“Understanding the Holy Spirit and His works” #118 What are the works of the Holy Spirit in general, and particularly in the believer`s life? Dear Friends. While we were looking at how the Lord Jesus had within the 3 years of His earthly ministry trained up His Disciples and sent them on a mission to go and evangelize the city of Galilee. We have said that too many people running our Churches today were only doing Ministry and have abandoned everything about the Mission. What does this statement mean, and what are the consequences for the Church? The truth about doing ministry without getting involved in mission is that no Church that is doing this will ever produce a healthy congregation. Again, what does this mean? This is what we mean, “when the Churches are not disciplining their members, they will fail to produce the Bible literates.” It is only by disciplining the members that the Churches could produce the knowledgeable congregants who can go out to be witnesses for the Lord. It is good to separate Bible studies from the Discipleship classes. And what had made it easy to differentiate is that most pastors always come back within the mid weeks to continue with what they have preached on the previous Sundays in the name of the Bible Studies. And other pastors have no schedules in the Churches except only that Sunday morning services. But when we begin to look carefully from the Scripture we will see Christ Jesus making this statement showing that there is the difference between one being discipled, and the ordinary Church goers. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:31-32). Now it would be very interesting to understand V.32 from the context that it was used here which had originated from V.31. It is only when we have discipled the people that they will get to know the truth, and the truth that they know will set them free. Yeah, depending on the denominations or the ministers, people may differ on how they use the name: Some may choose to call their classes Sunday school classes, while others may choose to call it Discipleship classes. But the bottom-line is the AIM. Is it to prepare the people to go out and be witnessing or what? We are going to briefly take a look at some of the consequences that is when the Churches are not involved in this mission: Once a Church has failed in its responsibility to guide the members through the Discipleship Classes or through the Sunday School Classes. The Church will render the members irrelevant, and this means to say, it will never know the usefulness of their members. Therefore, it cannot help them to discover their Ministry and Spiritual Gifts (Ephesians 4:11-12)(1Corinthians 12:1-11,27-31). Once a Church has failed to carry out its duty in this way, the Church will lack the vision, and any knowledge of the Church Planting. We could see Churches splitting today, and once a friendly minister; would go on to be the worst enemy of his spiritual son in the Lord. Why? This is because if the Churches have been following the Biblical principles like disciplining its members, they will get involve in Church Planting. And if there has been Church Planting there wouldn`t have been Church splitting at its worst like when the two friends would become sworn enemies. We want you to get our point here, a Church which has been in one place for 15 to 20 years without having a branch where it would send a member of the Church as pastor is not doing its mission work properly. And this is the genesis of the Church splitting. As one next to the pastor continues to watch the senior pastor and his family living at the expense of the Church, one day, he may decide to start his own Church, and if he is well organized, he is going to hurt the mother Church because he will be leaving with some members…. And once he is leaving, he is not leaving with the benediction of his pastor which may result in two of them going to remain enemies for a time.... And one benefit of the Churches disciplining their members is that those who have been discipled may turn out to help in the Church growths or promoting their senior pastors. How do we mean? Some of the people who were trained or who have passed through the discipleship classes may travel to a new city or another country. And just because they have discovered their callings by passing through the discipleship classes, they may not like to keep on looking for a place to worship in their new locations after a while. Normally, or as the case may be, they will gather their family members, friends and people around them and start a Church. And will likely seek the blessings of their home pastors and ask to be affiliated…. It is by using this method that most pastors from the continent of Africa can boast of owning 400 to 4000 Churches world wild within a time period.
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 01:41:26 +0000
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