A DEVOTIONAL GUIDE FOR “THE TEN
TIMELESS VALUES FOR DISCIPLESHIP”
“We declare
to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with
us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” I John 1:3
Reflection: Our Vows
A couple of years ago, those who are
responsible for such things decided that we needed a revision in the liturgy
for joining the church. For years the
question asked of candidates was, “As
members of this congregation, will you faithfully participate in its ministries
by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, and your service?” Now we have added a fifth responsibility
for church members, “your witness”. I’m not sure what that says about us that we
never felt the need to have witness as part of our commitment to being a member
of the church. Could it be that we were
so focused on making church members that are committed to the support of the
institution that we forgot that our primary mission was to reach out and make new
disciples of all nations? After all,
good church members should pray for each other, come together for worship and
fellowship, give of our money, time, and talent to support and serve the church. But in reality, all of those things are
inwardly focused as we work on our own relationship to God and minister to each
other. Could it have been that finally we
woke up and realized our church was in steady decline primarily because we had
become so inwardly focused that we had long forgotten that our primary mission
was to reach out to bring new people into a relationship with Christ? Maybe it is not a mystery why 40% of all
United Methodist Churches didn’t have one profession of faith last year. Maybe we had forgotten to teach people that
Jesus and the early church equated being a member of the “Body of Christ
(church) with being a disciple and being a disciple meant being a witness for Christ.
Many of us would define a disciple as one who follows Jesus and that is
true. Jesus however invited people to
follow him in order to make them into “fishers of people”, disciples who are
intentionally trying to bring other people to Jesus. What led to the explosion of growth in the
early church was when people had a life changing encounter with Jesus and an
infilling of his Spirit they could not help but go and tell and show others
what they had experienced. The writer of
I John said that we witness to what we’ve experienced in our own life so other
people can share the experience and become part of our “fellowship”. Think about how often we “witness” to our
experience at a new restaurant, golf course, ball game, or with a new technological gadget, television
show or movie so that people might share that experience with us. Is it that our relationship with Christ doesn’t
have that big of an impact on our own lives, or have we been so immersed in a
culture where faith is privatized that the sharing of it is thought to be an
unwelcome intrusion into the lives of others?
It is time to recapture the idea that to follow Jesus is to be
transformed into a witness for Him.
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