- How can we measure success differently for the next decade? What would it look like not to just bring people into the church, but to send them back out into the world? At Grace, we wanna follow Jesus in our whole lives, where we live, work, learn, and play. The church isn't just here to meet your needs, it's here to train and equip you a need to meet the needs of the world. Join us in September as we think big, start small, and go deep as a missional force in our communities. Well hi everyone, Christian Business Guru Ken Blanchard said that any leader of any industry or organization needs to only come back to two questions regularly to find their way quickly to true north. These two questions can be adapted for individuals as well as to kind of get a quick take on how life is going. Being able to answer these two questions clearly and honestly can really take a temperature of the present as well as set a course for the future. So what are the two questions? The two questions are what business are we in and how's business? And so for us as a church, it's clarifying to remember that we're not in the worship service business, we're not in the special events business, we're not in the children's programming business, we're not in the preaching business, some of your theme, obviously. We are in the disciple making business. And so Jesus was crystal clear in his great commission that this is the primary job of his church, make disciples. And so then the second question is how's business? And that's complicated. That there are certainly some amazing bright spots around grace, sold out disciples of Jesus. But one of the reasons that we're going through a major remodel right now as a church is because while disciple making is our heartbeat, our church isn't necessarily organized around this as our central focus. And so our new awake the lake vision, that's the series we're in right now, it's centered around making this deepening discipleship emphasis a priority for us at grace. And so one of the visuals that's been helpful to us in this process from future church is the idea of the lower room in the upper room. The lower room represents why most people come to a church. The word here is provision. How will this church provide for me? And so if someone talks about why they like the church, one of the four P's usually take center stage. Place, it's the place or the personality or the programs or the people. That's the lower room. And this is where a lot of churches invest all of their time and energy and resources. It's what motivates a lot of people to attend a church. When you've heard me talk about the attractional church model, these are the factors that attract people to a church. Now please understand, we still wanna do all of those things really well. We're not saying that with this new vision that we're gonna let our buildings go to crap and we're not gonna let our kids programming deteriorate or something like that. We want the lower room to be fantastic. We just want many more people to come to the upper room. And so people in the upper room call their church home because they are passionate about how God has positioned us to make and multiply disciples, both inside and outside our walls. These people are less concerned about the provision. What am I getting? And more about the disciple making vision. How are we multiplying? And so we believe that we already have a ton of people at grace. We're living out an upper room kind of faith. But we also know that it's on us to build a very clear and obvious stairway to invite many more of you to the upper room. And up until now, Grace Church has kinda looked more like this. Like we've got a nice big front door and but there's still some confusing things going on. Some sun rooms built on the side called Surveyory and GLI. That there is a stairway to the upper room but it's narrow and it's kind of hidden. And so it's on us to clarify and make obvious that the way to get to our disciple making vision in the upper room. Now, I'm excited to announce that we've had our first round of a brand new training experience called Launch. This is gonna be one of the main stairways to introduce you to our new approach. And really the first look at the discipleship roles that we're inviting everyone at Grace to step into, as well as some of the tools that we're gonna be using to train these roles along the way. So we have some classes starting on October on a bunch of different days and times and we would just love for everyone to jump in as you're able. But why is this important? Well, because as I said the beginning, the business we're in is disciple making. In fact, I wanna take you to Jesus foundational teaching on this, it's over in Matthew 28, 18 and you can find your way there in your Bible or your Bible app, it's called the Great Commission. And as you get there, I just wanna walk us through what I'm calling four preliminary truths about discipleship. Here's the first one. Every person is a disciple of someone or something. So we all have go-to sources that are teaching us about what to believe about the world, about how to behave in the world, about what kind of decisions to make. And so lots of people today, sadly, are being discipled by their newsfeeds, where they're being discipled by social media or being discipled by influencers that they follow or being discipled by their friends who have a certain worldview or their family members. This is the way our family has always done it. That is a form of discipleship. And every human being is a disciple of someone or something. The second truth is that every person is becoming who they are by who or what disciples them. So discipleship has a profoundly central impact on who we are becoming. Are you an early