Sent

(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

“Therefore, go.” Okay, we got that down. That means we don’t just sit around and wait. Nor do we leave it to someone else to do. If you go, you’re not going away from the action; you’re going into it. This is purposeful. You’ve been sent. Sent to do what? To make disciples. Great, how do you do that? Is there a discipleship manual? Is there a notebook for this? “Ten Things Every Disciple of Mine Should Know,” by Jesus Christ. 

What does that mean to make disciples? John Shirk, our Minister of Discipleship, offers a hyper-relational discipleship model all of us can learn from. He actually brings people into his circle of life. It’s all about relationships. It’s coming alongside each other. It’s walking and talking. It’s “as you go along, make disciples.”

We can all do this! Bringing people into a small group and joining them into rhythms with other people, where there’s a lot more richness of relationship, that is actually discipleship. It is not formal, but it is intentional.As mentioned within our recent study, most Millennials say that our society is facing a crisis of leadership because there are not enough good leaders to go around right now. These people are noticing a variety of large global problems and they are ready to enact change. They want a relationship with older, wiser people like our primary audience who can provide a laboratory for leadership.

Your energy and your focus has to be to continue to communicate to the Millennials you know that they matter to God, that who they are is important to you, and that instead of being an add-on or somebody that gets helped, they are actually agents of change, transforming within the body of Christ while operating in their spheres of influence.

It’s a time to join forces, Boomers with Millennials, by cultivating cross-generational relationships through mutual interest and toward a new frontier. Not only can our primary audience develop a flourishing faith with the Millennials, we will be changing the metaphor from simply passing the baton to the next generation, to a more functional, biblical picture of the body — that is, the entire community of faith, across the entire lifespan, working together to fulfill God’s purposes. This puts all of us on the front lines of humanity doing the impossible and proving it can be done!