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FAST Missions

Daniel Vis

The Training Recipe

This morning I want to pick up again where we left off last time.

If you haven't noticed, these first few sermons, I don't always do it this way, but these first few sermons have been kind of a series, right?

We've been building line upon line, thought upon thought, trying to help us move to the point where we're able to start thinking about building a strategic plan for real growth in our church.

For explosive growth, that's what we want, isn't it?

And I know the sermons have been kind of spread out with different messages in between, but I hope you can still kind of follow along with the big picture, just by way of review, and then we'll get into our topic in just a moment.

The very first sermon I preached as your pastor, We talked about how God wants to do a new thing, amen?

Something big, something exciting here in New Albany, something powerful.

Then the next sermon I preached, we talked about how the key to experiencing God's power in our church is for our church to have a clear sense of purpose, right?

And the way we grow in purpose is by being clear on our mission, and also having a clear vision or a plan to get that mission done.

Last time, my third sermon, we talked about anyone remember the word we talked about last time?

And how what's needed is not just a slight change in our existing way of doing things, little small tweaks, but what we need is a radical paradigm shift, a change in the underlying model that shapes everything we do in our church.

Because the paradigm determines everything.

It determines the goals that we set, the methodology that we use, how we measure success.

And if we want to see New Testament results, we have to have a New Testament paradigm.

And the paradigm, at least as far as I can tell in the New Testament, it was a paradigm of spiritual multiplication where every person that comes into the church is equipped and empowered to go back out and win someone else.

So there's rapid, explosive spiritual multiplication.

That's the paradigm of the New Testament Church.

But that may have raised a question in your mind.

If it's true that this is the method that God wants us to use, this is the paradigm, this is the strategy we have to follow, that somehow we have to pursue spiritual multiplication, then Why is it that so few churches are doing it?

Why is it that there are so few workers in our church?

I mean, if this is the 1 thing Jesus said to do, go make disciples and teach them to observe everything I commanded you.

If that's what he said to do, why is it we're doing everything else but that?

Well, that's our subject for this morning.

I want to kneel and pray for the Holy Spirit to be with us for just a few moments this morning as we study.

Father in heaven, we come to you because we sense that you're wanting to do something here.

And we have some idea of what it's going to look like, what your purpose is, your plan.

We want to be in harmony with you, but we don't know how to do it.

I'm praying, Lord, that you would give us wisdom this morning, make your word simple and clear.

So why is it that we're not really making disciples?

Why is it that we're not raising up workers in our churches?

Why is there so little real spiritual multiplication?

Seems like we're busy doing all kinds of things, but we're not getting the 1 result that we should be getting in our churches.

We have an endless array of programs and activities, but why are there so few workers?

If the real problem really is the harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few, then why are we not focusing more on solving this problem?

Why can't we raise up more effective laborers who are regularly, consistently winning souls to Christ?

Is there something possibly that we're missing?

I believe at least part of our problem is that we don't really understand the concept of disciple making.

Now making disciples is kind of a lost art these days.

It's not really a part of our culture anymore at all.

I had a number of chances to go to Korea at different times through the years.

And I saw some amazing things that God was doing there in Korea.

Particularly, I was impressed with how rapidly Korea modernized in say the last 20 or 30 years.

But if I had gone to Korea say 100 years ago or 200 years ago, I would have seen much more disciple making.

For example, I might have seen someone that was a great martial artist and he had his disciples, his students, that he was training in his method of combat.

Or maybe I might have been able to see someone who is a philosopher, a Buddhist philosopher or whatever, And he has his students that are sitting around him and they're living their life together, learning how to live out a certain philosophy, a certain way of life.

Or maybe a certain artist and he's got a style and he has his students, his disciples that are trying to learn his method of performing that kind of arts.

Or maybe a craftsman and he has workers, younger workers that are working with him side by side, learning that particular craft or skill.

That was how these specialized skills were passed down 100, 200 years ago.

It happens still sometimes in this country.

We have apprenticeships programs, something like that.

But really for the most part the way we do education is very very different isn't it in the United States?

I mean you go off to a school, to a college, You take a class, you do a workshop, you do a seminar, and you sit in a room and you listen to someone speak.

And we just soak up some information, we listen, and then we go our way.

It's not really a discipling relationship.

It's just sort of information transmission.

You see the difference So when Jesus said I want you to go make disciples because it's such a foreign part of it's not even a part of our Culture it doesn't even register with that in our minds what Jesus is saying.

Do you remember that when we talked about paradigms, 1 of the things I mentioned is that it shines a light on a really important question.

Are we creating people that are just intellectually converted or are we creating real disciples, real workers?

Are we focusing just on communicating information, just communicating basic Bible doctrines?

Are we just aiming for an intellectual conversion?

Or are we focusing on real life nuts and bolts, life transformation, the real implementation of Scripture that changes everything in our personal experience.

But what we focus on tells a lot about our paradigm, right?

Our paradigm drives the methods and our goals and what we're doing, how we do things.

And we have an amazing, powerful message, and we need to proclaim that message.

But I think somehow we may have slipped into the mindset without realizing that information alone is all that we need to do.

Information alone is never gonna produce a church full of workers.

I mean, sometimes you'll find someone that gets so excited about the message and just by sheer willpower or by the power of the Holy Spirit or somehow they just go on to become a worker.

But the vast majority of our members, they get excited about our message and they study our message.

For most people to become a worker, you need a different method of transmission than just the communication of information.

To put it a little differently, we're blessed as a church with a lot of information, a lot of Bible truth, a lot of insight into Scripture, amen?

And when you first join our church, or first start attending, sometimes it feels like you're drinking water out of a fire hydrant.

The water is just coming out so fast you can't hardly even get any in your mouth.

And that's fine at first, but it becomes a problem when there's not a corresponding application of that information to our life.

If there's no application, then the information, it's not producing the change that it needs to.

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The Training Recipe

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