Peeps on Earth Goodwill to Men!

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Pastor Foley

If you’ve been following the blog for any amount of time, you know that we have a well established rhythm of posting on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  You also know, I hope, that I cherish this blog as a place to hash out ideas related to discipleship and the ways in which that plays out in various areas of life.

It’s for that reason that I hope you’ll pay close attention to an exception to that pattern.  I want to invite you to a part of spreading pure happiness to one of the darkest places on earth.

North Korea, as you may know, is known as the “hermit kingdom” for good reason.  It is intentionally exclusive of the outside world filtering news, religion, technology, etc.  The result is a population that is literally left in the dark (Google “North Korea at night” and look at the images that come up to see what I’m talking about).

For most of the year, our team in South Korea is busy launching balloons carrying things like Gospel fliers and Bibles, but this Christmas Eve, we’re going to launch something entirely different into the world’s most closed country.

Peeps.

Why, you ask?

The inspiration comes from an event that occurred almost a hundred years ago, during World War I, known as The Christmas Truce. During one of the most violent events in history, soldiers from England and Germany came out of their trenches to sing carols and play soccer by moonlight.  For one night, the war was put on hold in favor of humanity.

We believe that for one night, it’s possible to share simple joy with the people of North Korea. 

The rest of the year we’ll continue to send socks, medicine, flyers, and Bibles as balloon payloads. But on Christmas Eve, Peeps will fall on North Korea like snow along with other personal care items.

But we need your help!

Each Peep costs $1.00 to launch and with your participation, North Koreans will be able to share in the simple joy of marshmallow treats.

Click here to go to the Peeps page on the Seoul USA website and click on the “Sponsor Peeps” button to make your donation.

 

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Hot Mess Discipleship

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part II of our series on Preparation

There are three phrases that describe how discipleship might look in any given church today:

Specialist. Generalist. Hot mess.

Let’s start with hot mess.  The highly esteemed urban dictionary defines hot mess as “a derogatory term describing a situation, behavior, appearance, etc. that is disastrously bad.”

Hot mess discipleship means no discipleship.

Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s the idea of church as a kind of Alcoholics Anonymous gathering—like a Sinners Anonymous. At AA people stand up and say, “Hi, my name is Such-And-Such and I’m an alcoholic.” In hot mess discipleship, the Christian shows up at church and it’s as if they say, “Hi, my name is Such-And-Such, and I’m a sinner. I was born a sinner, I’m a sinner now, and I’ll be a sinner when I die. Christ being in my life means I’m no different, but I am forgiven.”

It’s absolutely true that we’re sinners, but the Scripture’s identity of choice for us is saints. It’s how we get addressed in all the letters in the New Testament. “To the saints.” It doesn’t say “To the sinners” and that’s because it does make a difference that Christ lives in us.

We’re more than forgiven; we’re being transformed.

And the Scriptures lay out soldier imagery for us:

  • The Word of God is a two edged sword.
  • We put on the armor of God.
  • We take captive every thought.
  • We have work to do.

We don’t have time to wallow in our sin. Our calling is not to sin and then get forgiven. It’s to carry out the vocation of redeemed humanity: Mirroring the image of Christ to the world.  We’ll fall short and sin along the way, and when we do, we repent of it, confess it, receive his pardon, and get back in the fight.

We’re not just trophies of grace, old drunk uncles always needing to be picked up out of the gutter by our good nephew Jesus. We’re his mighty warriors. He has work for us to do. Grace-empowered work.  Supernatural work. But change is underway in us, and we’re not who we were yesterday.

In our next post, we’ll look at the very popular discipleship method of training specialists…and why we shouldn’t.

What other negative results does “hot mess discipleship” produce in the Church?

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For Whose Sake Does the Christian Teacher Minister?

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part I of our series on Preparation

The church which I pastor takes time each year to prepare for and be sensitive to God’s leading in listening for the ways in which he is calling us to grow individually over the following year.

In this Preparation series, I’d like to do the same with you, dear reader, as we look forward to the next year of blogging and growing together, should the Lord tarry.

Today, I want to talk about discipleship.

The comprehensive discipleship of individual Christians is one of the most important responsibilities of the church, and yet it is an area that is chronically overlooked. We Christians and churches don’t spend anywhere near enough time in this area. We don’t have a plan.

And, in some cases, we don’t even believe that it’s possible for Christians to grow to full maturity in Christ.

Unfortunately, most of the church’s focus ends up being on making the church grow in terms of the number of Christians who come to church.  What we lack in maturity we hope to make up in numbers!

According to the Bible, the focus in not on numerical growth, but on each Christian growing to full maturity in Christ.  So, we’re going to spend some time during this series looking at some of the Scriptures that emphasize and underscore the need for all Christians to be a part of a comprehensive system of discipleship that helps them grow to fullness in Christ.

To begin, we look at Ephesians 4:11-13:

11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

You can see in verse 11 that the Scripture defines our roles as pastors , teachers and missionaries as supporting and serving the body of Christ. In a secular classroom the teacher would be up above everyone and the students would be trying to win the teacher’s favor.

But Christian teachers are servants.  We teach (and blog) to support others and help them grow.

As we’ve seen for many popular pastors out there, that has become synonymous with helping people achieve their dreams or obtain those things they think they need to get by.  But that is not so.  The Christian teacher serves for Christ’s sake, not the student’s (see 2 Corinthians 4:5).

Neither do we serve for the sake of the church. We often misunderstand that phrase “build up the body” in Ephesians 4:12 to mean “make the church as large as possible.” But we can see in verse 13 that the building up of the body is primarily about maturity, not size.  And it is a ministry to all Christians which means the Christian pastor should have a vision and plan for each individual Christian which Christ has given them to grow them to full maturity in Christ.

With this in mind we’ll turn our attention in our next post to the first of three ways in which discipleship is often done today described here only as “hot mess.”  You won’t want to miss it.

What do you think?  Is maturity in Christ possible?  Whose responsibility is it to guide Christians towards that?

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