The local church doesn't have to come up with a fancy, new, cutting-edge mission statement. We already have a mission. It was given to the Disciples after Jesus rose from the dead, and it’s been the mission of the Church ever since. Jesus calls His followers to make disciples. In this message, we'll discuss what fulfilling that mission statement can look like for Christians today.
Transcription (automatically-generated):
Whenever you meet someone for the very first time, the first piece of information that's exchanged between the two of you is usually your first names. It goes like this. Hey, I'm Tony. And the other person goes, Oh, hey, Tony. My name is Susan. But after that, chances are close to one hundred percent, the same question comes up every time. So what do you do? I'm a teacher or I'm a nurse or I'm a personal trainer or I'm a stay at home mom or I'm in school right now or I'm retired or I'm unemployed at the moment, or I'm on disability or whatever without fail.
After your name is known, what you do is the first piece of information that someone asks about you in a in an attempt to get you get to know you a little bit better. So how would we answer that as a church if that question ever came up in conversation? Oh, so your gospel city church, we've heard so much about you. So what do you guys do? And our answer and it's the title of this message We Make Disciples.
When anybody thinks about gospel, city, church, this is what we want them to have pop up in their minds. Now, what do we come up with this answer? Where do we get the idea that we're to make disciples? Or two thousand years ago, a group of guys left behind everything in their lives to follow around, a formerly untrained rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth. They followed him for three years. They were with him 24/7. They ate with them.
They were friends with him. They loved him. They heard him preach. They saw him perform miracles. They believed he was the messiah that Israel had been waiting for for a long time. They saw him betrayed into the hands of the religious leaders. They saw him condemned and handed over to pilot. They saw him crucified. Then they saw him alive. Three days after that, he was dead and buried. And forty days after his resurrection, they saw him ascend into heaven.
But before he left to go back to heaven, they had a particular encounter with him at a mountain in Galilee. And part of that conversation is recorded for us in the end of Matthew's gospel. Matthew, chapter twenty eight, verses eighteen to twenty says this. And Jesus came and said to them, all the authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, go there for and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Jesus. Jesus told them to go and make disciples. We call this the great commission is not called the great suggestion. If there was ever a book of things that Jesus never said, this could be an entry in that book. Listen to this. Imagine Jesus saying this, which he never did. Hey, guys, I know you're all really pretty busy right now. You have fish to catch and families to raise, but it's not too much trouble to ask.
Could you maybe possibly think about setting aside some time every once in a while to, oh, I don't know, make some disciples. But don't worry. If you're too busy and you can't do it, I totally get it. It's just an idea that I'm throwing out there. You never said that what Jesus actually said, all the authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me go therefore and make disciples. Jesus not only gave this commission to his disciples back then, Jesus gives the same commission to every single one of us who follow him today, all of us not just pastors, not just the real spiritual Christians, whatever that means.
Every Christian is called to make disciples. So what is a disciple? Well, here's a definition of a disciple from the dictionary. A disciple is a follower or student of a teacher, leader or philosopher. So from this definition, we can see that the word disciple is not an exclusively Christian term. Using this definition, anyone could be a disciple of any other person. A person could be a disciple of Buddha. A person could be a disciple of a football coach.
A person could be a disciple of a college professor. A person could be a disciple of an author or of an inventor or of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But when we're talking about the great commission, is Jesus calling us to make just any kind of random disciples of random people? Or is he commission enough to make a certain kind of disciple? Jesus is calling us to make disciples of him, Jesus is calling us to make personal followers of him, Jesus is calling us to make people who are born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, people who leave everything to follow Jesus, people who love Jesus more than anything else in their lives.
Jesus is calling us to make Christians. Here's the first fill in on your outline, a disciple of Jesus is called a Christian, a disciple of Jesus is called a Christian. And just so we're clear, this is what Jesus is calling us to do in the great commission. When he says go and make disciples, he's saying, go make Christians. Let's be clear about something else. This is a humanly impossible task to do, it's humanly possible to make someone else love Jesus in a way that they would give up everything in their life to follow him and love him more than anything else.