riser? Well, somebody probably discipled you to do that. Do you follow a certain diet? Somebody probably discipled you to do that. Are you a hard worker? Are you a stress eater? Are you a corporate ladder climber? We are becoming who we're becoming by who disciples us. The third truth is that in the New Testament, the word Christian is used three times. The word disciple is used 260 times. And the only point here is that the disciple is the preferred word in the New Testament to describe a follower of Jesus. Christian isn't a bad term. It simply means little Christ, which is a great description. But if the Bible consistently refers to us as disciples, we should probably figure out what that means. And finally, discipleship is more caught than taught because it's primarily relational. And this is important because often when the word discipleship is used, people assume that it comes in the form of information, like an information download, a study or a book or a set of doctrines. But discipleship is a relational word. In fact, the closest English equivalent is the word apprentice. And so when you're an apprentice of someone, information is part of the deal, but a much bigger part is following that person and watching what they do and then eventually doing those things yourself. And so these are four preliminary truths as we get into the centrality of discipleship today and make our way to Jesus' central teaching on the topic. And so here's my big idea. God has a disciple-making journey for you to walk. Will you take the next step? Now, hopefully you're at Matthew 28, we're gonna, sorry, Matthew 28, we're gonna start in 18. And in these last words of Jesus to his disciples, we see actually what he's saying is just a summary of his own life. And as he makes this case, this original handoff, we see that the disciples job is to do for the rest of your life what Jesus has done in his. It's an everyday commission. It's given to every believer for every moment of his or her life. And so look how Jesus describes it in verse 18. It says, Jesus came and said to them, "All authority and heaven on earth has been given to me. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and 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." Now, I wanna use a little bit of an unusual angle in interpreting this text today that might be off-putting to some of you because it's gonna remind some of you of English class, all right? But I wanna break down the sentence structure of this passage a little bit so that you can see what's going on here in this original discipleship handoff of Jesus. And so what we have in this text is two commands and three supporting verbs. So a lot of people read this passage and they think that the first command of the great commission is obvious. It's gotta be the word go. Go into all the world and make disciples. But the sentence structure of the original text, go isn't the command. It's actually a supporting verb. The main command of this text is make disciples. This is the main call. This is the main activity that Jesus is inviting us into. He's commanding his followers to prioritize a disciple-making focus with their lives. Now, the next three supporting verbs actually describe the key elements of the disciple-making process. And so the first supporting verb in the original means as you are going, we read it as just go, but it actually means as you are going. Like, and I really like this because it brings this into the everyday. It's a reminder that this discipleship call doesn't just apply to people who are going across the oceans, although I pray some of you are called to do that. But as you're going across the street to the grocery store, as you're going into town to work, as you're going about your life, as you're going to football practice, as you're going to school, as you're going to your home. As you're going, he says, make disciples. So the idea of making more disciples of Jesus should be part of the everyday air that you and I are breathing. And so can you think of someone right now who's in your circle of relationships, who's just kind of waiting for someone to show them the ways of Jesus. As you're going, make disciples. This is personal outreach. This is everyday mission. The second supporting verb is this word baptizing. We were so thrilled to celebrate almost 100 baptisms a couple of weeks ago. Because baptism is that initial act of obedience after a decision of faith to become a disciple of Jesus. And so if baptisms are happening, it means that there are people coming to faith and the discipleship relationship that you're building as you're going about your life. It's going to eventually lead to a decision of faith and that person will be baptized. So I ask you again, when is the last time someone close to you took that step of faith as a result of your influence in their life? Jesus says, if you're walking out this disciple making vision, there will be people taking this step of baptism. And so he says, make disciples and do it as you're going. Then baptizing them. And here's the third part, this supporting verb. It's teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you, teaching them to observe. Now, don't be distracted by this word teaching. This is not a classroom term. Remember, this discipleship journey is happening as you are going. And so he's referring here to the kind of teaching that happens as life is happening. It's more like spiritual training in the school of life. We said earlier, this is a highly relational process. And so teaching them to observe or obey is the training of a new disciple and how to make wise decisions as decisions are being made. How to walk through a crisis as crises are popping up. Almost like a new baby, there needs to be nourishment