The Christian Church: Clueless – Go Make Disciples – Marketplace Discipleship – The Equipping Church – How can we equip our People for God’s Work in the Marketplace? Part 12 of 12 #Church #TheChristianChurch #Jesus #Christians #Christianity #Disciples #DiscipleMaking #HouseChurches #Movement #SecularChurches #Clueless #CluelessGoMakeDisciples #movement #Stories #discipleship #Workplace #missionfields #DiscipleshipInTheWorkplace #MarketplaceDiscipleship #Markeplace #WorldofWork #workplace #Discipleship Subject – The Christian Church: Clueless – Go Make Disciples – Marketplace Discipleship – The Equipping Church – How can we equip our People for God’s Work in the Marketplace? Part 12 of 12 OTAKADA.org content count 2,115,764 Sunday, 4th of August 2019 Blog link: https://www.otakada.org/ The Christian Church: Clueless – Go Make Disciples – Marketplace Discipleship – The Equipping Church – How can we equip our People for God’s Work in the Marketplace? Part 12 of 12 Nuggets of Wisdom “Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of character apart from His fruit, and no effective witness without His power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead.” John Stott “Discipleship is the art and science of helping people find, follow and fully become like Jesus. Discipleship happens as God’s people show love, share truth and live life with one another, making new disciples along the way.” – Brandon Cox “The pursuit of God is not a part-time, weekend exercise. If it is, chances are you will experience a part-time, weekend freedom. Abiding requires a kind of staying power. The pursuit is relentless. It hungers and thirsts. It pants as the deer after the mountain brook. It takes the kingdom by storm…The pursuit of God is a pursuit of passion. Indifference will not do. To abide in the Word is to hang on tenaciously. A weak grip will soon slip away. Discipleship requires staying power. We sign up for duration. We do not graduate until heaven.” – R. C. Sproul Key verses for Today: Matthew 28:18-20 Amplified Bible (AMP) 18 Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority (all power of absolute rule) in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations [help the people to learn of Me, believe in Me, and obey My words], baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always [remaining with you perpetually—regardless of circumstance, and on every occasion], even to the end of the age.” Ephesians 6:5-9 The Message (MSG) 5-8 Servants, respectfully obey your earthly masters but always with an eye to obeying the real master, Christ. Don’t just do what you have to do to get by, but work heartily, as Christ’s servants doing what God wants you to do. And work with a smile on your face, always keeping in mind that no matter who happens to be giving the orders, you’re really serving God. Good work will get you good pay from the Master, regardless of whether you are slave or free. 9 Masters, it’s the same with you. No abuse, please, and no threats. You and your servants are both under the same Master in heaven. He makes no distinction between you and them. 1 Timothy 2:4 [God] desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Introduction Dear brethren, welcome to the twelfth series on the Christian church – Go make disciples. Today, we exploring how the church can deliberately equip members in the world of work to be more effective in the discipleship effort at the workplace – We will look at churches already doing this and how church and marketplace activities are integrated seamlessly – WE ARE CALLED TO BELONG TO CHRIST AND PARTICIPATE IN HIS REDEMPTIVE WORK IN THE WORLD – Our life at the workplace and at the church should not be compartmentalized. How can a well-rounded equipping church achieve this noble objective of equipping the saints for the work of ministry in the marketplace? Your life, my life and everything and everyone around us are our mission fields. Don’t ever settle to the mindset that when you are out of your immediate environment, then mission field happens. Mission field is right in your home, your immediate environment, your work place, your trip to places you have been and seen, our struggle and victories through lives up and downs and how we are able to keep our heads above water, through it all by His grace. Mission field is essentially borderless…. The Equipping Church How can a church become more effective at equipping its people? The need for a reorientation outward and embarking on a journey in mission has already been identified—so has the need for an understanding of our Christian vocation and calling that includes a new appreciation of the role our daily work can play in the mission of God. It’s also helpful to ask, what does it look like in practice for a church to operate in a way that reflects these changed perspectives and priorities? Churches that have embarked on this journey demonstrate a number of common characteristics. Equipping churches: have a vision of God at work where their people work actively hunt for examples and resources connect daily work to worship address the opportunities and challenges their people face at work invest resources in equipping people for daily work create structures to sustain this ministry empower and collaborate with people in the congregation to lead the ministry release and support their people for work outside the church encourage everyone to take responsibility include daily work as part of youth ministry and compassion/outreach/service ministries Perhaps this list can provide a useful benchmark against which you can measure, evaluate and envision developments in your own church setting. We
