Small Groups and Discipleship - David Adams | KFW 2016

Small groups in discipleship. Thank you.

I wouldn't be a Christian if it wasn't for a small group. When I was 18 years old, I was wandering around in the world, and I stumbled upon a group of four Christians who were really living out the Scriptures.

And they loved each other, they were close, they were intimate, and they initiated with me. They were genuinely interested in my life. They shared the Scriptures with me, they introduced me to Jesus. I was called to repent of my sins, my selfishness, my pride, my impurity, and I became a Christian.

And when you think of Jesus' ministry, so much of His ministry was in small groups. Small groups of people where He was discipling both the lost and His followers. So that's what I want to talk about today. I want to do three things. My goal is to do three things today. The first one is to just kind of give a picture of what is group discipleship.

Second, I want to take a brief look and just remind us that this was prevalent in Jesus' ministry and some of the characteristics of that. And third, I want to talk about how can we implement this in our own ministries.

So let's start with what does group discipleship look like? I have a friend, his name is Chris. He's a close brother, and he is a master carpenter. He teaches at the local vocational school, and this coming week he will have 14 to 15-year-olds show up who want to be carpenters.

Now, we live in Boston, so I know probably many of you probably are teaching your children to work with wood and lumber and saw. Now, this is Boston, OK? These kids who will come in, most of them have no clue. They've never lifted a hammer, they've never pulled a saw, they've never drilled a screw. Now, that may be crazy to many of you, but that's just normal in the city, OK? So my friend Chris, he has four years to teach 14 to 16-year-olds how to be carpenters.

So how in the world is he going to do that? So one thing he could do is he could write a book, and he could say, "Here is a book on carpentry. Now, I'm a master carpenter. I've written everything you need to know in this book. I want you to read this, I want you to memorize it, and in four years I'm going to give you a test. Oh, and by the way, here's a room full of equipment: saws and drills and wood. And read the book. I'm going to come back in four years, and you're going to take a test and see if you graduate." OK, I think most of us would agree that that would be a recipe for disaster, OK?

What else could he do? Well, he could say, "Well, I want to give you a book, and I want you to be serious about this book, but also what I want you to do is every week I'm going to get in front of you, and I'm going to teach you about carpentry, because I am a master carpenter, and I've worked hard at that, and it's been humbling, and I love my craft. And I'm going to tell stories about carpentry, I'm going to talk about what I did well and what I didn't do well, and I'm going to give you specific instruction." And that would be much helpful in addition to the book, right? I mean, that would be what a blessing to have someone who's experienced, who's gone through it, who's been practicing carpentry their whole life, a master carpenter, to get that instruction.

And yet, can you imagine if you just lectured once a week referencing the book, would those 15 students become carpenters?

I don't think so. I don't think so. And thankfully, that's not how he does it. How does he do it? Well, what he says, he says basically, not quite in these words, but he says, "Come. Follow me. And I'm going to make you into carpenters.

All of you." And you've never picked up a hammer, most of you. You've never picked up a saw. "In four years you're going to build a house." And these kids are like, "You got to be kidding me. What are you talking about? There's no way. I can't do that." He says, "No, but you need to come and follow me, and I'm going to show you how to do it." So what does he do?

He models. They start with a little table. "We're going to make a table." And their kids are like, "We don't know how to make a table." "No, I'm going to show you how to make a table." And he shows them how to measure the wood, to read the plan. He shows them how to cut. He shows them how to drill. He shows them how to put it together. He shows them how to stain it so it looks beautiful.

He models it, shows them how, every step of the way. Then what does he do? Well, he makes them do it. OK, I just showed you. Now you go do it.

Now what happens? Oh, it's disaster, right?

Legs are cut the wrong sides, the screws are going in all kinds of different directions. I mean, the stain looks horrible. But he creates an environment where mistakes are encouraged.

Mistakes are good. If you're willing to step out and pick up that hammer for the first time ever, awesome. He praises mistakes. Mistakes are incredible, because one student makes a mistake, he'll pull the whole group and say, "You know, what's up with the stain there? Why does that look like that?" "Well, this is why. Let me show you." And they all learn from the one's mistake.

He pulls the victories, too. He pulls aside. "Did you see, Bill? You see how straight" I'm not a carpenter, so my examples are horrible. "See how straight and true he drew that line? Why is that so effective? Why did that have an effect on his end product?" And they all gather around. They all learn from the one.

No one is left behind in this man's class. The master carpenter doesn't let anyone you actually get graded by you helping one another. Part of the ground rules is we're going to help and serve each other. And so there's no one jumping way ahead. Now, some may master skills quicker, but then they actually get a better grade if they will serve and help and teach the others.