and protection right away for that baby to survive. And the parent, the spiritual parent is responsible for the spiritual feeding and protection. So you don't just drop that new disciple off at the doorstep of the church and say here, now he or she is your problem. Just like you wouldn't do that with a newborn baby. And so when there are questions like you track down some answers, when that baby disciple is rude to his wife, you tell him that he's being a jerk and train him in the ways of Jesus. When that baby disciple in her work gets hard and her boss is a jerk, talk her through the attitudes that align with the heart of Jesus. As you're going, make disciples, baptizing them and then teaching them, training them in the ways of obedience. And now until it recently, I only thought that there was one command in this text. But upon deeper inspection, there are actually two. The second command is so beautiful and so necessary and so like our gracious savior. The second command is attached to this word in our text that we read, behold. Some translations say surely or low. This one says behold. But I like the literal translation that just says, be sure of this. That's the command. Be sure of this. Jesus is saying, if you forget everything else, you can be sure of this. What can we be sure of? He says, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. As you commit to this lifestyle of disciple making, don't you forget, please be sure of this. Don't doubt it. Never let it far from your mind that I will be with you and I will show you how to do this. I will make you disciple makers. And I'm so grateful for this commission for this promise that he'll be with us always. Now I started today with two questions. What business are we in and how's business? And I said, you could apply those two questions, not just to us corporately as a church, but to you personally. And I want to come back to that. Because you see, it's not just the church that is in the disciple making business. It's every individual follower of Jesus. And so if you follow Jesus, this applies to you. You are part of the family business of disciple making. Your primary job is you're not in the money making business. You're not in the saving for retirement business. You're not in the travel soccer team business. You're not in the little league coaching business. You're not in the healthy lifestyle business. You're not in the party on the weekends business. You're in the discipleship and the disciple making business. And so I would ask you the same searching question that we've been asking as a church for the last couple of years. How's business? How's it going for you? With this central call of Jesus to make more disciples as you're going about your life, seeing them baptize and then training them into the ways of Christ. How's business? As a church, we've said, you know what? Our disciple making outcomes need to be better. And the first step is to really change our approach, to change the scorecard of how we're measuring success. So I want to spend some time now talking about some of the shifts and some of the definitions that we're giving to this next chapter for us as a church. Let's call it changing the scorecard a deep discipleship. So the two typical metrics in the church world that many churches used to define success are attendance and giving. And it's not bad to measure those things. And frankly, they're just the two easiest things to measure. But we're committed to figuring out some new metrics. And one of the clarifying phrases that has emerged during our journey is that we are a people development organization. And so our job is to not build a remarkable church. Our job is to build remarkable people. And so listen, when it comes to scorecards around spiritual development, just people development in general, it's a tricky thing because all people development is subjective. And so say you're a soccer coach. A soccer coach might be trying to evaluate the individual players on his team. And he could have a very precise series of tests and drills that each player goes through. And he could take each player through like a 96 point assessment and check them all off on his paper. In the end, whatever number he writes down at the bottom line is still subjective. And so it's hard. But even though it's hard, part of our process going forward is to figure out how to change the scorecard and try to measure the right things. Not just nickels and noses on a Sunday morning, but to measure progress toward discipleship. So we needed to find some terms. And I want to start by just asking what is a disciple? You know, we said earlier that this word disciple is used some 260 times in the New Testament, so we should probably know what that is. A very simple definition is that a disciple is an apprentice of Jesus who imitates his ways and then makes more disciples. Now, even though that's an accurate definition, it's still pretty broad and open-ended. One of the aha moments for me during our remodeling process as a church is this concept of defining discipleship locally. In other words, we can look at our local church, we can look at our local area in the Erie region and discover some of the unique problems and issues that our region is facing and then ask, well, what kind of disciple would it take to impact this region? Now, there are obviously some universal components of discipleship that are just always true, but this localized approach can inform the way we frame the roles and qualities of a disciple of Jesus for this region at this time. So our team began to research the scriptures. We started with some existing characteristics of discipleship that we've used for many years here at Grace. It's the places in the Gospels where Jesus actually unequivocally