Understanding Spiritual Growth - Lesson 7

Dr. Stephen Martyn
Understanding Spiritual Growth 
SF304-07
Vision for Discipleship
Lesson Transcript

Welcome to our seventh session in this foundation's course where I want to talk about some of the mechanics of discipling a few and what those mechanics will look like on a week-by-week basis. Now remember, we've got a goal in all of this. The goal is to put people in such a place in the environment of their life where they can hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to them, either directly or through the word or in prayer, in preaching and teaching.

So we're keeping our goal in mind. Now remember, we are called to love the crowd. I rejoice in any congregation that is being faithful to the Word of God, and if they've got 10,000 people out there, then bring it on

Let's double that for the Lord's sake. But I also know that just as Jesus preached to immense crowds, he only discipled a few. In other words, his direct day-in and day-out interaction was with a few.

So we can gather from that that you really can't fully disciple a crowd, although I know the Lord is capable of bringing someone up on his own. He doesn't need me, yet he calls me and he calls you to come alongside and help. What about preaching? Well, it's critical.

It's absolutely critical. But I'm telling you, if Jesus couldn't accomplish full-blown discipleship in his ministry by his teaching alone, and he's the Lord of the universe, the greatest preacher we'll ever have or ever know, if he couldn't do it by preaching and teaching alone, then why would I expect to be able to do that? But our default mode now is that we're going to default toward us always being the one in charge and toward us as the leader being the one with all the answers. Friends, you've got to lay that down.

Now, we do come with the answers of God in our didactic training part. And you think about how you can do that. We're going to come to that point.

But hold on now. I want you to know, what is it going to take to gather a few people and hold them for a two-year period? From decades of experience here, I'm pretty assured that you're not going to put up a sign and say, hey, y'all, I want you to join me for a two-year process. And oh, by the way, there's going to be disciplines along the way.

We're going to meet every week. You're not going to have a whole line of people lining up for this. It's just not going to happen.

High bar discipleship is not necessarily a magnet in this day and age. We just have to be real here. There are times when you might even have to spend a year to two to three years getting people just ready to step into a discipleship process.

That's where the programs can be helpful, like Alpha. But I'm telling you, we can trust that the Holy Spirit will be calling people ahead of time. So bathe all of this in prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to lead you.

Now, who do you gather? Who are you looking for? Husbands and wives? Absolutely. Get husbands and wives. You say, now, whoa, wait a minute.

Is that the example of Jesus? Okay. So the example of Jesus, he had those 12 men closely to him. Look, I don't care how you do it.

Get 12, 10 men. If you're female, get 10 women. But I also know from other examples of Jesus followers through church history, starting very early on, specifically starting with the Celtic movement, that there were families involved in discipleship.

And I know that the revival that saved England from a bloody civil war from 1740 or 1739 till 1791, that revival was fueled by men and women coming together on a weekly basis in these small groups. Husbands and wives? Yes. Young and old? Absolutely.

Don't fool yourself by only looking for one age group. Male and female? Yes. I've found that 10 people is a strong starting number, a good number.

You get 10 people committed and amazing, amazing things. Can you do it with the triad? Of course you can. Can you do it with five? Of course you can.

But I love the number of 10 to 12 people. Now, you're going to find real reluctance to sign up for a long-term commitment. In all of my training and teaching across the church, the people who actually fight this the most are the pastors.

And I cannot tell you how many times I've heard pastors tell me, my people don't have the time to do this. They're not going to do this. I'm sorry, pastor.

Normally what that means is you don't want to take the time to do this. I know you're committed. I know you're overworked, but we're talking priority here.

We're talking the priority of Christ for your life. And I also need to tell you that thousands have made this type of commitment. In the Wesleyan stream, in the Reformed stream, I can take you and show you in the Catholic stream, in the Anglican stream.

Look, people are willing to make this type of commitment. I've seen it. I know it firsthand.

So there's going to be reluctance. Let me encourage you to say, all right, let's come and dip your toes in the water. You know, may feel a little cold.

You may think I can't swim in these waters or there's sharks out in that ocean. So I want to encourage you here to look in terms of when you start, how you start and doing a trial period. So let's go over here and let's say it is late August, which is usually in terms of our cyclical year in local congregation, at least that's a good time to start a ministry, especially when the kids come back to school.

Let me say, why don't you set a trial period that will go to right before Christmas. So we're going to go through December for a trial period. And this trial period will be important because number one, you're saying, look, I'm not asking you for a two year commitment.