That's humanly impossible. If we could change people this way on our own, in our strength, don't you think we'd be doing it all over the place all of the time? I know that I would if I had the power in myself to turn people into Christians, I'd just go around zapping everyone. I'd be like Oprah when she used to give cars away for free on her TV show. A car for you, a car for you, a car for you.
I'd be like salvation for you, salvation for you, salvation for you all. My extended family would be Christians if it was humanly possible to do all my neighbors would be Christians to everyone in the city would be Christians if we could just make it happen according to our own abilities. But we can't. It's a humanly impossible task Jesus gives us when he tells us to go and make disciples because he's telling us to make people who are radically in love with him, we can't turn that switch on in someone else's life.
But if you hang with me, we will get to how we're able to do this impossible task later in this message. So why do we make disciples? Well, the main reason we make disciples flows out of what we've discussed in the first two parts of this sermon series. We make disciples because we believe the Bible. We talked about believing the Bible in part one of the series, and we believe the Bible is God's word to us. So we believe it actively mean that we give ourselves to doing whatever it tells us to do.
And we've just seen in Matthew twenty eight verses, 18 to 20 that Jesus tells us to make disciples. So we make disciples. That's how simple it is for us. The Bible says to do it. So we do it again. It's not called the great suggestion. It's called the great commission. And we make disciples because we love Jesus, we looked at this last week, we love Jesus. He is the loveliest thing that anyone can love.
We love him more than anything. And you know what we will do if we love him, we will obey him. Jesus says this in John, chapter 14, verse 15. If you love me, Jesus says you will keep my commandments. Jesus is saying that if we value him above anything in our life, then we will also value his will above our own. We will want to do whatever he wants us to do because we love what he wants more than what we want.
And Jesus wants us to make disciples. So this is what we're going to do. We make disciples also because we love people, love wants what's best for the other person, no matter the cost. I saw a touching story on social media this week where a dad worked three part time jobs so that he could afford to buy his eighth grade daughter the dress that she wanted for her eighth grade party that she was going to at school. He made that sacrifice to make her happy.
He did it because he loved her and it was really touching. But as Christians, we don't love people by giving them material things. We spend our lives so that we can love people by giving them Jesus. We do whatever it takes to give another person the opportunity to enter into a relationship with Jesus, to have their sins forgiven, to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to have the gift of eternal life. What better gift could you give to someone than the gift of knowing Jesus?
What better display of love could we show another person? Other than that we want people to become Christians because that's the single best thing that can happen in anyone's life. So there are at least three reasons that we make disciples here at Gospel City Church because we love the Bible, because we love Jesus and because we love people. Well, how do we do it, how do we go about the business of making disciples? Well, let's learn how we can make disciples by walking through the great commission, which again is found in Matthew chapter twenty eight, verses 18 to 20.
Let me read it one more time. And Jesus came and said to them, all the authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, go there for and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. After Jesus establishes that all the authority has been given to him, he says, the first thing that we need to do when it comes to making disciples is go.
He says, go, Jesus is sending us to accomplish this task goal is an action word, it's not a sit around and think about it kind of word. The light turns green in the cars behind you. Don't give you too much time to think about whether you're going to drive through the intersection ahead of you or not. There are honking horns remind you that green means go and we are taught or told to go make disciples. But I know there are some very real concerns and questions that come up when we hear a command like this from Jesus to go and make disciples.
One of the main questions is this who has the time in this day and age to make disciples? The last time I checked are in our days. We still only have twenty four hours in each of them and our lives fill all of those twenty four hours up pretty quick, don't they? Our days are filled with full time work or part time work or full time school or part time school. Or sometimes there's a combination of both work and school.
There are relationships that need time and attention and energy. There's marriages and kids and extended family stuff and friendships. There are health issues to address. There are errands that need to be done every week. There's laundry, there's dishes, there's groceries, there's cleaning. There are church services to attend on the weekend. And in between all that, we need to find time to eat, bathe, go to the washroom and sleep every once in a while.
And you're telling me that I need to find time to go make disciples on top of all of that? How is that even possible? Well, here's part of the solution. We need to understand what goal means in Matthew. Chapter twenty eight. Some Bible scholars say a more accurate rendition of Jesus Command to go and make disciples of all nations is. As you go. Make disciples of all nations. Wherever we go as God's people, we are to be making disciples.
