Baptist Fellowship Church

Great Commission - Equipping (Discipleship)
Acts 2:42-47

Equipping or Discipleship

What is a disciple?

What does a disciple look like?

A disciple is a learner, who learns the life-teaching of his Master. As a church, we are to reach out to people for Jesus, and to teach them to be like Him.
Discipleship equals discipline. The goal of discipleship is to make disciples, so that they, in turn, make disciples of others. (Eph 4:11-12, Eph 4:13-15)

3 principles in Discipleship

Relationship

It is the most critical principle today, yet most neglected. Most people are intimidated by the word ‘discipleship’. We need friendship with a Christ-centred focus. We are all called to be disciplers. Only 2 types of people who cannot be disciplers:

a. Someone who is not a disciple himself;
b. Someone who disobeys God’s command and refuses to disciple.

(Prov 27:17, 1 Cor 10:12, 1 John 3:10, Prov 18:24)

Discipleship is a partnership. Mentorship is part of the disciplinary process, but is not equal to discipleship itself. It comes long after relationship-discipleship comes to fruit.

Teaching

Faithful disciples must be committed to teaching others (as with Paul and Timothy). 2 Tim 2:1.

In many instances, we learn by experience. But in some others, we need to learn before we make any move. The only purpose of teaching is to move hearts so that they will obey.

To serve the Lord, we need to have patience to follow. Personal obedience reveals our love for Christ. 2 Peter 3:18.

Mentorship for Service

The Timothy principle: the ultimate goal of leadership is to give our ministry away. God is interested in our obedience and faithfulness and not so much in what we can do.

Mr and Mrs ET Chua

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Sermons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.