in 2020 all over the world there were several new phrases introduced into our english vocabulary and i'm certain there's a translation in various languages around the world of of our every nation seminary students and how you would say it but in english one of them was a difference in the essential and non-essential jobs and functions and stores and during the covet lockdowns they were different in different communities in different nations different cities even within a nation different cities had different uh situations but the idea was certain things were essential and others were not and it was always puzzling because sometimes that changed from month to month it changed from week to week and sometimes it changed from city to city and and even my my grandchildren in school because of my children live in different parts of metro nashville there are lines drawn in maybe one district the schools were open in another district they weren't at the same time and in one part of the city you could eat in restaurants in other parts you couldn't they were closed and another part you could eat in a restaurant only if it had outside dining and it was very confusing and there were even places where parts of stores were open if they determine what they're selling in this section of the store is essential and what they're selling over here is non-essential but the most puzzling of all is almost everywhere in america at least liquor stores were open and so the liquor stores and getting alcohol was essential but churches and many times were closed and unable to meet and so worship was non-essential but liquor wasn't it was puzzling it was confusing it made no sense i'm sure the leaders were doing the best they could with the information they had but how do you know what's essential and what is not in ministry how do we know what's good and may be negotiable in what's absolutely non-negotiable and essential for instance musical instruments during worship there are places where they're not available or places where people have um the people they're reaching are much better with a calculator than a guitar or a piano and so musical instruments some of us think it's essential but is it church buildings a lot of times different places in the world think that's absolutely essential in other places they actually prefer not to have church buildings or even to have a roof or electricity in the way they do ministry uh how about ministerial educational credentials there's a good question for seminary students is that essential or is that non-essential i will say this and in the every nation world is um as long as i have any influence having ministerial educational credentials will never will never be essential to be ordained or to be a pastor but hopefully what we're doing here together you'll find helpful and beneficial but not mandated how about legal boards i i spend a lot of time working and training board members board of trustee members in different cultures because every every different nation they have different rules and laws of how nonprofits or religious organizations are set up so are boards essential the way we figure out what's essential and what's non-essential in the ministry world for me i think the best way is to look at what jesus did and what jesus said certainly we can get other voices and other books and other seminars that might help us i'll never forget years ago in the philippines we had a an american missionary was there and he was working as the asia director for a ministry that does bible colleges all over the world especially in areas with low educational levels and so they're dealing primarily with very poor and not highly educated and they're trying to bring basic bible curriculum to them they do a great job it's really a great ministry and wonderful people and so this man and his wife uh used our church in manila as a home base but their ministry was outside they traveled all over that part of asia and as he was in our church for a while he observed some pretty strong leaders coming up all around me many of whom were certainly better at winning people to christ than i ever was or ever will be others were much better preachers than i was or ever will be and others were better at me than various things and and he was so impressed with the discipleship culture he saw so this is a guy heading up not just one bible school but a whole region of the world and doing a lot of ministerial training and i never forget the conversation he said steve i've been watching the discipleship at victory for several years i'm impressed with the leaders that are being produced so would you share the material with me i said what do you mean the material so this is back in the mid to late 80s when our church was relatively young and i looked and i said i said i don't i'm not trying to be super spiritual here but i held up my bible i said this is our discipleship material that's all we have he goes no no come on seriously i want what material do you use you have to have like a handbook or a manual i said actually we don't we our discipleship material is the bible now eventually at that time we did have sort of a uh a great great great grandfather the purple book that wasn't quite what it was and we had a few notes here and there but materials eventually were produced to help people be able to transfer discipleship and multiply faster but at the time we had the bible we had what we read in the bible the example jesus gave and the words jesus said it's not a bad place to start in terms of discipleship in fact it's the best place to start and i say that as one who's written books on discipleship and leadership development there's still nothing better than going back to scripture so we talk about what is essential and what is not we have to go to the example of jesus and the words of jesus what did he do and model for us and what did he say that means what he expects of us matthew 28 um you know we have to go here if we're talking about discipleship and you all know this and i think it answers a lot of questions about discipleship but particularly the idea is discipleship primarily for church people to help christians go deeper in their faith and the idea of spiritual formation and and walking in good relationships within the um church community or is it primarily mission reaching out and that seems to be especially