And here's your next fill in on your outline. Go means as you are going go means as you are going in the context of the great commission. Now, this changes the equation. What have I told you that you don't need to carve out extra hours in your day in order to make disciples, but all you need to do is use the hours that you're already using as you are going about doing the things you're already doing. You can make disciples.
We shouldn't try to compartmentalize our disciple making efforts into blocks of time that need to be fit into our already busy schedules. If I get off work at five o'clock and drive home and eat dinner, then from then from six thirty till nine pm, I have time blocked off to make disciples. I don't think it should be like that necessarily, what if he began to think of yourself as a disciple maker like who is at the core of your identity?
And if that was the case, then you would be a disciple maker. Everywhere you go, whatever you are doing, wherever you are there, you are a disciple maker. You can make disciples while you're at work. You can make disciples while you're at school. You can make disciples at home. You can make disciples as you drive. You can make disciples at church. You can make disciples. When you're hanging at the beach with friends, you get the picture.
Waking up to this realization is a big step to walking in the calling that Jesus has on your life to make disciples. You can make disciples as you are going about doing some of the things that you're already doing. Here are some examples. You have to buy groceries. Maybe you can invite someone with you to do that one day and then discipleship relationship can happen while you're at the store. You have to eat lunch at work. Maybe you can invite a coworker to eat lunch with you.
An opportunity for discipleship can happen there. You have to have dinner each night. Hopefully you do. You can invite someone over, a neighbor or a friend to do that with you. You go to church each week. You can invite someone to come with you. You may have kids and a busy life that doesn't allow you to get out much. You can invite a friend over to your place and hang out with you while you're doing some of the chores around the house.
And the house doesn't even have to be clean. They can see you as you normally live for the majority of your time. They don't need to see the pristine, clean house that we usually spend an hour or two to get ready before a company comes over. And by the way, the houses that are super clean like that are usually only clean for about one percent of the time during during the week. My wife would have would kill me if I do this, but to make a point, I was tempted to take a picture of what our bathroom usually looks like during the week, because when people come over, it looks immaculate.
But in between visitations, it just looks like a bomb went off. I'll pay for that one later when he begin to look at your calling as a disciple maker and you look at your current life rhythms and you begin to see opportunities to bring other people into some of these things with you, then a whole new world of disciple making possibilities opens up to you. Now, introverts are freaking out at this point. You don't have to include someone every time you do a simple task, I'm just highlighting the fact that you can include some people some of the time I'm highlighting the fact that the opportunity to make disciples is not out of anyone's reach.
I hope this begins to open up our understanding of what Jesus means when he says, go and make disciples. This brings us to the next and really the central phrase in the great commission, make disciples the next PHILON. The act of making disciples is an every Christian calling, the act of making disciples is an every Christian calling. This is not just for elders of the church or for a select few Christians in the congregation. If you are a disciple of Jesus, if you are a Christian, then you have been personally commissioned by the Lord Jesus to make disciples brings brings the next fill in.
The act of making disciples is a lifetime calling. The act of making disciples is a lifetime. Calling you or I will never graduate from the job of making disciples. You should never hear these words come out of a Christian's mouth. Are you know, that was a good run. Now I'm retired from making disciples that that should never come out of a Christian's mouth. There's no retirement in the Christian life from obeying Jesus. You and I will be done making disciples when we've entered into eternal glory.
And the act of making disciples is a two part process, your next filling part one of making disciples requires engaging the pre-Christian part. One of making disciples requires engaging the pre-Christian when Jesus says go make disciples. He is telling us to go to people who aren't already Christians and lead them into becoming Christians. How do we do that? Well, simply put, we share the gospel with them. The gospel is the power that can turn a person from not loving Jesus into a person that loves Jesus more than anything in their life.
Romans, one 16, says, For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek later. In Romans, Paul says this in Chapter 10, verses 13 to 17. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him and whom they have not believed, and how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?
