulate you more. We wanna love what you love. We wanna know what you know. We wanna do what you want us to do. Would you help us to do these things because you are worthy, because you're transcendent grace and mercy to undeserving sinners like us and undeserving sinners like the people that don't know yet how great you are and how much you love them. Lord, bless your name. Amen.