in western discipleship models and discipleship discussions it seems to be typically a program to help christians become better christians and a lot of times discipleship does just that and that's not a bad thing to do it's just incomplete it's just not the full picture but then other models of discipleship they stop as soon as someone gets baptized it's like discipleship is to get them to christ and get them baptized then let's move on to something else and they're forever spiritual babies and diapers and we don't want either one of those models and i think matthew 28 brings the two together and clearly shows what the the dual focus of discipleship is supposed to be here we go verse 19 go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit now we all understand the basics of hermeneutics and i think there's one of the most basic if we get it right down to the starting point of hermeneutics it's that what did the original person speaking or writing mean and what did the first people who read that or heard that what did they think that person meant now when we read this in our with our modern western ears we think okay go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of father son and the holy spirit we we think let's go start a discipleship class let's go find some of our church members who aren't doing church very well and let's put them in a discipleship group and let's help them do better or let's put them in a discipleship class or let's put them in a course and basically help the christians become better christians but that's not what anybody thought this meant when jesus said go make disciples of all nations a hundred percent of the people who heard that thought he meant go find people who don't know jesus perhaps they've never heard of jesus maybe they have heard of him but go find people who are not currently following him and help them follow him that's what we call evangelism and so from the very beginning the first understanding of this great commission text here was evangelism but it doesn't end there that that's not where it ends and i felt like for decades i've intentionally over emphasized the evangelism part of discipleship because in the western church it's so de-emphasized to the point that we've made discipleship a class or a course to help christians become better christians and that's not at all what he's saying now we get to verse 20. so is it mission evangelism or is it spiritual formation and personal growth well it's probably both so let's look so verse 19 is obviously this go and it's an evangelistic mission part of the great commission but then we get to verse 20 teaching them teaching who who's them who's them teaching them those people who just heard the gospel and got baptized now they're believers teaching them to observe all that i commanded you and so we have the one two punch of discipleship it is a going and reaching lost people with the gospel and it is teaching those people to mature in christ unfortunately again part of the church focuses so much on the maturity aspect they never actually reach out other parts of the church focus so much on getting people to raise their hand to get saved that maybe they should just baptize the arm because that's the only part that responded to jesus but we've got to have the evangelism and the maturity and so they're both it's not either or it's not which is most important they're both connected in a way and should never be divided much of the church though divides and i think we see it on org charts at churches we go in a bookstore and we see the the divisions even where the books are here's the evangelism section here's the discipleship section and that sends a terrible message that evangelism is one thing and discipleship is another and they're not really connected but they are connected the same way my arm is connected to my shoulder it has to work together if i cut my arm off and lay it there it's ineffective and i think that's what's happened evangelism has become ineffective because it's not connected to what we think of as discipleship and this discipleship spiritual formation grow learn teaching aspect is not effective because it's not connected to reaching people who are far from christ and so we've got to remarry those we we've got to reconnect those and that's what we're trying to do in relational discipleship in this course we are super serious about walking in relationships together within the the church family but we're also all in on extending the borders of that family and including people who are far from god as a core of discipleship so it's both so often the answer in scripture is both but we're back to the question of essential how do we know what's essential what did jesus do and what did he say we're looking at what he said what he said is go make disciples what he said at the beginning was come follow me and i'll make you fishers of men what did he do what we find jesus doing is going in and you can look through any one of the gospels just pick one maybe not so much in john but any one of the synoptic gospels and go through and follow every time there's a multitude you'll find that pretty quickly after that jesus goes off just with the 12. and then you'll see after the 12 there's another multitude moment and then he'll pull aside with the 12. and you see this again back and forth tension between the big crowd and the small group and i think it is a picture of the church rhythms and the way that healthy churches work there are these big crowd moments and then you have to pull away to these small group discipleship moments and what was so amazing about the way jesus made disciples and it's so difficult for us discipleship done correctly with the dual tension of evangelism and establishing equipping spiritual formation aspects those two when we do that right things start growing typically now depending on the soil where we are sometimes it'll go rapidly sometimes slowly but it does it does cause growth but when things start growing really large a lot of us stop doing the small group and we just start only doing these big crowd things but that's not what jesus did so how do we know what's essential by looking at jesus what did he do the more you see the big crowds as the gospels move on in time you'll see him even more pulling aside with the small group with that relational discipleship moment