And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they? How are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news? But they have not all obeyed the gospel for Isaiah, says Lord, who has believe what he has heard from us. So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. The gospel is the powerful message of the good news of the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
People can get saved when they hear the gospel. This is the message that we believed when we became a Christian. And this is the same message that we share with others so that they might hear it and believe it and become Christians to. Every conversation that you have with every person who isn't a Christian doesn't have to have the gospel forced into it in an awkward way. Like, if you can picture me driving away from a drive thru window and I got my I got my food, I'm paid, I'm on my way, and then I realize it hit me.
Oh, my goodness. I didn't share the gospel with the person who served my fast food meal. Then I don't have to roll down the window. And as I'm driving away, scream out. Jesus loves you so much that he died in the cross for your sins and he buried and and it was Rose on the third day and turn from your sins and trust in him and you'll be saved. I don't have to do that as I'm I don't have to force it in to every single conversation.
It might come a weird sometimes when we share the gospel, to be sure, but I don't think it has to be weird every single time. I would suggest to you that you want to be constantly thinking, praying and having a level of awareness of when you can bring the gospel into the conversation you are having with people and how are you going to build a bridge to the gospel in the conversation that you're having? But someone might be saying to themselves right now, well, what if I don't know what the gospel is or how to articulate it to someone else?
Well, my answer to you would be learn it, ask for help, practice sharing it, talk about it with your brothers and sisters in Christ, you need to know the gospel. The gospel is Christianity, one or one. It's a story when I became a Christian and started walking with Jesus about 20 years ago, when I became when I came to follow Jesus, I was just I just loved him so much. And I had the evidence of him living in my life because my life was changing.
But for the first few years of walking with Jesus, I didn't know how to articulate the gospel. And let me tell you how I came to that realization, I was telling everyone about Jesus because I wanted them to become a Christian like I was I wanted them to have what I had in my life, in this new life with Jesus. But no one was becoming one. I was confused and baffled as to why people didn't want Jesus. He was so awesome.
Then the Lord led me to learning more about salvation and how it worked. I wanted people to get saved and so I learned how salvation would work in a person's life. I was brought to Romans 116 where we learned that the gospel is the power of salvation to everyone who believes the gospel was that. That eventually led me to First Corinthians 15, where we learned there that the gospel is the gospel is the good news message of the life sinless life of Jesus, his substitutionary death on the cross for our sins and his victorious conquering of death when he resurrected from it on the third day.
This is the message that God uses to save people. Early on, I wasn't sharing the gospel with people because I didn't know what the gospel was. I was just telling everyone how awesome Jesus was in a really general way. But then I learned how to tell them how awesome Jesus was in a very specific way. I was armed with the power that saves people. I learned the gospel. Now I'm like a saw in Jesus parable. Of the four soils, I'm scattering the seed of the gospel everywhere I go, hoping and praying that it miraculously takes root in people's lives and bears the fruit of salvation and praise God, it has.
I've seen people become born again by the power of the Gospel when they heard it and believed it. If you don't know how to articulate the gospel, then I would just encourage you to spend the next little while in your personal devotion times to give yourself to be coming equipped with a basic understanding of it. You need to if you're going to make disciples. Well, you might say, what if I know the gospel, but I'm scared to share the gospel with someone?
Well, everyone is scared in some way from time to time, if we're honest. But we have to overcome this because what's the alternative? Never telling someone you love how they can be saved because you're scared of making the environment that you're in less enjoyable and more awkward. Share openly with God and with others in the church why you're scared to share the gospel and then ask God for the boldness to share it anyway. We have the only way a person can be saved.
We can't stay silent no matter what the cost, no matter how scary it may be. OK, well, where do we find unbelievers to share the gospel with? Well, you can go overseas as a missionary to an unreached people group. You can live there, learn the language and the culture. You can love them and look for ways to bring the gospel to them. That's one way you can do it. Or and this is the much more common approach.
You can go across the lunchroom on your break while you're at work as a missionary that lives in Canada. And you can go to a person here who's never heard the good news about Jesus and find a way to share it with them without ever having to sell your house and jumping on an airplane to go and do it. That's another way that you can reach an unbeliever with the gospel. So part one of making disciples requires that we find a way to bring the gospel to people who aren't already following Jesus.
