Making Disciples
Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. So how do we make disciples? The Apostle Paul tells the church at Philippi that they are to conform their thinking and their practices to Christ, as well as to Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus, who are models in discipleship. “Brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example” (Philippians 3:17 NLT) Again at the end of the letter Paul says, “Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me – everything you heard from me and saw me doing” (Philippians 4:9 NLT) . This may seem somewhat presumptuous to us, maybe even pompous. Paul says this five or six times in the New Testament, “Imitate me, follow my example.” It’s not presumptuous, however, it’s discipleship! And we didn’t learn it from Paul. We learned it from Jesus. Jesus chose Twelve to be his disciples, to follow him closely. Jesus was the model, the Master. The disciples were the stude...