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The five verses at the end of Matthew are five of the most important verses in the Bible. They are known as the Great Commission. There is plenty of drama behind these verses. I want to start out by setting up this drama. Jesus told his disciples on two different occasions to meet him in Galilee. Right before Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane he said that after he was raised he would go to Galilee. They would meet him there. This message was almost like a secret instruction. That was the first time. The second time was right after the women went to the empty tomb to discover that Jesus was raised. An angel told the women in the empty tomb that Jesus was raised from the dead. They ran from the tomb and met Jesus. Jesus told the women to tell his disciples to go to Galilee to meet him This wasnt a short trek. Some people think that Jesus met the disciples on the same mountain in Galilee where Jesus gave his sermon on the mount. If that was the case the hike took about five days. SLIDE Heres a picture of the distance between Jerusalem and the mountain. When the eleven disciples got there they saw Jesus. There must have been quite a lot of emotion in their meeting. The disciples bowed down to worship Jesus. Some doubted that this was Jesus. We can understand this as Jesus had died on the cross. No one in the history of the world had ever come back from death to life. Then Jesus gave the words that have influenced people. SLIDE All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, Go, make disciples of

all nations. Matthew 28:18b-19a Go, make disciples. Jesus went on to say that when to make disciples that they should

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SLIDE Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Saon and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. This is the Great Commission. The Great Commission and the Great Commandment form the heart of the gospel. The Great Commandmentwhich is love God and love your neighbor as ourselves. Go make disciples who love. Thats the core of the church. Today Im starting a two week sermon series called Growing Disciplesits not the ABCs. Were going to look at how making disciples is the primary mission of a local congregation, were going to explore what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and well look at how this emphasis of making disciples can impact the culture of our new congregation. Well explore how churches can miss the target in making disciples. During these two weeks were going to have conversations after the sermon about this idea of making disciples. I deliberatively chose these two Sundays to focus on this topic. Traditionally these are two of the lowest Sundays of the year in terms of church attendance. Plus we just had a big worship service on Wednesday night. We have an opportunity over these two weeks to talk to each other about growing disciples. I need you to help me. I want to do some brainstorming with you. What does the word disciple mean to you? There are no right or wrong answers. What does the word disciple mean to you? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Jesus gave some clues about his understanding of disciples when he called his disciples. Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee when he saw Peter and Andrew throwing their nets into the lake. Jesus said to Peter and Andrew, SLIDE Follow me, and I will make you fish for people. Matthew 4:19 Peter and Andrew did follow Jesus. They became disciples. Five chapters later in the 9th chapter of Matthew Jesus was walking and he came across a man named Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. Jesus said to Matthew, follow me. And Matthew left his tax collecting booth and followed Jesus. He became a disciple. For these men following Jesus meant a literal following of Jesus. They traveled with Jesus as Jesus walked through Galilee for three years teaching and proclaiming the kingdom of God. Others joined them and many women joined them. This group became a community. We think of this group as followers of Jesus. We can take these stories and apply them to our lives so that we understand what it means to be a disciple. SLIDE To be a disciple of Jesus means we are followers of Jesus. To be a disciple means we are followers of Jesus. As Presbyterians weve come up with language to describe what it means to be followers of Jesus. We say that Jesus is our Lord and Savior. To say Lord means that Jesus is first in our lives; to say Savior means we believe that only God can save us that we cant save ourselves. Some say that to follow Jesus means we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Discipleship is the process where we grow as disciples or followers of Jesus. Just as Peter and Andrew and Matthew and others journeyed with Jesus you and I have a faith journey. Jesus, of course, is in heaven, but he sent his Spirit to be with us. We travel on this journey of

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faith. Through this journey we grow deeper as disciples. This journey of being a disciple is discipleship. Jesus was clear in his Great Commission that the task of his remaining 11 disciples was to make disciples. Those 11 disciples became the leaders of what we know as the church. We can take this Great Commission and apply it to our congregation. The Great Commission gives us the answer to the question, what is the most important task of a congregation? Whats the most important task of a local congregation. Ill answer the question, The most important task of a local congregation is to make disciples and grow in discipleship. Local congregations do a lot of ministries. We gather for worship, we serve the wider community, we have fellowship events, we pray together, we give money, we serve in the world, we confront injustice when we see it, we educate and form our children and youth. All of these ministries are important, but we do them for one reason. To make disciples and grow in discipleship. This task is in our Purpose Statement at Chain of lakes. We say that we are called to be an authentic Christian community My dream for us at Chain of Lakes is to frequently evaluate and ask ourselves the question, how are we doing at making disciples and how are we doing at growing in discipleship? Congregations have different understandings of what it means to be a disciple. For some to be a disciple means serving in the world or doing acts of justice. For others being a disciple means a lot of Bible Study; for some being a disciple means raising kids in the faith. Following