It doesn't take much time before you've got a class of 15 students learning and growing, helping one another to become carpenters. And he's standing back, stepping in, teaching, training, waiting, let the mistakes happen, jumping again, equipping, accountability, addressing issues that need to be addressed.

And repeat. Year one. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Four years go by. The fourth year they build a house. They build a whole house. So cool.

And they can't believe it. If you had told them they were going to build a house when you started, no way. But they built the house. My friend Chris, all these kids go out and get jobs in carpentry. They're so skilled by the time they get out and leave the master, they get these great jobs in their fields.

He's been doing this for 20 years.

He graduates 15 students. That's 300 carpenters this one man has made. They have gone out and become business owners and carpenters that train other carpenters. There are literally in Boston hundreds, maybe thousands, of carpenters who have been trained by this one man who has taken this one approach of working with a small group and molding them and shaping them into his image, if you will.

This is group discipleship.

And Jesus did exactly the same thing. He picked his 12, and others followed as well. He said, "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Now, Jesus did have the book. He was the book, right?

Jesus did teach the Sermon on the Mount. He laid out his principles. But then he had them walk together for three years. He gave them the model. He taught in the synagogues.

He showed them how to use the Old Testament to prove the Christ. He showed them the courage to walk into a group of religious people and speak the truth in love. He showed them how to serve, to touch the lepers, to heal the lepers, to heal Peter's mother-in-law, to show compassion. He demonstrated for them the principles that he taught, and they were there every step of the way. He showed them how to pray. He didn't tell them just to pray. He showed them how to pray. He showed them how to evangelize, how to take this tax collector who's sitting in a tree and people hate to call him down, to go and have a meal with him, and to bring salvation to that household.

They saw that. They're processing. They're watching. They're seeing.

To see a woman who's caught in adultery, to protect her, to send away the Pharisees, the legalists, and to call her to repent of her sin. And they saw that. They watched that. They connected with the teaching, and they saw how to do it. Jesus modeled it for them. But then Jesus made them go out and do it. And I love this. I love think about there's so many examples. I'm just going to give you a couple. But think about it. Jesus says, "Oh, by the way, there's like 4,000 people here that are really hungry.

You feed them."

I mean, can you imagine what they were thinking? Like, "Ah." We think Jesus probably isn't mistaken here, but we have no idea. But they were forced to think, consider, "How do we do this? Oh, there's a couple of fish here. There's a loaf here." Now, Jesus had to kind of step in and finish that job. But I think there were some lessons learned by that act of training. Jesus is always asking these guys questions. You can't really hide.

Making them think, "Who do the people say the Son of Man is?" Blah, blah, blah, blah. "Oh, by the way, who do you guys think he is?"

You know, when you're sitting in a big group, you can hear things that are very powerful and are from the book and are from God. But it's different when someone's looking you face-to-face, asking you the same question, and you're forced to respond. It's very exposing.

But it's good.

He sends them out two by two. That's been shared a couple of times, I think, over this weekend. And it says in that passage, "He sent them out." Can you imagine them going out for the first time, and then they come back, and it says they shared what they had learned with each other? Wouldn't that be an amazing conversation to hear? "This went well. This went horrible. I did this. I did this. Oh, why didn't this work?"

Jesus created somehow he was able to create a very safe environment for people to make mistakes.

Peter on the water. Jesus comes out, and Peter's like, "Ah. If it's you, tell me to come out." Jesus says, "Come." Somehow Peter felt secure enough to get out of the boat and walk on water. Now, that's pretty crazy.

But Jesus, something about Jesus called people to step out and do something beyond what they thought they could do.

You know, when Jesus came down the mountain, there was that kid who had the demon possession, and the disciples are really trying to throw the thing out, but they can't. And I think Jesus probably really appreciated that they're trying.

And then later they say, "Why couldn't we do it, Jesus?" There's just such this intimacy. He said, "It's OK. This one comes out by prayer." You look at Acts. They totally got that lesson. They internalized that one. They're praying all the time.

They're doing all kinds of stuff for God. And I think Jesus somehow was so patient, so loving, and yet he was so hardline on sin, so hardline about the kingdom teachings. He had this perfect mix. And the result was these 12 men walked for three years and the other disciples, and we see the book of Acts. That's the result. And whoa, what happened there?

So I think if you look at the scriptures, I want to encourage you to go in and read the Gospels and just think of all the groups and all the situations, and think for yourself, what is the dynamic? How does Jesus do this? And then lastly, I want to just share I spent about 30 years in a group of churches that was really serious about group discipleship.