says, here's what my disciples are like. And so you have places like John 8 where he says, you know, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. And so there's a key, you know, living in his words. John 13, Jesus says, by this all people will know you're my disciples. And so our ears perk up. If you have love for one another. So there's a defining, you know, defining character quality. It's love. Luke 9 says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me." John 15, "By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples." And so we began there, these blatant passages. And then we began to search the Gospels and Acts specifically for other examples, either in Jesus' own life or in the life of his disciples, where they're demonstrating repeated actions or attitudes that show faithful obedient discipleship. Now remember, the goal of this whole Christian life is to become more and more like Jesus. Romans 8, 29, Paul says, "For for those God for knew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son." That's the whole goal of Christianity. The word likeness means replica. This is our driving force. So the role of any apprentice is to become like his master. And so again, we're searching the scriptures. We're asking, what does this look like in real life? We took all of that research in and we created some categories. And to make a very long story, a little shorter, we landed on four roles that we're calling our dream disciple. It's an aspirational term, dream disciple, because that's how Jesus did it. He affirmed with his disciples, "I want you to be great." And here's what greatness looked like, and then he would surprise them a little with his definitions. That's kind of the approach that we're taking with a dream disciple concept. And along with each of these four roles, we're creating discipleship questions, and trainings, and tools, and assessments to just help us to measure. Are we growing? Are we progressing? Are we maturing in our faith? And from all this research, we ask, well, what is grace's dream disciple? And here are the four roles of our dream disciple that we tried to put some modern language to and a description. Compassionate storyteller just says, "I know God's story. I know my place in it, and I'm motivated to tell the people in my life." Savvy follower says, "I discern God's voice and follow his lead at the right time in the right way." Intentional friend says, "I partner with God to build healthy relationships and to restore broken ones." An embedded influencer says, "I understand how God has purposefully gifted and positioned me to multiply his work in the world." So as you can see, with each role comes these two discipleship questions. When we were first presenting these roles to some of our core teams, one person kind of raised their hand, and they said, you know, these sound a little basic, maybe a little trendy, maybe not deep enough. And my friend Dave, who was co-presenting, said, "Okay, I want to do a little test." He says, "I dare you. I dare you to find a friend and ask each other one of the questions, or two of the questions, from this list every week, and to challenge each other to have a good answer for that question. I dare you to come back in a couple weeks and tell me that these are not deep enough." And I just believe, if we as a church would put our hands in the middle and we'd just say, we're pursuing Jesus with all of our hearts through these four roles. I believe it wouldn't just change our lives and our church. I believe we would transform this whole region with the gospel. So let me just give you one simple example of how we've already used this tool. We've done a couple of pilot huddle groups using nothing but the Bible and these roles and questions. So I led one of these huddles with a group of about six people. And I'm actually a little bitter about it. Because after almost 30 years of pastoring and preparing countless Bible studies and small group sessions and leadership training courses, this was zero preparation. It was so simple. We started the same way every week. We would read down through these four roles and the eight questions that go with them. I would just say, I want you to read slowly and prayerfully until the Holy Spirit tells you to stop. And then just when He tells you to stop, just kind of sorted out with Him. Why are you stopping me here? What are you trying to say to me? And then if you're so inclined, share it with the rest of us. What is the Holy Spirit saying to you? So one person would start, "Hey, this Holy Spirit stopped me at this one under intentional friend. Who in my life needs me most during this season? And what is my next step with them?" And here's why the Spirit stopped me. It's because it's my child who needs me most. And I've been avoiding a conversation that I know I need to have with that child. And they would just kind of open up why God stopped them there. And once they get done explaining why the Spirit stopped them, I would look around at the rest of the table and just say, "Is the Holy Spirit prompting anyone around the table to say anything to this person right now?" Maybe a word of support, maybe a word of comfort or challenge or wisdom. We're just going to hang out for a moment here until God's Spirit prompts someone. And sure enough, someone would speak. And then the next person, the next person. And then we would keep going around. Where does the Holy Spirit tell you to stop? And if enough people stopped on a certain role, in this case, intentional friend, then I would pull out one of the tools that we've created. And we would practice using that tool of how to be a better intentional friend. And each meeting then ended with all of us kind of putting hands in the middle and