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Jesus will probably look different at our congregation compared to following Jesus at another congregation. Thats okay What is not okay is for us a local congregation to lose track of this singular goal. Its easy to get off track. Often what gets in the way of this focus is when churches become overly focused on the ABCs. I received this idea from a book by Glenn McDonald called The Disciple Making Church Whats the ABCs The ABCs are this? SLIDE Aattendance Bbuilding Ccash A lot of churches get focused on how many people come to worship, what type of building or property does the church have, and how is the church doing financially. What happens is the prime focus of a church is not discipleship but instead becomes the ABC. This is so easy to do. New people can sniff this out. When a new person comes they can sense quickly if the congregation is trying to fit the new person into the agenda of the congregation instead of helping the person be a disciple and grow in discipleship. Sometimes when a new person comes to a congregation one of the first thoughts that goes through the minds of people in a congregation is, fresh meat. Lets get the person involved. Recently Ive joined the Rotary club in Blaine. I really enjoy it as Ive had the opportunity to meet new people, and Ive had the chance to learn a lot about the community. Every week I receive an E-mail from Rotary about what is going on. Guess what is mentioned in

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the E-mail. They share a long list of how I can get involved. To be a successful participant in Rotary Im expected to be involved. We want people to get involved in a local congregation, but involvement isnt the most important task. But what happens if were involved, but are never growing in discipleship. Even worse what happens if the church becomes overly focused on getting people involved and they become obsessed about the reason for involvement. Since we didnt worship on Sundays at Chain of Lakes I had the opportunity this past Sunday to worship at different places. We can see the churches who have a desperation for getting people involved. One worship service where Kristel and I attended spent almost ten minutes just on announcements. One person came up to the pulpit and then another. There was a line of people just waiting to share with others how they could get involved at the church. This is goodto an extent. But it becomes counter-productive when getting involved becomes more important to making disciples and growing in discipleship. Churches can be obsessed about the ABCs. Ive certainly had my moments of being obsessed about the ABCs. We cant ignore the ABCs. Churches start to decline when we miss the ultimate target. We almost have to unlearn church. I would guess that many of us came to Chain of Lakes from churches who have focused on the ABCs. We learned that at church we are supposed to get people involvedthat we want to run a program. What is most important. What I am saying is we want to be a discipleship church and not a membership church. What I mean by that is the quality of our discipleship is more important than the needs of the institution.

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I want to close by sharing an article I wrote a few years ago. In this article I tried to share the differences between being a discipleship church and a membership church.
In a membership church the purpose of the church is to get members In a discipleship church the purpose of the church is to develop disciples There is nothing in the Bible about being a member of a church There are many references in the bible about being a disciple (Matthew 28:16-20) In a membership church one of the purposes is to connect the person to the institution. These questions are often asked, Lets give the person a job Lets get the person on a committee Lets figure out how the person can meet the needs of the institution In a discipleship church the focus is connecting the person to God. These questions are often asked, Lets help the person grow to be the person God desires for that person to be Lets figure out how the person can identify and use the gifts God has given the person How are we helping people grow in their relationship to God? In a membership church a members might only show up for certain family eventsbaptisms, weddings, funerals and for Christmas and Easter. In a discipleship church a person will frequently show up for worship because they see worship as part of growing as a disciple In a membership church people will be critical and even judgmental of each other because they get frustrated when other people dont do their part. In a discipleship church people realize that some folks are still growing in what it means to be a disciple. People respond to folks who dont participate in compassion and not judgment In a membership church the worship attendance of the congregation is often less than one half of the number of members In a discipleship church the worship attendance of the congregation is larger than the number of members In a discipleship church people who arent members frequently participate and give of their finances In a membership church only the members participate and give of their finances. In a discipleship church people are comfortable with what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. They understand that it is not freaky, or authoritarian or giving up control. What it means to be a disciple is accepted and understood by the congregation. In a membership church people dont understand what it means to be a disciple. They are afraid and intimidated by the term.

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The purpose of this sermon is to get us thinking about making disciples and growing in discipleship. I want to initiate a conversation. Were going to get into groups for about ten minutes and talk about what it would mean for us at Chain of Lakes to be a discipleship church.