And here's part two, and it's your next film. Part two of Making Disciples requires engaging the Christian Pozza of making disciples requires engaging the Christian after they become one. Then the Bible paints a bleak evangelistic picture for us. Most people will not believe the gospel when we share with them. Jesus says this in Matthew Chapter seven, verses 13 to 14, he says enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide in the way is easy. That leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many.
The gate is narrow and the way is hard. That leads to life and those who find it are few. Jesus says many will reject the gospel and choose to continue to go through the Whitegate and down the easy way that leads to destruction. But Jesus also says that some will enter the narrow gate and go down the hard way that leads to life. Praise God, some people will believe the gospel when you share it with them. And when they do, the disciple making process isn't over.
In a sense, it's just beginning. When a person becomes a Christian, they are a brand new babe in Christ. They need to be loved, nurtured, encouraged, taught the truth of Christ. And that's our job as Christians to help other disciples mature in their faith. Again, not just the pastor's job, but every Christian's responsibility. Why do we know when a person becomes a Christian? Is there a way to identify someone who has believed the gospel and turned their life over to Christ?
Yes, because that person gets baptized. Jesus says this in the great commission, baptize them. These are new disciples in the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And your next filling baptism is the public identification of a person who has become a disciple of Jesus. Baptism is the public identification of a person who has become a disciple of Jesus. This is how new believers are marked out. They get baptized. This is really important in the discipleship process for a couple of reasons.
One, a new believer gets baptized simply because Jesus tells them to. They get baptized in obedience to Jesus, because if you remember, if we love him, we will give ourselves to obeying him. And he tells us the first thing we need to do as Christians is to get baptized to baptism, notifies the church that we need to now engage this person as a Christian. Remember the two parts to disciple making part one, engage the pre-Christian part to engage the Christian baptism, says to everyone, this one here is a new Christian.
We don't need to preach to this person anymore. There need to be saved and how to get saved. They are saved now. We need to teach them how to be a Christian, how to follow Jesus. We shouldn't try to save someone who has already saved. And on the other hand, we shouldn't try to call someone to live like a Christian if they aren't a Christian. Baptism is what makes the distinction clear for everyone involved. What should we teach other Christians to do as part of the disciple making process?
Again, Jesus tells us in the great commission. Says teach them these new disciples to observe. All I have commanded you. Now, I personally don't like the ESV use of the word observe in this text, it makes it sound like we can look at Jesus commands like there hanging in an art gallery or in a on display in a museum. Don't touch. Just observe. Just look at his commands and study them. Don't get your fingerprints on them, don't get messy.
A better translation is the word obey. Teach them to obey all I have commanded you. We need to teach one another how to obey Jesus. That's what he tells us to do. And this is a major component of making disciples your next villain. Making disciples includes teaching Christians how to obey Jesus. Making disciples includes teaching Christians how to obey Jesus. Well, how do we teach people to obey the commands of Jesus? Here's an important lesson. Before you're going to teach anything to anyone, you should be doing those things in your life that you want to teach others to do before you teach people to obey Jesus.
You need to learn to obey Jesus. You need to know what he's asking you to do. So you need to give yourself the learning his commands, study the Bible on your own, come to church and listen to the sermons. Listen to Christians who are more mature than you, teach you how they learn to obey Christ, then give yourself to obeying his commands. You can only begin teaching others when you are growing in your own obedience to him.
When you're learning to obey Jesus commands, then you can be used to teach others, to obey them to. Teaching others to do something is way easier said than done. I think we would we want to make it easier than it actually is. We're tempted to make the teaching process easier by boiling down the learning process into accumulating information. You want to learn something? Go read these books. Watch these videos on YouTube. And after you've done that, you should have learned what you've wanted to learn.
But teaching people takes way more than throwing a textbook at them and wishing them good luck. Can you imagine if that's what Jesus did? Can you imagine if after he called his 12 disciples to follow him, he gathered them together for a meeting and then gave each of them their own personal scroll with the Bible on it and their own personal handwritten note of instructions from him and said, OK, now, guys, you have what you need, study it and then do what you learn.
