Disciples

If we were the originals desciples what would the church look like today?

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Hey guys, welcome back to Learning Out Loud. I've been thinking about something over the past couple weeks, and the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I've gotten. What I've been thinking about is what if we were the twelve disciples? If Jesus walked into churches today, picked 12 of us and said, Follow me, what would that look like? Would we actually follow? Because sometimes I look at the people in the Bible and then I look at Christianity today and I wonder how we got from there to here. And I'm not saying this because I figured Christianity out. The name of the podcast is Learning Out Loud for a Reason. I'm learning. But lately I'm realizing that some of the biggest lessons I'm learning aren't necessarily coming through people sitting down and teaching me. I'm learning more from watching people. I'm learning from situations that make me uncomfortable. I'm learning from things that don't seem to line up with what God the God I'm reading about in scriptures. And that keeps sending me back to my Bible asking, God, is this really what you meant for our church to look like? Think about the people God used in Scripture. Moses was around 80 years old when God sent him back to Egypt. Eighty. And Moses definitely had excuses. He basically asked God, Who am I to do this? What if they don't believe me? I'm not a good speaker. Can you send somebody else? But God still said go. And Sarah was well beyond normal childbearing age when God fulfilled his promise and gave her Isaac. The disciples weren't living comfortable lives either. They left things behind to follow Jesus. They traveled, they served, they were rejected, they were arrested, they were beaten, they were imprisoned, and they kept going. Paul talks about beating, shipwrecks, hunger, danger, and sleepless nights. And Jesus, Jesus carried a cross. So when I put that Christianity beside some of the Christianity I see today, I struggle with the differences. Because sometimes our reasons are my knees hurt. I've already done my part. Let somebody younger do it. Or that's not my job. And I want to be careful here. I'm not talking about someone who physically cannot do something. Our bodies have limitations. Age is real and illness is real and pain is real. I'm talking about the mindset that there comes a point when we've somehow finished serving God. And I haven't seen that in scripture. I haven't seen anywhere where Jesus says, follow me until you're tired of it. Where does it say, make disciples until you put in enough years? I can't find that. Maybe somebody who used to build things now prays. Maybe somebody who used to run around with children now teaches younger adults how to teach them. Maybe somebody who can't go out anymore calls people, encourages them, and pours decades of wisdom into somebody younger. But that's different from saying, I've done my part. Because when exactly does a disciple stop being a disciple? Maybe we haven't lost our passion. And this is where the thought really started bothering me. Because I don't actually think Christians have lost all their passion. We still have plenty of energy when something matters enough to us. We'll argue over a worship song, we'll argue about decorations, we'll argue about traditions, we'll argue about who gets to make decisions, we'll argue about who's in charge, we'll talk about what somebody else did. We'll talk about what about what who should have done something differently. We'll defend our position, we'll defend our preference, we'll defend our title. But maybe the problem isn't that we don't have any fight left in us. Maybe the question is, what are we fighting for? Because the disciples fought to spread the gospel. The early church endured persecution to tell people about Jesus. And sometimes we're using all that passion fighting one another. And that really bothers me. Because what if we took the same energy we used to talk about another Christian and used it to help that Christian grow? What if instead of asking who gets control, we asked who needs to be served? What if instead of worrying about who gets credit, we worry about whether somebody knows Jesus? What if we cared as much about making disciples as we care about getting our preferences heard? Mint dilingumin, and that's when something said Jesus said started hitting differently for me. In Matthew 23, 23, Jesus is talking to the scribes and Pharisees, and he tells them that they tithe even their meant dilingumen, but they've neglected the weightier matters of the law justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Think about that. They weren't ignoring religion, that was the problem. They were extremely religious. They cared about getting things right. But somehow they had made the smaller things enormous while neglecting the things that mattered more. And I started wondering, what if we're still doing that? What if we changed the mint and cumin? What if our mint and cumin are worship styles, songs, decorations, traditions, committees, titles, positions, who gets to make the decisions, who gets to be in charge, who did something first, who should have asked permission? Some of those things aren't meaningless. Order does matter, doctrine matters, what we sing about God matters, leadership matters, church decisions matter, but Jesus himself talks about weightier matters. So maybe the question isn't simply does this matter? Maybe it's how much does this matter compared with what Jesus told us matters? Because we can spend an hour debating a worship song while somebody down the road doesn't know Jesus. We can argue about decorations while two Christians aren't speaking to each other. We can fight for authority while nobody is making disciples. We can know exactly what everybody else is doing wrong while gossiping about them ourselves. And somehow we can convince ourselves that we're defending Christianity while ignoring the Christianity Jesus actually told us to live. Somebody told me they didn't like the song because they didn't believe God's love should be described as reckless. My first thought was basically, what's wrong with it? Because I hear the part about leaving the 99 and