Tag: discipleship

5 POP’s

Jesus not only commanded his disciples to make disciples, in Matthew 10 and Luke 10 he also gave them his method for doing so. Neil Cole relates Jesus’ method as the 5 POP’s in his book, Organic Church.  I’ve found these to be a very helpful framework on which to hang and a myriad of disciplemaking activities.  I hope you will too.

1. Practice of Prayer – The church is conceived in heaven before it is born on earth. If we are going to see churches planted and reproduced, we must plead with the Lord of the Harvest for everything we need – guidance, opportunities, boldness, the words to say, signs and wonders following, etc. Organic Church Planting is not a formula that works according to predictable outcomes. It’s a partnership with God to carry out his Great Commission.
2. Pockets of People – The approach to church planting as presented in Scripture had entire households (oikoi) in view. An oikos is a web of relationships. Every person (except the Unibomber) has one. As disciplemakers, we need to intentionally consider who in our oikos needs to hear the saving message of Jesus and begin praying for them. If we’ve reached our oikos or been rejected by it, we should find another Pocket of People that will accept us and begin prayerfully reaching them.
3. Power of Presence – They say 90% of baseball is showing up. That’s the case with disciplemaking.  We don’t have to hide from dark places; we must invade them with the confidence that “Where we go the King goes and where the King goes people bow.” If we partner with Jesus to make disciples we will find ourselves knee deep in the dirt of broken lives.
4. Person of Peace – In an oikos there is often a particular person that God has prepared the be the agent of the gospel for the rest of the group. This person is usually either the best person in the group such as with Cornelius in Acts 10 or the worst person such as with the Samaritan woman in John 4. We should look for this person. They will be receptive to the gospel at some point. Once they come to faith, we should equip them to reach the rest of their oikos. Their transformation will awaken others by demonstrating the saving power of the gospel.
5. People of Purpose – Once several in the oikos have been reached they should begin to gather as a spiritual family on mission for God. They should be taught to support and challenge each other to live in obedience to their king and to spread the knowledge of his kingdom reign into other oikoi.

As a parting shot, I want add a sixth POP – Probability of Pain.  Disciplemaking is an act of war.  Those who engage in it will experience the harship, hurt, and harm common to soldiers on active duty.  Before we set out, we should count the cost associated with victory.  If you can do anything else, you probably should.

Organic Church Planter Training

The gospel is a seed which takes root in the hearts of individuals and bears fruit through redeemed relationships.  Having borne fruit it, must then spread into the soil of other hearts and so The Growth Wheel continues to turn.  In this way, healthy disciples of Christ are produced and reproduced spreading the knowledge of God in the face of Christ throughout the world.  Coming August 24th -26th, our church will host Neil Cole and Phil Helfer as they lead the Greenhouse Intensive Training Weekend in Springdale Arkansas.  This training will provide ordinary Christ followers with basic skills to begin making disciples right where they are.  Individual online registration ends August 19th.

For more information on Organic Church or on the Springdale Greenhouse Intensive Training Weekend, check out this radio interview with Neil Cole-

NeilColeOrganicChurch

Rotten Tomatoes

So, I went to hear Phil Vischer, the creator of the “Veggie Tales” video series, speak at a college near my home. He recounted the story of his company’s rise to prominence in the Christian media industry and its subsequent decline and eventual bankruptcy. As a life lesson from his experiences, he advised his audience to allow their dreams to die; that God does not want to compete for their affection with their dreams. He used Scripture to make his point and seemed as passionate as a person could be when advising others to be dispassionate. For some reason, though, what he said didn’t sit right with me. Something seemed right about it and wrong at the same time- sort of like rotten tomatoes.

Tomatoes are great. I love them. Salsa is one of my many food addictions. However, have you ever noticed that tomatoes can subtly go bad? They’re sour and soft to begin with. So, it’s sometimes difficult to tell when they’ve just crossed the line. I can get pretty easily be fooled into taking a couple of bites of bad Pico de Gallo.

Once I realize that my Pico has turned, though, I simply throw it out and start slicing fresh tomatoes. I don’t suddenly decide that tomatoes can’t be trusted. I guess if I continued to eat bad Pico for a few days and became violently ill, then I might swear off of tomatoes for a while. It seems to me that the trick is to know when to give up on a batch and start with a new one.

Here’s the point. God wants us both to enjoy a relationship with him and to have a sense of purpose (a dream if you will). According to Ephesians 2:8-10, God’s grace has a two-fold benefit for its recipients – reconciliation with God and fulfillment of the, “good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We must, however, distinguish the dream he has for us from any particular manifestation of that dream. For instance, I’m passionate to make disciples for him. I’m working on a couple of initiatives aimed at doing just that. But I must continue to remind myself that the initiatives are not the dream, making disciples is. If I invest time, care, and energy in the efforts in which I am engaged and discover down the road that they are not making disciples, then I must throw them out and try something fresh. On the other hand, when I hold on to old methods, they go bad and can make me and others sick.

Once we’ve experienced the pain of rotten tomatoes, we may be tempted to swear off forever. We must not. God dreams of spreading a wonderful table and has invited undiscerning palates like ours to participate with him so that we might learn and the hungry might be fed.