discipleship blog #2
Here are a few thoughts concerning discipleship whilst I am leading a Pais ‘Talmidim Academy’
James Chapter 2
Yesterday I took the Talmidim Academy members with me to a Pais Collective Forum.
The forum is a one day event where we share with church leaders the concepts of our three Pais Distinctives. There were not many people in attendance at this one due to its slightly remote destination, but it was a great opportunity to teach the TA delegates how to share vision.
Another brilliant opportunity that came out of it was connected to this passage in James 2. It talks about faith without works.
The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse. (James 2:26 MSG)
I was teaching during the day but my friend Kevin Pimblott was facilitating. There are many things the delegates can learn from Kevin that they would not normally learn from me. One if them is his consistent ministry to those he meets along the way no matter how unimportant they may seem to others. Kevin really lives out the spirit of James 2.
His faith leads him to great works.
Not necessarily great in the sense of dramatic and big but in the sense of specific and secret. He is very aware of the Spirit and is obviously asking the Holy Ghost how he can bless people and be the voice and hands of Jesus there lives. It may simply be going out of his way to give a few spirit led words or a few money notes tightly folded over quite lay passed on to someone as a blessing.
It is this ‘always on’ attitude that I need to learn and the Book of James is teaching about.
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup-where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
So part of discipline people is exposing them to others better than you in God’s eyes in certain areas. In this case asking my ‘disciples’ at the beginning of the day to watch Kevin carefully and later in the day asking them what they observed.
The second challenge is for me not to think “Cool, that’s great…. Kevin can teach them that so that I don’t have to!”. The writer of Hebrews, led by the Spirit already knew what I was thinking…
I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, “Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I’ll handle the works department.” Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove. (James 2:14-18 MSG)
I can’t leave a God given command intended for all of us and think someone else can concentrate on that.
So I think what I will do is ask Kevin to mentor me in that particular area. I’ll ask him to watch me and suggest things to me whilst we are together. I’ll ask him Saturday when I see him.
Let me encourage you that as you make disciples, please realize it takes a village to grow a disciple and whilst growing them you must not be the village idiot but instead allow the village to also grow you.
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