Disciple: Be One. Make One.

September 28, 2015 by Chris Parker Leave a Comment

We are all familiar with the great commission. Especially during mission trips, we let the words of Jesus be a beckoning for students and adults to participate…”GO! And make disciples of all nations…” yet we also understand this should not be merely a seasonal advertisement at the local department store. Let the words sink in…GO….MAKE DISCIPLES….OF ALL NATIONS.

There is nothing in the phrases of Jesus that reduce the vision to a short-term trip, it’s communicated as a directive in lifestyle and mission. The aim. Jesus asked his disciples and followers to make this their aim and let everything else fall into place…the cost of following Christ is great. In the days of the early church roots it meant leaving your home, not continuing in the family business, traveling great distances to spread the word. The aim was clear.

This mantra of “Disciple: Be One. Make One.” was introduced to me by my youth pastor (Bobby Pruitt/love that guy), it was the slogan of our youth group in which we clarified all activities, retreats and new opportunities through. We were challenged constantly about our “aim” and if it truly was our aim to be a disciple of Christ and if we were living on mission to make other disciples.

Confession. The more I have become involved with vocational ministry the harder it seems to make this my aim. I find myself doing “good” things for the kingdom: recruiting and training leaders, preaching to MS and HS students, creating momentum for parents to feel the support of the church, bettering our environments for kids and students, and dreaming big dreams for the next generation….

but this is not discipleship.

All of these things can be a means to discipleship, but will not suffice as discipleship in the way Jesus intended. He defined discipleship by setting the example. He shared meals with them, spent hours of time discussing life, traveling together, camping trips, excursions, answering weird questions that people had…

Here’s my personal conviction. Over the years in vocational ministry I have had seasons of intentional discipleship. Sometimes I am being intentional to disciple a leader and a student, other times just a student but still other times nobody…zilch, nada, none – but man oh man, that camp we did was awesome!

I think this is something everyone who works for a church or ministry should be aware of, you can be incredibly busy, booked and burned out…for really, really good things. Even though that’s the case, I still think we may miss the mark because of what we’ve been told to aim at by Jesus himself, “GO MAKE DISCIPLES.”

Today I meet with Zach. He’s a middle school small group leader in my ministry. We have been discussing the holy spirit and prayer and will continue down that road for a few weeks. Let me set the record straight by saying Zach reached out to me, not the other way around. It was a conviction moment when he asked, “Would you disciple me?” I quickly answered yes because I knew I needed too…but deep down I quickly went to the craziness of my to-do list to see where this might “fit-in”. Sad.

Make it your aim to disciple someone…always. Never be too busy that a discipleship relationship would take precedent over other important things your church deems as important. If you want your church, your ministry, your flock to be disciples that are making disciples then you need to set the pace for them.

So, I leave you with these questions to wrestle with and pray over today.

“To whom is Jesus asking you to GO?”
“Do you let weekly “church stuff” take precedence over a discipleship relationship?”
Who will you ask to hold you accountable to discipling others?

Leading your leaders.

March 27, 2014 by Chris Parker Leave a Comment

Perhaps the best thing you can do for your students is understand that you simply cannot lead them all. Whether your youth group size is 30 or 300, you need to inherit this mindset if you don’t already have it. An authentic relationship is hardly possible with 30, let alone 300.

Do you want to offer the very best to the students and make sure they are connected to great leadership? The answer isn’t you, at least not for all of them. Offer the best through your leaders. Recruit them. Develop them. Get them connected to students. Focus your leadership on the leaders, in turn you will multiply your leadership beyond what you could have ever offered students on your own.

If it weren’t for the 35-40 leaders that were investing into our students, the students would not be truly connected to the church body… they would be connected to just a building, just a program, just another student function.

My goal is to get a Christ-following adult into the life of every student that walks through that door, and I have to be okay with it not being me… but only because I recruited, developed and am in touch with those that are leading the students.

Take your street for Jesus.

June 3, 2012 by Chris Parker Leave a Comment

Fanchon St. – Our rental has been quite the fixer-upper for my wife and I during our first year of marriage. Our honeymoon house. The home was built in the 1920’s and moved to Fanchon St. in the 1940’s (our landlord is a house mover). Along with character it has bubbling plaster walls and uneven floors. Since moving in my father-in-law and I re-walled the bathroom, Calla and I painted the whole place and I transformed a dirt pile into a yard with grass and a garden!

The first night after our wedding we came home to pack for our honeymoon, it was storming pretty bad…the ceiling in the living room was bowed with a crack down the middle gushing water all over the newly installed carpet!!! Needless to say we still packed, threw some buckets under the leaks and jetted out the door for for our honeymoon. Oh the beauty of renting and not owning! And yes…I did call my landlord once we pulled off Fanchon St.

We drove 12 hours north to the quaint, boundary waters town of Grand Marais, Minnesota. There we enjoyed the great outdoors and a beautiful cabin overlooking one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. One week later we sank back into the reality of “real life” on Fanchon St.

We were the only married couple on our street when we moved in last year. Our neighbor on the left is a recently divorced man, to our right an older single woman whose boyfriend visits on the weekends. Across the street a family with many kids from different marriages, the current couple is not married….and more identities unfolded over the year as we got to know our neighbors. We picked up the bits and pieces on what all these people shared in common…a longing for community.

My wife and I began praying for our neighbors…that we might have the opportunity to be Jesus to them. Our prayer and dreams began spinning out of control as we prayed for months and months that we would have opportunities to love our neighbors, serve our neighbors and help build the foundation of a community that would be centered on the hospitality and grace of Jesus.

Nothing happened. Sure, there were good conversations here and there…times we were able to share our faith stories with them…but nothing really happened. Our prayers, hopes and what we were wishing for were not lining up with the reality that Fanchon St. was still the same old Fanchon St.

We had to take initiative…our hopes needed to be followed by action. We decided to have a campfire in the backyard and invite everyone over for s’mores! We made it a BIG DEAL and let them know all about it by printing off colorful postcards and putting one in each mailbox…it was titled “Friday on Fanchon St.” The incredibly small investment of time, intentionality and an invitation paid huge dividends for the kingdom of God. That night everyone showed up, parents, kids, a baby, and around that campfire we had COMMUNITY! As if we couldn’t ask for more, one woman stayed particularly late and we had the opportunity to unfold the love of Christ in the gospel story and share how we know the Bible is historically accurate.

Need I say more? Take your street for Jesus. They are longing for community, more than that – longing for the person of Jesus Christ.