And some tremendous things happened. There's some tremendously good things, and there's some really bad things. And I think a brother, Chuck Pike, a good friend of mine, he's always pushing me on this. He says, "Make sure we learn quickly from the mistakes that we've made."

And so I learn as much from the mistakes as from the good things. But I want to just share some of the things that I think are worthy of imitation from our experience. The first part is Jesus says, "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." So group discipleship, there's kind of two pieces to it, right? "Follow me" is learning obedience, learning to be like Jesus.

OK, that's a piece of it. But why do we do that? Well, the whole purpose was to go become make fishers of men, help people become fishermen to catch fish. And so the "follow me" in small groups so our congregation, what we did basically was we would meet together as a church on Sunday, but then every person would be in a small group of between 8 to 15 people. And it was in that small group that we did our personal discipling. And we would come together often several times during the week where we'd have teaching. We would discuss the Sunday lesson. We would apply it to our lives. There would be confession, iron sharpening, iron, accountability.

It was a safe place when it was done well. And we learned from each other how to be more like the master. So that was a piece of it. The other piece of it, though, was that the whole purpose that we're here for is to go make fishers of men. We're going to go fishing. We're going to have Bible studies where we invite our neighbors, our friends, our people we work with to come, to come into the relationship, to see the relationships, to study the Bible with us, to share the scriptures with them.

Personal Bible studies, we'd have that. A few people from the group would get together with someone they were reaching out to and study the scriptures with them. What would happen is that there would be this community. That's the kind of the community that I saw. I'm like, "This is amazing. I've never seen anything like this." And then I came to the church service. I said, "Wow, there's even more people than these four or five." I saw it in my life, in my little town, but then I saw the bigger picture. And what happens was then people become Christians. They come into the kingdom. And so what happened I know this is going to sound crazy, but the church that we were a part of in Boston started with 30 people, and everyone was part of a small group.

And everyone was committed to this concept of discipling one another and reaching out and helping other people become Christians. And so what happened was those groups would grow. So you have a group of 10 people. It becomes 20 people. So you split it. Now, you've got two groups of 10 people, and they go out and do the same thing. And then they split. And then they split. And it's multiplication. So the group, the 30 people in Boston, became a church of 2,500 in about 15 years.

They also sent a group, a small group, to New York. And they did the same thing. And they split, and they split, and they multiplied. And then they started sending out churches into Chicago, into Seattle, into L.A., into London, into Paris, into Moscow, into Berlin, all these different places, teaching a hardcore discipleship of following Jesus.

Literally hundreds of churches.

Now, the problem was the scriptures say that the student is not greater than his teacher.

And like any congregation, pride can set in. And this group thought they had a lock on the truth, on certain teachings, a few teachings, that they elevated above other teachings. And they ignored many of the teachings that many of you hold so dearly. They just ignored them.

That was a problem. God will eventually have to deal with that. But they neglected to follow all Jesus' commandments. But the lesson I learned was, be humble. I need other Christians who have other strengths in my life. Because if I'm working in my small group and trying to practice discipleship, I'm not going to see it all. I'm going to have a blind spot or many blind spots. I need other Christians in my life.

But what I appreciate was the purpose was to go and make disciples of the group. Can you imagine my friend Chris, if all he did was have them cut wood and drill holes, but they never made anything? I mean, a carpenter who doesn't make stuff, he's not a carpenter.

There's something wrong if we're disciples and we're not making fishers of men. Because that's what Jesus told us to do. There's nothing as Christ-like as laying your life down for someone who really doesn't want the Gospel or know the Gospel. Because typically you'll be rejected.

You'll be scorned. But often, you keep doing it, people will turn and become Christians. That's an incredibly loving feat that only God can help us to do. The last thing I wanted to share was just this environment, the importance of having this environment that's safe, that's positive, hardlined on sin, but allows people's hearts to come out, people to make mistakes, to say the foolish thing, the stupid thing. Because that's the only way you can disciple people, right? Help people see what's right and correct.

And I am just so excited to look out at this group because you have embraced some of the most hardest teachings in the scriptures.

It's crazy. Non-resistance, covering, divorce and remarriage, these are the most radical teachings in the scriptures. They're so countercultural. You've embraced them. Like the heart, I feel like that's the hard work. The easy work is to go out and tell people about it. And if you hold on to that now, you probably think the opposite. I think it's the other way. I think it's hard to get the group I know, who really loves discipleship, to embrace these hard teachings. But if we can get these together, oh my goodness, could God not be glorified and praised? Could the Gospel not go out to all nations? And that is my prayer and hope. Amen.