A Vision for Discipleship

(Guest post by Jeff Ripple my father and pastor on our church’s vision for discipleship.) 

Christ Fellowship Church is called to impact the city of Taylor, surrounding area, and beyond, through discipleship that equips families and individuals to become an effective living witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In our vision to disciple families; husbands and wives, moms and dads, men and women, must be disciples along with children.  That means doctors and lawyers, plumbers and electricians, ditch diggers and street sweepers, homemakers and dress makers, pastors and parishioners must become disciples so that their children can become disciples also.

A disciple is a learner and learning begins first and foremost at home in the family.  You say; “I come from a broken home.”  It makes no difference, the home you raise your children in will be the home they learn in, for good or not.  The home we raise our children in may not be the home we would have chosen, but it is the home we make it.  We are not excused from raising and teaching our children just because life is not what we wish it to be.

You may say; “I am single.”  I say single or not, we have a call from the Lord to be and to make disciples and the first order of business is to be a disciple, single, married, with, or without children.

The scripture speaks of God as our Father as well as a “father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5).”  How is it that God becomes a Father to the fatherless?  I believe it is in no small part through the love and commitment of those spiritual fathers God will raise up through discipleship in the Church.  This is the beauty and blessing of living in community, of being in fellowship with the saints who are the body of Christ.

It begins with a man

To disciple families we must begin where God did…with the man (Genesis 2:7).  Men I wish it were as easy as coming to church week in and week out and by osmosis you become the man, the husband, the father that God declares you are to be.

From the beginning God established a patriarchy.  That simply means that men are to be the primary leaders in society under normal circumstances.  Today this flies in the face of “conventional wisdom” and political correctness, but God is neither conventionally wise nor politically correct.  He is ALL wise and ALWAYS correct.

Men have a tendency to become passive while women have a tendency to become dominate.  Think back to the garden (Genesis 3).  Who was the passive party between Adam and Eve at the dawn of the fall?  It was Adam.  Who was the dominate one?  It was Eve.  In his passivity Adam allowed Eve to have discourse with the serpent and ultimately partook of the forbidden fruit in following her lead.  Eve in her dominance took the initiative and contemplated the merits of the forbidden fruit and reasoned herself, though unsoundly, into indulging and so then passive Adam.

God began the human race with a man.  It was not good for man to be alone so God created woman from his side.  This can speak of many things in terms of the relationship between a man and a woman, but one undeniable truth is that God created man to be the head of woman.  That is not bad, but good for both.

God has ordained headship.

The Church will never get down to the business of making disciples as long as we have men choosing to be passive while women are left to be dominant.  This has nothing to do with who is the better, but it has everything to do with who is the head.

²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  ²³ For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.  ²⁴ Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Ephesians 5:22-24

You may wonder what all this has to do with discipleship.  Here in lies the problem; we have failed to see the importance of first things and their order along with their ordained operation.  The order and the operation of headship are important.

The theology of “ME”

I believe we are so consumed with a “ME” centered theology that we do not recognize it.  We have defaulted to the belief that what ever needs to be done to minister to “ME” becomes justifiable in the face of passive resistance.  We can read what the scripture is telling us, but we somehow come to believe that the ends justify the means.  In other words it does not really matter how we achieve the vision as long as the vision is achieved.  God’s vision cannot be achieved apart from the ordained means.  Any attempt to achieve a God given vision apart from the God ordained means is nothing more than an illusion…or as the scripture declares “having a form of godliness, but denying the power” (2Timothy 3:5).

Does the end justify the means?  “Stealing from WalMart is acceptable because that is how I can best meet my need…the end justifies the means.  After all WalMart has more than they will miss.”  For most of us that would be unthinkable, but when we bypass the scripture in an attempt to meet our perceived need we have attempted robbery and God will not bless that which is obtained through robbery.

When we look at families…here are some examples;

• “It doesn’t matter if I go to church, as long as my wife takes the kids”
• “I would go to church if my wife would go with me”
• “I would go to church, but I am too busy”
• “Teaching my kids about God is the responsibility of the church”
• “I would go to church, but my kids don’t want to go”
• I would go to church, but it is not worth the hassle”
• “Education is the responsibility of the public schools” (I just threw that one in).

In all of these examples we see the “ME” theology in full force.  God in Himself is not reason enough…if my spouse, if my kids, If I weren’t so busy, if it were more convenient, if it were more this, or more that…but for “ME” it is not.

Men in their proper place

The Church needs men to rise up and take their proper place.  Men are called to lead, not default into passive resistance while the wife and mother become dominate in the face of a man forfeiting his place.  The discipleship of families must begin with the discipleship of men.  The discipleship of all men, male and female, should begin with the discipleship of fathers.  The discipleship of a child first begins with the father being a disciple.  The model of our leadership is Christ in His humble strength.

The question is never whether the child will be a disciple…a learner.  The question is what will the child learn?  What kind of disciple will the child be? The truth is one way or another every child is a disciple from the day they are born.  The question is will they grow up learning of and following Christ or another way?  Fathers, you hold that answer by the grace and power of God.  It is an awesome responsibility.

What if there is no father in the home?  Then the church that is committed to disciple men in order to obey the scripture is to raise up nursing fathers for the fatherless God has placed in their care.  We see this lived out in the life of Paul and his spiritual children (1Corinthians 4:17, Philemon 1:10).

Discipleship is the responsibility of the church and it begins with the men of the church in order to affect the families of the church, in order to affect the world around us.  If we do not do this we are disobedient and without excuse.

Walking in our land

Too much of the church is content with coming on Sunday morning and then going back to “real life.”  Too much or our Christianity is based on what happens for approximately 2 hours one morning a week.  Our faith and so our relationship with God is not something we experience in a two hour time slot, it is the life we live each and every day in every place our foot treads.  Real life is 24/7 and so is real faith.

God told Abraham in Genesis 13:17 to walk through the land “for I give it to you” and so as the seed of Abraham through faith we should walk through our land…our work places, our shopping places, our homes, our neighborhoods…each day as we live our lives and know that God has called us to be salt and light in the land He has caused us to dwell in…in the land He has commanded us to walk in.

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,       Colossians 2:6

If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Galatians 5:25

This “walking through” does not look like some ritual of literally walking our streets and public places and “claiming” them for God.  This “walking through” is our “living in” it is our working in, our relating in the places and with the people of our land.  It is praying for our land and the people of that land.  Our greatest influence comes in the daily living, the daily walking, of our life…that is how people know you and come to trust you and you become an instrument in the hand of God for turning them to Him.  It is in our land that the battles are won and lives are transformed for the glory of God.  It is in the land that the Spirit moves as you move through the land possessed and filled by the Spirit.  That is the way God has ordained it to be.

A Vision for Discipleship

Christ Fellowship Church is called to impact the city of Taylor, surrounding area, and beyond, through discipleship that equips families and individuals to become an effective living witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We will do this as we:

• Hold Jesus Christ and His Gospel as central in all things
• Teach and disciple people in the Scriptures
• Equip and establish people in a scripturally based Spirit led life
• Identify and permeate all areas of influence God has presently granted
• Expand our areas of influence in an authentic and meaningful way
• Joyfully sacrifice our convenience as a love offering for His glory
• Find our greatest fulfillment and happiness in Christ and in His Body
• Establish multiplying leadership for multiplying ministry
• Establish multi-functional ministries for discipleship and outreach
• Establish multi-site ministries (not mega) for more effective reach into our community and beyond