I'm just asking you to come for these few weeks, come and see. And if they need to get out of it, then grace you graciously allow them to get out of it. There's not going to be any shame.

The other thing is, if you need to ask some of them to get out of it, which that's one of the hardest lessons, if I were to name the hardest lesson, that was the hardest lesson I had to learn that there will be sometimes when you've got to invite people out because they see it as a therapy group and they want to focus the entire event around themselves. And that will you'll never recover. That group will be a waste of people's time.

So we start. And then at the end of December, we say, all right, are you ready now to sign the covenant? Remember that covenant we've been working on and that you're going to tailor fit to your people and you're not going to make it like the engineers do. We love engineers.

There's engineers in my family, but it's going to be a very simple covenant, devotional living, relational strengthening, vocational serving, temple nurturing and recreational. Forget how that went, but anyway, restoring. There you go.

So we're going to sign that covenant the 1st of January and you're going to keep these people now for a full two years. Actually, I found very few people who have backed out of this initial trial period. Very, very few.

So I'm going to assume that, well, you determine the makeup. You're going to determine the makeup. You're bathing it all in prayer.

But here now you've got the people that you are working with. It's going to be an amazing journey for you. You're going to live in community.

Look, this is going to be a holy community. Remember, we're going to be praying for one another. We're going to be supporting one another.

You're going to see us in any true Christian, any true Christian community. A call goes out at 1am in the morning. Does anybody have a humidifier? My baby's deathly ill.

She can't breathe. Our humidifier doesn't work. Boom, 15, 20 minutes later, a humidifier is delivered.

You know, I've seen things like that time and time again. One of these covenant groups where I spun them off and lay people were living, leading them. One of the members of the group had a brain aneurysm, life threatening situation.

It was the wife. The husband called all of the covenant group. The entire covenant group is with them early in the morning at the emergency room.

And then she went in for brain surgery. Then after she came out of brain surgery, they looked at each other and said, did anybody tell Steve about this? Oh, I can't believe we didn't tell our pastor. Friends that day, I rejoiced that nobody told me they were the body of Christ being the body of Christ to each other.

They were ministering to each other. Yes, I showed up, but they did the real heavy lifting, uh, that day. So we're going to, uh, you're going to disciple these people, encourage these people.

You're going to stay with these people. You're going to meet with them week in and week out, and you are going to rejoice at how this turns out. You're going to be surprised by grace.

Now, when you get them started, what do you want? Okay. Get them a Bible. Uh, if it's, what do we say? What's the, where's your microphone? What's the translation today? You know, Bill is here.

Bill says we're going to get them in the NIV. Actually, we've had groups where we did the Greek. Oh yeah.

Now that I didn't lead that. I before them. Um, I've actually found it helpful when everyone did not have the same translation.

Now I won't reliable translations. Okay. Uh, I've even found it helpful when we had paraphrases and you got to understand paraphrases are a little bit loose, but I love the message.

Just, just as a second point of reference, you getting them on the same page. Remember you're going to outline where they're going to be every day in the word. Remember, you're going to have a notebook for them.

Uh, now in a period of two years, you could easily have four studies in a period of two years, one in the fall, second one in spring, third one in the next fall, the fourth one in the following spring, or you can have as many as seven studies. Don't overdo it. But in this day and age, for heaven's sakes, all you got to do is get in front, get them, uh, and just record it yourself.

You can send it out, put it on your own church website or whatever platform they're all using. You could send out a weekly teaching for them, or you can have a weekly teaching, or you can go to biblical training and you got plenty of weekly trainings. I'm, I don't mean that seriously.

Um, uh, so you're going to do the didactic training. Remember, you're going to build the bridge. You're going to build that beautiful bridge.

You're going to have the covenant. They're going to be following that covenant every day. They can say, I'm, I'm committed to devotional living this day and all that that entails.

Um, you're going to have, um, you're not only going to have the week by week meetings and let me encourage you, you keep the didactic part to one hour per week. Don't go over one hour. You're, you're asking enough.

Now, if you did it face to face, when we came doing the, to do the didactic part in the last congregation, I said, well, we had three services on Sunday morning, back to back. Um, finally we said, well, the only time we can do it is, is, uh, before the Sunday school hour. I mean, like at eight in the morning, they showed up.