going after one, and I think of Luke 15. So I started digging in. What does reckless actually mean? What was the songwriter trying to communicate? What does scripture say? And I realized something. It's good to examine the words we're singing. We should care whether they're what they're saying about God is true. A worship song isn't scripture just because somebody says God inspired them to write it. We test things. But that opened another question for me. If we're going to examine a word in a worship song that carefully, why aren't we examining ourselves that carefully? If I'm worried that somebody might get the wrong understanding of God's character because of one word in a song, shouldn't I also be worried about what somebody learns about God's character from watching Christians? What does gossip teach them about Jesus? What does fighting for control teach them? What does refusing to serve teach them? What does tearing another Christian down teach them? What does sitting in church for decades without helping another person grow in Christ teach them? Because people aren't only hearing what we sing about God, they're watching how we live like we know Him. I've been thinking a lot about spiritual language, things like God told me, God showed me, I prayed about it, God gave me this gift, and I absolutely believe God speaks. I believe in the Holy Spirit, I believe God gives spiritual gifts, I believe God directs people, but scripture also tells us to test things. First Thessalonians 5 tells us not to despise prophecies, but to test everything and hold fast to what is good. 1 John 4 tells us to test the spirits. So saying something spiritual doesn't automatically make it spiritual. Having a title doesn't automatically make somebody spiritually mature. Claiming a gift doesn't automatically mean we're using it correctly. And saying I prayed about it doesn't mean nobody else is allowed to use discernment. That isn't unbelief. Scripture tells us to test. And that's something I'm learning because I watched what happens when spiritual words become the end of a conversation instead of beginning of discernment. Are we making disciples? I got into Matthew 28. Jesus tells his followers, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. It's the Great Commission. Make disciples, not just converts, not just church members, not just people who know when service starts, disciples. And that's what really got me thinking. Because you can sit in a church pew for 30 years. You can know every song. You can know what when to say amen. You can know church language, you can hold a position, you can have a title, you can know everybody's business. You can have very strong opinions about what church should look like. But after all those years, who have you helped become more like Jesus? Who have you discipled? Who have you encouraged? Who have you taught? Who have you walked beside when they were struggling? Who have you lovingly corrected? Who have you allowed to correct you? Who knows Jesus better because you were willing to pour into them? Because Jesus didn't tell his type disciples, go get people into buildings. He told disciples to make disciples. And if I I wonder if somewhere along the way we confuse church attendance with discipleship. We come, we sit, we listen, we nod, we agree, we go home. Then we come back the next Sunday and do it again. But the word never changes what we're doing. What exactly are we doing? James 122 says, Be doers of the word and not hearers only. That verse sounds completely different to me when I picture a church full of people saying amen and then walking out exactly the same. And then what are we showing the next generation? And this part matters to me, because there are younger Christians watching. There are children watching. There are people walking in the churches who barely know anything about Jesus. What are we teaching them Christianity is? Do they see people who carry one another's burdens? Do they see older Christians pouring into younger Christians? Do they see disagreements handled with love and truth? Do they see forgiveness? Do they see service? Do they see sacrifice? Do they see people so passionate about reaching the loss that they're willing to be inconvenienced? Or do they see us fighting about things that won't matter in eternity? Because we're not discipling people whether we realize it or not. The question is, what are we discipling them into? And maybe this is why we're I'm here. I've struggled with some of what I've seen. There have been moments when I've thought, God, why am I here? And I'm starting to wonder if maybe part of the answer is because I'm learning. Sometimes God puts people in our lives who teach us exactly what we want to become. And sometimes we learn by seeing something and thinking, I don't want my walk with God to become that. I don't want to spend my life defending Christianity and forget to live it. I don't want to know scripture to prove somebody's worship song wrong, but not enough scripture to recognize gossip. I don't want to claim spiritual gifts without spiritual fruit. I don't want to fight for a position while ignoring the person beside me who needs help growing in Christ. I don't want to become so attached to tradition that I'm unwilling to move when God says go. I don't want to decide I've served enough. I don't want to sit in church every week, nod my head at the word of God, and then do absolutely nothing with it. I want to be a disciple. Not just somebody who believes Jesus is right, somebody who follows him. And I'm going back to the question that started all of this. What if we were the twelve disciples? If Jesus walked in at our churches today and said, Follow me, would we? Would we leave our comfort? Would we serve when it hurt? Would we go when it was inconvenient? Would we let him correct us? Would we stop fighting one another long enough to fight for the people who don't know him? Would we actually make disciples? Or would we sit there, nod, agree, and wait for somebody else to go? I don't want the small things to become big while the big things become small. I don't want to just go to church. I want my life to show what that when Jesus said follow me, I got up and followed. I'm still learning what that looks like, and I'm learning out loud.