But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing – James 1:22-25.
This core value is very personal to me. I have loved the concept and committed myself to keep on learning about disciple-making in the context of the church.
Oak Grove Church is committed to making disciples: This is what Christ commanded us to do. I do not believe that this died out with the original disciples / apostles. As they planted churches, they created community for people to become followers of Jesus, learn from others how to embrace the character and commitments of Jesus and spread the gospel to anyone and everyone who did not know Jesus. This continues to be the driving catalyst for what we are doing. We are going to deepen our commitment to this in the next couple of years and we hope to mobilize a host of people who have the heart, know-how and vision to invest in God’s kingdom work for the rest of our lives.
Oak Grove Church is taking new bold steps of faith to equip our people to become disciple-makers. One tool we are giving away to our disciple-makers through this summer is called, Coach the Bible. This is a very thorough and practical tool to help every person have relationship with another person, have the knowledge to help a person know where they are in their journey with Christ and help anyone take their next step with Christ. This does not replace anything; especially our Picture of a Disciple. What this does is give a tool to our disciple makers to care for and help others in a specific journey to become spiritual parents.
Disciple-making: Coming alongside another.
We hope to raise up 50 people over the next couple of years who will be committed to life-on-life disciple making. We all know that we live in such a chaotic world that we need both the encouragement of relationship and the stimulation of following the faith of others. We are borrowing the slogan from Bill Mowry in his book, “The Alongsider” which claims that disciple making is for amateurs. In other words, it is not for the highly educated, not for the professionals, not for those who are extroverts and certainly not those who are “more spiritual.”
R = Relationships
Making disciples is about relationship with God and (at least) one other person. Preaching on Sunday mornings helps create our culture of disciple making. We advocate those beliefs, values, and convictions as we see them in the Scriptures. But our larger church gathering faces some impossible obstacles to get alongside others personally.
2D – Discover and Discussion about God’s Word.
The heart of discipleship is about having God’s truth between me and another person and discovering what it says and then discussing the meaning of what we are discovering.
3A – Affirmation / Application / Accountability
People need affirmation. To know they are loved and accepted in Christ and in the community of faith. But the Bible tells us we need to encourage one another and there is no greater need for encouragement than applying our life to the redeeming truth of God’s Word. Finally, we all need help to keep on going so when others give us permission to ask how things are going as we apply our life to truth, we start to grow and mature in Christ.
In His grace,
Pastor Brad