I mean, I think we had, uh, I think we have 53 people then committed because we divided all of these groups out. They 53 people showed up for the didactic part for two years, all sorts of professionals and all sorts. I mean, teachers, you name it.

Physicians was, it was a wonderful event. Uh, there are going to be times when I'm trusting that for you as the leader, you are meeting with them, not only as a group, but one-on-one you're walking with them. You can't meet with them one-on-one each one of them every week.

If you've got multiple groups going, but you certainly can, uh, with your small group or you can send them a text, whatever, but you're staying in touch. Everyone is listening to what the Lord has to say to them every day. And you're doing that.

How, by how we talked about last in the last session about making notes. Now here's a huge issue in this type of a formational group. Here's the first lesson in how to kill a formational group really quickly.

That is fixing other people's problems. Now, when you get into a small group, you're going to have all sorts of relational. Well, the people in the group are going to have relational challenges.

Hello. Welcome to our world. You're not going to be in any business, in any profession, in any, I mean, we got, we have relational challenges with our own families.

Don't we? Or certainly I do. All right. So the first thing that somebody's going to say is, well, when my aunt Susie's cousin's neighbor had that, this is what they did.

And that's when you meet, it's like timeout. We do not fix problems. We do not come back with solutions.

Well, why not? Because the Holy Spirit's got a better solution for them. I want them listening to the word of God. I want them praying and I'm going to pray for them so that they hear from the Lord themselves.

And we're going to support that. Now, I'm not saying there might not be a time where as a leader, you might want to have a pastoral presence, but friends, you'll kill a group. Just you'll kill it quickly, quickly.

And you'll make that group dependent upon you. Now that's a disease. If they're dependent upon you, your goal is to have them dependent upon the Holy Spirit of God and the written word of God, not upon you.

And so we don't fix problems. The Lord himself does. What do we do? We stay with people, praying for them week after week, year after year, because some of these relational issues are not going to be solved even in two years.

But we pray, we watch, we bear with. So you're off. You're off.

You're going. Now it becomes a long obedience in the same direction. Again, let me point you to Peterson.

And again, I want to also point you to one last text, and that is practicing the way. Be with Jesus, become like him, do as he did by John Mark Comer. I love this guy.

He was a student, one of Bill's students. And I just I'm deeply impressed by this late. I just got it.

I was only able to read about a third of the book on the plane coming down to film this. But I can tell this is a winner. So we're going to we're going to be with Jesus over this period of time.

We're going to learn how to hear the word of God together. And if somebody gets some wacko reading from what God says will gently, lovingly, you know, say, well, I'm wondering if the word might be saying this. What you'll see happen is you'll see them and you yourself will be the same way.

You'll fall over backwards sometimes by listening to their insights and people will be given the same insight from the Holy Spirit. And that what does that do? That's the Lord confirming, hey, he does speak and he does let us know what he wants us to hear. This is amazing.

You'll find you're going to they're going to for the first time in their lives, maybe somebody is is being listened to. They're being loved. This is this is how Jesus loved people.

He he he said his gaze intently upon them. He listened to them. He spoke his word to them.

They're going to be testing vocational waters. In other words, how's the Lord God calling them in their setting to serve faithfully? Most huge issues you're going to be establishing dispositions. I get up in the morning.

I pray first just as I brush my teeth. You know, you're going to be setting prayer in as a way of life. And hopefully you'll be able to do you'll be able to teach them about prayer as a way of life.

Now, here's the deal. Are you ready? Are your seatbelts on? And along the way, your people will become bored. Lord, help us.

Did I just hear that old professor say that? Yeah, you just heard him say that they're going to get bored. It's going to become old to them. They're going to want to do something else.

Some of them may ask you to get out. Now, friends, here's where you got to trust me. Jesus never forced anybody to stay with as some of those exterior disciples.

Everyone could walk away whenever they wanted to. This was the invitation. This one, you know, shackling people.

But you've got to bring up all of the love of God you've got in your heart and say, I want you to stay with me. Now, you don't have to stay with them. You don't tell them this, but you know yourself they've been so deformed by a world system that they're trained for something new, something different, something, you know, exciting.

And to stay with something for a long period of time is becoming more and more and more difficult. The little black box I held up in the last service, it's a cell phone is a neutral thing or a smartphone is a neutral thing. But oh, my gosh, can it can it lead to some bad dispositions in our life? We're breaking these dispositions.