Good luck. And then he imagine he walks away and leaves them to figure everything out on their own. For the record, Jesus didn't teach his disciples using that method, thankfully he didn't, because I don't think they would have learned what they needed to learn from him that way. What did Jesus do to teach his disciples, how did Jesus teaches disciples? Well, let's look at Jesus as a model for our disciple making efforts. He called them to follow him and they did.
He then spent the next three years with them day in and day out. He was with his disciples. They saw him preach. They saw him here. They saw him handle the opposition of the religious leaders. They saw him love those who were on the margins of society. They saw him pray. They saw his life. They were with him. No doubt. Jesus taught his disciples many things with his words. But we cannot discount the lessons they learned from him just simply by being with him.
He gave them an example. They could see an example they could emulate. He didn't write them a story on parchment about him washing their feet. He actually got up from the table one time and washed their feet. If we're going to successfully make disciples, then we need to pattern our disciple making efforts after the master disciple maker. We need to give ourselves to making disciples like Jesus did. And he spent time with his disciples. He taught them in a context where they were together with him.
If you or I are going to make disciples by teaching them to obey Jesus, then we need to be prepared to invest time with them. If you want to take the call to make disciples seriously, then you need to invest time in the lives of the people that you want to disciple. You cannot teach others the way you are supposed to. Apart from spending time with them, because part of teaching them is modeling for them, how do you obey the commands?
They need to be around you long enough to see what a godly, obedient Christian life looks like. You can't explain and model obedience apart from being in the presence of the ones you're trying to teach. Now, some of you may be overwhelmed at this point, so let me remind you of something I said earlier in the message. I said that making a disciple is a humanly impossible task. Isn't that like God, though, to command us to do things that we can't do in our own strength?
Abraham, go and have a kid with Sarah in your old age. Moses, go and deliver my people from Egypt. Joshua, go and take the city of Jericho by walking around his walls a few times and shouting into the air. Gideon, go in the battle with only three hundred men marry to have a baby while you're still a virgin. Peter, go walk on the water disciples. Go and make disciples. God causes people to do impossible things, and when he does, he always supplies what we need in order to get the job done.
God gave everyone what they needed to obey him in each of the examples I just gave you. And God gives us what we need in order to make disciples look at the last line in the great commission and we'll see a very precious promise for us. Jesus says, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Jesus tells his disciples back then and he's telling us today, I am with you. Jesus is with us.
That's the ultimate game changer. Jesus is the one who makes impossible things possible without Jesus. We are always bringing a knife to a gunfight. Whatever battle we're facing without Jesus, we are always undersupplied. But with Jesus, what can we do if Jesus is with us? What does the apostle Paul say in Philippians? Chapter four, verse thirteen. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Making disciples is an impossible task without Jesus. But here is your next villain. Making disciples is possible only because Jesus is with us. Making disciples is possible only because Jesus is with us. Here are some of the things we have at our disposal to make disciples since we have Jesus, we've been given the power of the Holy Spirit, we've been given a new heart, one that loves the things that Jesus loves, one that wants to obey everything that Jesus has commanded us, one that understands and wants to make disciples.
We've been given spiritual gifts. We've been given the church. We've been given each of the opportunities that we have in our life. We've been given the power of the gospel. We've been given the ongoing work of Jesus, of drawing Amen unto himself. We have Jesus who is the one who saves people. We have Jesus who is the one who sanctifies them by changing them from the inside out. He gives those who we are discipling hearts that want to learn and obey his commands.
We cannot make disciples if we don't have those things. But we do have those things because we have Jesus. Let's begin to bring all of this home. How are we going to make disciples at Gospel City Church? Well, number one, focus on your own personal relationship with Jesus Abidin him. Jesus says these words in John, Chapter 15, verse four to five. He says, abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine.
Neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit from apart from me. You can do nothing. Everything that you do for Jesus will flow out of the love relationship that you have with them. So spend personal time with Jesus every day and he will lead you in your disciple making journey. So that's number one. Focus your own on your own personal relationship with Jesus to focus on the unbelievers that God has placed in your life.
