We’re all being discipled. The question is ‘Who are you being discipled by? Who are you following?’
None of us is neutral. We’re all following someone and being shaped by something. The problem is that most of us are unaware of this discipleship process—we simply swallow the story we’re told without realising how it shapes us.
How are you being discipled by your workplace, shaped by its worldview and values to fit the cultural mould? How are you being shaped by the messages of the secular, progressive cultural elite? How are you being shaped by what you watch on Netflix and listen to on Spotify?
God has set his church in the world as a city on a hill (Matthew 5:13–16). He has called us to be the salt of the earth and light in the darkness. But there’s a problem when the church is more like the world than like Jesus.
‘The missional church movement went to the pub to reach people for Jesus, but all that happened was we became more like the people at the pub!’ Mark Sayers
If this danger is real for any church, it’s the church that started in a bar, moved to a pub, and now meets in a music venue!
There is nothing more important for us than to respond to Jesus’s call of discipleship and intentionally learn to be like him.
Our hope for this series is that each member of the Anchor Family will actively take their part in Jesus’s mission of discipleship: both personally learning to be like Jesus, and making disciples of Jesus.
Here are the key ideas we hope you take away from the series:
1 A disciple is someone that is learning to love and live like Jesus
This is a holistic transformative learning process, not classroom learning to pass an exam. This is embodied learning in the context of community that results in inner transformation that works itself out in obedience to Jesus’s teaching.
2 Every disciple is called to be a disciple-maker
We all have a part to play in God’s mission. Making disciples is not done by professional pastors or evangelists, but by everyone of us as we share the gospel and our lives with one another and our neighbours.
3 We make disciples by prayerfully sowing the seed of the gospel in people’s lives
It is only as the gospel seed is planted in people’s hearts that we will see fruit in people’s lives as God gives the growth by his Spirit.
This means that we don’t make fruitful disciples just by hanging out together or being a nice friend. Of course, this relational context is vital to discipleship as we learn from one another and love our neighbours. But if we want to see our city transformed by the good news of Jesus, we need to be sharing God’s Word with people.
Discipleship Practices
We don’t want this series to be purely theoretical. Discipleship is more like a practical apprenticeship than a university lecture. With this in mind, we want to commit to four practices over the next eight weeks as we learn to be like Jesus together.
1 Prayer
Prayer is vital for discipleship, as the gospel cannot produce fruit in someone’s life without a powerful working of the Holy Spirit. Prayer covers and infuses all of the other practices listed below: praying that God will speak to us through the Bible in a transformative way; praying for one another in Triplets; and praying for our unbelieving friends as we seek to share Jesus with them.
And yet it’s not enough for prayer to be assumed, lest it is neglected. We want prayer to saturate every corner of our church. So over the next eight weeks, we want you to commit to the practice of prayer.
Here are some practical ideas to help you pray:
- Before you read your Bible, being with a few minutes of silence and solitude, focusing your heart and mind on the love and mercy of our Father in Heaven, and asking him to speak to you through his word
- Shape your prayers around what you’ve read in the Bible
- Use the PrayerMate app to plan to pray for others, including your ‘five’
- In Triplets, lead one another in prayers of repentance and faith, as well as praying for one another’s needs
- Use each line of the Lord’s Prayer as a springboard for prayer (Matthew 6:9–13)
- Use a Psalm to pour out your heart to God
- Use the ACTS structure: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication (asking)
‘This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.’ 1 John 5:14–15
2 Bible Reading: Learning from God
A disciple is a learner—someone that is learning to be like Jesus. An important part of this transformative process is learning from God’s Word and responding in obedience. We’ve created an eight-week Bible reading plan (four days a week) to facilitate our learning together as a church family.
We’d love you to commit to this as a vital discipline for your own spiritual growth. We believe that the Bible is the place where we hear God’s voice most clearly, and that it is the key to a fruitful life, as the Spirit takes the implanted word and bears the fruit of obedience in our lives.
This is not about filling our heads with Bible knowledge, but meeting with God our Father in his word, and being transformed by the Spirit into the likeness of our Saviour Jesus.
We encourage you to purchase an Abide Journal from the Connect Desk at a Sunday Gathering for $10 and use the REAP journaling method to understand and apply God’s Word. This practice is really about each of us taking personal responsibility for our own spiritual growth.
3 Gospel Triplets: Learning from One Another
Discipleship is more than learning information. It is learning a person (Jesus) and his way of life.
The New Testament emphasises the importance of imitation as a crucial way that we learn to be like Jesus—‘Follow me as I follow Jesus’ (Philippians 4:9). We take this seriously at Anchor, and understand that it is virtually impossible to make fruitful disciples outside the context of community.
Over the next eight weeks, we want to facilitate you forming intentional disciple-making relationships, especially in Gospel Triplets.
If you’re already in a Triplet, use the next eight weeks to intentionally disciple one another and apply the gospel to your life.
If you’re not in a Triplet, talk to your Gospel Community leader or go to the Connect Desk at a Sunday Gathering to help you connect with people.
We all need to take the initiative in seeking out others to disciple, because to be a disciple of Jesus is to be a disciple-maker.
Within Triplets, we focus on Head, Heart, and Hands.
Head: review what God has been speaking to you in the Follow Me Bible reading plan, how the Spirit has been convicting you of sin, and leading you to repentance and obedience.
Heart: ask each other: ‘What bad fruit is there in your life?” Use the Fruit to Root resource to help you repent of the root issues of unbelief and idolatry, and speak the truth of the gospel into one another’s lives.
Hands: keep each other accountable for living in obedience to God’s Word as everyday missionaries.
4 Mission: Ask a Friend to Read the Bible with You
We believe that God has called each of us to be an everyday missionary in the city of Sydney.
Over the next eight weeks, we want each member of the Anchor Family to prayerfully commit to pursue one of your ‘five’ friends to read the Bible with. This is within the context of 5FOR5 (choose five friends, and seek to do five things: PRAY, CONTACT, BLESS, INVITE, SHARE), and is designed to help us intentionally share Jesus with our friends.
We have a deep belief that the gospel is the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16), and that as we open the Bible we hear God speak. We are expectant that as we read the Bible with our non-Christian friends, many will be captivated by the person of Jesus.
Here’s what to do.
1 Identify a friend who is warm towards you and pray that God will make them receptive and open a door for the gospel
2 Ask them: ‘I’m looking for someone to read the Bible with, and I’m wondering if that’s you?’ If they say ‘No’, then say ‘No worries!’ If they say ‘Yes!’, then organise a time to grab a coffee and read together.
3 When you meet up, read a chapter of Mark’s gospel together (starting at chapter 1).
4 Ask five questions:
What did you notice?
What does is say about God?
What does it say about people?
What will you do?
Who will you tell?
5 Organise a time to meet again to read the next chapter.
We are praying expectantly that God will use this series to bring transformation in your life and in our city as we surrender ourselves to our Master and his mission of making disciples.
Join us this Sunday 29 July as we begin our new nine-week sermon series Follow Me: Learning to Love and Live Like Jesus. 10:30am The Factory Theatre 105 Victoria Road Marrickville NSW.