giving an "I will" statement. In other words, this is what God spoke to me today through this group. And here's what I will do about it this week. When we came back next week, it was how did everybody do with your "I will" statement from last time. And then let's look down these questions again. What is the Holy Spirit speaking to you? Where is He telling you to stop today? Do you know what that process is called? That we walk through. It's called discipleship. And we're committed over this next season to obsessing about this. Instead of just how many people can we get to attend our services? Or are we making budget this month? We want to say, are we developing remarkable disciples? Are we developing remarkable apprentices of Jesus who hear what He says and see what He does? And then just obey Him unequivocally. And so we're creating tools that you could draw on a napkin. That's how simple and memorable we want them to be. That these tools are going to help you to live out these roles in your everyday life, where you live, work, learn, and play. And we're developing assessment tools to help measure some of these discipleship outcomes. You can assess yourself. You can also have your mentors, your life group leaders, your team leaders, speak into those assessments. But one of the goals is that over the next three years that we'll have 500 of you, 500 people at grace who rank yourself a six or higher on a scale of 10 in all four of these dream disciple roles. And if that sounds weird to kind of be scoring things or whatever, let me just say we're obsessing less about getting the metrics just right. And we're obsessing a whole lot more about the kind of attention that's required to make more growing and maturing disciples of Jesus. And there's another level to this. It's not just committing to this discipleship journey yourself, but it's making more disciples. And so we'll ask what is disciple making? Well, there are lots of ideas around this, but I want to present another just very simple and straightforward working definition, just to remove some of the mystery. Disciple making is just consistently helping someone else take their next spiritual step toward becoming like Jesus. Remember, I said earlier that this process primarily relational, which means it's more caught than taught. Paul underlines this in a passage in 1 Corinthians 4, 14 that I think is so fascinating. He says this, "I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children, for though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel, and I urge you then to be imitators of me." That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved, and faithful child and the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ. Now, notice all the family language here. He's calling them children. He's calling Timothy, my beloved and faithful child. And what's the gist of his admonishment here? He says, "You have countless guides." The word here means professional teachers or pedagogies, but you don't have fathers. And so in that world at age 12, girls would be handed over to their mothers, and boys would be handed over to their fathers, and they would learn the way of the mother and the father as apprentices. This is what mothers and fathers did, training their children as apprentices into the things that they did day to day. And so he says, "You have a lot of guides, people giving you information, but no one to actually show you the ways of Jesus." And so in this way, Corinth is like the American church. They have the best communicators in the whole world passing through, the best podcasts you can listen to, the best experiences in church, the best worship services, but they're the least spiritually mature. And we see that if information alone could disciple, they would be the most spiritually mature church, but they're the least. Why? Because they have no spiritual mothers or fathers, no one showing them how to walk out their faith in real life. And so what's the solution? Well, he says, "Here's the solution, imitate me. Better yet, I sent Timothy to you who remind you, not of my teachings, but of my ways in Christ." And so imitate Timothy as he imitates me as I imitate Christ. And this passage is so challenging because it means that we all must be asking the question, "Do I have a life worth imitating?" So yes, discipleship, disciple making has an element of information. Here's a book about learning how to paint. But information alone won't do it. It also has imitation. Come learn to paint with me and learn to paint like me. But then there's also innovation. Come paint like me so you can learn to paint like you. There's information, there's imitation. So there can be innovation when it comes to following. And at Grace we're asking, "What if we put as much imagination into our training environments that we do into our teaching environments? How can we be more of a training center? How can we develop better proficiencies for reproducing disciples in the real world?" Let me just outline one more construct that's going to help put this in context as I begin to wrap this up. It's the progression toward disciple maker. If we go back to that great commission to Jesus' original handoff when he said go and make disciples of all nations, he knew that his followers couldn't accomplish that on their own. There wasn't enough of them to reach the whole world. He was assuming that they would go make disciples who would in turn go and make more disciples. And the genius of Jesus' method is that he recognized people were at different stages. And so he started with where they were at and then intentionally moved them to a deeper level of growth. It's a progression and I want you to locate yourself on this progression as I talk through it. Step one