The Church Answers Podcast

The Six Purposes of the Church: How They Really Play Out in a Local Congregation. Part 5 of 9: The Purpose of Discipleship

The purposes of the church originate with the early churches in the New Testament. When Rick Warren wrote "The Purpose Driven Church" in 1995, the purposes became commonplace in conversations in churches around the world. Thom takes a detailed journey about the purposes of the church through nine episodes. Keep all of them together to share with your church leaders and members.

Duration:: 10m
Broadcast on:: 24 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

- Welcome to the Church Answers Podcast, presented by Cheney & Associates. Cheney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here's the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. - Welcome to the Church Answers Podcast. My name is Tom Rayner. Thank you for being here. Thanks for watching on YouTube. Give us a thumbs up. Give us a, go and subscribe to us. We'd love to have you subscribe to the Church Answers channel. Hey, if you're listening on your favorite podcast app, give us a rating and review, whatever is involved in getting the word out about the Church Answers Podcast and speaking of getting the word out, we're always sponsored by Cheney & Associates, the accounting firm for the church, the cloud-based accounting firm for the church. What does that mean? That means I can serve you wherever you are. And boy, did they serve you well. Listen to me, you are not going to find a better accounting firm for your church bookkeeping, payroll, accounting, finance. Give it to Cheney and take it off your plate. Your church and you are supposed to do ministry to let them do this work 'cause they are none better. Only thing, only customers they have for churches and Christian organizations. So let them be the accounting firm for you 'cause they are the accounting firm for the church. Okay, I've been talking about now. This is fifth episode. I believe on the whole topic of what this book has done for the local church. Yeah, this is fifth episode. What this church, what this book is done for the church. The book is called The Purpose Driven Church. It's a book written by Rick Warren. There's the Rick Warren there. Sold over one million copies in the perspective of books on the church. This is one of the two best, and I've been modestly saying that my book was a, I am a church member, was around two million. And those are two books that complimented each other. I have to give Rick a lot of credit. My book came after he is. I focused upon one aspect of it, which was what it means to be a member of the body of Christ. He focused upon five purposes, and we of course, edit a six, call prayer. Now go back and listen or watch some of the other podcasts, if you haven't heard anything to this point. We're gonna talk about the origin of the book. When Rick called me in 1994, and he asked me to be one of the endorses of this book, not only was I honored, I was excited. And when the book came out in 1995, in Donovan released it, oh, it hit the church world like a tidal wave in the positive sense. Now, when I said tidal wave, tidal waves just rearrange things. I mean, they are, I've never been in one. All I've done is seen the videos of them. But once they pass through, what they sweep over does not look the same. That's the way it was with churches. And you say, well, in that destructive, not really, because they washed away some of the things that needed to be washed away to somewhat keep the metaphor of the tidal wave, but they kept those things that are important, which were the purposes of the church. And what was so profoundly brilliant about the purpose of in church, if you read this in the way that it was intended to, now it's a thicker book. So it is by design, it is by design having a lot of other information in it, like a lot of the history of his church, Saddleback Church, a lot of expansion on application. And before I leave, I'm going to talk about this fourth part, bringing in the crowd. I like to name it something else, but still it is something that I think is worth going over because that's how he applied the purpose-driven church to this church when he was pastor at Saddleback. So we've been going over each of the purposes. And in the last episode, we covered that most neglected purpose, the purpose of evangelism. Now we're going to go to the purpose of discipleship. Allow me again to read directly from his book, purpose-driven church, on discipleship. And let's talk about exactly what he was saying when he said discipleship. Reading in the book where I have page 106, purpose number five, teaching them to obey, the word we commonly use referring to refer to this purpose is discipleship. The church exists to edify or to educate God's people. Discipleship is the process of helping people become more like Christ in their thoughts, their feelings, and their actions. As the church, we're calling not only to reach people, but also to teach them. After someone has made a decision for Christ, he or she must be disciple. It is the church's responsibility to develop people to spiritual maturity. This is God's will for believers, Paul writes in Ephesians 4, 12, and 13, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. There was an unfortunate debate that took place for almost 20 years in the American church and the latter part of the 20th century, and that debate was more important. Discipleship or evangelism. It would almost be like saying what is more important? Water or air for a human to continue. They'll obviously die more quickly without air, but they'll eventually die without water as well. Both are absolutely essential for the viability of a life. Both evangelism and discipleship are absolutely essential. And so it was so unfortunate when their debate came along, which is, is it evangelism or is it discipleship? Sometimes churches would form their whole basis for meaning upon, particularly that it's a weird discipleship church. We know that as we get portions more committed to Christ, they are naturally going to evangelize. No, they're not. No, they're not. They may learn a lot more and they may know the Bible, but they're not naturally going to evangelize. These have to be two intentional purposes and discipleship is that growing maturation in Christ. It is not something that is counter to evangelism. It is something that compliments evangelism. The great commission is the great commission for a reason. It says go and make disciples. The go means that you're out doing something. Make means that you are seeing people changed. In other words, from the old life to the new life, from the old birth to the new birth, and they make disciples not only have they changed their eternity, but they are now changing to become more like Christ. It's not an either or if you look at evangelism and discipleship, it is a both end. And when it is all said and done, both are incredibly important. Now, what Rick did in this book, he made us answer the question if we were reading carefully, what are we doing about evangelism? What are we doing about discipleship? In discipleship, how much of our financial resources are going toward helping our people become more edified or more like Christ? How much of our time is used to help people grow in Christ more? And quite frankly, many churches think they're doing well here and they may be because they are communicating knowledge, biblical knowledge, which is important, but discipleship is more than just attaining knowledge. It is attaining character. It is becoming action oriented. Discipleship is not just what happens to you cognitively. Discipleship is how Christ changes your life and its totality. And so, Rick's book said, "Well, one of the purposes is discipleship." If one of the purposes is discipleship, what is our church doing in order to make disciples? How are we being intentional? And that's one of the great things about the Purpose Triven Church book. It was about intentionality. When he says, "These are the five purposes of the church." And when we added prayer as a sixth purpose, he was saying, "Church, what are you doing intentionally to help people to grow as followers of Christ?" Not incidentally, not just as another program or some type of cognitive application. What are you doing intentionally to watch these lives become more like Christ? I love the fact that evangelism and discipleship are both two separate purposes, but they're two complimentary purposes as well. You really cannot have one with the other. You cannot make a disciple until someone becomes a disciple and you're not going to make other disciples unless those people are growing in Christ. It is complimentary. So I love that we're going through each of these six purposes. We've gone through the purpose of evangelism. We've gone through the purpose of discipleship. And in the next episode, we will be going through the purpose of ministry. We'll talk about specific application of ministry in that episode. So as we finish up this second week, talking about the book, The Purpose Triven Church, we'll be finishing up three of the first six purposes of the church. And the next episode is already there. It's already ready for you. It's already downloaded. So come on and watch us on YouTube or listen to us on your favorite podcasting out and contact the folks at Chaney and Associates. That is chaneyassociates.com, the accounting firm for the church. And in the meantime, we'll see you in the next episode of The Church Answers Podcast as we talk about the third of the six purposes, ministry. We'll see you then. - You have been listening to The Church Answers Podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Chaney will focus on finances. Also, please subscribe and give a review to The Church Answers Podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) (gentle music)