Reaching Women and Children With Woman Pastors

The same people James talks about, anyone who is not a doer of the word.

 

Jesus gave the vision and demonstrated his methodology that worked. He commanded his disciples to make disciples. The fact is that a new believer knows little about Jesus let alone knowing him in a deep personal way.

So how will you teach those looking to you for leadership to help them carry out the commands Jesus gave? Anyone knows that the lecture method is the poorest method of personal discipleship. Lectures give out lots of information at once but do nothing to get people to do much. For example there was an ordained deacon in a church I pastored and he was a great teacher. He was a leader in the previous church he was at and involved in the denomination in teaching people and in a church ministry outside of the church. I had worked with most of the men in the church in a personal setting training them to be leaders for one and a half years. At the end of that time it was time to send them out. I sent them out with their families. That man started shaking uncontrollably. At the end of two hours he was a changed man. He was motor mouth and had started two Bible studies as a result. No amount of sermon would have done anything. It was that one time experience that have him confidence in God and that enabled him to share his faith. That man became the number one leader in that church almost over night. His son leads a youth group in a church. Before that he was a fearful teacher in the church. Today he is a changed man.

Currently I meet with a young man who at one time came to church every Sunday because his family did but for three years he was recruiting people to atheism. I met with him twice and then realized how wrong he was and now follows Jesus. He has been talking to me about how to make disciples. He is now sharing the gospel with his friends instead of leading them astray. How much did sermons do for him? When I talked with him personally our discussions ahd nothing to do with sermons he had heard but about some of the things he had read. I showed him a dialog I had with someone he had read and pointed out the nonsense of what he believed. My discussions with him had more to do with historical context, literary genre, and textual criticism.

If we want to see the lives of men and women changed we must enable them to live out their faith as Jesus did with his disciples instead of taking the easy route and making excuses and just preaching.

While preaching is only a small part of making disciples is just that a small part.

 

James 1:22 is not limited to particular groups of people. Look at who James addressed--church people. Mt. 28:19, 20 is not void from "them." I see them all around us.

 

I was being a bit sarcastic but my real point is that since the pastor is a man and he is not reaching men then why have him to reach men when he is not? The church is the result of his leadership.

 

You made two contradictory statements how do you reconcile them? You say it is nonsense in that Jesus did not provide the methodoolgy and vision, then you say he showed us how. Which one is it? Showing is both vision and method. How is it not. If I show someone how to do a math problem I am showing them my method of solving it.

 

One of the greatest fears I have is that will will become as the Pharisees did. I find myself trying to stay more alert than ever and being sure I understand the passage well. I see what I would call good and bad everywhere. I have seen things that were shocking in Baptist Churches and some great things. I am not too sure we can generalize any more. When I listen to my friends when they come back from the mission field it is interesting to see the changes they notice. Lately it has been about the dumbing down of the preaching and Sunday School lessons.

 

Recently I read a book on pastoring and it was written by a retired pastor. He said that a pastor needs to not have an inflated sense of his ego in regards to his own preaching when it may be that the congregation is trying to help him and are tolerating his poor preaching.

I used to think I was a pretty good preacher until I listened to some of my own preaching several years later. I said to myself, "Wow! People listened to that?" The time that we think we are a great preacher is when we need a big dose of humility.

 

If you really believe that then go through any of the gospels and see what Jesus did compared to what he preached.

I have got two books for you to read if you really think preaching makes disciples. Following the Master: A Biblical Theology of Discipleship by Michael J. Wilkins and Pastoring Men: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why It Matters Now More Than Ever by Patrick Morley. Both of those men are making disciples.

Can you explain how people can sit in a church and listen to you and then go out and make disciples? My experience has been quite the opposite. Almost everyone I meet with has been in a church for years doing nothing. Almost everyone of them within two years is starting to do some kind of ministry on their own.

Preaching works so good that a young man I meet with each week spent three years making disciples of atheism while listening to the preacher speak each week from the Bible in the same Baptist Church I attend. Almost one year ago I met him and started dealing with the questions he had. He had issues in regards to textual criticism, historical context, and literary context.When was the last time you dealt with those in a sermon?

 

We will remember much more oif the humble person than anything of what a person says. Young people listen more to what others say. Older listen more to what others do.

I know a man who was like what you are saying about your pastor and his church went from about 250 to over 4000. He was not all that of a good preacher but he knew how to make disciples and the entire church was involved in that. That church sent missionaries all over the world and their whole approach was to work with the locals to make disciples and establish churches. They have never been the big guru in the world making a big splash. They did not have a flashy preacher but he was a man of God.

I am still challenged by a humble man who was the president of a mission board who was in India at the time. He preached for one month at the church. People and staff were saying that he changed our church because of who he was. IT was a churhc of about 1200 in regular attendance.