is seeker. And at this stage, Jesus would say come and see. When he first approached Andrew and John in John 1, he did it with a simple invitation. Just come, just show up in order to learn more. Step two is believer where Jesus says, "Follow me." The word follow literally means to come behind, to imitate my steps, to join me in the journey as an apprentice. Come and see the first one assumes curiosity. Follow me assumes commitment, that there's a desire there to walk as he walks, to love as he loves, to do as he does. Step three is worker. And here the invitation is follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Now here's a challenge to go deeper, to move from simply following Jesus and watching him to becoming his ministry team. This comes with a promise of relationship, by the way. Jesus pledges to make a greater investment in them with his very presence. And so you may find yourself in your own journey along this progression. Some of you are a seeker, some of you are believers. Some of you have even stepped up as workers on the Christ's ministry team. Many of you at Grace have done. But the inevitable goal is step four, which is disciple makers. Jesus is now going bare fruit. He issued this challenge at the end of his life, on his way to the Garden of Gethsemane, on his final night. Jesus stopped on his way in a vineyard and delivered his famous teaching about the vine and the branches. And in that same teaching, he calls his disciples, friends. And the reason he gives for calling them friends, he says, "Everything that I've learned from my father, I've made known to you." And now that we've moved to a whole new level of relationship. And so why is that necessary now? Well, he says it's because he's going to be going away soon and they must, here's the phrase, go and bare fruit. And the fruit he's referring to here is to go make more disciples. And he ends this section with his famous call, "As the Father sent me, now I am sending you to do what? To do the same things that I did, make disciples." And so the question on the front end, on those first two places are, "Can I trust God when I become a secret believer? When I become a worker and a disciple maker, the question on the back end is, "Can God trust me?" You must know that our dream disciple tools are not just to help you to be a better disciple, but to prepare you to be a disciple maker. And so I'd ask, where are you on this progression? Are you a seeker? Are you a believer, a worker? Or are you a disciple maker? And what would a next step look like for you? I would say at Grace, we're kind of fat in the middle, if you will. We have a lot of believers and we have a lot of workers, which is great. But what's going to give us our edge in the future is to greatly expand our disciple making impact, which is also going to greatly expand the number of seekers who are coming through. And for those of you who are workers on one of our teams right now, maybe with Grace Kids, or maybe on our worship team, or one of our life group leaders, or our guest experience team, if you're thinking about it next step, you could start with this simple question. Would you just ask, what would it look like to see your role through a disciple making lens? In other words, how would you serve differently? How would you prepare differently? If you knew that your primary job was not to play a guitar, it was not to rock babies, it was not to make coffee, or even to lead a group, that your primary job was to make more disciples of Jesus. How would you adjust how you approach that role? See, making disciples who would make more disciples was the plan of Jesus for his church all along, which means the gospel was never meant to stop with you. If you're a Christian today, can I ask you just to reflect for a moment? Who shared the gospel with you? Who bring their face to mind, their name to mind? Who was it that trained you along the way in your discipleship journey? And we could just stop right here and just spend some time praising God for those people who nurtured us on our spiritual journey. In fact, if you haven't done it a while, shoot them a text or a call today, thank them for having the courage to share the gift of faith with you. But who entrusted the gospel to you? Who has God used to show you how to follow Jesus? And listen, that wasn't meant to stop with you. So who are you now being called to disciple in that same way? See, so many Christians are tempted to look at this great commission of Jesus and to think, well, what can I really do to reach the nations with the gospel? That sounds pretty big. And Jesus is saying, here's what you can do. You can make disciples who make disciples who make disciples, and eventually that's going to spread to all the nations of the earth. Do you realize that if we were to do that, if every disciple of Jesus would spend even a whole year discipling one other person? And that one other person was so grounded in their faith after that year that they could turn around the next year, and each of you could disciple one more. And that we would keep doubling that every year. Do you realize that would only take 34 years to reach the whole world? The math of Jesus' plan works brilliantly, which means the problem isn't in the design of Jesus' plan. The problem is in our ability to obey it. I've spent so many nights in my chair over these last couple of years doing business with God about my own leadership at grace over these past 30 years. Some moments celebrating, some moments repenting. This is what I want to give my life to during this final chapter. At our locations, your host is going to come now and walk you through one of our dream disciple tools as we embark on our mission to be a better training center. I love you guys.
