Starting New Things – Disciples in Relation to Each Other
Being a disciple of Jesus is doing what Jesus did and what Jesus did was primarily driven by three relationships, with his Father, with his disciples and with the world. Jesus chose twelve disciples who he invested a huge amount of time with. They were the people he left behind to carry on His mission. His final instruction to them in Matthew’s gospel was,
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mt 28:18b-20)
Jesus was talking to His disciples here and he told them to make disciples. The job of disciples is to make disciples. To pass on the learning that they got from Jesus. Learning by listening, learning by watching, and learning by doing together with Him and together with each other. Jesus and his disciples certainly went to the Synagogue, to take part in public worship together, just as we go to church today. Perhaps we can also imagine Jesus sat outside with His disciples at night around a campfire while they travlled through Galilee and on up to Jerusalem. Here they are sat around looking IN towards each other. We know Jesus taught his disciples the meaning of parables, we know they asked him questions and we know they discussed things among themselves.
In Acts we see the Early church meeting together for what we might call fellowship,
‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.’ (Acts 2:42-47)
The early disciples met in the temple courts but also in their homes. They met both publicly and privately. In the New Testament Letters we see the church encourgaed to meet and to pray and to give thanks. To mourn together and laugh together, to bear with one another to help each other and to not stop meeting together.
In our churches as they are, and in Starting New Things, we need to provide opportunity for some form of fellowship. Meeting together privately is a key New Testament practice and it is essential to making disciples. It means we need to think about home groups or small groups as part of what we offer. These structures might already exist in the life of the church or we might have to create them. We have a resource page for starting home groups here, its easier than you think! Or get in touch with John for a chat.
For encouragement: Belonging to a group that meets outside of public worship is a great way to learn to pray, read the Bible and to love our fellow Christians.
To think about: Do we offer access to people wanting to go deeper with each other and with their faith, if not, what’s stopping us?
If you want to find out more about discipleship head over to https://www.sheffield.anglican.org/your-calling/lights-for-christ/
Or get in touch with Hannah Sandoval our Lights for Christ enabler hannah.sandoval@Sheffield.anglican.org
For more posts in this series click here
https://www.sheffield.anglican.org/category/rejuvenated/
If you want to talk about Starting Something New, or church growth, or mission in general do get in touch john.marsh@sheffield.anglican.org