The Monthly Format for Whole Life Offering Discipleship

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part IX of our series on Preparation

I’ve mentioned plenty of times around here about .W Church’s strategy for tackling one Work of Mercy each month for 10 months out of each year.

Today, I want to give a bit more detail on the questions we’re asking to help us grow through that process.

We start the month by Searching the Scriptures.

The first question we ask is, “How did God do this first to us?”

We don’t start by asking how we are supposed to do this to other people, we start by asking how God first did this to us. How did God first do good to me when I was His enemy? How did God first share His bread with me? How did God open His home to me?

That’s how we keep our focus on the philanthropy of Christ; we always start from the outside and work inward. That’s the first week.

Then, as we move through the rest of the month: second week, third week, fourth week we then look and we ask, “How has the church carried out this Work of Mercy in this area throughout church history?” We also focus our worship and prayer on that Work of Mercy.

So during our “Doing Good” month, our worship and prayer is about doing good so we choose songs that involve doing good: God doing good to us, us doing good to others. Or if the month is about sharing your bread we choose songs about sharing your bread, and we pray about sharing your bread. And the same thing with self-denial, serving, and giving.

Then, every month we create opportunities for each discipleship student to serve in that ministry.  Last year, when we did Sharing Your Bread, the discipleship students in the US and in Korea went out to the park and they shared their bread.  They brought meals to share with the homeless and drug addicted and mentally ill people in the park.

The goal here is not that a few disciples would be raised up to specialize in homeless ministry, but that all would be capable of doing it and training others to to do so also.

The good thing about this is that, whether someone feels comfortable or skilled practicing a particular Work of Mercy or not, they can learn from each other and be mentored to do ministry together.

The result is that, after one year, we each grow in all of the areas of discipleship.  Every month we are doing each of these 7 internal Works of Piety and then throughout the year we are covering all of the Works of Mercy. Everything we do is coordinated with that plan.

And it all aims toward the goal that at the end of the year each student can be commissioned to start their own discipleship training group for those in their sphere of influence. 

This is just one plan. There’s nothing sacred about it. But this is the plan that we use and you may find it helpful. Or not. Maybe you will hate it so much that you decide to develop your own plan. Either way, that’s OK.

Good discipleship means developing some kind of a comprehensive plan to make sure that we are growing each Christian to fullness in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I really want to encourage you to make that your primary goal in life: developing Christians to fullness in Christ. Because if that is your primary goal in life, then we can build very strong families and very strong local churches and very strong churches around the world.

And even if they are small churches, they will be small churches with big Christians instead of big churches with small Christians.

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How and Why .W Church Trains Others to Lead

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part VIII of our series on Preparation

I’m sometimes asked how this whole discipleship method I’ve outlined in the past several posts looks for me and my church, which meets simultaneously in Colorado Springs, CO and Seoul Korea.

Well, when I travel to Korea I lead one of the Korean discipleship training meetings in person and I do one of the American meetings by video conference. When I’m in America I lead one of the discipleship training meetings in person and I do one of the Korean meetings by video conference.

I do this on purpose because it is good for disciples to grow by not always having the teacher around. 

If the teacher is always there in person the teacher usually does all of these things.  But because I am not always here the individual students have to learn to do these things. And that’s why most of the church is not regularly in a meeting I’m leading—because the meetings are being led by those I’m leading.

In our discipleship training program, we take these ten Works of Mercy and we dedicate a month to each.  That’s 10 months.  But before we start hearing and doing the word related to any of the specific Works of Mercy we take one month to study the overall concept of the whole life offering.  We call this the Preparation month. We focus on questions like,

  • What is the gospel?
  • What is God’s plan for each individual Christian?,
  • What is discipleship?

Then, we spend the next ten months tackling each of the Works of Mercy.  Our last month we call the Presentation month. We look back over the whole year and give God glory for how he’s grown us in each area. We set goals for the next year, when we are sent out to lead our own group in our own sphere of influence.

That’s what happens in our church. No one can stay several years in this group, just “being fed.” They get one year of intensive training, and then they’re leading a group.

I still train the leaders of the groups, but the point is there’s no such thing as someone who is permanently only being discipled but not discipling others. That goes against 2 Timothy 2:2:

“…and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

That applies to all of us.

We may not be leading huge congregations, but Christ is holding each of us responsible for discipling those in our own sphere of influence.

If you have any question about that, check out the Great Commission.

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The Relationship Between Works of Mercy and Works of Piety

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part VII of our series on Preparation

In our last post, I walked through the Whole Life Offering diagram shown to the left (click the diagram to pull up a larger version).

Today, we’re going to focus on the orange icons near the middle. These icons represent the Works of Mercy; the ways in which we love our neighbors. They are the external part of ministry for each and every Christian.

Why do we start by talking about the Works of Mercy instead of the Works of Piety? Why do we talk about loving our neighbor before we talk about loving God?

Well, in 1 John 4:20, the Apostle John says,

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

These 10 Works of Mercy are the ways Christ calls us to love our brother and, in so doing, we see clearly how Christ first loved us. In the history of the church there are different lists of Works of Mercy; some lists are shorter—they may have 9 or 8 works.  Some lists are longer.  They’re not all the same but this list is pretty common among all of the church leaders through history.

These are the 10 ways of loving our neighbor that Jesus commands us to do in order to mirror his love into the world.

Each of these Works of Mercy are commanded of Christians as the ways we should love our neighbors because they’re how he first loved us. (Don’t forget that “The Philanthropy of Christ” outer circle reminds us of where this all began)

One of the Works of Mercy is Sharing Your Bread. Have you ever noticed how the Bible never tells us to feed the poor? Instead it says, “Share your bread.” If I feed the poor I can just hand out frozen turkeys or bags of canned soup. But if I share my bread it means I have to actually be eating a meal together with someone.

Big difference.

Another Work of Mercy is Opening Your Home. The Bible never says, “Find a place for homeless people to sleep” or “build a homeless shelter.”  It says, “Open your home to the homeless.”

The point is this: with each of these works, the words are chosen very carefully – the wording indicates the way we are commanded in the Bible to do these things.

We’ll define each of these in the weeks and months to come. But for now I want you to turn your attention to the outer set of seven items.

These 7 are the Works of Piety. They’re the internal spiritual preparations; the ways that we love God. These 7 areas are all about spiritual development inside of us.

The first is Searching the Scriptures. The second one, Learning, is about how the church, across history, has faithfully interpreted and carried out the Word of God. Then there’s Worshipping, Praying, Self-Denial, Serving, and Giving.

Each of those builds on top of the other, meaning that we start first by Searching the Scriptures, and then we Learn about what the church can teach, then we Worship, etc.

What I want you to see about this chart is how each Work of Mercy is rooted in all seven of the Works of Piety

In other words, for the Work of Mercy of Sharing Your Bread, we need to Search Scripture about sharing your bread, Learn from church history about sharing your bread, Pray specifically about sharing your bread, incorporate sharing your bread into your family’s worship, and so on.

Now, there’s one last circle in the diagram that I didn’t cover on Friday: the fruits of the Spirit.

The question is: where does the fruit of the Spirit come from? How does it develop in our lives? 

The answer is: from the outside in.  That is, by the love of Christ, in the fellowship of our family, local church, and the church around the world, as we hear and do the word together. The fruit of the Spirit, in other words, is the product of the whole life offering, the result of comprehensive discipleship.

That’s basic, Scriptural growth for the believer.

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