Flourishing Life

“The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.” — C.S. Lewis

The temptation of a pastor coming to a new church is to jump into “fix-it” mode too quickly. Certainly, a new set of leadership eyes is helpful in finding some low-hanging fruit and making some adjustments to improve worship or outreach or some particular ministry of the church. These changes are important. But, more important is to inquire how are we making disciples who make disciples?

This is what the church is about, making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Too often, church leaders jump into institutional survival or even institutional growth mode and we fail to be missional leaders who engage in Kingdom-building ways of being in the communities in which we live.

We are to reach people with the Good News about Jesus Christ and then grow them into disciples of Jesus Christ who can do what Jesus does, make more disciples. That’s it. That’s what we do. If we grow disciples, we will grow the church. We can, however, focus on growing the church and never make a single disciple. Help us, Lord, think about, reflect on, pray about, then act on making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.