Pray for the people in your life who do not know Christ, pray that he saves them. Pray that he uses you to do it. Look for ways to build relational bridges with the people in your life who do not know him, look for opportunities to serve them, look for opportunities to share the gospel with them. So that's to focus on the unbelievers God has placed in your life. And three, focus on the believers God has placed in your life.
God has supplied you with people who need to be discipled, most of these relationships can be found in the church you're already a part of, whether you call gospel city church home or you're a part of another local church. The local church is where you will find the believers God has placed in your life to disciple and be discipled by. Here are some of the rhythms that we have in the life of gospel city church that are conducive to making disciples or weekly church services, on Sunday night, we come to be taught the word of God.
Together, we come to praise God. Together we come to serve. Together we come to give. Together, we come to take communion. Together we come to share testimonies together. Make no mistake about it, regular attendance and participation in the weekly church service is a vital part to mature you in your faith as a disciple of Jesus. We also have our home groups which are starting back up on Wednesdays in the Fall Home group is an opportunity for you to make disciples.
Remember, Jesus spent time with his disciples and that's what's at the heart of our home group time. We're not expecting anyone to spend 24/7 with another brother or sister in Christ like Jesus did with his disciples. We live in a different time and culture that Jesus and the disciples lived in. But we also don't expect that meaningful discipleship relationships in the church are possible with zero meaningful time spent together. So we ask all those who call Gospel City Church home to make every effort to set aside Wednesdays just to be with their brothers or sisters in Christ, to share our lives together, to open the word together, to pray together, to learn, model and teach obedience to Jesus together.
This time is specifically set aside so that discipleship can take place as a part of our regular rhythm as a church family. In the midst of all the busyness, we need to prioritize a time like this. And one more thing, here's something new for Gospel City starting Monday night in the fall. Members of Gospel City Church will be able to enroll in a yearlong discipleship training called Pipeline that's designed to equip disciples to live out the great commission. The pipeline level one training is designed to develop disciples who demonstrated a desire to grow and mature in Christ.
This training will help develop a strong foundation in spiritual and missional discipleship principles. Here are the seven competencies that we will grow in throughout the year spiritual formation, Bible fluency. Spiritual design, evangelism. Relationships. Understanding church and leadership. There's about three hours of homework each week that includes Bible reading, scripture memorization, watching sermons, reading articles, questions to answer, short essays to write and tasks to do. You'll spend time doing this work on your own if you if you participate in this.
But then we gather together once a week to go through what we've learned, processing it and discussing it together. This will be starting in September and runs for seven months through the calendar year, taking breaks over December and March and the summer, which line up with the same breaks we take for home group. We've done this training for two years now when we were still what part of us were still God rock? And I can tell you everyone who goes through it comes up more equipped and prepared to love and serve Jesus and make disciples in their life.
Fruit has come out of this time together and I am excited to take the next group of people through it as a part of our disciple making endeavors here at Gospel City Church. There'll be more info as we get closer to September. So. We've taken three weeks to answer the question, who is gospel city church? We believe the Bible. We love Jesus and people and we make disciples. This is who we are. And I pray that we can experience the reality of each of these in radical ways as we continue to give all of our life in sweet surrender to our king and our God.
Jesus Christ. We pray with me. Lord, that that is that is our prayer, Lord, we don't want to be a church that just talks about the things of the Bible, Lord, we want to we want to experience everything that you've called us to experience as your church, as the body of Christ, as your people, as your children filled with your spirit. We want everything that you're calling us to do to be a reality in our lives, because your way is the best way.
Your way is where life and fulfillment and power and meaning is found. Lord. And so we pray that as a church make us that, make us an obedient church, make us a holy church, make us a church marked by your power. Make us a church lord that's marked by your love. Do do things in us, Lord, that we cannot conjure up on our own. We need your spirit to empower us. And Lord, that is our hearts cry.
Make us a biblical church. Do that Lord for your glory. Do that for our satisfaction and our joy. But do that for the good of the city that you've called us to reach and the good of the nation and the world that you've called us to reach. Youth Gospel City, Church Lord. To reach and impact people for your name and for your kingdom. We pray all of these things. Jesus in your amazing name, Amen.