Don't let them go. You be firm in your own heart and you tell them I need you to stay with me here. More important, Jesus needs you to stay with me.

And there's a ministry for you coming out of all this. I need you to turn around and duplicate this when when you get through. I've had corporate executives say, Steve, I can't do this.

I can't I can't do the exercise part. They'll tell you about how many days they have to spend on airplanes going to China and back. And I said, I didn't give in.

You don't give in on the on the covenants. Just ask the Lord to help you. And I remember one corporate executive finding a way on jumbo jets to do the 30 minutes of exercise that he felt like he the Lord wanted him to do.

You hold on. You're a shepherd. A shepherd doesn't let let go of the sheep, although you don't force you can't force sheep.

So Jesus loves us enough to let us go if we demand to get out of his care. And as they get bored, what's happening? Ever wonder what's going on with the tree during the depths of winter? Ever wonder what's going on with the tulip bulb when there's several feet of snow on the ground? You know, ever wonder what's going on in the little bears, cubs in the when they're hibernating? Life is growing. And just because they don't feel it or just because they're bored, dismiss it.

You hold them in the grips of Jesus. And you go over this covenant week after week. And it will take root.

Remember, it's the two year rule. I owe that research to my friend Tom Alban, who did so much research in Wesleyan studies along this line. Two years to get people deep into these dispositions to where it becomes a part of them.

You keep them seeking the Lord regarding how they are to serve him and expect them. You expect them to serve them. Um, but at the same time now, you're not going to slot them ahead of time.

Just remember, you let the Holy Spirit lead them and he'll surprise both of you. Everyone seeking the Lord together. And I'm telling you, when that happens, you'll see a movement that you didn't start, that you didn't control.

You'll see gifted people taking up the call of ministry for their lives. So you're going to see people being grounded in the word of God and living by faith, hope and love. You are going to see qualitative transformation into the image of Christ.

Now you're not responsible for that and don't take credit for it. Don't go around telling everybody how many people you discipled or how many people you put in ministry. You didn't put anybody in ministry.

The Lord himself is the one who does all of this. You just get the privilege of seeing this unfold. You're going to see dispositional living.

You're going to see the people being the church that the Lord intended them to be. This, I'm telling you, this is going to bring joy to your life. And then you're going to see some of them come alongside of you to help you start the whole process again.

Some of them, you got to completely let go. They may be doing a ministry outside of the church. For instance, it doesn't matter.

It's the kingdom that counts. Let them work for the kingdom. I saw one of the people we trained and there were several of us doing this and discipled.

And this woman was having a little bit of a hard time understanding where her calling was going to be. And right at that time, her school, their kid's school called her and asked her to be on an advisory council for this public school. And she was talking to us about it.

That may be it. Just go with it and serve. Well, it was only a few months later before the Lord put her on the school board of a major school district in the United States.

And she had amazing influence in that position for the gospel. So let the Lord place the people where he wants them to place. Your job is not placement.

Your job is to help equip and to encourage them. Now, friends, this is kind of a thing where you go to swimming lessons and you see it a little bit of it modeled, but, you know, you're just going to have to jump in and you're going to have to start swimming. And what you're going to have to do is depend upon the Lord for his strength.

What you're going to find in all of this, what you're going to find is your own training is probably not going to be enough if you were if you were trained in graduate school or in seminary. And my response is will blessed be the name of the Lord, because that's going to that's going to move you to move beyond yourself and to trust the Lord to equip you in the way that you need to be equipped. Of course, you don't have all the gifts and graces necessary.

If you had all the gifts and graces necessary, we wouldn't need Jesus and we wouldn't need the body of Christ. You step in faith, you move in love, you're grounded in hope. I'm talking about infused theological hope that this is the way of life for God's church.

So let me just stop and see if there's any last comments in this small teaching series that we are about and move from there. So you addressed some of these comments to pastors who are going to start a group or things like that. Yeah.

Could the same thing be true for a lay person that wanted to begin something like this within their church, either an elder or just somebody that feels really strongly that that they want to take this on? Yes. I and thank you, Ed, for the question. I have seen lay people take this up with amazing effectiveness and I've seen lay people scale it up literally globally.

So I know lay people can do it. If lay people don't step up, probably in many situations, it's not going to happen. So yeah, step up, take it on.

The call is to the people of God, not to just one segment of the people of God. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Well, I pray that the Lord bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you and lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace. Shalom. Amen.