Slideshow image

I believe that every Christian wants to grow in their faith. I also think that many churches struggle with helping people do that. Simple growth is not the problem, but growth that leads people to live as “fishers of men”. We are all called to make disciple of all nations, but there is a huge chasm in churches on how to do that. Jesus invited John the Baptist’s disciples to come and get their questions answered about who He was. He then called His disciples to “come and follow me.” He also invited the disciples further in and called them to be with Him. The best place we can be is with Jesus, because we will never stay the same after being with Jesus. This calling of the disciples was to go further than just following Him but learned to be more like Him. He knew that His disciples would do greater things because they had been with Him. This idea brings us to the third phase of our mission statement where growing people is the focus.

 

We exist to make disciples by gathering people to worship God, connecting people to a Christ-centered community, growing people to reach their world in the power of the Holy Spirit, and multiplying disciples to expand God’s Kingdom.

 

Growing people is far more about culture than a process. A famous quote says, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Growing people must be a main part of the church instead of a sidecar that is mostly ignored. Training people and people wanting to be trained are not the same thing. Often people will get trained because they are asked, but there would be a culture change if people wanted to be trained to feed themselves in their walk with God. No matter how long you have been a follower of Jesus, there is still more growth we need in strengthening our walk with God. If people want to be trained to reach their world, the byproduct will be infectious, and more people will be coming to faith in Christ. If people want to be trained to invest in a few in a disciple-making relationship, people will grow in becoming more like Jesus. Paul called people to “imitate me, as I imitate Christ.” What if we lived our lives with that as our mindset. What would a church look like if that was the culture. I believe growth would happen in some amazing ways.

Here at Shady Oaks, I would love to see our culture shift from the connect phase to the growth phase. Our growth goal is to help people move from being a member to being a disciple-maker. That is what we have been called to do and a culture of willingness to be trained to grow will help us get there. Let’s develop a desire to grow.